Letter to Friedrich Engels, January 10, 1857

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 10 January 1857


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 10 January 1857 9 Graf ton Terrace, Maitland Park, H aver stock Hill

DEAR Frederic,

D'abord my best wishes for the New Year, albeit retrospective. As a result of watery ink and several nights' writing, one of my eyes is so inflamed that writing is irksome to me.

Both the £5 (the second) and the MOUNTAIN WARFARE[1] received. For both of them MY BEST THANKS.

Is it true that Lupus has again been attacked and robbed by Manchester highwaymen? Or is the rumour circulating here simply an indiscriminate rehash of the old story?

The best thing old Hill can do is retire, either to paradise or to some idyllic Swiss HILL, SO that he has to be replaced once and for all in your office and can no longer saddle you with double the work under the FALSE PRETENCE of his 'temporary' illnesses.

The Neuchâtel question[2] isn't quite so close to settlement as some papers make out. Both sides may already have gone too far with their braggadocio. Both have already brought discredit upon themselves: our Hohenzollern[3] with his déférence for Bonaparte, the Swiss with their 'dignified' attitude. Thus the rascals have deported several hundred factory workers to Piedmont because of their propagandist demonstrations. In this way the 'lenders'[4] hope to secure the esteem of Bonaparte and of Austria, TOO. What do you make of Lamoricière and Bedeau offering their épées to the Swiss burghers? Obviously just an anti-Bonaparte gesture, since the

fellows could be sure the lenders of Switzerland would not take them at their word.

There is great excitement in the petite démocratie. Just the kind of clash they want. On top of that, of course, your South German patriot regards the Swiss as kinsmen and in fact sees in the present clash nothing but a sequel to the 1849 campaign for the Constitution.[5] The Prussian, for his part, is certainly doing everything in his power to prevent A BREACH OF THE PEACE'. That is why Fatty[6] wrote to his brother-in-law[7] in Petersburg in terms reminiscent of the man who bade his wife stay him lest he jump out of the window. 'Stay me!' is a call our hereditary monarch has addressed to each of the great powers in turn. The question is whether they want to 'hold him back' and whether East and West, delighting equally in his discomfiture, will not add fuel to the flames. Whichever way the thing turns out, there will be no lack of red faces.

Proudhon is in process of bringing out an 'economic bible'[8] in Paris. Destruam et aedificabo.[9] The first part, or so he says, was set forth in the Philosophie de la misère.[10] The second he is about to 'reveal'. The scribble is appearing in German, translated by Ludwig Simon now duly installed as clerk with Königswärter (or some such name, the well-known banker to the National) in Paris. I have here a recent piece by one of Proudhon's disciples: De la Réforme des Banques par Alfred Darimon, 1856. Same old tale. The démonétisa- tion de l'or et de l'argent, or rather que toutes les marchandises should be transformed into instruments d'échange au même titre que l'or et l'argent.[11]

The piece has an introduction by Emil Girardin and betrays evident admiration for Isaac Péreire. Hence it enables one to get some idea of the kind of socialist coups d'état Bonaparte thinks himself capable of resorting to, even at the eleventh hour.

I have a whole LOT [OF] PAMPHLETS written by Bruno Bauer during the Russian war.[12] Feeble and pretentious. In company with his brother Egbert the worthy fellow has now rented from the Berlin municipality 50 acres of land outside Berlin. The intention is that the London Edgar's[13] mother-in-law—an old washerwoman or

SOMETHING OF THE SORT—should look after the 'market side'. Bruno has written to Edgar telling him that this is the way to 'independence'. He is paying a rent of 5 reichstalers PER ACRE, i.e. 250 reichstalers a year. It's old fallow land. Bruno hopes that the profit and the produce from this land will enable him to write at leisure his Geschichte des Urchristentums,[14] intended as an 'historical' test-piece for his critique of the Gospels.[15] Nice critical fantasies these, and to some extent Bruno may have been influenced by the recollection that in Part 2 Faust becomes a land-owner. Only he forgets that Faust obtained the money for that transformation from the Devil.

Lallerstedt, La Scandinavie, ses craintes et ses espérances, Swedish pendant to Mieroslawski's book.[16] Contains o n e or two FACTS of interest. In particular Lallerstedt recognises that, during the last century, England was constantly playing Russian tricks on Sweden. Recounts how Admiral Norris, sent by England on an ostensibly anti-Russian mission after the death of Charles XII, was bribed by Peter I with a precious stone of great value. Also has new material that throws light on the behaviour of Bernadotte.

Nothing new here. I go out little and hear little.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

Mr Faucher from Berlin is one of the PRINCIPAL SUB-EDITORS of The Morning Star. In a diatribe against Lupus in the London Illustrated News,[17] Horace Mayhew writes inter alia:

  • 'Symptoms of being a confirmed old Bachelor: When a man cannot go anywhere without his umbrella, that's a symptom. When a man thinks every one is cheating him, that's a symptom. When a man does all the shopping himself etc.'*
  1. ↑ F. Engels, 'Mountain Warfare in the Past and Present'.
  2. ↑ William IV
  3. ↑ Frederick
  4. ↑ Here and further in the text Marx puns on the words Borger (lenders) and Bürger (citizens, also burghers). The allusion is to the Swiss bankers who extended loans to French manufacturers.
  5. ↑ In addition, risings are expected in the Black Forest, etc.
  6. ↑ Frederick William IV
  7. ↑ Alexander II
  8. ↑ This presumably refers to P. J. Proudhon's Manuel du spéculateur à la bourse.
  9. ↑ I shall destroy and I shall build.
  10. ↑ P. J. Proudhon, Système des contradictions économiques, ou Philosophie de la misère, Tomes I-II.
  11. ↑ The demonetisation of gold and silver, or rather that all merchandise should be transformed into instruments of exchange in the same way as gold and silver.
  12. ↑ On the eve of and during the Crimean war Bruno Bauer published the following pamphlets: Rußland und das Germanenthum, Charlottenburg, 1853; Rußland und das Germanenthum. Zweite Abtheilung. Die deutsche und the orientalische Frage, Charlottenburg, 1853; Deutschland und das Russenthum, Charlottenburg, 1854; Die jetzige Stellung Rußlands, Charlottenburg, 1854; Rußland und England, Charlottenburg, 1854 (French edition: La Russie et l'Angleterre, Charlottenburg, 1854). These works, particularly the last two, were criticised in Marx's unfinished draft 'Pamphlets über the russische Kollision von B. Bauer', written in January 1857 (see present edition, Vol. 15).—90
  13. ↑ Edgar Bauer
  14. ↑ A reference to B. Bauer's Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs, Bd. I-IV.
  15. ↑ Goethe, Faust. Tragödie zweiter Teil, Act V.
  16. ↑ L. Mieroslawski, De la nationalité polonaise dans l'équilibre européen.
  17. ↑ The London Illustrated News, No. 836 (supplement), 20 December 1856.