Letter to Friedrich Engels, April 30, 1852

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Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 30 April 1852


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 1, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39
Keywords : Letter, Friedrich Engels


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

London, 30 April 1852

28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Frederic,

You will receive at the same time as this letter a colossal parcel from America. Today I have also had a letter from Cluss, of which I give excerpts below, as I shall be needing it until next week.

Dronke has arrived here sain et sauf[1] I like him better than I had feared. He has grown taller and has broadened out as well. This has also made him more self-possessed. For the present he hob-nobs with Anschütz, who welcomed him with open arms. He is going to start up a small business, having contracted in Paris to sell cigar cases and purses over here. 10% commission. And, through Anschütz, he will at once acquire the necessary connections for this TRADE.

He tells me that the 'worthy' Techow has sent character sketches of us to Switzerland in which he roundly inveighs against us and you in particular. You have aroused the professional jealousy of the military, et je pense[2] that one day you will justify leurs pressentiments[3] Further: from Geneva, Schily demanded that the gentlemen come to terms with us. This elicited an authoritative statement signed by Willich, Techow, Schapper and Schimmelpfennig in which, inter alia, it was pointed out that 1. there had been a complete break with this wholly impotent party; 2. there are police spies in our midst who have been reporting everything to the Prussian government.

I don't know whether I have already told you, or whether you heard during your stay here,[4] that Messrs Kinkel et Co. possess a mere 3,000 dollars in cash all told, that all respectable people such as Löwe of Calbe have all withdrawn, that relations between Willich on the one hand and Kinkel and Reichenbach on the other are very strained, and that the whole dungheap is in process of disintegration.

You will receive the memorandum on Germany.[5] Yesterday the curs held a meeting of guarantors here and elected a definitive committee. Mr Ruge wrote a letter of protest. Willich was not present. From the start Reichenbach refused to have anything more to do with the filthy business. The committee will be paid. Those elected are Kinkel, Willich (doubtful that he'll accept), Löwe of Calbe (will in any case refuse), Fickler, Ronge, Schütz of Mainz and one other. They will make up the total from out of their own midst. In his letter, Ruge attacks Kinkel as an agent of the Prince of Prussia[6] and a freemason.

Here is a passage from CIuss' letter: Huzel (not to be confused with Huzzelwitt), Cluss' friend, [present as a guarantor] at Kinkel's Cincinnati congress[7] writes and tells Cluss inter alia:

'Kinkel tried to floor me with vulgar invective against Marx and Engels. I succeeded in doing what I wanted, namely in cornering him so effectively that I shall have him at my mercy for some time to come. He tried to cover himself by obtaining my word of honour not to say anything about the incident or to write anything that would get him "into a stink"... In a letter to Anneke a certain Teilering scolds like a fishwife at Marx...'.

Cluss himself goes on:

'In New York, at the inimitable meeting which I reported in my last letter, the numerous gymnastic clubs constituted themselves a separate body and declared their support for my protest[8] and for Weydemeyer's article against Kinkel's memorandum![9][10]

Apropos. I gave Bangya a few pen-sketches of the great German men in London for him to pass on to Szemere.[11] This letter, I know not how, has been read to a German publisher without my name being mentioned. He is now asking for 'character sketches' of these gentlemen and, according to Bangya, is prepared to pay £25 for a few sheets. Anonymous or pseudonymous, of course. Well, qu'en penses-tu?[12] We would really have to do a humorous piece of this kind together. I have some doubts. If you think I should take this crap on, you will have to make a compilation from my letters and anything else you have which may contain fragments on the peculiarities of these curs. At all events you would have to send me a few notes about Willich 'in action'[13] and 'in Switzerland'.

Among the things I am sending you, you will find the draft of an advertisement for an illustrated book of battle reports by old Szerelmey. He wants it gingered up a little and done into English as an advertisement, in return for which he promises each of us a copy of his work. Je crois que ça vaut la peine de faire un petit puff.[14]

As soon as I set eyes on Mr Carey's first work in print[15] I foresaw that he would bring out an economic work on the 'harmony of interests'.[16]

Mais que dis-tu, mon cher,[17] to the fact that, in the Janus we sent you, Ruge seeks—and how he seeks, mon Dieu!—to appropriate communism as the latest product of his 'humanist thought'.

Have you read the cock-fight between Harney and Jones? If not, I shall send you their mutual philippics.[18] Both of them, the one voluntarily, the other involuntarily, descend to the level of German emigre polemics.

Your

K. M.

Have you ever read more egregious nonsense than B. Bauer's article in the Tribune: 'The Decline of England'? The passage most characteristic of the incorrigible old theologian runs as follows:

'While the English Parliament has hitherto persecuted the Romish policy, and availed itself of the popular impulses for the establishment of its sovereignty— while, in the old Romish spirit, it has taken advantage of internal domestic differences, as for example, the differences of High Church, of Scotch Presbyterianism, and of Irish Catholicism, for the formation and development of its aristocratic art of Government, [...] it has now become a party to the Continental struggle between the peoples and the Governments, and it appears as the advocate for Constitutionalism at the very moment when that is approaching its undeniable downfall.'

If that's not champion drivel, I don't know what is.

  1. ↑ safe and sound
  2. ↑ and I think
  3. ↑ their presentiments
  4. ↑ Engels visited Marx in London in the first half of April 1852 and returned to Manchester about 13 April
  5. ↑ See this volume, p. 90.
  6. ↑ Cf. this volume, p. 573.
  7. ↑ Straubinger—German travelling journeyman. Marx and Engels ironically applied the name to some participants in the German working-class movement of the time who were connected with guild production and displayed petty-bourgeois sectarian tendencies
  8. ↑ A. Cluss, 'An den Garanten-Congress des deutschen Anleihens in Cincinnati. Washington, Jan. 23', Turn-Zeitung, No. 6, 1 March 1852.
  9. ↑ J. Weydemeyer, 'Die revolutionäre Agitation unter der Emigration', Turn-Zeitung, No. 6, 1 March 1852.
  10. ↑ Marx quotes Cluss' letter to him of 15 April 1852. Cluss' previous letter of 4-6 April, mentioned here, was addressed to Wilhelm Wolff and informed him of a meeting of the German petty-bourgeois refugees held in New York on 3 April 1852 (see Note 106)
  11. ↑ The reference is presumably to the copies of Marx's letters of 15-22 August and 2 December 1851 to the journalist Ebner, in which he exposed the activities of Rüge, Kinkel, Willich and others (see present edition, Vol. 38). Later these literary sketches became part of the pamphlet The Great Men of the Exile (see Note 131). Marx's letters to Ebner became known to the Austrian police
  12. ↑ what do you think of it?
  13. ↑ An allusion to Willich's participation in the Baden-Palatinate uprising of 1849
  14. ↑ I think it warrants the trouble of a little puff.
  15. ↑ H. Ch. Carey, Essay on the Rate of Wages.
  16. ↑ H. Ch. Carey, The Harmony of Interests. In a letter of 15 April 1852 Cluss wrote Marx about the second edition of this book.
  17. ↑ But what, my dear fellow, do you say
  18. ↑ G. J. Harney, 'To the Readers of The Star, and the Democrats of Great Britain and Ireland', The Star, No. 753, 17 April 1852 and E. Jones, 'An Appeal for the Judgment of the People', Notes to the People, No. 52, 24 April 1852.
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