Letter to Karl Marx, January 28, 1869

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 29 January 1869


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, 29 January 1869

Dear Moor,

I at last have a chance to write to you at greater length. Herr, etc. Gimborn[1] has not presented himself. According to your description, the fellow obviously wants nothing but to indulge in spying industrially.

The Bakunin group of both male and female sex (which difference Bakunin also wants to abolish, i.e., that of the sexes) has probably quietly passed away. The business was of Russian cunning, but still started stupidly; the fox tail showed too clearly and workers, in particular, cannot be caught in this way. Old Becker[2] simply cannot keep his fingers off 'organising', and was just the man to walk into the trap. I am quite ready to believe that he commits other idiocies, but I wish we had a better source than Wilhelm,[3] who simply cannot see FACTS as they really are. Apropos, Wilhelm has not sent me his sheet[4] any more since New Year; if he thinks I'm going to pay for it, he is making a big mistake. I am really glad not to be instructed every week that we may not make a revolution until the Federal Diet, the blind Guelph[5] and the honorable Elector of Hesse[6] are restored, and terrible and legitimate revenge wreaked upon Bismarck the godless.

The Basle story is very nice.[7] Altogether things are marching ahead well in Switzerland. Of course, the affair is significant only because everything which is more or less suppressed on the rest of the Continent appears there in the light of day. But that is in itself very good. And direct legislation by the people makes sense there, because the direct or indirect domination of the bourgeoisie should be countered on the legislative councils.[8] Since the Swiss workers virtually did not exist as a political party of their own until the Geneva STRIKE,[9] but were simply the tail of the radical bourgeoisie, they elected only radical bourgeois to the councils. On the other hand, the elected peasants could also be managed easily by the educated bourgeois. For small cantons, this may be quite satisfactory, but it naturally immediately becomes superfluous and a hindrance as soon as the proletariat enters the movement en masse and begins to dominate it.

A nice feature of the Basle strike is the contributions from Austria as far as Temesvâr. It is inexcusable how old Becker has squandered this business with his wild declarations.[10]

Have only glanced at the Vogt pamphlet,[11] seen that he has the horse descended from the flea. If this is so, from whom is the jackass who wrote this pamphlet descended?

Today I am sending you back the copies of Social-Demokrat, etc., together with some copies of Zukunft. It is very good that there are still 50 copies of Herr Vogt with Kugelmann. When Vogt lectures again in Berlin, Kugelmann must send some there, and advertise it in the newspapers. I bet that will drive him away.

Sam Moore is now busily studying the first part of your Duncker,[12] and he understands it quite well. He has completely grasped the dialectical stuff on money theory, etc., and declares it the best thing in the whole book, THEORETICALLY SPEAKING.

The business with good old Gottfried1 is dragging on and on.[13]

If I can manage it somehow, I shall come to London next Thursday[14] evening and stay until Sunday evening.

The photograph gave great pleasure.[15] Gumpert has the Büchner[16] ; I shall pick it up in the next few days; I fight shy of his wife, who is becoming increasingly philistine.

You must give it to the Lassalleans that they understand agitation in quite a different way from our good old Wilhelm and his boors of the People's Party.[17] This is very disagreeable, since they appear to outflank Wilhelm and Bebel completely, and the masses are so enormously stupid, and the leaders a bunch of blackguards.

Tomorrow Jones will be buried with an enormous procession in the same churchyard where Lupus lies. It is a real pity about the man. After all, his bourgeois phrases were simply hypocrisy, and here in Manchester there is nobody who can replace him with the workers. The people here will break up completely and trail more than ever behind the bourgeoisie. Furthermore, amongst the politicians, he was the only educated Englishman who was, au fond,[18] completely on our side.

Apropos Beesly: How are things regarding the article for the Westminster?[19] Strike while the iron is hot.

I still have something of a cold. With weather like this, there is no end to it. I hope you are better now, too.

Best greetings to your wife and the girls. How is MRS LAFARGUE AND BABY?[20]

Your

F. E.

That the Russian[21] from the start announces 'Marx, K., Works, Volume I',[22] is also good.

  1. ↑ See this volume, p. 201.
  2. ↑ Johann Philipp Becker
  3. ↑ Wilhelm Liebknecht
  4. ↑ Demokratisches Wochenblatt
  5. ↑ George V
  6. ↑ Ludwig III
  7. ↑ Marx is referring to the economic struggle of the Swiss weavers and building workers, which began on 9 November 1868 with the strike of the ribbon-weavers and dyers in Basle and lasted until the spring of 1869. Marx described it in detail in the 'Report of the General Council to the Fourth Annual Congress of the International Working Men's Association' (see present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 68-82).
  8. ↑ A reference to the Constitution of the Swiss Confederation adopted on 12 September 1848. It granted the population the right to take part in exercising legislative power in the forms of Volksanregung and Initiativ begehren. In place of a former Diet, the central legislative body, the Federal Assembly, consisting of a National Council and Council of States, was set up.
  9. ↑ In March and April 1868, 3,000 building workers were on strike in Geneva. They demanded that the working day be reduced to ten hours, wages be raised, and payment by the day be substituted by payment by the hour. On the initiative of the Central Committee of the International's Geneva sections, the workers in other industries rendered assistance to the strikers. In 'The Fourth Annual Report of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association' to the Brussels Congress of 1868 written by Marx it is stated: 'In the struggle maintained by the building trades of Geneva the very existence of the International in Switzerland was put on its trial. The employers made it a preliminary condition of coming to any terms with their workmen that the latter should forsake the International. The working men indignantly refused to comply with this dictate' (present edition, Vol. 21, p. 16). The victory of Geneva workers was made possible by the solidarity action organised by the General Council in England, France and Germany.
  10. ↑ Engels is referring to the information on contributions for Basle workers, published in Der Vorbote, No. 1, January 1869, pp. 12-13.
  11. ↑ Ch. Vogt, Memoire sur les microcéphales ou hommes singes...
  12. ↑ K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
  13. ↑ See this volume, pp. 167, 170, 206.
  14. ↑ 4 February
  15. ↑ See this volume, p. 206.
  16. ↑ L. Büchner, Sechs Vorlesungen...
  17. ↑ Marx is referring to his stay with the Kugelmanns in Hanover from around 17 April to 15 May 1867. He visited them after his talks with Otto Meissner in Hamburg about the publication of Volume One of Capital.
  18. ↑ basically
  19. ↑ See this volume, pp. 138, 141.
  20. ↑ Charles Etienne
  21. ↑ N. F. Danielson
  22. ↑ See this volume, pp. 121, 123-25.