Letter to Friedrich Engels, October 27, 1852

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 27 October 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 October 1852 28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Engels,

I wrote and told you that I would compose a 'Lithographed Circular' about the 'Cologne trial'.[1] That 'L. C.' has now become a pamphlet of some 3 sheets.[2] The thing cannot be lithographed now for two reasons: firstly, such an extensive lithograph would prove very expensive while yielding nothing, for one could not in all decency sell a lithographed circular of this kind. Secondly, nobody could read or be expected to read, a lithograph of 3 printed sheets.

So the only thing to do is to get the thing printed. IMPOSSIBLE in Germany. London is the only conceivable place. It will also be possible to obtain credit if only I am in a position to make a part payment in advance. I would like you to discuss the matter with Weerth and Strohn. But not a day is to be lost. If the thing doesn't come out now, it will no longer be of any interest. My pamphlet is not a vindication of principles, but rather a denunciation of the Prussian government based on the facts and the course of events. Needless to say, I myself am incapable of contributing so much as a centime to the thing. Yesterday I pawned a coat dating back to my Liverpool days in order to buy writing paper.

The Empire is progressing splendidly.[3] Bonaparte knows better than anyone how to ensure that this time the commercial crisis will hit France even more cruelly than England.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ See this volume, p. 217.
  2. ↑ The reference is to Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne (see present edition, Vol. 11). Marx began writing the pamphlet at the end of October 1852, when the trial of the Communist League members was still in progress in Cologne, and completed it in early December. On 6 December a copy of the manuscript was sent to the publisher Schabelitz junior in Switzerland, and on the following day a second copy was dispatched to Cluss in the USA. The pamphlet was published in Basle in January 1853, but almost the whole edition (2,000 copies) was confiscated by the police in March in the Baden frontier village of Weill on the way to Germany. In the USA the work was first published in instalments in the democratic Boston Neu-England-Zeitung and at the end of April 1853 it was printed as a separate pamphlet by the same publishers
  3. ↑ An allusion to the campaign in French government circles for the proclamation of an empire (see Note 219)