Letter to Karl Marx, July 21, 1869

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 21 July 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 for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 43


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 21 July 1869

Dear Moor,

The whole family including Tussy, has gone to see the PRINCE OF WALES[1] drive past. Congratulations to them in such heat.

How dare Wilhelm assure Schweitzer publicly that 'the General Council of the IWA' takes exactly the same attitude to the said Schweitzer as he, Wilhelm does?[2] This is rather much, particularly if, as I assume, he did so without your permission.

That Schweitzer has lost a lot of support among the masses is shown by the fact that he has not dared to proclaim the voting figures.0 96 Incidentally, he remains—as a DEBATER—superior to all his opponents. The joke about the 'red' republic was very good, and his exploitation of Wilhelm's 'People's Party', ditto.

Wilhelm is betraying the workers to the bourgeois democrats; Wilhelm is taking care not to answer both points, and altogether he appears even more incapable than usual in this polemic. How absurd, for instance, just at the moment, to reprint from Schwabenmayer's[3] Demokratische Correspondenz the glorification of the bourgeois American Republic because of the Pacific Railway.[4]

And how can Wilhelm announce to Schweitzer that he will be shown the door at the Basle Congress[5] ?

Monsieur Bonaparte appears to have gone right out of his mind. One cropper after another. First his message with its apparent concessions, then the sudden adjournment, now this droll ministry.[6] If he had set out to show even the stupidest Frenchman that he wants to expose France to worldwide derision, he couldn't have done it better. This is just the way to shake the confidence his majority, his ministers and prefects, his judges and officers have in him. And since all the loyalty has been purchased and was conditional on his future success, they will desert him much earlier than the Senate and Corps législatif deserted the old Napoleon in 1814 and 1815.[7] Really not much is needed to lose respect for Mr Louis.

What has happened to the 18th Brumaire}[8] I see and hear nothing of it. Apropos! You must send me a copy for Charles,[9] whom I relieved of his copy (old edition) on this pledge.

What state are your travel plans in? Jenny writes that she will be returning on Saturday, and then a decision will, I suppose, soon be taken as to when you will go. Here the balancing of accounts is dragging on. Yesterday they said at least 14 days, which I translate as: at least 3 weeks. I'm afraid I'll be stuck here until about 20 August.

I shall cut to length and send to Kugelmann for the Zukunft, for its feuilleton, the biography[10] he returned to me. If you want to see it first, let me know.

I close because of the heat; with best greetings.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ Albert Edward
  2. ↑ F. Mende, 'An die Mitglieder des Allgemeinen deutschen Arbeiter-Vereins', 5 July 1869, Der Social-Demokrat, No. 79, 9 July 1869.
  3. ↑ Karl Mayer
  4. ↑ 'Was Bürger drüben können und hüben könnten', Demokratisches Wochenblatt, No. 29, 17 July 1869, supplement.
  5. ↑ A reference to the Congress of the First International held in Basle on 6-11 September 1869. It was attended by 78 delegates from England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Spain and North America. Marx was not present at the Congress but took an active part in preparing it. The General Council Minutes include his speeches dealing with individual items on the Congress's agenda: the agrarian question (6 July), the right of inheritance (20 July) and public education (10 and 17 August) (see present edition, Vol. 21). The question of the right of inheritance was entered on the agenda, which was approved on 22 June 1869, at the suggestion of the Geneva Section headed by the Bakuninists. They proposed to annihilate the right of inheritance, believing this to be the only means of eliminating private property and social injustice. At the General Council meeting of 3 August, Marx read out a Report of the General Council on the Right of Inheritance, prepared by him, which was approved and submitted to the Congress on behalf of the Council. However, at the Congress itself the question of the right of inheritance provoked a heated debate. Despite the opposition of Liebknecht and De Paepe, Bakunin managed to win some of the delegates over to his side. No resolution concerning this matter was passed. After discussing the land question for a second time (the first discussion of land ownership took place at the Brussels Congress [see Note 138]) the majority of the Basle Congress delegates voted for abolishing private property in land and converting it over into common property; the Congress also passed resolutions on the unification of trade unions at the national and international levels. The Basle Congress was the scene of the first clash between supporters of Marx and Engels, and the followers of Bakunin's anarchist doctrine. The latter failed to assume leadership in the International Working Men's Association. The Basle Congress confirmed that the General Council was to remain in London. In order to consolidate the unity and organisation of the International, the General Council was granted a right to expel from the International any section that did not comply with its Rules, on condition that the Federal Council and the Congress approved.
  6. ↑ The elections to the Corps législatif in May-June 1869 spelled considerable success to the anti-Bonapartist opposition despite the repressions of Napoleon III's government. At an extraordinary session in July 1869, 116 deputies belonging to the liberal opposition and Left Centre signed a statement on the need to form a responsible ministry and expand the rights of the Corps législatif. At the sittings of 5 and 8 July, deputy François Vincent Raspail exposed the blatant violations of the freedom of vote by Bonapartist authorities and accused the church of conducting election propaganda during services, and the police, of overstepping their powers at the time of preparations for the election campaign, when a massacre took place in Paris (see Annales du Sénat et du Corps législatif. Session extraordinaire du 28 juin au 6 septembre 1869, Paris, 1869, pp. 204-05). In his message of 12 July Napoleon III promised to expand the Corps' rights and appoint ministers from among deputies, but shirked the issue of the ministry's responsibility, stressing the inviolability of the emperor's power. On 13 July he postponed the session of the Corps législatif for an indefinite period, and on 17 July introduced into the government a number of persons who suited the big bourgeoisie and the clericals but who did not belong to the opposition.
  7. ↑ In early April 1814, after the troops of the anti-French coalition invaded Paris, Talleyrand prepared a convocation of the Senate which declared Napoleon I deposed. In June 1815, after Napoleon I's armies were defeated at Waterloo, the majority of the Chamber of Representatives demanded that he abdicate.
  8. ↑ The reference is to the second edition of Marx's work The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. See this volume, p. 297.
  9. ↑ Charles Roesgen
  10. ↑ F. Engels, Karl Marx. See also this volume, p. 318.