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Special pages :
Letter to Friedrich Engels, January 10, 1861
| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 10 January 1861 |
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41
MARX TO ENGELS
IN MANCHESTER
[London,] 10 January 1861
Dear Engels,
Yesterday I received the enclosed scrap of paper and thus can no longer avoid paying the agents £2 5/- for the books.[1] In addition, the TRANSPORT thereof to my house will cost ABOUT 10/-. Duty has been waived. I'd certainly not write to you about this nasty matter, but dura nécessitas[2] since I haven't a farthing.
Overleaf you will find a copy of a scrawl penned by H. Beta at Gottfried Kinkel's behest on the subject of Herr Vogt.
Your
K. M.
Magazin für Literatur des Auslands. 1861. No. 2. 'Herr Vogt—by Karl Marx. In the early years of the "refugees", many a little sum was doubtless expended on getting secret police to smell out frightful secrets and conspiracies. While the labour was great, the yield was rather pitiful. But as regards the fear inspired in many a refugee by the secret police, it was indeed quite desperate. Some men actually went mad as a result. Others, it is true, liked to boast about this fear, and to let all and sundry know that almost every state in Europe had assigned special spies to them. Boasting it was, not hypochondria. The devil in person eluded the notice of these small fry, even when he had them by the scruff of the neck. They ate and drank with him, entertained him as a friend at their tea-tables, and never noticed that his only object was to betray them,—not for 30 pieces of silver, not he! He was prepared to pay, and pay a lot, for the printing of this pamphlet with his own money. For ten years now the said Mr Karl Marx would seem to have laboured and snooped and nabbed letters and copied them so that he might appear on his own account and for his own delectation as the first among all your Vidocqs and Stiebers. All the long-forgotten rubbish and mistakes perpetrated by the emigration ten years since have been made use of, copied, extracted from friends over a cup of tea—not that one would wish to pillory the latter. In the space of ten years, any man, whether a refugee or not, is liable to write something nonsensical or over-hasty in private, counting on the discretion of friends, on its being swept away in the flow of time. But when friends carefully glean these occasional slips and snippets and deck them out with whimsy, thus raising a cloud of dust and filth, as in Mr Marx's pamphlets, when, for example, things uttered in an agitated hour ten years since[3]—(voilà Godofredum)[4]—are printed in bold so that one sees Mr Marx's desire to make a ribaldry, a disgusting little anecdote out of them,—then indeed everyone deserves to be pilloried. Mr Marx is a master of constructive denunciation. Vidocq, Ohm, Stieber, etc., are mere lambs by comparison. Many will delight in wading through this churned-up filth, for it is masterly calumny[5]; but we would urge caution on our readers: in the simian wilderness there are malicious baboons who, for want of other weapons, resort to ordure with which they bombard friend and foe alike. Beware: Throughout almost the whole of his 190 pages Mr Marx engages in this type of strategy, a type which eschews all expenditure on ammunition. Read it, by all means, but keep close at hand a basin of water and strong soap, not forgetting your smelling bottle!
H. B.'
Such is Gottfried's Beta (Betziche), former editor of Drucker's How Do You Do, and Gottfried's eulogistic arse-crawler in the Gartenlaube, etc. A fine crew! What a style and what nonsense!