Letter to Friedrich Engels, March 3, 1859

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 3 March 1859


First published abridged in Der Briefwech- sel 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
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 3 March 1859

Dear Engels,

From the enclosed letter of Lassalle's[1] you will see that I know my men and what MANAGEMENT means.

As regards the letter, I would make the following observations:

1. You must now really follow my advice and shun the office altogether for a few days. I did, of course, put the thing in such a way as to suggest that I'd already read your manuscript.[2] A few days here or there are of no importance, but if you only work in the evenings you won't finish in time.

2. In your position you cannot agree to the small fee but must, if only honoris causa, settle for the alternative of half the net profits.

3. Lassalle's direction that you send the title (i.e. not write it on the manuscript), the foreword (which I'd suggest you don't write) and the table of contents to him personally (F. Lassalle, 131 Potsdamer Strasse, Berlin), is a sensible one. For parcels are being opened by the Post Office, and the government mustn't know the title, which would give them the key to the whole secret.

The manuscript, on the other hand, I shall send from here, as I sent my own manuscript[3] (i.e. insured), to Duncker via Fräulein Ludmilla Assing. Only I'll get Pfänder to put himself down as the sender.

4. You should indeed include something national, anti- Bonapartist, but the tone should be careful and gentlemanly. You can the more readily employ this colour in that the intention of your pamphlet is, IN FACT, a great victory for Mazzini vis-à-vis the National Assembly of 1848 (Radowitz[4] -Mincio),[5] and you enable Germans for the first time to interest themselves with a good conscience in Italy's emancipation.

N o w, GOOD-BYE, OLD BOY.

Your K. M.

In his latest Gottfried Mr Gottfried[6] kow-tows to Suse-Sibeth, whom he describes as a model merchanting house, likewise to that wretched publisher, Trübner, who has compiled a worthless American bibliography.[7] Macte puer virtute.[8]

  1. ↑ In this letter, written at the end of February 1859, Lassalle informed Marx that he had reached an agreement with Franz Duncker regarding the publication of Engels' Po and Rhine. He stated the terms and suggested that the pamphlet should be published in French translation too.—398
  2. ↑ Po and Rhine (see this volume, pp. 391 92)
  3. ↑ A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
  4. ↑ Marx refers to J. M. von Radowitz's speech of 12 August 1848 in the Frankfurt National Assembly.
  5. ↑ In his speech in the Frankfurt National Assembly on 12 August 1848 General Radowitz asserted that Austria's boundary along the Mincio (in other words, continued Austrian rule in Northern Italy) guaranteed Germany against French invasion. This doctrine was refuted in Engels' pamphlet Po and Rhine and in Marx's article 'The War Prospect in Prussia' (see present edition, Vol. 16, pp. 216, 235 and 270).—398
  6. ↑ A reference to the weekly Hermann edited by Gottfried Kinkel.
  7. ↑ 'Commerzielle Briefe' and 'Amerikanische Literatur. Trübner's Bibliographical Guide to American Literature', Hermann, No. 7, 19 February 1859.
  8. ↑ Persevere in thy valour, o youth! (Virgil, Aeneid, IX, 641.)