Letter to Friedrich Engels, March 10, 1866

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 10 March 1866


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 3, Berlin, 1930
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


MARX TO ENGELS[1]

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 10 MARCH 1866

DEAR FRED,

Did you receive the lines I wrote last Tuesday?[2] I need to know in order to ascertain whether my letters are being tampered with. It was addressed to MRS Burns.

If I am to go to the seaside at all, it will have to be now, as I do not wish to waste any time. I told you in my last letter that in that case I wanted to go to Margate, and the requisite steps must be attended to now. I also asked you in my little letter what Gumpert has in mind by the 'cure'? Continuing with the arsenic, etc., or what?

Everything is at sixes and sevens on the 'INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL' and the 'newspaper board',[3] and a great desire is being manifested to rebel against the absent 'tyrant',[4] but at the same time to wreck the whole shop as well.[5] My wound (from the last carbuncle) has healed up sufficiently (and so far no new one has appeared) for me to go out into company next Monday and Tuesday; but, at the same time, I can still scarcely endure those late meetings in some corner of Fleet Street,,ofi and what is even worse, I am still in a state of such nervous irritation that I could hardly contain the storms within 'the bounds of pure reason',[6] but would more probably explode with excessive violence, which would be pointless.

When shall we finally see Polish article I?[7]

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in Karl Marx, On the First International. Arranged and edited, with an introduction and new translations by Saul K. Padover, New York, 1973.
  2. ↑ See this volume, p. 236.
  3. ↑ The Commonwealth
  4. ↑ i.e. Marx
  5. ↑ See this volume, pp. 249-51.
  6. ↑ Presumably an ironical allusion to Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft.
  7. ↑ in the series of articles 'What Have the Working Classes to Do with Poland?'