About Karl Blind

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Marx and Engels wrote this item at the request of Maltman Barry, a British journalist, formerly a member of the General Council of the First International. Barry intended to publicly expose Karl Blind, a former democrat, a National Liberal from the 1860s, who printed an article “Prince Napoleon and European Democracy” in Fraser’s Magazine (Vol. 20, London, 1879, pp. 504-21).

Marx made several additions to the extant manuscript, which was written mostly by Engels.

It was published in English for the first time in MEGA%, Abt. 1, Bd. 25, Berlin, 1985, S. 186-87.

The article ought to be headed, not “Prince Napoleon etc.”, but “I” . For every once the name of Prince Napoleon occurs in it, the pronoun “I “ occurs at least 20 times, not to count its inflected cases and derived forms. What it says of Prince Napoleon, has all been printed more than once, and what it says about “I” , has, alas, also been related, printed, and published more than once in England, as the proprietors and editors of sundry reviews, defunct and alive, know to their sorrow.

Deprived of its false pretence, the paper gives a new version of Mr. Blind’s old tale: How Karl Blind, by various untoward circumstances, was unfortunately prevented from changing the course of history. First comes the oft repeated story which forms his chief stock-in-trade, how he was sent on a diplomatic mission by the moribund provisional governments of the South German insurrection of 1849 ostensibly to the then government of the French Republic, but in reality to the revolutionary government of Ledru-Rollin which, it was expected, would be shortly installed by a popular commotion. Alas! the government which had sent him, was unceremoniously chased into Swiss exile by the Prussians, and the demonstration of the 13th June, which was to establish the government to which he was really accredited, was equally unceremoniously put down. Of his rather grotesque mission from a dead to an unborn government, he had the good fortune to be relieved by the existing French government who arrested him as a participator in the “pacific” demonstration of the unarmed Paris national guard on the 13th June, [and] finally expelled [from] the country. Had the government which sent him but remained alive, and had the government to which he was really sent, but come into existence, what would not Karl Blind have been enabled to do? By procuring himself from somebody in Baden a sham mission to somebody in Paris, he had contrived to eschew “diplomatically” even the least possibility of a dangerous encounter with the approaching Prussian army. At all events he had done something.

Again, in 1870, on the outbreak of the Franco-German war, there was a chance of Italy joining France. But Karl Blind watched. “Had King Victor Emmanuel etc.” (page 519). But again, it was an embassy from one non-existing government to another. Louis Napoleon refused Rome to Victor Emmanuel, thus forcing the latter to take the town in the teeth of France, and rendering the Italian alliance impossible. Again, the services and offers of Karl Blind, whatever these offers may have been worth, were declined, and that eternal diplomatist in partibus, instead of changing the route of history, had to be satisfied with the “warmest thanks” of Mazzini.

Who can help being reminded of the braggart who, when involved in a fracas, shouted: “Hold me back, friends, or else I shall commit some fearful deed!” Unfortunately for the world, but perhaps fortunately for Mr. Karl Blind, whenever he is about to step into the foreground of historical action, some untoward event prevents him from accomplishing that “fearful deed” which was to render him immortal.

Let us hope that this is the last lucubration, at least in English, written by Karl B. on K. B. in the interest of K. B.