Letter to Friedrich Engels, October 8, 1853

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 8 October 1853


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 1, Berlin, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

London, 8 October 1853

28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Engels,

D'abord[1] I must ask you—if you can—to send by return at least a minimum of money. Two weeks ago Spielmann finally paid up after deducting nearly £2. In the meantime, of course, debts had mounted up so much, so many of our absolute essentials had found their way to the pawnbroker's and the family had grown so shabby, that for the past 10 days there hasn't been a sou in the house. I now possess proof that I have been cheated by Spielmann, but à quoi bon?[2] At my request the firm in New York returned me the bill together with a letter from which it emerges that payment was made as early as 22 July, whereas I didn't receive the money until the end of September. I now have a further £24 to draw. (Since Pieper's incarceration I have sent in 6 articles, among them a fulminating acte d'accusation[3] of Palmerston, in which I trace his career from 1808 to 1832.[4] I shall hardly be able to deliver the sequel by Tuesday, since there are a great many Blue Books and Hansards to be consulted and Friday and today were utterly wasted in traipsing around after money. I wrote Friday's article[5] during the night, dictated it to my wife from 7 to 11 in the morning, then took Shanks's pony to the City.) Freiligrath has promised—and will do everything he can to that end, i.e. endorse it himself, etc.—to discount the bill for me with Bischoffsheim, but is unable to arrange the matter for another 8 to 10 days. Such is the casus belli. I shall have to see how I can get through the next few days. Credit is not available for food (excepting hot drinks and appurtenances). On top of that there'll be Pieper who will probably come out of hospital tomorrow—peut-être.[6] As soon as I got my money I sent him £3, but the jackass entrusted it to Liebknecht for safekeeping and will now find there's not a farthing left.

Of the many pleasures I have experienced during my years here, the greatest have consistently been provided by so-called party friends—red Wolff,[7] Lupus, Dronke, etc. Today Freiligrath told me that Franz Joseph Daniels is in London and had been to see him with red Wolff. He, Daniels, declared he wouldn't come to see me because my association with Bangya had brought about his brother's[8] arrest which would not otherwise have occurred. Bangya first called on me in February 1852, and Daniels was locked up in May 1851! A very retrospective effect, then. All this infamous gossip (the reward for my trouble and loss of time, and such-like agreeable consequences of the trial[9] ) is, of course, eagerly seized upon as an excuse for their own lamentable behaviour towards me and their cowardly retreat. However this vile business is attributable solely to the bandying about of ill-natured remarks by Messrs Dronke and W. Wolff who have kept for themselves the easier part, i.e. cancan,[10] being otherwise perfectly content to leave the work to me.

If my life was an easy, or at least a carefree one, I wouldn't, of course, give a fig for these scurrilities. But when, year after year, the bourgeois mire is laced with this and similar kinds of mire, c'est un peu fort.[11] I propose at the next opportunity to declare publicly that I have nothing whatever to do with any party. I no longer feel inclined to allow myself to be insulted by any old party jackass on so-called party grounds.

You can see how necessary it is to get my pamphlet[12] into Germany. Since you can't do it yourself, let me have Strohn's address and I will take the matter up with him.

I would also much like to hear at last what Mr Dronke has to say about the book.[13] As for Mr Lupus, he apparently wishes to make up for his servility towards his bourgeois patrons by being abominably insolent towards myself. I can assure him that he has by no means settled this matter by boasting to Imandt that, on the pretext of coming to say good-bye, he had vented his philistine spleen on me.

Enclosed a letter from Cluss. In his essay against the Neu-England-Zeitung[14] he has—aptly as I think—pieced together sundry passages from my letters about Carey, etc.[15]

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ First
  2. ↑ what's the use?
  3. ↑ indictment
  4. ↑ K. Marx, 'Lord Palmerston'.
  5. ↑ 7 October. K. Marx, 'The War Question.—Financial Matters.—Strikes'. Article written on 4 October 1853 was published in the New-York Daily Tribune, No. 3902, 19 October 1853 as a leading article 'I. Palmerston'.
  6. ↑ perhaps
  7. ↑ Ferdinand
  8. ↑ Roland Daniels
  9. ↑ Cologne communist trial
  10. ↑ malicious gossip
  11. ↑ it's a bit too much
  12. ↑ K. Marx, Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne.
  13. ↑ See this volume, p. 364.
  14. ↑ A. Cluss, 'Das "beste Blatt der Union" und seine "besten Männer" und Nationalökonomen', Die Reform, Nos. 48-51, 14, 17, 21 and 24 September 1853.
  15. ↑ In this letter Marx continues to set forth for his associates in America certain propositions of the economic theory he was then elaborating (see Note 45). At the time of writing this letter Marx had received from Cluss his article 'Das "beste Blatt der Union" und seine "besten Männer" und Nationalökonomen' published in the New York workers' newspaper Die Reform in September 1853, for which Cluss had made use of Marx's earlier letters. (For the text of this article and its analysis see present edition, Vol. 12, pp. 623-32.) The question of rent was among the problems raised in the article. These notes by Marx are directly related to this subject and to the critique he began earlier of the American vulgar economist H. Ch. Carey