Letter to Peter Imandt, August 27, 1852

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 27 August 1852


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 28, Moscow 1962
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO PETER IMANDT

IN LONDON

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

Dear Imandt,

2 truly memorable memoranda![1] If that's not champion drivel[2] ... or however the saying goes.

However, in your place I would reply to the lads: At your guarantors' meeting you nominated a committee (provisional), consisting of Reichenbach, Löwe and Schurz, to settle matters. You were to await that committee's report. Kinkel and Willich were in no way empowered either to ask questions or to receive answers. Their threat that anyone in Europe failing to answer by 1 September (extremely short notice) would be held to be in agreement with them, is merely an attempt by them and Co., after their failure at the meeting, to take over the administration of the funds by stealth. You should protest against this procedure and say you will, if necessary, publish your protest with your full reasons for it.

At the same time I would write to Reichenbach: Repeat the foregoing and declare that he must see to it that not a centime is paid out until the committee nominated by yourselves has submitted its report. Draw his attention to a few of the chief points of the document, but more especially to the following:

'In order that we may make use of the funds if need arise, we propose that the guarantors in America accord us with the utmost dispatch the right to co-opt a third colleague. In which case we should elect either Goegg or some other local member of the Revolutionary League, etc'

I.e. what the gentlemen have in mind is to get the money out of Reichenbach's hands 'with the utmost dispatch' because great 'need has now arisen' for Willich and Co. to 'make use of the funds'.

You could slip into both these letters a few jokes about the 'treaty of union'.[3]

Return me the documents as soon as possible, so that I can send reports to Germany and America (for which the next post leaves on Tuesday[4] ) 'with the utmost dispatch'.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ 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
  2. ↑ Marx uses the German saying: 'Wenn das nicht gut für die Wanzen ist, so weiß ich nicht, was besser ist.'
  3. ↑ See this volume, p. 166.
  4. ↑ 31 August