Letter to Friedrich Engels, August 27, 1852

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 27 August 1852


First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 27 August 1852 28 Dean Street, Soho Dear Frederick,

You will find enclosed:

1. Letter from Massol to me. The man upon whom he exerts influence is Proudhon, and the book which he regards as the happy (!) fruit of that influence is the latter's most recent book on Louis Bonaparte.[1] I shall be writing about this in one of my next letters.

2. Cluss' letter, an excerpt from which you have already had.[2]

3. A highly interesting letter from Jakob Huzel about Godo- fredus.[3]

4. A scribble by Goegg in the Schweizerische National-Zeitung.

5. and 6. "Draft of a treaty of union' between Kinkel, Willich and Goegg. A circular letter from the first-named gentlemen to their American committees and guarantors.[4]

The whole is a cry of distress from Kinkel-Willich. They wish 1. to remove the inflexible Reichenbach from the proximity of the Holy Graill98 so that they may use the funds 'with the utmost dispatch'.

2. Now that Kinkel no longer has an army behind him he wants to join the so-called Revolutionary League with £1,000 behind him, expecting the said League to show its gratitude by electing him to its highest committee.

3. Willich, hard-pressed and in an untenable position, wants-to go to America once he has, as he puts it, 'solved one more problem'. The problem is to feather a parasitical swindler's nest for himself in America by handing over the £1,000 to the Revolutionary League and by joining same.

More next time. Salut!

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ P. J. Proudhon, La révolution sociale démontrée par le coup d'état du 2 décembre.
  2. ↑ See this volume, pp. 160 61.
  3. ↑ Huzel's letter to Cluss of 20 July 1852 which Cluss sent to Marx and which contained information about Kinkel's preparations for a congress of guarantors in America in the autumn of 1852, and gave a list of European guarantors of the loan. Huzel had a high opinion of Marx's work, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, which he had read thanks to Cluss: I am also firmly convinced now that with his philosophy of destruction he will show us many more treasures with which we, despite all the devilish difficulties, can and must conquer the world.— In the Eighteenth Brumaire I find the loftiest ideas expressed in the most revolutionary way.'
  4. ↑ The reference is to the two documents: 'Entwurf des Unionsvertrags' and 'An das Comité zur Förderung der deutschen Nationalanleihe und an die Garanten dieser Anleihe in Amerika. London. 12. August 1852'. The first contained the terms for a preliminary agreement to amalgamate the American Revolutionary League and the German Emigration Club (see notes 173 and 26). The second document was an address to the committees and guarantors of the 'German-American revolutionary loan' (see Note 27). Its aim was to secure guarantors' preliminary consent to and approval of the amalgamation of these two organisations, which was to be finally formalised at the congress of the Revolutionary League at Wheeling (West Virginia) on 18 September 1852. On these documents see also this volume, pp. 168-69 and 173