Letter to Friedrich Engels, October 23, 1869

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 23 October 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


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 23 October 1869

DEAR FRED,

Best thanks for the photograms. I am also suffering from a bad grippe. I have already ordered the A. Young, and will write to the same man (Adams) about the Wakefield.[1]

According to Lafargue's letter, great excitement rules in Paris. I have been sent from St Petersburg a thick 500-page Flerovsky volume on the condition of the Russian peasants and workers.[2]

Unfortunately in Russian. The fellow worked on the book for 15 years.

The great Bakunin is now off to Naples, as DELEGATE to an atheists' congress being held there in opposition to the oecumenical consilium.[3]

Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ See the previous letter.
  2. ↑ N. Flerovsky's book The Condition of the Working Class in Russia (Н. Флеровский, Положение рабочего класса в России) was sent to Marx by Danielson on 30 September (12 October), 1869. Danielson expressed the hope that it would supply Marx with the necessary material for the subsequent parts of his classical work Capital. This work prompted Marx to take up Russian seriously. (For Marx's opinion of Flerovsky's book see this volume, pp. 390, 423, 424).
  3. ↑ A reference to the atheistic congress (Anticoncilio) convened in Naples on 8 December 1869 by petty-bourgeois democrats who stood close to the League of Peace and Freedom (see Note 271) as a gesture of opposition to the Catholic oecumenical council which was held in Vatican from 8 December 1869 to 20 October 1870, and adopted the dogma of the Pope's infallibility in the matters of faith. The atheistic congress was broken up by the Neapolitan authorities.