Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, February 15, 1872

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 15 February 1872


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


ENGELS TO WILHELM LIEBKNECHT

IN LEIPZIG

London, 15 February 1872

Dear Liebknecht,

Letters from Germany about enrolment are still not forthcoming.[1] If the dear Germans again will not go beyond promises and fine phrases, we shall never get anywhere with them.

I cannot procure for you the data about the POOR-RATES[2] for the moment. We are being kept busy by the reply[3] to the Jura circular,[4] which is very urgent, and local statistics are the sort of thing one must collect oneself from the sources. For the time being, do not mention the reply to the Jurassians in public.

You will be aware that Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc were the chief supporters of Bakunin & Co. (see the report on the last meeting).

[5]

Re the Misere de la philosophie, steps will be taken soon. Marx has signed the contract for the French translation of Capital and it will soon start to appear in instalments. (Between ourselves for the time being).[6] As soon as some have come out, it will be the turn of the Misère de la philosophie.

The Manifesto will follow, in German and probably in French and English (having appeared in an English and a French periodical in New York). You see that things are in full swing here. But it all makes for a lot of work.

The Lassalleans here have been thrown out, as you know. If they go on kicking up a fuss in the Neuer Social-Demokrat, send us the paper when you have finished with it—it doesn't get sent to the Workers' Educational Society[7] anymore. The Lassallean gentlemen here had the impertinence to go on behaving as if they were 'The Society' and sent Scherzer as their delegate to the General Council, where he was turned back without further ado.

You will have received the 800-odd STAMPS from Marx. You stick them on the top of the back of the title leaf of the Rules, of which, I hope, we shall soon receive the 3,000 copies, together with the bill? Cf. the relevant Conference resolution, which is clear enough.[8]

Enclosed find a Prussian loan-certificate for 10 thalers in settlement of the accompanying invoice, for which I should like a receipt. Use the balance as you think fit.

Furthermore, 4 reports on meetings1 from The Eastern Post and a few lines to Hepner.[9]

Cuno is behaving very courageously but has lost his job and is in a very bad way.[10]

I had guessed that your Italian could only be Stefanoni. Now just pay attention to this:

1. Libero Pensiero No. 18, 2 November 1871. Programme of the Società Universale dei Razionalisti, setting up a rival association to the International. According to its programme rationalist monasteries are to be established, a colossal sum of money to be invested in land is to be amassed and a marble bust of every bourgeois who donates 10,000 francs to the society is to be placed in the congress hall.[11]

2. There follow, in Nos. 20 & 21, increasingly virulent attacks on the International for repudiating atheism, as conceived by the[12] [13] Alliance, and on the General Council for its tyrannical ways, etc.

3. After an interval, this is followed in No. 1 of 4 January 1872 by a lengthy abusive article about the General Council, in which all the slanders of Schneider and Weber from the Neuer Social-Demokrat[14] appear in translation and are accompanied by equally outrageous commentaries, e.g. on the Communist trial.

4. This is followed in No. 3 of 18 January by a letter from Wilhelm Liebknecht of 28 December, in which the latter promises help to Stefanoni and offers to publish his contributions and to lend his support, without seeing it, to the programme of this honest society at the Saxon provincial assembly.4

5. This is followed in No. 4 of 25 January by another abusive article about the General Council in which the slanderous allegations about Marx by Messrs Schenck and Winand are once more translated from the Neuer.[15]

You can see in what fine company you have involved yourself with your letter-writing. Stefanoni, behind whom none other than Bakunin (who supplied him with all this material) is concealed, has just used you as a tool He has used Feuerbach in the same way, having published one of his letters too. Büchner, of course, is also conspiring with Stefanoni against us. This is what happens when you take up with people you do not know, when a simple enquiry, or even the mere mention of a name, would have sufficed for us to give you the necessary information and to prevent you from compromising yourself in this way. As things stand you have no option but to write Stefanoni a brief rude letter, sending him the relevant numbers of the Volksstaat However, since Stefanoni will take good care not to print your letter, you must send me a copy so that I can translate it and see that it appears in the Italian press, for even the Bakuninist papers are at loggerheads with him. However, if you wish us to continue to be able to come out with you and on your behalf abroad, the first precondition is that you do not continue to make things difficult for us by writing such letters to unknown people.

The people in Spain have their hands full with their struggle against the government, and are much too busy to quarrel with us anymore.

The Marx family and all of us send best wishes to you all, especially to Bebel.

Your

F. E.

[16]

Lafargue and Laura are in Madrid and intend to stay there for the time being.

  1. ↑ Membership of the International could be either collective or individual. In countries where its activities were officially banned (Germany, for instance), the General Council issued membership cards to each new recruit individually.
    The Congress of Saxonian Social-Democrats (see Note 418) passed a resolution in favour of recruiting individual applicants to the International.
  2. ↑ In a letter to Engels of 16 January 1872, Liebknecht enquired about the amount of tax revenues for the benefit of the poor received in various parishes of London. He needed the figures for a criticism of the unequal distribution of poor-tax proceeds in the different parts of the German Empire.
  3. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, Fictitious Splits in the International
  4. ↑ The Congress of the Bakuninist Jura Federation held in Sonvillier on 12 November 1871 adopted the Sonvillier circular, 'Circulaire à toutes les fédérations de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs'. It was directed against the General Council and the 1871 London Conference, and countered the Conference decisions with anarchist phrases about the sections' political indifferentism and complete autonomy. The Bakuninists proposed that all the federations demand the immediate convocation of a congress to revise the General Rules and to condemn the General Council's actions.
    The International's sections in Germany, Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, the USA, and also the Section in Milan, came out against the circular. Engels gave the Bakuninists a vigorous rebuff in his article 'The Congress of Sonvillier and the International' (present edition, Vol. 23).
  5. ↑ K. Marx, 'Inaugural Address of the Working Men's International Association'.
  6. ↑ The surviving manuscript copy of the letter does not bear the name of the addressee. However, its contents and Marx's correspondence on the subject indicate that it was addressed to the heads of the Lachâtre publishing house in Paris. On 13 February 1872 Marx received a reply from the manager Juste Vernouillet, who informed him about the despatch of copies of the agreement on the publication of the French translation of Volume I of Capital. The agreement was signed on 15 February by Marx on one side, and Maurice Lachâtre and Juste Vernouillet on the other. It stipulated that the French edition was to be published in 44 instalments, and sold five instalments at a time.
    The French authorised edition of Volume I of Capital was published between 17 September 1872 and November 1875. The translation was done by Joseph Roy, who began in February 1872 and completed work in late 1873. The quality of the translation largely failed to satisfy Marx; besides, he was convinced that the original needed to be revised to adapt it to French readers.
  7. ↑ On 26 November 1870, when the North German Reichstag discussed the question of granting credits for the continuation of the war against France, Bebel and Liebknecht spoke against credits and for a speedy peace treaty with the French Republic without annexations. On 17 December, after the Reichstag session had drawn to a close, Bebel, Liebknecht and Hepner were arrested and charged with high treason.
  8. ↑ Resolution IV of the 1871 London Conference introduced penny stamps for the payment of membership dues. 'These stamps are to be affixed to a special sheet of the livret or to the Rules which every member is held to possess' (see present edition, Vol. 22, p. 424). Consequently, the General Council ceased to issue membership cards.
  9. ↑ This letter by Engels has not been found.
  10. ↑ See this volume, p. 305.
  11. ↑ Luigi Stefanoni, a bourgeois democrat and member of the Bakuninist Alliance of Socialist Democracy, presented himself in November 1871 as the initiator of the Universal Society of Rationalists (Società Universale dei Razionalisti) allegedly intended to put into practice the principles of the International but free of 'its negative features'. Stefanoni advanced as a social panacea the Utopian idea of buying land from the landlords and establishing agricultural colonies. The draft programme of the Society was printed by II Libero Pensiero, No. 18, 2 November 1871. Later, Stefanoni published a number of slanderous articles directed against the General Council and Marx and Engels personally. Marx's and Engels' writings (e.g. Engels' letter to the editors of the Gazzettino Rosa, Marx's article 'Stefanoni and the International Again', present edition, Vol. 23, pp. 74-75, 160-63), which exposed Stefanoni's real ambitions, contributed to the failure of Stefanoni's attempts to subject the workers' movement in Italy to bourgeois influence.
  12. ↑ See this volume, p. 297.
  13. ↑ of the General Council
  14. ↑ After the 1871 London Conference the Lassalleans in the German Workers' Educational Society in London began campaigning against the General Council. They acted jointly with the Bakuninists and the petty-bourgeois refugees from the French Section of 1871. Joseph Schneider's article 'An die Socialdemokraten Deutschlands' was published in No. 67 of the Neuer Social-Demokrat, 3 December 1871. In it he calumniated Marx, Bebel and the International, citing, in particular, the 'Protestation' of 15 members of the French Section of 1871 (see Note 358).
    The Neuer Social-Demokrat, Nos. 68 and 69, 6 and 8 December 1871, published contributions by 'a socialist living in London' which contained attacks on the International. They could have been written by E. J. Weber.
    In December 1871 the Lassalleans were expelled from the Society, and it declared its solidarity with the General Council and the decisions of the London Conference.
  15. ↑ On 7 January 1872 the Neuer Social-Demokrat, No. 3, printed a letter written by a number of Lassalleans. It was signed by Heinrich Schenck and Christian Winand, who had been expelled from the German Workers' Educational Society in London (see Note 135), and contained libellous attacks on Marx and the General Council.
    On 27 January 1872 Der Volksstaat, No. 8, carried a reply signed by A. Caulaincourt, secretary of the German Workers' Educational Society, under the heading 'Die Gegner der Internationalen Arbeiterassoziation'. Der Volksstaat, No. 14 (17 February 1872), printed an article headed 'Wer ist Joseph Schneider?' criticising the Lassallean views expounded by Schneider in his article 'An die Socialdemokraten Deutschlands'. Directed against the International (see Note 386), it had appeared in the Neuer Social-Demokrat, No. 67, 3 December 1871.
  16. ↑ See this volume, p. 577.