Letter to Karl Marx, August 6, 1868

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 6 August 1868


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 4, Berlin, 1931
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 43


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

[Manchester,] 6 August 1868

Dear Moor,

What do I do in this heat? Languish and drink. Today it is raining, the air is muggy and saturated with humidity, it is therefore doubly horrible, the sweat does not evaporate and you are damp all over.

Last Friday[1] I took Lizzie and M. Ellen[2] to Bridlington Quay and returned on Monday; tomorrow I shall return there with Moore, and I would take my HOLIDAY and stay the week, but Charles[3] has gout and is all in, so I must do his work as well as my own, and there can be no question of going away.

Eichhoff's pamphlet[4] proves something which I had scarcely credited him with—that he is capable of reporting facts objectively. Of course, you had also made it easy for him. The thing will have a very good effect. Now as regards the transfer to Geneva, it reminds me of the Central Authority's move to Cologne.[5] I would think this coup over very thoroughly. First, are the few jackasses worth it that you should take this step for their sake and hand over responsibility for the whole thing to people who, for all their good will, and also probably instinct, just do not have the stuff to lead a movement like this? Second, once we start moving house, and the holy respect for London, which is still the Medina of the emigration, has been replaced by a very doubtful respect for Geneva—what is the guarantee that the Proudhonists will not succeed in one fine day having the Council transferred, if only as a matter of international courtoisie,[6] to Brussels or Paris? Finally: such centres should never be put in places where deportation is possible, as long as we have a spot free from this risk.

The more splendidly things go, the more important it is that you should keep them in your hands, and now that the business is also beginning to get under way in Germany, I do not believe that Becker[7] has the stuff to manage it. I sent Kugelmann the biographical stuff on Friday from York.[8]

It is a very good thing that something about your book[9] should now simultaneously appear in French papers, too. Nota bene, have at least 20-30 reprints made of my article in the Fortnightly[10] (for which we will naturally pay, s'il le faut[11] ), they can be used very well. ANYHOW, the conspiracy of silence is now over, and if the thing is only blazing a path slowly, it is now doing it surely.

GRAVEL is Kies. For the various stages of the Irish peat-ground I have no expressions, you will have to ask an East Frisian.

Borkheim has already reminded me of the 'date of maturity'. Best greetings to the entire sea-bathing company.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ 31 July
  2. ↑ Lydia (Lizzie) and Mary Ellen
  3. ↑ Charles Roesgen
  4. ↑ W. Eichhoff, Die Internationale Arbeiterassociation...
  5. ↑ Engels refers to the resolution of the Communist League's Central Authority in London of 15 September 1850 (see present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 625-29) passed as a result of the adventurist activities of the Willich-Schapper faction which transferred the powers of the Central Authority to the Cologne district authority.
    The Communist League—the first German and international communist proletarian organisation set up under the leadership of Marx and Engels in early June 1847 in London and operating until 1852. Its programme and organisational structure were evolved with the direct participation of Marx and Engels. On the instruction of the League's Second Congress held on 29 November-8 December 1847, which unanimously approved the principles of scientific communism elaborated by Marx and Engels, the two men wrote the League's programme, Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in February 1848 (see present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 477-519).
    During the 1848-49 revolution, the Communist League was the organisational centre and vanguard of the revolutionary movement in Germany.
    After the defeat of the revolution, the Communist League was restructured in 1849-50 and continued working. The 'Address of the Central Authority to the League' written by Marx and Engels in March 1850 (see present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 277-87) summed up the results of the 1848-49 revolution and emphasised the need to set up an independent proletarian party; it also developed the idea of permanent revolution.
    The decision mentioned above was adopted as a result of the dissent, which became more acute in the summer of 1850, over the tactics to be adopted in order to protect the workers from the influence of the Willich-Schapper faction, which tried to make the League adopt an adventurist policy of starting revolution in total disregard of the objective laws and the situation prevailing in Germany and other European countries. The faction's activities gave the police an excuse to stage provocative acts against the Communist League. However, the transfer of the Central Authority to Cologne had certain undesirable consequences: the Cologne district authority proved incapable of exercising leadership over the entire League; moreover, the transfer had put the Central Authority in danger of police reprisals. In fact, the police persecution and the arrests of May 1851 put an end to the work of the League in Germany. On 17 November 1852, soon after the Communist Trial in Cologne, the League dissolved itself on Marx's suggestion, but its members continued their propaganda and revolutionary work.
    The Communist League had played a major historical role as a school for proletarian revolutionaries and the embryo of a proletarian party, the forerunner of the International Working Men's Association.
  6. ↑ What do you think about this?
  7. ↑ Johann Philipp Becker
  8. ↑ A reference to Kugelmann's letter to Engels of 26 July 1868, which stated that, according to Kertbény, Keil of Leipzig agreed to feature Marx's biography in Die Gartenlaube magazine. However, the biography written by Engels was not printed. In July 1869, Engels revised it for Die Zukunft newspaper, and it appeared in No. 185 under the heading 'Karl Marx' on 11 August 1869 (see present edition, Vol. 21).
  9. ↑ the first volume of Capital; see also Note 116
  10. ↑ A reference to Engels' intention to write a review of Volume One of Marx's Capital for The Fortnightly Review to which Professor Beesly was a contributor, (see Marx's letter to Engels of 8 January 1868, present edition, Vol. 42). While working on the review, Engels wrote out excerpts from Capital, which later made up a synopsis (see Note 26). The review was written around 20 May-1 June 1868, but rejected by the editorial board (see present edition, Vol. 20).
  11. ↑ if necessary