MARX TO ENGELS
IN MANCHESTER
[London,] 26 October 1859
Dear Engels,
I trust that you aren't ill or that some other misfortune hasn't befallen you, but would beg you, whatever the case, TO DROP SOME LINES since your protracted silence worries me.
Do please return me the cutting from the Tribune[1] which I enclosed in my last.
Duncker has now definitely declared himself willing to bring out the second instalment.[2] Lassalle speaks of his 'Italian' tactics quasi re bene gesta[3] and, in the course of pressing me to make a statement, lets fall the modest hope that perhaps I have revised 'my' opinion.[4]
The Kinkel or Schiller festival here, a festival, by the by, that will turn out to be an altogether wretched affair, is something Freiligrath, 'as a German poet', could not but associate himself with, though I warned him that he was required simply as an accessory to Gottfried.[5]
As regards the Volk I have avoided the COUNTY COURT PROCESS by sacrificing ABOUT £5 while, on the other hand, getting Hollinger to recognise Biskamp as PROPRIETOR on the receipt; he (Biskamp) is therefore responsible for the balance, but since he possesses no property whatsoever, he is absolved of any further liability. This step—a highly unpleasant one under the ACTUAL CIRCUMSTANCES—had to be taken because Kinkel's gang was only waiting for the case in order to raise a public scandal, and not one of the paper's hangers-on was presentable enough to be exhibited in court.
At the request (ENCOMPASSED in two very plaintive, abject letters) of the Augsburger Zeitung I sent them the document relating to Blind.[6] It served the laddie right, the more so because he went to Collet and 1. tried to make use of him for sundry subterfuges, 2. denounced Liebknecht to Collet as 'BELONGING TO THE COMMUNIST PARTY' and, finally, in order to blacken him completely, 3. described the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung as a 'Russian' organ. Remind Thimm to settle his account with us. Salut.
Your
K. M.
- ↑ the clipping with Marx's article 'Kossuth and Louis Napoleon'
- ↑ 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
- ↑ as a well conducted action
- ↑ In a letter to Marx written in October 1859 Lassalle again tried to prove the correctness of the tactics he had advocated in his pamphlet Der italienische Krieg und the Aufgabe Preußens (see Note 421). Marx replied to him on 22 November, supplementing his criticism of Lassalle's anti-proletarian, pro-Bonapartist position on this question with fresh arguments (see this volume, pp. 536-39).—508, 522
- ↑ Marx refers to the festivities to mark the centenary of Schiller's birth on 10 November 1859. The preparations in London were handled by a jubilee committee consisting of petty-bourgeois refugees headed by Gottfried Kinkel, who hoped to use the festival for his own publicity purposes.—508, 511, 514, 525
- ↑ On 14 April 1856 Marx was invited as an official representative of the revolutionary refugees in London to a banquet commemorating the fourth anniversary of the Chartist People's Paper. In his address he spoke of the German and other proletarian revolutionaries' solidarity with the revolutionary wing of the Chartist movement, concentrating in particular on the historic role of the proletariat. The banquet was also addressed by the German Communist Wilhelm Pieper. The other speakers were mostly Chartists (James Finlen, Ernest Jones and others). Marx did not intend to publish his speech, but it was included in the newspaper report that appeared on 19 April 1856 under the heading 'Fourth Anniversary Banquet of The People's Paper' (present edition, Vol. 14, pp. 655-56).—38