Letter to Johann Georg Eccarius, May 3, 1872

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 3 May 1872


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

MARX TO JOHANN GEORG ECCARIUS[1]

IN LONDON

[London,] 3 May 1872

Dear Eccarius,

You seem to have lost your wits and as I regard this as a passing phase, at least for the present, perhaps you will allow me to address you for the time being as neither SIR, nor Herr nor Domine, and also to write to you in German instead of English.

If you haven't lost your memory along with your command of the German language—and if you have, the MINUTES of the General Council can jog it—you will recollect that all the quarrels I have had with the English since the founding of the International up to the last conference[2] have been due simply and solely to the fact that I always took your side. Firstly, on the subject of The Commonwealth, against Odger, Cremer, Howell, etc.; secondly, against Fox, with whom I had been on very friendly terms[3] ; and lastly, against Hales during the period when you were General Secretary.

If conflicts occurred later on, it would be important to establish who was responsible for them. I have only attacked you twice.

Firstly, on account of the premature publication of the Conference resolutions, in which, as you are well aware, you exceeded your brief.[4]

Secondly, because of the last skirmish with America where you caused great MISCHIEF. (I am leaving out of account here the fact that your actions brought such abuse from the AMERICAN PAPERS, aided and abetted by Karl Heinzen et Co., down on my head; I am just as impervious to this abuse as I had previously been to praise, both public and private, from the same source.)

You appear to imagine, however, that when you make BLUNDERS others must pay you compliments in return, instead of telling you the truth as one would to anyone else. I shall give you back Gregory's stuff tomorrow evening.[5] Today I have to go through the French and German proofs[6] simultaneously, so have no time to look through the American papers.

As for my 'INDICTMENT', I shall simply confine myself to proving that 1. you were absolutely in the wrong to write to New York in the way that you wrote, at such a decisive moment, even supposing that your GRIEVANCES were justified, and 2. that your complaint about the suppression of papers vis-à-vis the General Council is absolutely without foundation. Voilà tout[7]

Finally, let me give you some good advice. You must not think that old personal and party friends are or will be less well disposed towards you just because they see it as their duty to oppose your FREAKS. On the other hand, you should not imagine that the small clique of Englishmen who make use of you for certain purposes are your friends. I could prove the contrary if I wished.

And so salut Since it is my birthday the day after tomorrow I have absolutely no desire to celebrate it in the unpleasant conviction that I have lost one of my oldest friends and like-minded comrades.

Salut fraternel,

Karl Marx

  1. ↑ This is a reply to Eccarius' letter of 2 May 1872, which he had written following the General Council's discussion of his behaviour in dealing with the split in the Central Committee of the International Working Men's Association for North America.
    After the General Council meetings of 5 and 12 March 1872 had approved the relevant resolutions proposed by Marx, John Hales (Council Secretary) and Eccarius (Corresponding Secretary for the USA) took up a conciliatory position towards the American bourgeois reformist elements. Eccarius opposed the expulsion of Section No. 12 and spoke out against Article 2 of Resolution III (see Note 471), accusing Friedrich Adolph Sorge and Section No. 1 (see Note 354), which he headed, of divisive activities. He refused to send the above-mentioned resolutions to the USA, stating in a number of letters (e.g. to petty-bourgeois activist John Elliott) that he strongly disapproved of them.
    On 23 April 1872 the General Council meeting instructed Marx to prepare a detailed report on Eccarius' stand.
    Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in: Karl Marx, On the First International Arranged and edited, with an introduction and new translations by Saul K. Padover. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1973.
  2. ↑ the London Conference of 1871
  3. ↑ In early February 1866 on Marx's insistence and contrary to the wishes of trade union leaders, Eccarius was appointed editor-in-chief of The Commonwealth, the official organ of the International Working Men's Association.
    In September-October 1867, the General Council discussed the clash between Peter Fox and Eccarius. Fox had accused Eccarius of insulting some of the delegates to the Lausanne Congress in his reports published in The Times on 6, 9, 10 and 11 September.
  4. ↑ A reference to Eccarius' article on the 1871 London Conference in the American newspaper The World, which quoted some of its resolutions despite the Conference's decision not to make them public without special instructions from the General Council. Following investigation of this fact by the commission appointed by the Council on 10 October (with Hermann Jung as chairman, George Milner and George Harris), Eccarius was reprimanded at the General Council meeting of 30 January 1872.
  5. ↑ In a letter to Eccarius of 30 November 1871 J. W. Gregory, a member of the International in the USA and supporter of the bourgeois reformists, accused Section No. 1 (see Note 354) of divisive activities.
  6. ↑ of the French and the second German edition of Volume I of Capital
  7. ↑ That's all.