Letter to Friedrich Engels, October 5, 1859

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 5 October 1859


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
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 5 October [1859]

Dear Engels,

In view of the way things are managed here (Speck has gone bankrupt and disappeared; Garthe, the cashier, is in Brighton) and always have been managed so far as the Volk is concerned, it is impossible to obtain an accurate account AS TO FOREIGN [out-of- town] SUBSCRIBERS during the pre-Lessner period. Biskamp maintains that, with the exception of the very first issues, Thimm was always sent a dozen copies.

Hollinger is suing me for £12 and a couple of shillings arrears in respect of Das Volk, together with the type for the last issue, which did not appear. The dirty dog is trying to make out all of a sudden that I'm the 'proprietor', although the whole business, I won't say foundered (for your philistine here is a hopeless proposition), but closed down with a deficit because I wasn't the proprietor and was unable to knock the slipshod management into shape despite all the time I spent on it. Still less did I ever give the chap a legal guarantee. I think his account is wrong, for apart from the other moneys received, the fellow had had £7 from me for the 3 penultimate issues alone (his account covers the last 2 issues).—The 15/- for Lessner did not go through his hands but was paid direct by me.—However, I'm not going to engage in any controversy on the subject since I would thereby immediately acknowledge his right to sue me. The dirty dog will swear on oath and get one of his type-setters to swear on oath that I gave a guarantee. (Even were this the case he should have sued Biskamp first.) I shall call in Biskamp, etc., to give counter-evidence. Had I the means, I should have avoided all public proceedings, not by paying Hollinger, but by buying the debt he incurred with one Lisle, Hollinger's LANDLORD and owner of the press. Hollinger owes this man some £60 and has never paid him a FARTHING.

But circumstances being what they are, there can be no question of anything of the kind.

Unless I bring off some sort of coup—and I simply cannot see how I can do so—my position will become completely untenable. Freiligrath made another attempt at negotiating a bill. But

yesterday evening, at the same time as threatening letters from the LANDLORD, etc., etc., a letter arrived from him saying it was definitely no go. The enclosed letter from Lassalle, which I answered by return,[1] looks like good news to me. The thing[2] appears to be selling despite the conspiration de silence. Otherwise I wouldn't have received this indirect request from Duncker. I shall, by the by, be totally incapable of going on with the thing[3] until I've CLEARED up the worst of the domestic mess d'une manière ou d'une autre.[4] Your articles[5] on my affair have been reprinted in German papers from New York to California (with the tiny little Volk we hooked the whole of the German-American press). To show you the kind of rubbish that's appearing in Germany, I enclose a cutting of the advertisements in the Vienna Presse. Il suffit[6] TO READ the index. (By THE BY, I am giving lectures about the first instalment to a select circle of artisans.[7] It seems to interest the chaps a great deal.[8] )

Lastly, a report on two 'great men'.[9]

Ad vocem[10] R. Schramm. Some while ago this pitiful blockhead was in Ostend, whence he sent a contribution to the Hermann.[11]

Not that I'm in the habit of reading that trashy sheet; I heard about this through Freiligrath. In his contribution R. Schramm declares that one could gauge the depths to which the Germans had sunk simply by listening to their conversations on the beach. Thus he had, for instance, overheard two ladies chattering away in broad Wuppertal accents and one of them had addressed the other as 'Mrs Engels'. So that's the kind of revenge this wretch takes! But by way of retribution the blockhead recently lost £2,000 (teste[12] Freiligrath), having, like a fool, entered the 'precious stones business'. This had, moreover, frustrated his scheme of starting a German paper of his own in London (was to have come out this month). To the chap's intense annoyance and as a riposte to his childish MALICE, I got Biskamp to see that the FACTS—non- appearance of the paper, gem trade and loss of money—were published in the Weser-Zeitung. Ad vocem K. Blind. With regard to this homme d'état, I must go into greater detail.

About a fortnight after my return to London from Manchester, Biskamp told me that Blind had proposed, through Hollinger, that he (i.e. Das Volk) amalgamate with Blind and company but

that I, and the communist element generally, must go. In our stead—sensible socialism. At that time I had, as you know, written nothing for the Volk save for a pleasantry or two.[13] However, I forthwith wrote Blind, not a letter, but a communication of ABOUT IO LINES[14] in which I called him amongst other things an homme d'état and an 'important man', and alluded to his henchman 'Fidelio'[15] (i.e. Hollinger). Next day along comes Liebknecht, and tells me that Blind and Hollinger are sitting in the pub on the corner. The former, he said, was expecting me. I therefore went there with Liebknecht. Blind gave his word of honour that there was nothing in the thing. That swine Hollinger ditto. Hence I could only believe them. However, the meeting gave me a chance of finding out about other machinations of Blind's. Inter alia, the conversation came round to Vogt. Blind assured me on his word of honour (as he had already assured Freiligrath, though omitting his word of honour) that he had neither written the anonymous Zur Warnung nor launched it upon the world. I said this surprised me, since it contained no more than what he had told me by word of mouth on the occasion of Urquhart's meeting on 9 May.[16] I reminded him that he had assured me at the time that he possessed tangible evidence, knew the name of the man to whom Vogt had offered 30,000 or 40,000 gulden, but 'unfortunately' could not divulge it, etc. Well, Blind hadn't the face to deny this but expressly admitted it more than once in Liebknecht's and Hollinger's presence.

WELL! A few weeks ago the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung wrote to Liebknecht, who had sent them Zur Warnung. Liebknecht came to me.[17] I told him to go and find Blind, and that I should await the homme d'état 'in the pub at Blind's corner'. Blind was at some resort—St. Leonard's, I think. Liebknecht wrote to him; wrote once, twice. At last a letter from the homme d'état. In the coolest and most 'diplomatic' manner the latter regretted that T should have called to see him in vain. Liebknecht, he went on, must understand that he (Blind) had no desire to intervene in the affairs of a 'paper with which he had absolutely nothing to do' and in a matter with which he had absolutely nothing to do. As for Liebknecht's allusions to 'remarks' let fall 'in the course of a private conversation', these could only be attributed to a 'complete' misunderstanding. And that, or so the homme d'état imagined, was that.

I now took Liebknecht with me to Collet. I recalled that The Free Press of 27 May ('The Grand Duke Constantine',[18] etc., p. 53) had contained a paragraph which I immediately suspected to be Blind's handiwork and which, taken in conjunction with Blind's verbal admissions before Liebknecht, Hollinger and myself, constituted the entire contents of the anonymous pamphlet, besides providing proof that it was not just en passant, in the course of a 'private conversation', that Blind had touched on this 'matter with which he had absolutely nothing to do'. Hence to Collet, who instantly declared Blind to be the AUTHOR. He still had Blind's letter in which the latter had enclosed his card but had asked that his name should not be disclosed. This was convincing evidence.

By a series of manoeuvres which it would take too long to describe here, I further extracted the enclosed (which you must let me have back by return. I have also shown it to Freiligrath). So much for the respectable citizen's 'word of honour'!

Well, last Saturday Liebknecht sent the homme d'état a letter (modelled on a letter from myself to Liebknecht in which I had summed the matter up in somewhat forceful terms[19] ). We are awaiting the answer and will let you know the details.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ See this volume, pp. 497-99.
  2. ↑ K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
  3. ↑ After the publication, in June 1859, of the first instalment of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (see present edition, Vol. 30), Marx intended, as previously agreed with the Berlin publisher Duncker, to prepare for the press and publish as the second instalment the 'Chapter on Capital', which constitutes the bulk of his main economic manuscript of 1857-58; and then publish the remaining parts of his economic work (see Notes 250 and 355). As he proceeded with his plan, however, he realised that he would have to do more research to formulate the basic propositions of his economic theory. But his journalistic activity and other party obligations, above all the need to refute publicly Vogt's slanderous allegations against proletarian revolutionaries, temporarily diverted him from his economic studies. It was not until 1861 that he resumed them in earnest. Later Marx decided to publish his researches not as the second and further instalments of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy but as a large independent work.—489, 498, 502, 508, 511, 522, 523, 542, 574
  4. ↑ one way or another
  5. ↑ F. Engels, 'Karl Marx. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'.'
  6. ↑ It suffices
  7. ↑ Marx has: Knoten.
  8. ↑ Marx means the lectures on political economy he gave in the German Workers' Educational Society in London in the autumn of 1859, after the publication of his A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. The draft of one of the lectures has been published in the present edition under the title 'On the Division of Labour' (Vol. 16, pp. 617-18).—502, 520
  9. ↑ The 'great men' (the 'großen Männer') was the nickname Marx and Engels applied to German and other refugees, primarily petty-bourgeois democrats, who after the 1848-49 revolution engaged in pseudo-revolutionary activities, organised plots, raised 'revolutionary loans', formed governments in exile, and the like. In their joint work The Great Men of the Exile (present edition, Vol. 11) Marx and Engels gave a satirical description of some of them.—376, 500, 502
  10. ↑ As to
  11. ↑ [C. Schramm,] 'Ostende 31. August', Hermann, No. 36, 10 September 1859 ('Vermischte Nachrichten').
  12. ↑ witness
  13. ↑ Marx means his reviews published in the section 'Gatherings from the Press'.
  14. ↑ This communication has not been found.—503
  15. ↑ Fidelio—the assumed name of Leonore, heroine of Beethoven's opera Fidelio.
  16. ↑ 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
  17. ↑ 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
  18. ↑ The Free Press, No. 5, of 27 May 1859 carried Karl Blind's anonymous note 'The Grand Duke Constantine to Be King of Hungary' exposing the plans for giving the Hungarian throne to the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia. Marx mentioned this article in his Herr Vogt (see Vol. 17, pp. 122-24). Blind also hinted at the possibility of some refugee German democrats and liberals being bribed by the Bonapartists. The same issue of the journal carried an excerpt from a private letter comparing Kossuth's tendency to yield to Bonapartist demagogy in the nationalities question with Mazzini's critical attitude to it. Marx may have drawn on the two items for the facts he relates to Engels.—452, 504, 521
  19. ↑ See this volume, pp. 486 88.