Letter to Adolf Cluss, August 30, 1852

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 30 August 1852


First published in Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 50, Moscow, 1980
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO ADOLF CLUSS[1]

IN WASHINGTON

[London, 30 August 1852]

... This is how the gentlemen[2] have been manoeuvring. They are ignoring their deposition by the guarantors in their immediate vicinity who have seen through them, and are endeavouring to obtain individual votes by stealth, which is partly why Schurz left for America. (A further object is to set up kindergartens there, after the style of the Friends of Light.[3] ) They, who up till now have been vainly angling for unrestricted access to the administra-

tion of the funds—which Reichenbach is withholding from them—are behaving as though they propose to withdraw from it now', unless allowed to do as they please. What they really want is to get at it'.

The point d''''argent[4] is as follows: The chaps have spent £200, which would hardly be ratified here. By this coup, by the special powers they have received from the other guarantors, they hope to get the money out of Reichenbach's clutches and, above all, to make good the £'200'. This was their ploy: First, they send the documents of 11 and 12 August to America and Switzerland, behind the backs of the London guarantors'. Then the letter was delivered to the latter on the 26th with the instruction that, if they failed to answer by 1 September, their silence would be taken for consent.

What will Weitling say on learning that the money will now be indirectly finding its way to the worthy Heinzen? The gentlemen were likewise careful not to mention that, despite Kinkel's recommendation and Goegg's pleading, the Revolutionary League's attempt to establish itself over here was a lamentable failure. Not a man allowed himself to be moved by them. What they now call the Revolutionary League in London is Ruge's clearly circumscribed following, seven in number, which formerly went by the name of Agitation Club. The said league comprises the following gentlemen: Ruge, Goegg, Franck (Vienna), Ronge, Tausenau, Sigel (the other one)[5] ; Oswald, the tobacconist, and the arrogant Tralle have joined in place of Gen. Sigel and Fickler.

Tralle was denounced by Dulon in person because, at a time of peril, he ratted on his little Bremen paper.[6]

Willich is completely and utterly gone to the dogs. Schärttner has refused him his free meals and publicly shown him the door. He now proposes to go to America, where he hopes to be given a kind welcome from the Revolutionary League in return for his intention to bring them the £1,000 by way of a dowry. Schärttner had been solicitously accepted into the central authority of Willich's league. Willich's position in London has become com- pletely untenable; his parasitical existence is over once and for all. It would do no harm were these plans and grand designs of the patriots made public.

In the Kinkel-Willich document you will find the beautiful

axiom: 'The time of the pen is past, the time of the sword has come'[7] ; this should read IN PLAIN GERMAN, and in a higher sense, the time of 'fencing' has come.[8]

In a few days' time the revolutionary general Techow is leaving for Australia with Madame Schmidt (Stirner's wife). He has been living with her in this country for some time. But along comes his fiancée, on learning which Mrs Schmidt declares she will stand down. Then his affianced acquires another 'fiancé' and says she doesn't want Techow any more because of his having lived with the Schmidt woman, and that she is going to marry the other man. Nevertheless he lives in the same house as herself, and the fiancé (the other one) a few miles outside London. Poor Buridan- Techow!

Madame Pulszky was terribly put out, one of the American papers in which you mentioned her having arrived over here.

A propos'. Szemere has sent his manuscript to Webb; but first he got a written agreement that it must be published as it stands'. Let me solve the Szemere mystère for you. The chap is very tight'-'fisted', which is why he would rather get Webb to print his thing than do so himself, as he could perfectly well do...

... A few days ago Félix Pyat called a reunion of his French adherents and laid before them a programme which is now to be published. 'God' had had a hand in it. One of those present objected to God finding lodgment in a revolutionary programme. In conformity with the gouvernement direct principle, Pyat put it to the vote''. 'God' got by with a majority of 7. L''''être suprême est sauvé encore une fois'.[9] God doth not forsake his own, the saying used to go. Now it is: God's own do not forsake him. One good turn deserves another...[10]

  1. ↑ The only part of this letter that has survived is an extract in Cluss' letter to Weydemeyer of 21 September 1852. Cluss writes: 'Herewith English notes for the Herald. Lexow will no doubt attend to them if you din it into him that the rotten elements and buffoons have got to be rendered harmless for the revolution. The agent mentioned therein is General Vetter, a generalissimo of the Kossuth-Mazzini army. He vanished from London for a considerable stretch of time, no one knew where to. He was travelling on a passport in which he figured as an American painter, and with a singer by the name of Ferenze (his mistress). She gave concerts in all the important places. The rest you may read in the English. Vetter has now told the "big-wigs" [i.e. Kossuth] that, circumstances being what they are, he thinks he can do no better than go to America with Ferenze. Mazzini et Kossuth are said to be resigned to their fate and to have decided to leave the initiative to the French.— On 14 and 15 September—yet another intrigue conducted by Kinkel behind the backs of the guarantors in London—the pro-Kinkel guarantors are to hold a meeting in Antwerp with a view to adopting a congressional resolution that will, it is hoped, serve as a weapon against the resolution passed by the American and Swiss guarantors.' After this Cluss quotes fragments from Marx's letter which are reproduced here in full. 'Notes for the Herald' mentioned by Cluss are a version of Marx's article 'Movements of Mazzini and Kossuth.—League with Louis Napoleon.— Palmerston' sent by Marx to Dana presumably after 5 September 1852. When publishing it in the New-York Daily Tribune the editors dated it 28 September 1852. The editors of the present edition have no information whether this material was published in The New-York Herald
  2. ↑ Kinkel and Willich
  3. ↑ The Friends of Light (Lichtfreunde)—a religious trend that arose in 1841 and was directed against the pietism predominant in the Lutheran Church and distinguished by extreme mysticism and bigotry
  4. ↑ money matter
  5. ↑ Albert Sigel
  6. ↑ Bremer Tages' 'Chronik
  7. ↑ Marx alludes to a passage in the address to the guarantors of the loan issued on 12 August 1852 (see Note 197). In reply to the guarantors' proposal to found a newspaper, the document stated that revolution 'no longer needs the pen but the sword. A newspaper in London is of no use for the revolution'
  8. ↑ Play on the word, Fechten', which, besides 'fencing', can also mean 'door to door begging'.
  9. ↑ The Supreme Being is saved once again.
  10. ↑ Cluss does not say that this paragraph is by Marx, but textually it almost coincides with Marx's letter to Engels of 30 August 1852 (see this volume, p. 170)