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Letter to Friedrich Engels, August 17, 1849
First published: abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913 and in full in MEGA, 1929.
To Engels in Vevey
Air extract from this letter was published in English for the first time in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975.
Paris, 17 August 1849[edit source]
Dear Engels,
I don’t know whether my first letter — in reply to the first one you sent my wife arrived safely, since your address was very uncertain. I would have already replied to your second[1] had I not been prevented by the fact that the whole of my family here was ill. Let me repeat once again how anxious my wife and I were on your account and what a delightful surprise it was to have definite news of you.
You will see from the date that, as a result of my protest, the Ministry of the Interior has for the time being left me unmolested here in Paris. The Morbihan département, to which I had been directed, is lethal at this time of year — the Pontine marshes of Brittany.[2] It would not be prudent just now to write about the 13 June affair.[3] I don’t believe, or at least don’t know whether secrecy of the mails is being observed.
The general situation here may he summed up in a couple of words: the majority disintegrating into its original, mutually hostile elements, Bonapartism hopelessly compromised, ill-will among the peasants because of the retention of the 45 centimes, the wine-growers furious at the threatened retention of the tax on drink,[4] the current of public opinion once again anti-reactionary, in the Chamber, now prorogued, and in the Ministry, reaction, growing exclusive and concerned with expelling the Barrot-Dufaure clique from the Cabinet.[5] As soon as this comes about you can look for an early revolutionary resurrection.
I don’t know whether in Switzerland you have any chance of following the English movement. The English have taken it up again at exactly the same juncture at which it was broken off by the February revolution. As you are aware, the Peace Party[6] is nothing but the Free-Trade party under a new guise. But this time the industrial bourgeoisie is acting in a manner even more revolutionary than during the Anti-Corn Law League agitation.[7] In two ways: 1) the aristocracy, whose roots have been attacked at home by the repeal of the Corn Laws and the Navigation Acts, is further to be ruined in the sphere of foreign policy, in its European ramifications. Reversal of Pitt’s policy. Anti-Russian-Austrian-Prussian, in a word, pro Italy and Hungary. Cobden has formally threatened to proscribe bankers who make loans to Russia, has unleashed a veritable campaign against Russian finances. 2) Agitation for universal suffrage, in order to effect the total political severance of the tenants from the landed aristocracy, to give the towns an absolute majority in Parliament, to nullify the House of Lords. Financial reform, in order to curb the Church and cut off the political revenues of the aristocracy.
Chartists and Free Traders have joined hands in these two propaganda campaigns. Harney and Palmerston apparently friends. At the last meeting held in London, O'Connor and Colonel Thompson both of one mind.[8]
Consequences of this economic campaign against feudalism and Holy Alliance incalculable.
Hungary splendid. But this rotten Prussia? What do you think of it? The pallid canaille [H. Heine, Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen] are now being fattened in Saxony, Baden, the Palatinate. If they send an army to the aid of the Austrians, it will be so contrived that they themselves remain in Bohemia and wax fat there. But wretched Prussia — I only fear that it’s too craven — lost as soon as it participates in the Hungarian affair, which in any case is turning into a general war.
Now, my dear friend, what should we for our part do? We must launch out into a literary and commercial venture, I await your proposals. Red Lupus [Ferdinand Wolff] is here, in the same house as myself; Dronke in Paris likewise, but he’s an insignificant little chap of the school of E. Meyen. Lupus [Wilhelm Wolff] is in Zurich. Address: Dr. Lüning. You don’t need to write separately to M. Ramboz. It’s my pseudonym.
So the address is simply:
Monsieur Ramboz, 45, rue de Lille.
Salut!
Ch. M.
- ↑ This letter written in the first half of August 1849 has not been found.
- ↑ Marx’s protest to the French Ministry of the Interior against the decision to expel him from Paris has not been found. When he wrote this letter Marx did not know that his protest had been rejected. But he soon received a notification by the commissioner of police, dated 16 August 1849, stating that Minister of the Interior Dufaure had upheld the decision on Marx’s expulsion (see Notification Sent by the Commissioner of Police Stating That Marx's Petition Was Rejected).
- ↑ Montagnards — during the French revolution of 1848-49 representatives in the Constituent and subsequently Legislative Assembly of a bloc of democrats and petty-bourgeois socialists grouped around the newspaper La Réforme. They called themselves the Montagne by analogy with the Montagne in the Convention of 1792-94.
On 13 June 1849 the Montagne staged a peaceful demonstration to protest against the sending of French troops to suppress the Roman Republic. The demonstration was dispersed by the army and the bourgeois detachments of the National Guards and there followed a counter-revolutionary offensive, persecution of democrats and proletarian activists, including emigrants. Many Montagnards were arrested or emigrated. - ↑ Montagnards — during the French revolution of 1848-49 representatives in the Constituent and subsequently Legislative Assembly of a bloc of democrats and petty-bourgeois socialists grouped around the newspaper La Réforme. They called themselves the Montagne by analogy with the Montagne in the Convention of 1792-94.
On 13 June 1849 the Montagne staged a peaceful demonstration to protest against the sending of French troops to suppress the Roman Republic. The demonstration was dispersed by the army and the bourgeois detachments of the National Guards and there followed a counter-revolutionary offensive, persecution of democrats and proletarian activists, including emigrants. Many Montagnards were arrested or emigrated. - ↑ The reference is to the home situation in France in the summer of 1849 which was characterised by intensified repressions against democrats and socialists and by discord and friction within the ruling circles themselves — between the various factions in the Assembly majority (*), between these factions and the Government, and between the Assembly and Louis Bonaparte’s entourage.
The addition of 45 centimes to every franc of all direct taxes was introduced by the Provisional Government on 16 March 1848. It aroused particular discontent among the peasants, who formed the bulk of tax-payers.
In mid-August 1849 tinder pressure from the monarchist deputies, a two months’ adjournment of the French Legislative Assembly was decreed. The Assembly met again in October 1849.
(*) These were the two factions in the so-called Party of Order — a conservative bloc of the monarchist groups formed in 1848 which had the majority in the Legislative Assembly of the French Republic (opened at the end of May 1849).
The Philippists or Orleanists were supporters of the House of Orleans (a lateral branch of the Bourbon dynasty) overthrown by the February revolution of 1848; they represented the interests of the financial aristocracy and the big industrial bourgeoisie; their candidate for the throne was Louis Philippe Albert, Count of Paris and grandson of Louis Philippe.
The Legitimists, supporters of the main branch of the Bourbon dynasty overthrown in 1830, upheld the interests of the big hereditary landowners and the claim to the French throne of the Count of Chambord, King Charles X’s grandson, who called himself Henry V. Some of the Legitimists remained outside the bloc of monarchist groups. - ↑ The Peace Society — a pacifist organisation founded by the Quakers in 1816 in London. It was actively supported by the Free Traders who assumed that in peace time free trade would enable Britain to make better use of its industrial superiority and win economic and politics supremacy.
- ↑ The Corn Laws (first introduced in the fifteenth century) imposed high import duties on agricultural produce in the interests of landowners in order to maintain high prices for these products on the home market. In 1838 the Manchester factory owners Cobden and Bright founded the Anti-Corn Law League, which demanded the lifting of the corn tariffs and urged unlimited freedom of trade for the purpose of weakening the economic and political power of the landed aristocracy and reducing worker’s wages. The struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy over the Corn Laws ended in 1846 with their repeal.
The Navigation Acts were passed by the British Parliament in 1651 and subsequent years to protect British shipping companies against foreign rivals. They were repealed in 1849. - ↑ At the meeting on 13 August 1849 in the London Drury Lane Theatre of the National Association for Parliamentary and Financial Reform (founded by the bourgeois radicals in 1849 with the aim of achieving a democratic electoral system and changes in the tax system) O'Connor advocated a union of the middle and working classes. His speech was supported by the Free Trader Thomas Thompson.