Letter to Friedrich Engels, about December 12, 1853

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 12 December 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, about 12 December 1853]

Dear Engels,

From the telegram I received from you this morning I naturally cannot tell:

1. Whether Cluss', etc., answers[1] and the issues of the Reform relating to Willich[2] have reached you from New York. The contrary would seem possible, since Mr Lupus, in a fatuous letter to Cluss, seeks to conceal his laziness by inveighing against Weydemeyer.

2. Has Dronke returned the relevant numbers of the Criminal-Zeitung[3] I asked Steffen to get you to send them to him in Chester, since I can't do without the one copy I have down here. When—induced by you—I came in my last letter[4] to speak of the odd affair of 'the well-known gentleman, Dr Dronke's' statement, it occurred to me that the immediate upshot would be that I would get no private letters from you until the affair could be assumed to have blown over—say a week or two. At least, that is the method which, since Mr Lupus' arrival in Manchester, you have adhered to with unusual consistency in all matters concerning myself and the two gentlemen. Hence, if our correspondence is not to be reduced to mere telegraphic exchanges, it would be better if both of us were to omit in future all allusions to your friends and protégés up there.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ J. Weydemeyer, A. Cluss, A. Jacobi, 'An die Redaktion der New-Yorker Criminal-Zeitung', Belletristisches Journal und New-Yorker Criminal-Zeitung, No. 37, 25 November 1853.
  2. ↑ 'Werbungen in New-York', 'Das Wirken der "Militär Kommission"', Die Reform, Nos. 87 and 88, 19 and 21 November 1853.
  3. ↑ containing Willich's 'Doctor Karl Marx und seine "Enthüllungen"'
  4. ↑ See this volume, pp. 400-01.