Letter to César de Paepe, November 24, 1871

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 24 November 1871


First published in L'Actualité de l'histoire, No. 25, Paris, 1958
Translated from the French
Published in English in: Annali, an. 1, Milano, 1958, and published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


MARX TO CÉSAR DE PAEPE

IN BRUSSELS

London, 24 November 1871

My dear Friend,

I would have written to you long since had my time been my own. For the past four weeks I have been confined to the house, having had abscesses, operations, etc., secundum legem artis.[1]

Nevertheless, what with the business of the International on the one hand and the refugees on the other, I have not even got round to rewriting the first chapter of Capital for the Russian translation.[2] Since our friends in St Petersburg were becoming ever more pressing, I was forced to leave the chapter as it stands and make no more than a few minor alterations. As I told you in London, I have often asked myself if the time has not come to resign from the General Council. The more the society develops, the more my time is taken up and I must, after all, finally have done with Das Kapital. Moreover, my resignation would rid the International of the threat of Pan-Germanism, a threat, or so say Messrs Rouillier, Malon, Bakunin, Robin & Co., represented by myself.[3]

I have spoken to my doctor about your case. He tells me:

1. If you are to set up in London as an English doctor, it would not be sufficient to pass the examinations over here. You would be obliged to do at least two years of study in a London hospital (or at university). They would take into account Belgian courses in some branches of the science but not all.

2. On the other hand, you can set up here as a doctor with your Belgian qualifications without passing further examinations and without attending any English courses. There are French and German doctors here who practise in this way. True, there are certain fields, not many of them (forensic medicine, for example), in which you would be precluded from working, but that is a minor matter.

3. Lastly you could—as many foreigners have done before you—combine the two methods, namely start practising straight away and at the same time take the necessary steps to transform yourself later into an English doctor and ultimately become the physician of Her Most Gracious Majesty.

So you can see, my dear friend, that there are many roads that lead to Rome. Drop me a few lines about this subject.

The conduct of the Belgian Federal Council vis-à-vis the General Council strikes me as suspect. Mr Hins and his wife—I am speaking frankly—are Bakuninists and Mr Steens has doubtless discovered that his eloquence is insufficiently admired. In Geneva it is even being said, as Utin wrote and told me (he doesn't believe it, needless to say), that you have sided with the Alliancists who are in league with André Léo, Malon, Razoua, etc.

This essentially insignificant business could have unpleasant consequences. England, the United States, Germany, Denmark, Holland, Austria, most of the French groups, the northern Italians, Sicily and Rome, the vast majority of the Romance Swiss, all the German Swiss and the Russians in Russia (as distinct from certain Russians abroad linked with Bakunin) are marching in step with the General Council.

On the other hand, there will be the Jura Federation in Switzerland (in other words the men of the Alliance who hide behind this name), Naples, possibly Spain, part of Belgium and certain groups of French refugees (who, by the by, to judge by the correspondence we have had from France, would not appear to exert any serious influence there), and these will form the opposing camp. Such a split, in itself no great danger, would be highly inopportune at a time when we must march shoulder to shoulder against the common foe. Our adversaries harbour no illusions whatever about their weakness, but they count on acquiring much moral support from the accession of the Belgian Federal Council.

Every day people keep asking me for the Anti-Proudhon.[4] I could carry out some degree of propaganda amongst the best minds in the French emigration were I to have the few copies of my piece against Proudhon you were kind enough to promise me.

Fraternal greetings,

Karl Marx

Your friend Léonard the painter is not having much luck over here, I am sorry to say. My family went to see his pictures yesterday. I have not seen any of them so far because the fog is atrocious so that I have not yet been permitted to leave my room.

  1. ↑ in accordance with the rules of the art
  2. ↑ In his letter of 11 (23) May 1871, Nikolai Danielson informed Marx that Hermann Lopatin could not complete the translation of Capital into Russian and had asked Danielson to finish the work. Knowing from Lopatin that Marx intended to revise the first chapter of the first German edition of Capital, Volume I, for the Russian edition, Danielson asked Marx to send him the new version of the chapter. Being very busy at the time, Marx was unable to revise the chapter for the first Russian edition. In preparing the second German edition of Volume I of Capital Marx substantially revised the chapter and turned it into Part I, 'Commodities and Money' (see present edition, Vol. 35). On the Russian edition of Capital see Note 146.
  3. ↑ Ibid., p. 256.
  4. ↑ K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy. Answer to the 'Philosophy of Poverty' by M. Proudhon.