Letter to Karl Marx, October 14, 1868

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 14 October 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, 14 October 1868

Dear Moor,

Today the Kölnische Zeitung states that the workers (COLLIERS) in Essen, who have just ended the STRIKE successfully,[1] have revolted against Schweitzerism and its supporters, the local bigwigs, and are demanding strict accounting of the STRIKE funds.[2] The source is suspect, but the symptom is significant. This whole agitation breaks down on money matters; the Lassallean leaders are too scoundrelly in this respect.

Further, it reports that in Gladbach the cotton manufacturers have recognised that the working day is too long, and are forming an association among themselves to reduce the day from 13 hours to 12 for the time being (issue of 12 October). You see that your book[3] is also having a practical effect on the bourgeoisie.

Yet another stupid issue of Wilhelm's sheet[4] this week! He interrupts your stuff about Hirsch[5] in order to publish a rubbishy article which amounts to saying that bourgeois society, or the social', as he puts it, is determined by the political' and not vice versa.[6] Naturam si furca expellas,[7] etc. Nearly every article is crawling with nonsense.

Ernest the Fox now seems to be a certainty here if you can trust the cheers with which he, in particular, is honoured everywhere among the 3 liberal candidates.[8] If things go well, this will be due neither to his cunning, nor to his STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS, but only to the instinct of the masses. The Tories can find no candidate, it is said they wish to put up here one of the Hoares (London bankers); but the man will have to have a lot of money to throw away for nothing if he lets himself in for it.

In Berlin, as a result of the great heat last summer, afternoon lessons were completely abandoned in a number of high schools and morning lessons extended by one period. The results were quite unexpected, the boys made enormously rapid progress, and the business is now going to be tried out on a larger scale.

In Spain the rule of the generals appears to be wearing out rapidly.[9] The abolition of the Jesuits and the partial abolition of the monasteries had been long in coming and only seem to have been forced, at least in part, by financial difficulties; on the other hand, the reward for the officers and NCOs for joining the insurrectionary side came quickly enough. The disarmament of the people also appears to be only a question of time. All the same, in a movement like this the little tricks are not enough with which, after a coup, a general could edge his way through as Isabella's minister.

With best greetings.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ Between 14 and 22 September 1868, 13,000 miners were on strike in Essen. They demanded that deductions from wages be stopped and an eight-hour working day introduced. The strike ended in victory for the workers.
  2. ↑ The reports, datelined 'Essen, 8. Okt.' and 'Gladbach, 10. Okt.', appeared in the column Vermischte Nachrichten (Miscellaneous Reports), Kölnische Zeitung, No. 284, 12 October 1868.
  3. ↑ the first volume of Capital
  4. ↑ Demokratisches Wochenblatt
  5. ↑ K. Marx, 'Connections Between the International Working Men's Association and English Working Men's Organisations'.
  6. ↑ 'Der Staat und die soziale Frage', Demokratisches Wochenblatt, No. 41, 10 October 1868.
  7. ↑ naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret—You may drive nature out with a pitchfork, still it will return (Horace, Epistles, I, 10, 24).
  8. ↑ Ernest Jones was nominated for the Parliamentary elections of 1868 by Manchester's workers, but lost.
  9. ↑ A reference to the bourgeois revolution in Spain (1868-74) which began on 18 September 1868 with a naval mutiny in Cadiz against the reactionary monarchy of Isabella II. The masses, supported by almost all the royal troops, were actively involved in the revolution. As a result, state authority passed to the bourgeoisie and bourgeois landowners, who on 18 October formed a provisional government headed by General Francisco Serrano. The Constituent Cortes, convened in February 1869, passed a bourgeois-monarchist constitution which proclaimed Spain a hereditary monarchy and introduced a number of bourgeois freedoms (universal suffrage for men, freedom of press, assembly, associations, etc.). Against the background of fierce class clashes, a bourgeois- democratic federative republic was proclaimed in Spain in 1873. However, in 1874, big bourgeoisie and landowners engineered a restoration of the Bourbons.