Letter to Karl Marx, February 1, 1860

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 1 February 1860


First published 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 41


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

[Manchester,] 1 February 1860

Dear Moor,

This time, then, the business is growing more serious every day. Mr Altenhöfer and the devious Hafner in Paris have each published personal, if somewhat vague, statements in the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung.[1] Now we get Lassalle's sagacious letter.[2] The chap is himself already almost a Bonapartist, at a time when coquetting with Bonapartism seems to be the order of the day in Berlin, so Mr Vogt will undoubtedly find the ground favourable there. A fine notion of Lassalle's, that one shouldn't use one's connection with the Augsburg A. Z. against Vogt and Bonaparte, yet Vogt can use Bonapartist money for Bonapartist ends and keep his hands perfectly clean! In the eyes of these folk, it is actually meritorious of Bonap. to have beaten the Austrians; the specific Prussian spirit and Berlin punditry are again in the ascendant and things in that city must look almost as they did after the peace of Basle.[3] There's no reasoning with such people. Lassalle seems to excrete this paltry, niggling pap as naturally as his turds, and maybe a good deal more easily—what answer can one give to such inanities and facile wisdom! Extraordinary advice, the chap doles out!

Let's wait until we've got the pamphlet,[4] and in the meantime cast round for somewhere to print and someone to publish our riposte. If possible, Germany and the opposing party's headquarters, Berlin. The business of the 3,000 copies is plainly a lie of Vogt's.[5] However, there's scandal enough and to spare. I shall go and see Lupus today and tell him to rack his brains for all the material he can lay hands on concerning Vogt. In the meantime, I shall sort through the papers dealing with 1850/52 and you must look out our old manuscript about the émigrés.b So far, I have no idea of what the fellow actually says.

Regards to the FAMILY.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ The supplement to the Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 28 (28 January 1860), carried statements by its editor Altenhöfer and a journalist called Hafner denying, in rather vague terms, the accusations against them in Vogt's pamphlet Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung.
  2. ↑ Lassalle's letter TO MARX of late January 1860 (see notes 32 and 33).
  3. ↑ This refers to the separate peace concluded by Prussia with the French Republic in Basle on 5 April 1795. It was the result of French victories and French diplomatic skill in exploiting the differences between members of the first anti-French coalition, above all Prusso-Austrian friction. The peace with Prussia initiated the collapse of the coalition; Spain concluded a separate peace treaty with France in Basle on 22 July 1795.
  4. ↑ C. Vogt, Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung, Geneva, 1859.
  5. ↑ Late in January 1860, Lassalle wrote TO MARX (see notes 32, 33 and 48) that Vogt's pamphlet Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung had been printed in 3,000 copies and all had been sold.