Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, October 7, 1876

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 7 October 1876


First published in W. Liebknecht. Briefwechsel mit Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, Den Haag, 1963
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


MARX TO WILHELM LIEBKNECHT

IN LEIPZIG

London, 7 October 1876
41 Maitland Park Road, N. W.

Dear LIBRARY,[1]

According to a letter you wrote to Engels, you told the Congress that Engels was going to deal with Dühring. Instead, much to his displeasure, he found—and showed me immediately on my arrival from Karlsbad 178—a report in the Volksstaat according to which you had said that I (something I would never dream of doing) was going to take issue with Mr Dühring.[2]

Resolve for me, O Oerindur, this dichotomy of nature![3]

Engels is busy with his work on Dühring.[4] It entails a considerable sacrifice on his part, as he had to break off an incomparably more important piece of work to that end.

The fact that your Congress proffered a fraternal hand to Guillaume and Co., is, given the form it took, relatively innocuous.[5] However, any real co-operation with these people, who have systematically worked to bring about the dissolution of the International, is to be avoided under all circumstances. The very few working men in the Jura, Italy and Spain whom they are still leading by the nose, may FOR OUGHT I KNOW be upright men. They themselves are incorrigible intriguers who, now that they have discovered their nullity outside the International, would like to worm their way in again through the back door so that they may resume their previous role.[6]

I had already been in communication with Bracke about the translation into German of Lissagaray's book before your proposal[7] reached me; I have concluded an agreement with Bracke.[8]

It is about time the Volksstaat, or rather, I should now say, the Vorwärts,[9] put a finger at last on the real source of the rot in dealing with the oriental question.[10] In one of its most recent numbers the Kölnische Zeitung says that one might echo the words of a famous diplomat: 'Il n'y a plus d'Europe!'[11] once upon a time it was possible to speak of other powers, now the stage is held by only one power—Russia!

But why is this? The German papers, in so far as they aren't dancing to Russia's tune, now heap reproaches on Disraeli, now accuse Andrâssy of weak-minded vacillation.

Yet the nub of the matter is—Bismarck's policy. He embarked on it after Sedan[12] during the Franco-Prussian War. At this moment he is hamstringing Austria (and even England, relatively speaking) by his official flirtation with Russia; indeed, he is hamstringing the entire Continent. The passage (according to the latest advices) of armed Russian troops through the Romanian provinces (under the auspices of a Hohenzollern[13] ) has led everyone in Paris and London to believe in the existence of an offensive and defensive alliance between Russia and Prussia. In fact, by his policy of conquest in France, Bismarck has disarmed Germany vis-à-vis Russia and condemned her to the shameful role she is playing at this moment, et qui est véritablement 'la honte de l'Europe'[14]

Here in England a turning-point has been reached; the curtain is about to fall on the sentimental farce staged by the Whigs in their haste to reconquer the LOAVES AND FISHES OF OFFICE and for which an appropriate chorus has been provided from among the workers—such canaille as Mottershead, Hales et tutti quanti[15] —under the influence of bourgeois FIVE POUND NOTES; Gladstone has sounded the retreat, ditto Lord Russell, and now only the brazen Bob Lowe (the Australian ex-demagogue, the creature who, during the recent reform movement, followed the example of Edmund Burke and branded the working class a SWINISH MULTITUDE) is making a fool of himself with his talk of the AUTOCRAT OF ALL THE RUSSIAS AS 'THE ONLY FATHER OF THE OPPRESSED'. Amongst the London workers, it is precisely the most progressive and resolute who have staged a PROTEST MEETING against the Pan-Slavophiles. They realise that, each time the working class acts as chorus to the governing classes (to a Bright, Gladstone, etc.), it is perpetrating an infamy. Caeterum censeo[16] that it behoves you to write a LEADING ARTICLE revealing how sorry a figure is cut by the German-Prussian, ostensibly anti-Russian, bourgeois press which, while at most presuming to criticise the ministers of other countries, maintains a most devout silence in regard to its own Bismarck. With warmest regards to your family.

Your

Moor

Apropos. The rascal from Antwerp, whom Guillaume and Co., by their intrigues among the unwitting Dutch workers, foisted upon the Hague Congress[17] as its provisional president, one van den Abeele, has now himself been unmasked by his own people as an agent of the French government and has accordingly been thrown out of those sections of the International still eking out an existence in Belgium. This, after another of the same clique, Mr Bastelica, had publicly disclosed in Strasbourg that he was a Bonapartist agent![18]

[Note at the beginning of the letter]

The Frankfurter Zeitung's 'unbaptized crusader'[19] is playing a thoroughly grotesque role in the oriental imbroglio.

  1. ↑ Engels' letter has not been found.
  2. ↑ Marx is referring to the report of the second congress of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany held in Gotha from 19 to 23 August 1876. It was printed in Der Volksstaat, Nos 98-102", from 23 August to 1 September in the section 'Kongress der Sozialisten Deutschlands'. This particular reference is to the part of the report featured by Der Volksstaat, No. 102 on 1 September. Reporting on the debate with Dühring, its author, Julius Motteler, mistakenly mentioned Marx instead of Engels. Wilhelm Liebknecht rectified the misunderstanding in his letter to Marx of 9 October 1876.
  3. ↑ from Adolf Milliner's drama Die Schuld, Act II, Scene 5
  4. ↑ Anti Dühring and Dialectics of Nature
  5. ↑ Annolied (The Song of Anno)—a poem written by an unknown author in the late 11th century in Middle High German in praise of Anno, Archbishop of Cologne.
  6. ↑ From 1869 onwards, Bakunin and his followers, who had set up their own secret organisation, the Alliance of Socialist Democracy (see Note 201), within the International, sought to take over the leadership of the IWMA and to replace its programme with their own. Following the Hague Congress of 1872 (see Note 20), the anarchists openly advocated a split in the International. Beginning in 1873, they endeavoured to unite the socialist organisations of various countries under their supremacy with a view to 'restoring' the International. These attempts suffered a fiasco at the international socialist congress in Ghent in 1877 (see Note 324).
  7. ↑ See this volume, pp. 149-52.
  8. ↑ Considering it very important to familiarise workers with the true history of the Paris Commune, Marx became actively involved in the commissioning of a German translation of a book written by one of its members, Prosper Olivier Lissagaray, Histoire de la Commune de 1871. He requested Wilhelm Bracke, and Engels asked Wilhelm Bios to find somebody to do the job. The sample translation done by Julius Grunzig failed to satisfy Marx, as did that by Isolde Kurz. Although Marx was already overburdened with work, he had to spend a great deal of time and effort editing the translation. In the autumn of 1877, on Marx's and Engels' proposal, Wilhelm Bios was recruited as another editor. Lissagaray's book appeared in German in Brunswick late in 1877.— 155, 172, 189, 196, 222, 230, 262, 266, 285 19.) The general socialist congress held in Gotha from 19 to 23 August 1876 decided, at its meeting of 23 August, to publish a single organ of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, Vorwärts, that was to replace Der Volksstaat and Der Neue Social-Demokrat. The congress elected Wilhelm Liebknecht and Wilhelm Hasenclever editors of the new paper, which was to appear from 1 October.
  9. ↑ This is a draft of Engels' reply to Patrick John Coleman's letter of 19 May 1875. It was written down on the last page of Coleman's letter informing Engels about his intention to go into trading business and requesting him to become security for him.
  10. ↑ The reference is to the mass electoral reform movement in England in 1865-67
  11. ↑ There is no longer a Europe!
  12. ↑ The reference is to the battle of 1 September 1870 during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, in which the French army was smashed. The crushing defeat at Sedan speeded up the collapse of the Second Empire and led to the proclamation of a republic in France on 4 September 1870.
  13. ↑ Carol I
  14. ↑ and which is truly 'the shame of Europe' (an allusion to E. de Girardin's pamphlet La Honte de l'Europe)
  15. ↑ and whoever else there may be
  16. ↑ For the rest, I consider. These are the initial words of Cato the Elder's famous expression: Caeterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam (For the rest, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed).
  17. ↑ The Hague Congress (2-7 September 1872) of the International Working Men's Association was the most representative in its history. Present at the congress were 65 delegates from 15 countries. It took stock of the campaign against Bakuninism within the International and mapped out a programme of action suited to the new conditions that had emerged after the Paris Commune. Its main decision was to endorse the London Conference (1871) resolution on the political action of the working class concisely formulated as Art. 7 of the International's Rules. The congress also reached a number of decisions aimed at consolidating the Association's organisational structure.
    After the congress, the Bakuninists declared their disagreement with its resolutions, causing what amounted to a split in the International. The Hague Congress laid the foundation for future political parties of the working class in various countries.
  18. ↑ See this volume, p. 184.
  19. ↑ Presumably Leopold Sonnemann.