Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, September 17, 1859

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 17 September 1859


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow 1946. Printed according to the original. Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


MARX TO WILHELM LIEBKNECHT

IN LONDON

London, 17 September 1859

Dear Liebknecht,

I should ere now have returned Blind's letter of 8th Sep- tember,[1] which you passed on to me, had not various passages therein made it necessary for me to take further steps to ascertain the facts of the case.

In this letter Blind maintains that he had had nothing whatever to do with the problem in question' (i.e. with the public denunciation of Vogt). He further maintains that 'the remarks' he made in the course of a private conversation...[2] (implying that he's only spoken about Vogt in private') 'were completely misinterpreted'. The words

'completely misinterpreted' are used with reference to myself. It was J who completely misinterpreted' Blind's 'remarks made in the course of a private conversation and hence completely misrepresented them to you and Biskamp. The misrepresentation in question is not witting, deliberate misrepresentation, but misrepresentation due either to the inherent difficulty of Blind's account, or to the feebleness and natural perversity of my powers of comprehension. As to which I would observe:

1. Vogt was a tool used by Bonaparte to corrupt liberals in Germany and German revolutionaries abroad. Vogt further offered 30,000 gulden to a certain liberal writer in Germany in order to win him over in the interests of Bonapartist propagan- da.—These two on-dit[3] were imparted to me IN THE MOST SERIOUS MANNER by Blind on 9 May, the day of Urquhart's first meeting. He imparted them to Freiligrath. He imparted them to others. He repeated, or rather reaffirmed, them in your presence, in Holling- er's presence, in my presence, on the day we all three of us had AN INTERVIEW with him. In regard to these two points, therefore, there can be no question of any interpretation, false or otherwise. They have been admitted. They can be proved by evidence. They are FACTS in so far as we consider Blind's statements as FACTS.

2. Now as to Blind's interpretation'— minus the name Vogt qua agent of Bonapartist corruption, and minus the affair of the 30,000 gulden—it is to be found in an article in the London Free Press dated 27 May with the heading: 'The Grand Duke Constantine to be King of Hungary'.[4] Blind is the author of this article in which he says that *he 'knows the name of a Swiss Senator to whom he (Prince Jerome Napoleon) broached the subject'*, and even knows what Plon-Plon DID BROACH TO THE Swiss SENATOR; in which he further * knows of 'the attempts made... to win over to the Russo-Napoleonic scheme some of the exiled German Democrats, as well as some influential Liberals in Germany'*; in which he further KNOWS that *large pecuniary advantages were held out to them as a bribe'*; and in which, finally, he is * 'glad that these offers were rejected with indigna- tion' *. This 'interpretation' is printed and did not therefore occur 'in the course of a private conversation'. Again, it would seem from this that Blind, far from having had nothing to do with 'the problem', played the part of initiator.

3. Add together 1. the facts related, and admitted to have been related, by Blind and 2. the 'interpretation' which Blind had

printed and which is legally verifiable as such, and what do you get?

The anonymous pamphlet Zur Warnung minus a few irrelevant phrases. Whether or not Blind composed this pamphlet is therefore completely immaterial. He is responsible for publishing the elements which go to make it up.

He mentioned the name Vogt and the affair of the 30,000 gulden 'in the course of a private conversation'. Not only with me but with Freiligrath and others. And not as a private and confidential matter but as political denunciation. He himself had the 'interpretation' relating to these two POINTS printed.

It is quite immaterial, therefore, whether or not the pamphlet which subsequently came out was composed by him! All it contains is the sum total of verbal Blind and printed Blind. It is Blind added together. Hence it was not only / who regarded him as its author. Freiligrath did too. He even questioned him about it.

Author or otherwise, it in no way alters the case. He is still the instigator responsible.

You will recall that at the above-mentioned meeting he stated on his word of honour that he had not composed the pamphlet. Composing and writing are in effect two separate things. I now have documentary, legally valid evidence (which is at your disposal) to the effect that the pamphlet was printed by F. Hollinger, was handed to him by Blind, was written in Blind's hand, and was regarded by F. Hollinger as Blind's product.[5]

What remains, then, is my interpretation, described not merely as a 'misinterpretation' but a 'complete misinterpretation'.

As regards the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, the relationship between myself and that paper has always been one of outright hostility. What is at issue in the law-suit that is to be heard in open court at Augsburg on the 28th of October[6] is not a QUARREL between the A. A. Z. and Vogt but a legal ruling on the relationship between the German ex-imperial regent[7] Vogt and the French EMPEROR Louis Bonaparte. In my view, then, what is at issue for every German revolutionary, even if not a member of a 'Fatherland Association',[8] is not, in this instance, 'the affairs of a newspaper with which he had nothing whatever to do'; rather it is his own affair. That, however, is a matter of taste. De gustibus, etc.[9]

Salut. Y o u r

K. M.

  1. ↑ Blind's letter to Liebknecht of 8 September 1859 is quoted in full in Marx's Herr Vogt (see present edition, Vol. 17, p. 122).—486
  2. ↑ About the middle of July 1859 Marx talked with Blind, Liebknecht and Hollinger, the owner of the print-shop in which Das Volk was printed, about the anti-Vogt anonymous pamphlet Zur Warnung (A Warning) which had been reprinted in Das Volk, No. 7, 18 June and the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 173, 22 June. The pamphlet exposed Vogt as a bribed Bonapartist agent. During the conversation, Marx gave it as his opinion that the pamphlet had been written by Blind as it contained facts which the latter had related to him at a public meeting on 9 May 1859 (see Note 420); Marx also pointed out that the proofs of the pamphlet, discovered by Liebknecht in Hollinger's print-shop in mid-June and sent by him to the Allgemeine Zeitung contained corrections in Blind's handwriting. However, Blind, unwilling openly to attack Vogt, denied his authorship. His attitude was later condemned by Marx in his polemi cal work Herr Vogt (present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 122-32).—479, 486, 498. 503, 539
  3. ↑ rumours
  4. ↑ About the middle of July 1859 Marx talked with Blind, Liebknecht and Hollinger, the owner of the print-shop in which Das Volk was printed, about the anti-Vogt anonymous pamphlet Zur Warnung (A Warning) which had been reprinted in Das Volk, No. 7, 18 June and the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 173, 22 June. The pamphlet exposed Vogt as a bribed Bonapartist agent. During the conversation, Marx gave it as his opinion that the pamphlet had been written by Blind as it contained facts which the latter had related to him at a public meeting on 9 May 1859 (see Note 420); Marx also pointed out that the proofs of the pamphlet, discovered by Liebknecht in Hollinger's print-shop in mid-June and sent by him to the Allgemeine Zeitung contained corrections in Blind's handwriting. However, Blind, unwilling openly to attack Vogt, denied his authorship. His attitude was later condemned by Marx in his polemical work Herr Vogt (present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 122-32).—479, 486, 498. 503, 539
  5. ↑ Marx means the written declaration given to him on 17 September 1859 by August Vögele, the compositor, testifying that the pamphlet Zur Warnung had been set in Fidelio Hollinger's print-shop, that the manuscript was in Blind's hand and that Hollinger had named Blind as the author of the pamphlet (see present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 123, 124-25 and 319).—488, 498
  6. ↑ On 22 June 1859 the Allgemeine Zeitung reprinted the pamphlet Zur Warnung, which induced Vogt, in July, to bring an action for libel against the paper. The case was heard on 24 October 1859. In early August the editors of the Allgemeine Zeitung had asked Liebknecht for proof of the accusations against Vogt contained in Zur Warnung. Liebknecht requested Marx to help him obtain Blind's admission that he, Blind, was the author of the anonymous pamphlet. Marx considered such an admission necessary also because Vogt had declared Marx to be the author of the pamphlet. Besides, Marx wanted to expose the cowardice of this petty-bourgeois democrat who dared not challenge Bonaparte's agents openly and was, as it were, aiding and abetting Vogt in his dispute with the Allgemeine Zeitung. Though Marx emphatically condemned the paper's conservative views, in this case he assisted it in the interests of the common struggle against Bonapartism. The court dismissed Vogt's action (see present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 111-32, also pp. 3 and 8-9).—488, 503, 507, 514, 519, 520
  7. ↑ Ridiculing Karl Vogt, Marx often puns on his name. Vogt or Landvogt was the name of provincial governors or other officials in the German Empire in the Middle Ages. By calling him 'the great imperial Vogt', Marx alludes to the fact that he was one of the five members of the Regency of the Empire (Reichsregentschaft) formed in Stuttgart in early June 1849 by the 'Rump' of the Frankfurt National Assembly. The Regency's attempts to enforce the Imperial Constitution (see Note 116) by parliamentary means ended in failure.—428, 434, 436, 450, 460, 488, 521
  8. ↑ Marx refers to the Friends of the Fatherland Society (Vaterlandsfreundegesellschaft)— a republican association of German refugees in London that existed in the 1850s and 60s. Karl Blind, Ferdinand Freiligrath and Fidelio Hollinger were among its members.—488
  9. ↑ De gustibus non est disputandum—Tastes are not matters for discussion.