Letter to Karl Marx, February 27, 1865

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 27 February 1865


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 27 February 1865

Dear Moor,

As you had positively promised to take the necessary steps regarding the newspapers[1] immediately Meissner sent a positive reply, I counted on it that this had been done. Meanwhile, today I dispatched the necessary to Siebel,[2] Liebknecht and Klein in Cologne (for the Rheinische Zeitung),[3] as there is no time to lose. If you have anyone else who can do anything, please write to them—PERHAPS Kugelmann? His letter returned enclosed, ditto Miquel whose high-faluting refashioning of the theory into a platform for mayoral dignity and bourgeois benevolence greatly amused me.[4] It is more or less how Heinrich Bürgers will view the world if he should ever become mayor of Nippes or Kalscheuren.

Jones has got SESSIONS again, I have not been able to see him yet. More tomorrow, 7 o'clock has just struck and I must post this letter.

Your

F. E.

I have no port wine in the WAREHOUSE and will have to get hold of some first, but will do so immediately.

  1. ↑ Engels refers to the publication of a notice about his pamphlet The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party (see this volume, p. 84).
  2. ↑ See this volume, pp. 111-12.
  3. ↑ Engels' notice announcing the publication of his pamphlet The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party (see present edition, Vol. 20, p. 81) was printed anonymously in a number of German papers with the help of Carl Siebel, Johann Klein and Wilhelm Liebknecht (Engels' letters to Klein and Liebknecht requesting to publish the notice have not been found). The notice was published anonymously in Berliner Reform (No. 53), Düsseldorfer Zeitung (No. 62), Elberfelder Zeitung (No. 62) and Rheinische Zeitung (No. 62) on 3 March 1865; Oberrheinische Courier (No. 56) on 7 March, and others. Moreover, on 9 March the Rheinische Zeitung carried a special article 'Für die Arbeiterpartei' about Engels' pamphlet containing long passages from it.
  4. ↑ In his letter to Marx of 19 February 1865, Ludwig Kugelmann enclosed a letter from Miquel, a former member of the Communist League, dated 22 December 1864. Miquel alleged in it that Marx's work A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy 'contains little of what is actually new' and that its conclusions were not applicable to Germany's social and political conditions. At the same time, Miquel tried to justify his desertion to the liberal camp.