Letter to Friedrich Engels, March 20, 1869

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 20 March 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
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 43


MARX TO ENGELS[1]

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 20 March 1869

DEAR FRED,

We all hope that, in your next letter, you will be sending us better news about MRS Lizzie's state of health. Tussy especially asks you to extend our deepest sympathy to her. It's damned awful weather. Jennychen can't get rid of her cold, and for the past few days I have been cold-wild and cough-confused.

Next week (Friday or Saturday[2] ) the children are going to Paris to the Lafargues. The business with Laura was this: she had a fall 2 or 3 weeks before her accouchement. As a result of this fall, she had to keep to her bed until 1-2 weeks ago and only with difficulty avoided danger.

I intend to have myself naturalised as an Englishman,[3] so I can travel to Paris safely. Without such a journey the French edition of my book[4] will never materialise. My presence there is absolutely necessary. Under Pahnerston's law you can, if you wish, slough off the Englishman again after 6 months. The law provides no protection for the naturalised person with regard to illegalities committed in his country of birth before naturalisation, if he should return to that country. With this exception, a naturalised person is on the same footing as any Englishman vis-à-vis foreign GOVERNMENTS. I really cannot see why I should not visit Paris without the permission of M. Bonaparte, if I have the means to do so.

My best thanks to Schorlemmer for the 2ND EDITION of Chemie.[5]

Tomorrow, as a Sunday recreation, I shall start re-reading the 2nd part, the organic chemistry (and assume that this is where the changes are to be sought).

As regards Louis Bonaparte, I am not in favour of printing the series from the Revue up to 1850 as an introduction[6] . On the one hand, I don't wish to give Meissner new excuses for delay. On the other, it would be very easy, by patching in FACTS that emerged later, to revise this section, but there is no hurry. In Brussels, De Paepe has sought in vain for a French publisher for Louis Bonaparte. For such operations, these gentlemen demand money from the author.

Blanqui, who is now in Paris, made very good jokes at Lafargue's about Moilin's real QUACK NOSTRUM. France, he said, is always ungrateful to its great men. Moilin, for instance, has solved the problem of the century in an unprecedentedly simple manner—and Paris goes about its business as though nothing had happened.

Castille was a June insurgent, was transported as such to Cayenne, and returned after the general amnesty. He wrote the first edition of his book[7] de bonne foi.[8] In the meantime, the government bought him, and staged this second edition as the antithesis to Ténot's writings. The changes made are: 1. the tone has become more bourgeois, sometimes smart-alecky. 2. Passages against the men of December[9] have been removed. 3. A few quietly apologetic phrases for Bonaparte have been patched in. Despite all this, the fonds[10] unchanged, and it remains as you say, a very satisfactory work. It is a very good thing when M. Bonaparte pushes back the writing of history to the period before 2 December. The struggle of the various parties, their mutual: Et tu Brute![11] will help put a stop to the 'revolutionism' of the old scoundrels of 1848 and earlier.

I sent to Beesly, by city post, WITH A FEW RANDOM NOTES for him to read, Vermorel's pamphlet[12] that I also sent you (with the Castille). He sent it back to me with the enclosed note, which is as stupid as it is MAGISTERIAL and arrogant. It appears to me that positive philosophy may be equated with ignorance about everything positive. The other sheet enclosed was sent me by Borkheim for my 'DUTCH RELATIONS'.[13]

Yesterday I found the report on the 'miners' guilds',[14] printed in full in the Social-Demokrat of last Wednesday. Whether the Zukunft has taken it I do not know.[15] Possibly the report does not stand at that lofty stage of wisdom that alone can satisfy social policy. I have not yet received Wilhelm for this week[16]

Apropos. In the very near future there will be a demonstration here for E. Jones. The business is sponsored by the Clerkenwell branch of the quondam REFORM LEAGUE.[17] Their leaders, Weston, Lucraft, etc. are MEMBERS of our GENERAL COUNCIL. The festival committee offered me one of the 5 presidential chairs in Trafalgar Square, from which the masses are to be harangued. I refused the courtesy very politely. What I could not refuse, however, was to promise a small contribution to the demonstration costs ON BEHALF OF MYSELF AND FRIENDS. It must be paid Tuesday NEXT[18] If you and Moore want to take a share, it must be done by then. Addio.

Your

Moor

who every day resembles more a 'white' washed Moor.

  1. ↑ A short excerpt from this letter was published in English for the first time in: The Letters of Karl Marx. Selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1979.
  2. ↑ 26 or 27 March
  3. ↑ When he was about to travel to Karlsbad for a cure, Marx made an attempt to become a British subject in August 1874, as a precaution against possible reprisals by Austrian authorities. In Austria, as in a number of other European countries, members of the workers' and democratic movement could be taken to court for merely corresponding with Marx. A Special Report of the Metropolitan Police Office, Scotland Yard, is extant which was drawn up in connection with Marx's application for citizenship and in which Marx is characterised as follows: '... he is the notorious German agitator, the head of the International Society, and an advocate of Communistic principles. This man has not been loyal to his own King and Country.'
    Marx's request was not granted for reasons which had probably not been explained to him.
  4. ↑ Marx attached considerable importance to the publishing of the French translation of Capital. Ever since 1867, negotiations with Elisée Reclus through Victor Schily had been under way in Paris. Reclus undertook to do the translation in collaboration with Moses Hess. Judging from Schily's letter to Marx of 24 January 1868, Elisée Reclus and Moses Hess intended not so much to translate Capital as to abridge it in order to adapt it to the needs and tastes of the French public. The negotiations, which lasted for almost three years, were unproductive. In early 1868, an offer to translate Capital came from Jo'sef Cwierczakiewicz (alias Card), a Polish émigré in Geneva. Marx turned the offer down (see present edition, Vol. 42, p. 528, 532-33). In December 1868 Lafargue entered into negotiations with the French authoress Clémence Royer over a translation of Capital (see Note 282).
    For subsequent attempts to get Capital translated into French, see Note 441.
  5. ↑ H. E. Roscoe, Kurzes Lehrbuch der Chemie nach den neuesten Ansichten der Wissenschaft. Deutsche Ausgabe, unter Mitwirkung des Verfassers bearbeitet von Carl Schorlemmer.
  6. ↑ See this volume, p. 241.
  7. ↑ H. Castille, Le massacres de juin 1848...
  8. ↑ in good faith
  9. ↑ This refers to the coup d'état of 2 December 1851
  10. ↑ basis
  11. ↑ Cf. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, III, 1, 77.
  12. ↑ A. Vermorel, Les hommes de 1848.
  13. ↑ 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).
  14. ↑ F. Engels, 'Bericht über die Knappschaftsvereine der Bergarbeiter in den Kohlenwerken Sachsens', Der Social-Demokrat, No. 33, 17 March 1869.
  15. ↑ Engels wrote the 'Report on the Miners' Guilds in the Coalfields of Saxony' (see present edition, Vol. 21) at Marx's request on the basis of material sent in by the Saxon miners from Lugau, Nieder-Würschnitz and Oelsnitz, who informed the General Council and Marx personally of their wish to join the International (see Note 241). The report, which Engels had written in English, was read at the General Council meeting of 23 February 1869. An abridged version appeared in The Bee-Hive, No. 385, 27 February 1869. Other English newspapers, including The Times, The Daily News and The Morning Advertiser, refused to carry the report. In early March 1869 Marx himself translated it into German, and it was published in Der Social-Demokrat, No. 33, 17 March, Demokratisches Wochenblatt, No. 12 (supplement), 20 March, and Die Zukunft, nos. 67 and 68, 20 and 21 March 1869.
  16. ↑ The reference is to Demokratisches Wochenblatt.
  17. ↑ The Reform League was founded in London in the spring of 1865 on the initiative and with the direct participation of the International's General Council as a political centre of the mass movement for the second election reform. The League's leading bodies—the Council and Executive Committee— included the General Council members, mainly trade-union leaders. The League's programme was drafted under the influence of Marx, who called upon the working-classes to pursue their policy independently of bourgeois parties. Unlike these parties, which confined their demands to household suffrage, the League advanced the demand for manhood suffrage. This revived Chartist slogan (see Note 201) evoked a sympathetic response among the working class and won the League the support of the trade unions, hitherto indifferent to politics. The League had branches in all major industrial towns and counties. However, the vacillations of the bourgeois radicals in its leadership, and the conciliation of the trade union leaders prevented the League from following the line chartered by the General Council. The British bourgeoisie succeeded in splitting the movement, and a moderate reform was carried out in 1867 which granted franchise only to the petty bourgeoisie and the upper layer of the working class (see Note 3).
  18. ↑ 23 March