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Special pages :
Letter to Friedrich Engels, August 30, 1873
| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 30 August 1873 |
MARX TO ENGELS[1]
IN RAMSGATE
[London,] 30 August 1873
Dear FRED,
Your telegram[2] received; Serraillier arrived later on with Perret's letter to Days in his pocket.[3] I couldn't keep it for you because Days, who is secretary of the local FEDERAL COUNCIL, needs to report on it on Tuesday.[4] However, Serraillier has promised to make a copie of it for you. The letter is classical; the 'ILLIMITED' POWERS or rather pouvoirs illimités which the La Haye Congress[5]
granted to the GENERAL COUNCIL, must be withdrawn from it. On this point the Genevois—and ditto Mr Perret—are agreed; for then there is some hope that des sections jurassiennes will go over to them. For years now this same Perret has been writing that these SECTIONS would go over to them if only the GENERAL COUNCIL would proceed more energetically against the Jurassians! And of course everything is always looked at from the most bigoted and most parochial Swiss point of view. Furthermore, Frankel tells me that the same riff-raff are discontented with the resolutions passed at Olden, or whatever the place is called where the local Swiss congress met!70s In the circumstances there can be absolutely no question of going to Geneva[6] on account of people like that, people who even refuse to accept mandates from English sections.[7]
I think you would do well to send a counter-order to Hepner without delay; he will still receive the avis[8] in time.
Yesterday, A FEW HOURS before I wrote to you, je l'ai échappé belle[9] and can still feel the effects in all my bones. I drank a spoonful of raspberry vinegar and some of it stuck in my wind-pipe. I had a terrible choking-fit, my face went quite black, etc. Another second or so and I would have departed this life. The first thing that occurred to me post festum[10] was whether it might not be possible to bring about such ACCIDENTS artificially. It would be the most decent and least suspicious method, and moreover a highly expeditious one, of doing away with oneself. It would be a great service to the English if one could recommend the experiment publicly.
Madame Longuet will arrive tomorrow, after all sorts of telegrams to and fro—it was very stormy in Boulogne.
Aproposl Lafargue and Le Moussu have definitely split up.[11] It took place—the separation, that is—when Le Moussu declared his willingness to do so since reluctance was in evidence on the other side. Le Moussu is now counting on you. I think the separation is a good thing and had become a necessity for both sides, since a lot of time was wasted in this war between the frogs and mice.[12]
Salut.
Your
K. M.
As for Serraillier, who couldn't work for a week because he was unwell and who would have lost ABOUT another two weeks with the Geneva trip,[13] I am very pleased that we have not given him any reason to accuse us later on of having ruined his whole business! You know how, where and when the Frenchman makes a habit of bringing to bear his 'working-class nature' against the 'bourgeois' in his own party.
Have received a letter from França.[14]
- ↑ Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in The Letters of Karl Marx. Selected and translated with Explanatory Notes and an Introduction by Saul K. Padover. Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, [1979].
- ↑ This letter by Engels has not been found.
- ↑ A reference to the letter written in late August 1873 by Henri Perret, Secretary of the Romance Federal Council in Switzerland, to Alfred Days, Secretary of the British Federal Council. It mirrored the conciliatory attitude taken by some of the International's Swiss members vis-à-vis the Bakuninist sectarians and their willingness to make concessions, notably to revise the resolutions passed by the Hague Congress on the powers of the General Council.
- ↑ 3 September
- ↑ On 19 July 1872 at the meeting of the General Council Executive Committee (Sub-Committee; see Note 435), Engels was instructed to prepare the financial report for the Hague Congress covering the period since the London Conference in September 1871. The report was read out by Engels at the Hague Congress sitting of 7 September 1872, and unanimously approved.
Marx and Engels arrived at The Hague to take part in the Congress on 1 September 1872. On 8 September they travelled to Amsterdam, where they took part in the meeting marking the closure of the Congress. Engels returned to London on 12 September, and Marx around 17 September 1872.
The Fifth Congress of the International Working Men's Association was held on 2-7 September 1872 in The Hague and attended by 65 delegates from 15 national organisations. Its decision to include in the General Rules (as Article 7a) the major tenet on the conquest of political power by the proletariat, and its resolutions relating to Administrative Regulations signified a victory for Marxism. The Congress took stock of the struggle Marx, Engels and their followers had waged for years against petty-bourgeois sectarianism in the workers' movement, in whatever guise it appeared, most notably against Bakuninism; Mikhail Bakunin and James Guillaume, the anarchist leaders, were expelled from the International. The resolutions of the Hague Congress laid the groundwork for the future formation of independent political parties of the working class on a national level. - ↑ A reference to the next regular congress of the International scheduled for September 1873.
The 6th Congress of the International Working Men's Association was held in Geneva between 8 and 13 September 1873. Of the 31 delegates present at the Congress, 28 were representatives of the International's Swiss branches or its émigré sections in Switzerland. When considering the General Rules, the majority headed by Johann Philipp Becker endorsed the decisions of the Hague Congress of 1872 on extending the functions of the General Council (against opposition from Henri Perret and a number of other Swiss delegates). The Congress stressed the need for the working class to engage in political struggle. New York was left as the General Council's headquarters until the next Congress scheduled for 1875. The Geneva Congress of 1873 was the last congress of the International Working Men's Association. - ↑ See this volume, p. 523.
- ↑ message
- ↑ I had a narrow escape
- ↑ subsequently
- ↑ In 1873 Lafargue together with Benjamin Le Moussu and George Moore tried to open up in London an association dealing in the production of engravings. After Lafargue had resigned from the business in late summer 1873, he was replaced by Marx. The association fell apart in the spring of 1874.
- ↑ Marx alluded to Batrachomyomachia (The Batde of the Frogs and Mice), an ancient Greek anonymous mock-heroic poem- parodying Homer's Iliad.
- ↑ A reference to Auguste Serraillier's planned trip to the Geneva Congress of the International (see Note 672) as the General Council representative. As a member of the British Federal Council, he was also to hold credentials from the British sections. However, by the end of August, drawing on the reports from the International's local branches, Marx and Engels had already realised that under the conditions obtaining at the time the Congress had no chance of becoming a truly international forum. They were gravely concerned about the conciliatory tendencies being displayed by some of the International's activists in Romance Switzerland, and their readiness to go back on a number of the Hague Congress resolutions in order to work out a compromise with the anarchists. Marx and Engels thus considered it inexpedient to send a representative to the Congress and persuaded Serraillier not to go to Switzerland.
- ↑ José Nobre-França, one of the organisers and leaders of the Portuguese sections of the International, sent a letter to Marx via Engels thanking him for the instalments of the French edition of Volume I of Capital. He noted the great importance of Marx's work in popularising the revolutionary theory among Portuguese workers and freeing them from the influence of Proudhonism.