Letter to Karl Marx, March 1, 1868


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

[Manchester,] 1 March 1868

Dear Moor,

The whole of last week I worked like a slave from morning till night in commerce so that I was good for nothing at all. This has now passed, I think, and this week I should get back on to the rails.

Enclosure from Meissner. His draft is naturally absolutely unusable: I shall see whether I cannot knock together something better for him. Now I am sorry that I sent him the articles, I should already have prepared something for him from them.[1]

I shall write something for Wilhelmchen[2] ; verbatim extracts would be difficult, but I can spin out some main points to some extent for his public.[3] I, too, have seen only 3 numbers of the rag,[4] and these could have been edited by Gustav Struve. Since Wilhelmchen was left to his own devices his South German basic federative republicanism (how earnest[5] the man is) has broken out again in full glory. The fellow even re-prints Karl Grün.D95

How is your carbuncle faring? Let us hope that this is finally the last.

Mr Goegg obstinately sends me the Les États-Unis d'Europe (the fellow wants me to get an agency for him, thus the devotion). Since the paper appears simultaneously and with the same contents in German and French, it would not be bad at all to announce your book[6] there and Goegg has promised to insert articles by you or me. What do you think of that?

Best greetings to your wife, the girls and Lafargue.

Your

F. E.

  1. See this volume, p. 534.
  2. Wilhelm Liebknecht
  3. At Marx's request, Engels wrote a detailed review of Volume One of Capital for the Demokratisches Wochenblatt in the first half of March; it was published in it unsigned, as two articles, in Nos. 12 and 13 of 21 and 28 March 1868 (see present edition, Vol. 20).
  4. Demokratisches Wochenblatt
  5. Ernscht in the original; Engels is punning on the Saxon pronunciation of ernst.
  6. the first volume of Capital