Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, November 21, 1865

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 21 November 1865


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow, 1946 and in the language of the original, English, in: Wilhelm Liebknecht. Briefwechsel mit Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, The Hague, 1963
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


MARX TO WILHELM LIEBKNECHT

IN LEIPZIG[1]

[London,] 21 November 1865

My dear Miller,[2]

Since the conference[3] held at this place I fell again very sick. Afterwards I had to leave London for family affairs.[4] Hence my protracted silence. As to your report, I could not lay it before the conference, because I was too personally introduced in it.[5] As to your Berlin speech, there were some very disagreeable blunders in it which could only emanate from yourself, because they alluded to facts only known to you, but half forgotten and wrongly reproduced by you.[6] But this is a thing of the past.

I have received the Berlin letter, and I shall answer to it.[7] I have at present neither the time nor the means to go to Berlin. Even if I could, you know very well that all and every sort of agitation would be out of the question. The Prussian government has not in vain declared that the amnesty, as far as I was concerned, still excluded me from Prussia, and only gave me leave to travel as a Foreigner through the Bismarckian world.[8]

The Workman's Advocate I shall send you one of these days some numbers of. You can write to it on every subject you please, social or political. Till now it is a paper of good will, but very mediocre still. Of course, myself had and have not yet the time to contribute to it, although I am one of its Directors.[9] (By my continual relapse into damned ill health I was forced to interrupt the finishing of my book[10] and must now apply to it all my time, part of which is, with all that, absorbed by the International Associa- tion.) Engels has promised to contribute[11] but not yet done so. And the same is the case with other people.

The Conference has resolved that a Public Congress is to take place at the end of May, at Geneva. A programme of questions to be there debated, has been resolved upon.[12] But nobody can assist who does not belong to a society connected with us, and being sent as a delegate of such society. I now call upon you very seriously (I shall do the same at Mayence through Stumpf, and shall write to the Berliners[13] on it) to enter the Association with some men, few or many, we do not care. I shall send you cards which I have prepaid, so that you can give them away. But now work! Every society (whatever its number) can enbody itself by paying 5 shilling in the block. The cards, on the contrary, which cost each 1 shilling, give the right of individual membership, which is important for all workingmen going to Foreign countries. But treat this money matter as quite secondary. The principal thing is to get up members, individual or societies, in Germany. On the congress, Solingen was the only place represented (they had given power of delegation to our old friend Becker,[14] whom you are very mistaken in if you consider him as a tool of Megära Hatzfeldt).

The programme (of questions to be lead before Congress) I shall send you in my next letter. All the Paris liberal and republican papers have made great fuss about our Association. Henri Martin, the well known historian, had a most enthusiastic leader about it in the Siècle][15]

I have heard nothing of Quenstedt[16]

A thing which will rather surprise you, is this: Shortly before the arrival of workingmen's letter from Berlin, I received from that very same place—centre et foyer des lumières',[17] of course — a letter on the part of— Lothar Bucher, inviting me to become the London money article writer of the Preussische Staatsanzeiger, and giving me to understand that everybody, der noch bei Lebzeiten im Staat wirken will, 'sich an die Regierung ralliiren' muss.[18] I have answered him by a few lines which he is not likely to exhibit.[19] Of course, you must not publish in the papers this affair, but you can communicate it, under the seal of discretion, to your friends.

Freiligrath's London shop—viz. the London branch of the Bank of Switzerland — will be shut up, never to be opened again, before 1866.[20]

Give my best compliments to Madame and Alice.[21]

Yours truly

A. Williams[22]

Some curious letters, written long time since, during his stay at London, by Bernhard Becker to Dr Rode have fallen into my hands.

I have opened this letter again, and by that operation somewhat torn it, in order to add that, during the past spring I had sent a letter to Dr Kugelmann, together with cards of membership for our Association.[23] I have received no answer on his part.[24] The letter of which you speak has never arrived at my hands. Please, write him on this affair. If he writes to me, let him do so under the address of 'A. Williams, Esq.', and not the other one.

  1. ↑ The letter bears the stamp: International Working Men's Association / Central Council / London
  2. ↑ Liebknecht's conspiratorial pseudonym
  3. ↑ The London Conference of the International Working Men's Association was held from 25 to 29 September 1865. It was convened on Marx's insistence, for he considered that the Association's sections were not yet strong enough to succeed in holding a general congress in 1865 as stipulated by the Provisional Rules. The conference was attended by Central Council members and by delegates from the principal branches in France, Switzerland and Belgium. Wilhelm Liebknecht could not come to the conference, and Germany was represented by Karl Marx as the Corresponding Secretary of the Central Council for the country and Johann Philipp Becker who had credentials from the Solingen branch of the General Association of German Workers which was in opposition to the latter's Lassallean leadership.
    The conference heard the Central Council's report, its financial statement, and also delegates' reports on the situation in individual sections. The main point discussed was the agenda and the procedure for convening the forthcoming congress. It was decided to hold it in Geneva in May 1866 (later the Central Council postponed it until early September 1866). Though the Proudhonists demanded that the Polish question should be struck off the agenda of the Congress and that the right of any member of the Association to participate in it be recognised, the conference retained in the agenda the point of the restoration of Poland's independence and recognised only elected delegates as competent members of the Congress. Other proposals of the Council concerning the programme of the Congress were also approved.
    The London Conference of 1865 which was prepared and conducted under Marx's guidance played an important part in the formation and organisational shaping of the International.
  4. ↑ Marx stayed with Engels in Manchester from 20 October to early November 1865.
  5. ↑ Marx is referring to Liebknecht's 'Report on the Working-Class Movement in Germany' drawn up for the London Conference of the International (see Note 247). The manuscript of the report preserved among Marx's papers was published in English for the first time in The General Council of the First International. 1864-1866. The London Conference 1865. Minutes, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1961, pp. 251-60.
  6. ↑ See this volume, p. 176.
  7. ↑ The enclosed letter, dated 13 November 1865, was from Theodor Metzner, Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt, members of the Berlin branch of the General Association of German Workers. During Wilhelm Liebknecht's stay in Berlin all three came into close contact with him which they continued to maintain after his expulsion from Berlin. In their letter the Berlin workers who gravitated towards the International informed Marx about the working-class movement in Germany and the split in the General Association and asked Marx to come to Berlin to lead it.
  8. ↑ In connection with the enthronement of King William I of Prussia an amnesty was granted in Prussia on 12 January 1861 guaranteeing, in words, all political refugees unimpeded return to the country. In the spring of 1861, during his stay in Berlin, Marx submitted an application to the Prussian government requesting the restoration of his Prussian citizenship. His request was rejected by the Prussian authorities on the grounds that in 1845 Marx had surrendered his status as a Prussian of his 'own free will' and 'therefore' could be regarded 'as a foreigner' (see present edition, Vol. 19, pp. 339-58).
  9. ↑ At the end of July 1865 John Bredford Leno, the proprietor of The Miner and Workman's Advocate published in London from 1863, proposed placing this weekly at the service of the Central Council of the International. The proposal met with approval by the Council members. They discussed the matter at the meetings of 8 and 15 August 1865, in the absence of Marx who was busy with his Capital. However, Eccarius informed him in detail about this in a letter dated 16 August 1865.
    On 22 August an inaugural meeting was held of shareholders of the joint-stock company for financing the workers' paper, which was called the Industrial Newspaper Company. The meeting, which Marx attended, approved the address to the working men of Great Britain and Ireland and the Company's Prospectus (both published in the present edition, Vol. 20). On 25 September 1865 the London Conference of the International declared the newspaper, which in September assumed the name of The Workman's Advocate, an official organ of the International. At the beginning of November 1865 the paper became the full property of the Industrial Newspaper Company. Marx was a member of the Company's Board and remained on it until June 1866. However, the growing influence of reformist elements in the paper's Editorial Board and the vacillation and conciliatory policy of the trade union leaders on the Company's Board did not allow Marx and his followers to prevent the transformation of this working-class paper into an organ supporting the bourgeoisie.
  10. ↑ Capital
  11. ↑ See this volume, pp. 198 99, 205.
  12. ↑ See previous letter.
  13. ↑ August Vogt, Sigfrid Meyer, Theodor Metzner
  14. ↑ Johann Philipp Becker
  15. ↑ The Workman's Advocate, No. 141, of 18 November 1865 printed Peter Fox's report of the Central Council meeting of 14 November 1865 (see The General Council of the First International. 1864-1866. The London Conference 1865. Minutes, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1961, pp. 138-41). At this meeting the Corresponding Secretary for France, Eugène Dupont, read out the preface to the French delegates' report of the London Conference published in Le Siècle on 14 October 1865. The author of the preface was Henri Martin, a French historian and member of the International. He highly appreciated the activities of the International, its first conference and the programme of the future congress, in particular its Point 9 demanding the 'reconstruction of Poland upon a democratic and socialist basis'. The French Proudhonists Henri Tolain and Ernest Fribourg opposed this point at the conference and after it, for they advocated the proletariat's abstention from political activity.
  16. ↑ In a letter to Marx written in mid-November 1865 Liebknecht told him that a certain Quenstedt from Berlin intended to write to Marx and help him publish reviews of Capital in scientific journals.
  17. ↑ centre and hearth of enlightenment
  18. ↑ who wishes to be active in the state during his lifetime must 'rally to the government'
  19. ↑ In a letter to Marx of 8 October 1865 Lothar Bucher invited him to contribute to the official organ of the Prussian government. Marx's reply letter to Bücher has not been discovered. Later, in 1878, Marx wrote a special item, 'Herr Bucher', concerning this offer, and gave a rebuff to this agent of Bismarck's in another article, 'Reply to Bucher's "Declaration" ' (see present edition, Vol. 24).
  20. ↑ See this volume, p. 208.
  21. ↑ Ernestine and Alice Liebknecht
  22. ↑ Marx's conspiratorial pseudonym
  23. ↑ Marx is referring to his letter to Kugelmann of 23 February 1865 (see this volume, pp. 101 06).
  24. ↑ Kugelmann could not answer Marx's letter of 23 February 1865 (see this volume, pp. 101-05) until 20 December (see Marx's reply of 15 January 1866 in this volume, pp. 220-21).