Letter to Wilhelm Bracke, October 23, 1877

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 23 October 1877


First published, in Russian, in Marx-Engels Archives, Vol. I (VI), Moscow, 1932
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


MARX TO WILHELM BRACKE

IN BRUNSWICK

[London,] 23 October 1877

Dear Bracke,

Your news is bad but was readily predictable. I have already suggested on a number of- occasions that you should kick out the gracious Isolde.[1] However much corrected, her product remains an abortion.[2] Add to that the waste of time, waste of money, etc. There can be no legal objection to that person's being 'kicked out' since she does not, and is unable to, perform what
she contractually undertook to do. Bios had at one time proffered his services (unfortunately not until after Isolde).[3]

The review, Zukunft, is by no means satisfactory, its main endeavour being to substitute ideological catch-phrases such as 'justice', etc., for materialist knowledge. Its programme
is wretched! Promises, what's more, to peddle phantasms of the future structure of society. This, the first result of a bourgeois[4]

buying his way into the party, is not a happy one—as might have been predicted.

The Vorwärts, too, is publishing a mass of immature, stereotyped essays by aspiring and presumptuous striplings.[5] I shouldn't have thought the proletariat's money was intended to provide a dumping-ground for such exercises.

I trust your health is improving. I myself have been suffering from influenza for several weeks,— most disruptive of work.

Yours,

K. M.

  1. ↑ Isolde Kurz
  2. ↑ Marx means the editing of the German translation of Prosper Olivier Lissagaray's Histoire de la Commune de 1871, which occupied him between October 1876 and August 1877 (for details, see Note 194).
  3. ↑ 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, "l 96,' 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 lo 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.
  4. ↑ An excerpt from this letter was published in English for the first time in: K. Marx, On History and People, McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, 1977. It appeared in English in full in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1979.
  5. ↑ See also previous letter.