Letter to Collet Dobson Collet, September 6, 1871

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 6 September 1871


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVI, Moscow 1935
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


MARX TO COLLET DOBSON COLLET

IN LONDON

[London,] 6 September 1871

Dear Sir,

From your letter I see that you are not only 'alarmed',[1] but have also grown suspicious, since you tuned down your usual 'My dear Sir' to 'Dear Sir'. Lafargue[2]

For my own part I consider the feeling of 'alarm' not one peculiarly adapted to lend a scientific and objective point de vue.

I regret not being able to fulfil your wish. I have gone through the whole round of my Continental friends but found no one in possession of some of the numerous reviews and extracts of my book[3] that have appeared in Italian and French. The French edition in extenso has been cut short by the Prussian war.[4]

Neither translation nor review has appeared in English. Two years since my friend F. Engels sent a very accurate analysis of Das Kapital to the Fortnightly, but it was returned with the remark that 'it was too scientific for the English Review-reader'.'

I do not know of what manifestoes you speak. Save the address on The Civil War in France and Mr. Washburne,[5] which I had the honour to send you, the General Council has, since September 1870, published no manifesto except those on the Franco-Prussian War[6] which I hereby forward you. Apart [from] the manifestoes published by the French and Prussian police in the name of the International, and which I have declared to be forgeries in La Vérité (Paris),[7] no manifesto has besides been published in the latter times. The so-called Swiss manifesto, printed in The Times,[8] is, as The Examiner of last Saturday justly remarked,[9]

'a garbled translation of a French version, itself far from accurate... It issues, not from the International Workingmen's Association, but from some of its Swiss members'.

Yours faithfully,

K. M.

  1. ↑ In his letter of 30 August 1871 Collet asked Marx where he could get Volume I of Capital, or excerpts from it in English, French or Italian, for the purpose of comparing them with the addresses issued by the International, which, as he put it, alarmed him.
  2. ↑ Laura and Paul
  3. ↑ Volume I of Capital
  4. ↑ The reference is to the report on a meeting organised by members of the German colony in Manchester at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. One of the aims of the meeting was to set up a relief fund for the wounded and the families of the war dead. The report was published in The Manchester Guardian, No. 7466, on 22 July 1870 under the heading 'Meeting of Germans in Manchester'.
  5. ↑ K. Marx, 'Mr. Washburne, the American Ambassador, in Paris'.
  6. ↑ Marx has in mind the pamphlet The General Council of the International Workingmen's Association on the war (London, 1870), containing the first and second Addresses of the General Council of the International on the Franco-Prussian War.
  7. ↑ K. Marx, 'To the Editor of La Vérité.'
  8. ↑ 'A New Socialist Programme', The Times, No. 27155, 30 August 1871 (reprint from the Journal de Genève).
  9. ↑ 'A New Socialist Programme', The Examiner, No. 3318, 2 September 1871.