Letter to Karl Marx, January 25, 1851

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 25 January 1851


First published in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 1, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38, pp. 266-268

TO MARX IN LONDON

[Manchester,] Saturday [25 January 1851]

Dear Marx,

Je te trouve joli en me disant que je suis taciturne comme la mort![1] However, I'll refrain from making any further riposte.

The perfidy of that Pomeranian blackguard, Ruge, is crude beyond all measure.[2] It would be the simplest if you were to draft a statement to be signed by us both.[3] A few personal remarks could, if necessary, be appended in the form of notes and signed separately by each of us. I don't know whether I should add something on my own account, if only to say that, in my commercial employment, I have maintained complete independence and hence do not have to let myself be ordered by my 'principals', as Mr Ruge was by his superior Mazzini, despite all his earlier atheistic boasting,[4] to append my signature to moving appeals to the bon dieu[5] ; and that I have adopted this line so as not to fall into the necessity, congenial enough to other worthy gents held up to us as an example by Mr Ruge, namely, of living on democratic charity—or some such. Tell me if you think this is necessary.

The article, by the way, with its moral indignation and its monumental lies, provides splendid stuff for ridicule. It immediately puts one on the track of Ruge's intrigues. It's very natural that Mr Ruge and Mazzini's European Committee should be as incense in the nostrils of the worthy Reverend Dulon, and that Mazzini's sublime manifestos should find their only fertile soil in Germany among those wailing North German, Lower-Saxon democrats swimming in Bremen-concocted, belletristic, drivel-sauce. These gentlemen's Friendship of Light[6] was bound to find desirable allies in Ronge-Mazzini and in the now once more god-fearing Ruge, while the honour of officially corresponding as the 'German Committee' with the greatest men of respectable European democracy must inevitably have made that malleable parson Dulon receptive to the worst scurrilities levelled against the 'frivolous' and godless folk of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Ruge, too, has only plucked up courage since coming to believe that the Revue is dead. But I think he is mistaken and will shortly bring down a pretty thunderstorm upon his ludicrous cranium.

Would it not be a good idea—since we cannot possibly raise a real shindy about this article or reply to it anywhere save in the Tages-Chronik[7] —to have the aforesaid Dulon secretly worked upon by his friend, red Becker[8] ? After these scurrilities we can't even be sure that our reply will be accepted.

But it is clear as day that it was only Schramm's[9] fatuous manner and the ill-considered prating which, to judge by this article, he indulged in at his brother's,[10] that inspired these jackasses with sufficient courage to vent themselves so vulgarly against us, the 'isolated and forsaken by all'. The fellow will now himself realise how base are the machinations whose tool he has become, and he must also realise that his stupidity harms himself more than others. The great Ruge doesn't even pay him the half-hearted court he pays to Tellering. 'C. Schramm, not to be confused!'[11] What's the fellow up to now? Cette affaire est de peu d'importance.[12] Trumped-up and misconstrued tittle-tattle, clumsy and incomprehensible insinuations and moral bombast—nous avons soutenu, Dieu merci, de bien autres charges ![13] The only unpleasantness is that the thing will upset your wife so much, which, as things are now, is undesirable.[14]

Next week in The Friend of the People I shall duly take the European Committee to task and have already notified Harney.[15]

I must stop now, as the office is just closing and it's nearly time for the post. More anon.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ You're a fine one to tell me I'm silent as the grave.
  2. ↑ See this volume, p. 265.
  3. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, 'Statement. 27 January 1851.'
  4. ↑ This refers to the manifesto of the Central Committee of European Democracy (see Note 338) 'Aux peoples! Organisation de la démocratie' published in Le Proscrit, No. 2, 6 August 1850 and signed by Mazzini, Ledru-Rollin, Darasz and Ruge. Ruge, who posed as an atheist, signed the manifesto, despite the religious slogans it contained. For criticism of the manifesto see: K. Marx and F. Engels, 'Review (May to October [1850])' (present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 528-32).
  5. ↑ Good Lord
  6. ↑ Friends of Light—a religious trend which arose in 1841. It was directed against pietism which, supported by Junker circles and predominant in the official Protestant Church, was distinguished by extreme mysticism and bigotry. The 'Friends of Light' movement was an expression of bourgeois discontent with the reactionary order in Germany in the 1840s, which led in 1846-47 to the formation of so-called free communities, which broke away from the official Protestant Church.
  7. ↑ Bremer Tages-Chronik
  8. ↑ Hermann Becker
  9. ↑ Conrad Schramm
  10. ↑ Rudolf Schramm
  11. ↑ Ruge's article has: 'Conrad Schramm (not to be confused with the Berlin deputy Rudolf Schramm)....'
  12. ↑ The affair's of small significance.
  13. ↑ We have, God be praised, survived far worse accusations.
  14. ↑ Jenny Marx who was extremely grieved by the death of her son Heinrich Guido (Fawksy) was soon to have a baby. On 28 March 1851 she gave birth to a daughter, Franziska, the Marxes' fifth child.
  15. ↑ At this time Engels was working on a series of articles on the European petty-bourgeois democratic leaders which he intended for The Friend of the People, a weekly edited by G. J. Harney. His intention did not materialise, however, owing to disagreements with Harney because of the latter's sympathising with opponents of Marx and Engels—petty-bourgeois emigrants and sectarian elements. Later Marx and Engels used this material in The Great Men of the Exile (see present edition, Vol. 11).