Letter to Friedrich Engels, July 23, 1877

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 23 July 1877


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 4, Berlin, 1931
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


MARX TO ENGELS

IN RAMSGATE

[London,] 23 July 1877

Dear Fred,

The enclosed Journal des Débats is already a bit out of date but is not without interest, notably the LEADER on the oriental war and the articles from Russia. Also, Volksfreund,[1] which seems to have become Mr Dühring's monitor. Collet's 'ENGLAND, ENEMY OF TURKEY', etc.

I had intended to pay you a two- or three-day visit in Ramsgate; a trip to see Gumpert would be pointless for I know BY HEART, both from him and from the Karlsbad doctors and professors, everything that medical science cannot do in this particular case. Besides, my insomnie is somewhat better. But un homme propose et l'autre dispose.[2] The other, in this instance, being Hirsch who has come to London for the express purpose of spending a week in my company. More about him and what he has told me in the course of this epistle. But tout d'abord,[3] my plans for the immediate future.

I intend to leave shortly, if possible on 12th August, for Neuenahr[4] and not for Karlsbad, and this for the following reasons:

First, because of the expense: As you know, my wife suffers from serious digestive disturbances and, since I shall in any case be taking Tussy who has had another nasty attack, my wife would take great exception to being left behind. For the three of us plus luggage—if, for the sake of the cure one travels at one's leisure as I have several times done—the journey there and back would alone amount to £70. Moreover I long ago promised Lenchen,[5] who is very much run down, to convey her to her home where she cannot live completely gratis. Moreover, the family has all sorts of purchases to make for the trip.

Secondly: In unguarded moments, the Karlsbad doctors have themselves told me that, if one didn't want to visit Karlsbad every year, Neuenahr might be beneficial as an intermezzo. Of course, they would rather one always went to Karlsbad. But it might be better even from the viewpoint of hygiene to make a change for once and take less potent waters, for variatio delectat corpus.[6] Besides, my trouble is not so much my LIVER as the nervous upset occasioned by it. Hence, less potent waters, but of essentiellement the same composition.

Furthermore, there is one important matter I have always neglected because of the expense—the after-cure. In view of the greatly reduced travelling expenses and the fact that the house will be shut up (under Withers' care) for the duration of the cure, all these birds would be killed with one stone by exchanging Karlsbad for Neuenahr.

HENCE q.e.d. I hope you approve. Now for other matters—first of all Hirsch. He has turned out very well and has not been wasting his time. I tried him out, amongst other things, on the subject of French statistics and found him to be à la hauteur[7] He also gave me some very interesting information about the almost universal transformation of French industrial concerns into JOINT STOCK COMPANIES. In the first place, this was facilitated by legislation in the days of the Empire. In the second, the French are not partial to business, preferring whenever possible to live as rentiers. And to which end this form of business is, of course, A GODSEND.

According to Hirsch (and here he may be taking too rosy a view) the officers of the French Army, with the exception of those at the top, are republican. However that may be, it is a FACT and a typical one, that Galliffet (the incident with la Beaumont[8] really did take place, as Hirsch ascertained, according to further recherches[9] ) offered his services to Mr Gambetta in a letter written in his own hand, and that the self-same Galliffet, after the préfet of his garrison town had been dismissed by Broglie, called on the disgraced préfet, together with his general staff, to proffer his condolences. If these things occur in a dry tree, etc.[10] On the other hand, there is a widespread belief among the non-commissioned officers, largely consisting of new men, that Mac-Mahon got rid of the Chamber because it had put forward a series of proposals intended to improve the lot of non-commissioned officers.

Everything that happens at the Elysée[11] daily becomes common knowledge in Paris, for the Bonapartist tapageurs[12] who frequent the place cannot hold their tongues. Mac-Mahon is exceedingly embittered. The brute, whose first historic words were: J'y suis, j'y reste,[13] his second being: C'est assez,[14] is now uttering his last one. All he says from morn till night is: Merde![15]

Hirsch is furious with the Vorwärts over the Dühring business as well as 'Nieder mit der Republik!'. [16] He wrote an exceedingly brusque letter to the executive (Geib, etc.)[17] about both these. He, too, now realises that fusion has degraded the party, both in theory and in practice.

With reference to 'Nieder mit der Republik!', he remarked that the great Hasenclever as a Prussian soldier (probably a reservist or militia man) was at the gates of Paris at the time of the Commune, and hence has no reason to lay down the law in matters of principle.

He maintains that, at the time of the Prussian conflict,[18] Hasenclever was editor of a progressist[19] paper in Krefeld,[20] sold it to an ultra-reactionary, and gravely compromised himself in the course of a lawsuit arising out of the sale. This, as Bracke himself told him, was known to Bracke and Co. when they appointed Hasenclever co-editor with Liebknecht of the Vorwärts.[21]

Liebknecht, MEANWHILE, est puni par où il a péché.[22] The Lassallean gang is doing everything it can to harass and humiliate him. For instance, they reproach him with the pittance he is paid by the Vorwärts, say his wife (with five children) doesn't need a maid, etc. They have, contrary to all party and journalistic practice, deliberately so organised things that Liebknecht has to go to jug for all articles,[23] even if written during his absence, thus in fact playing the same role on the Vorwärts as the man of straw on a French paper.

Next month Hirsch is leaving Paris for Berlin where he is going to take over the editorship of the lithographed party papers for a month[24] and proposes to do so in such a way as to mortify the allied riffraff.

I enclose herewith a letter from the Zukunft, in case you have not also received one.[25] Send it back to me for answering.

What a nice piece of cunning on the part of 'citizen', 'thinker' and 'socialist of the future' Most. So a second fusion is planned; ourselves, combined with Mr Dühring, for he'll be there without fail; at the same time, our names under the editorship of Most and Co. will mean our swallowing all their infamies in public, and most gratefully at that! In which case I would infinitely sooner have obliged Wiede.[26] But I am obliged to Most for having given me the opportunity of tendering my refusal. These fellows imagine they are dealing with 'babes and sucklings'. Quelle impudence![27]

I should say that the Russians have grossly miscalculated with their sabre-rattling; and when unsoldierly coups de tête[28] of this kind don't come off HERE AND THEN, their effect on their own army and the public is highly and miserably compromising, particularly so soon after the EXIT from Armenia.

Friend Lopatin, it seems, has in the meantime again waxed unpatriotic.

I trust that your wife is feeling better. Salut to all.

Your

Moor

  1. ↑ Braunschweiger Volksfreund
  2. ↑ One man proposes, the other disposes.
  3. ↑ first of all
  4. ↑ Marx, accompanied by his wife and daughter Eleanor, took a course of treatment in Neuenahr (Germany) from 8 August 1877 and returned to London about 27 September.
  5. ↑ Helene Demuth
  6. ↑ variety becomes the body (an expression traced back to Euripides' tragedy Orestes, 234).
  7. ↑ up to the mark
  8. ↑ A reference to the scandal involving General Galliffet and Madame de Beaumont. In all probability, Marx first learned about it from the Vorwärts, which on 6 April 1877 carried an item beginning with the words 'The Nemesis has grabbed another one by the hair!' in the 'Sozialpolitische Uebersicht' column. The author went on to say that about two weeks previously, at a ball in Paris, in a fit of jealousy Galliffet had seriously wounded his mistress Mme de Beaumont, President Mac-Mahon's sister-in-law, and had consequently been imprisoned. The Paris papers hushed up the scandal. The Vorwärts viewed this unsavoury story, with a hangman of the Paris Commune as its protagonist, as striking proof of the degeneration of bourgeois society. Marx learned the details of the scandal from Carl Hirsch, who arrived in London from Paris about 20 July.
  9. ↑ researches
  10. ↑ Cf. Luke 23:31
  11. ↑ Palais de l'Elysée—the residence of the President of the French Republic in Paris.
  12. ↑ brawlers
  13. ↑ The words 'Here I am, here I remain' are ascribed to Mac-Mahon, who was supposed to have uttered them during the Crimean War, on 8 September 1855, in response to the suggestion that he retreat from the Malakhov Hill which he had seized and which was to be blown up by the Russians on 9 September.
  14. ↑ That's enough
  15. ↑ Shit!
  16. ↑ From 10 June 1877 the Vorwärts carried a series of articles covering the conflict between the monarchists and the republican majority in the French Chamber of Deputies and Mac-Mahon's attempt to effect a coup d'état (see Note 283). The first of them was an editorial 'Zum jüngsten Staatsstreich des Herrn Mac-Mahon'. The editorial board took a nihilist stand on these events, implying that it was immaterial to the proletariat whether it was campaigning under a bourgeois republic or a monarchy. These views were stated most directly in the editorial 'Nieder mit der Republik!' (Down with the Republic!) featured by the Vorwärts on 1 July 1877 and written, most probably, by Wilhelm Hasenclever.
  17. ↑ In line with the decision of the Gotha unity congress of 1875 (see Note 71), the leading bodies of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany were the Executive Committe (Vorstand), Control Commission (Controlkomission) and Committee (Ausschuss). The Executive Committee elected at the Gotha Congress had five members: Hasenclever and Hartmann, the chairmen; Auer and Derossi, the secretaries, and Geib, the treasurer. Thus the Executive came to comprise three Lassalleans (Hasenclever, Hartmann and Derossi) and two Eisenachers (Auer and Geib). The Executive Committee was to be based in Hamburg.
  18. ↑ A reference to the constitutional conflict in Prussia that arose in February 1860 over the refusal of the bourgeois majority in the Lower Chamber of the Prussian Provincial Diet to endorse the army reorganisation project proposed by War Minister von Roon. However, the government soon managed to secure allocations from the Provincial Diet to 'maintain the army ready for action', which in fact meant the beginning of the planned reorganisation. When, in March 1862, the liberal majority of the Chamber refused to approve military spending and demanded a ministry accountable to the Provincial Diet, the government dissolved the Diet and announced new elections. The Bismarck Ministry was formed at the end of September 1862. In October, it again dissolved the Provincial Diet and began to carry out the military reform without the sanction of the Diet. The conflict was settled only in 1866 when, after Prussia's victory over Austria, the Prussian bourgeoisie gave in to Bismarck.
  19. ↑ A reference to the Party of Progress formed in June 1861 (its most eminent members were Waldeck, Virchow, Schulze-Delitsch, Forchenbeck and Hover-beck). The party's programme included the unification of Germany under the aegis of Prussia, the convocation of an all-German Parliament, and the formation of a strong liberal ministry accountable to the Chamber of Deputies. Fearing a popular revolution, the Party of Progress gave no support to the basic democratic demands—universal suffrage and freedoms of the press, association and assembly. In 1866 the party split, and its Right wing founded the National Libera] Party, which capitulated to the Bismarck government.
  20. ↑ Presumably Westphälische Volkszeitung.
  21. ↑ Complying with Marx's request, Liebknecht wrote a long article, 'Die Schande Europas', which was carried by the Vorwärts, No. 6, 13 October 1876.
  22. ↑ is reaping what he has sown (Bible, The Wisdom of Solomon 11:7).
  23. ↑ From 15 June to 15 August 1877 Liebknecht was serving a sentence of two months. In a letter TO ENGELS despatched on 27 June from Leipzig prison, he wrote that as the editor of the Vorwärts and an organiser of the Social-Democrats' election campaign in the winter of 1876-77 he had had a multitude of charges brought against him, and this would entail several court trials.
  24. ↑ See this volume, pp. 252-53.
  25. ↑ On 20 July 1877 the Zukunft editors wrote to Marx and Engels inviting them to contribute to the magazine and referring to the relevant decision of the Gotha Congress to start a scientific review (see Note 314). The letters were signed 'The Zukunft editorial board' and gave the forwarding office of the Berliner Freie Presse, edited by Johann Most, as its address.
  26. ↑ In his letters to Marx of 9 July and TO ENGELS of 10 July 1877, Franz Wiede proposed that they contribute to the Neue Gesellschaft magazine he was planning to start (the first issue appeared in Zurich in October 1877). In a letter TO ENGELS of 20 July 1877, Wiede asked for a speedy reply to his proposal.
  27. ↑ What impudence!
  28. ↑ brain waves