Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, November 17, 1871

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 17 November 1871


First published, in Russian, in Marx-Engels Archives, Vol. I (VI), Moscow, 1932
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


MARX TO WILHELM LIEBKNECHT[1]

IN LEIPZIG

London, 17 November 1871
1 Maitland Park Road,
Haverstock Hill

Dear Liebknecht,

1. Letter to follow concerning the printing of the Rules,[2] etc.

2. Your comments on my proposals concerning Berlin rest on a complete misunderstanding. I declared my opposition to unprovoked demonstrations, but pointed to 'provocations', and imminent ones at that, which would provide demonstrations with a background and with prospects of success.[3]

3. First Bebel and yourself do not come to the Conference, and take no steps to ensure that other delegates turn up. Then you print a report from Boruttau in which, acting perhaps as an unconscious agent of the Geneva conspiracy against the General Council, he rebukes the latter for failing to invite delegates from Germany.[4] The construction already being put upon this in Geneva by the Bakuninists and the whole host of conspiratorial hangers-on among the émigrés, is that Marx has lost his influence even in Germany!

4. You may rest assured that I am better informed than you about the intrigues within the International. So when I write to you that letters from Boruttau with any bearing at all on the International (including the Manifesto already announced, which the aforesaid Boruttau has sent you) should not be printed in the Volksstaat, you have simply to make up your mind whether you wish to act against us or with us. If the latter is the case, then my instructions, which are based on a thorough knowledge of the circumstances, should be followed to the letter.

5. Since we are most dissatisfied here with the way in which the affairs of the International have been conducted hitherto, it is my duty, in accordance with the instructions of the General Council, to make direct contact with the main centres in Germany. I have already made a start on this.[5]

6. We are so overwhelmed with International WORK here that Engels and myself have had no time up to now to write a Preface for the Communist Manifesto.9 At all events we shall not write one simply in order to trigger off a polemic with Mr Boruttau in the Volksstaat.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ On 19 December 1870 The Times published Gladstone's letter, dated 15 December, which announced an amnesty of the condemned Fenians (on the Fenians see Note 6). However, this amnesty was hedged round with numerous reservations, which caused Engels to compare it with the shabby amnesty of political prisoners announced in Prussia in January 1861 on the occasion of William I's accession to the throne.
  2. ↑ K. Marx, General Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Working Men's Association.
  3. ↑ See this volume, p. 237.
  4. ↑ [K.] Boruttau, 'Sozialismus und Kommunismus', Der Volksstaat, Nos. 88 and 89, 1 and 4 November 1871.
  5. ↑ See this volume, p. 221.