Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, May 15, 1853

Author(s) Adolf Cluss
Written 15 May 1853


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


ADOLF CLUSS TO JOSEPH WEYDEMEYER

IN NEW YORK

Washington, May 15th 1853

... Marx has written me a very jolly letter in which he says that everyone was greatly amused by my description of the doings of Willich, that 'brother of the guild of misery'.[1] He says that, amid peals of Homeric laughter, they resolved en grand comité[2] to wish his 'life' as unhampered a course as possible. He remarks: 'If the lunacy of this drôle[3] were not intermixed and interlarded with cunning calculations as to how best to fill his belly without doing any work, he would long since have found his way to the lunatic asylum.' In return for my report, Marx is going to send me in his next a copy of the passage relating to Willich in The Great Men of the Exile.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution. Marx says he has no time for translation; if you or I or someone else will undertake to translate it, and if we let him know where he left off, he will take upon himself to write the whole of the conclusion.[4] Marx is of the opinion that as a pamphlet, the thing will not sell, and certainly not pay for itself; he would be perfectly satisfied with a feuilleton. (So whatever remains to be done would be left to us.)

Raveaux's former followers—philistines—long in need of another saint, have put red Becker[5] in Raveaux's place. A tout seigneur tout honneur[6] .

  1. ↑ The reference is to Cluss' letter to Marx of 10 April 1853
  2. ↑ in full committee
  3. ↑ rascal
  4. ↑ Engels planned to publish Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany in German in Die Reform. The last, twentieth, article of this work did not appear in the New-York Daily Tribune and was probably not written (see Note 214)
  5. ↑ probably Max Joseph Becker
  6. ↑ Honour to whom honour is due.