Letter to Friedrich Engels, September 25, 1860

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Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 25 September 1860


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41
Keywords : Letter, Friedrich Engels


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 25 September 1860

Dear Engels,

The family arrived back safely yesterday. With regard to the enclosed letter from Dana I should explain that, after your visit to London,[1] I wrote to Dana saying I would rather he assigned the 'NAVY' article to some other contributor to the Cyclopaedia.[2] After that, I didn't hear from him and thought the matter had been DROPPED until the enclosed letter turned up yesterday. If you could possibly do the thing—however briefly and superficially DOES NOT MATTER—it would be of enormous help to me, particularly just now, since, to obtain a breathing-space, I was forced on 14 September to draw an anticipatory bill on Dana, having a life of 2 months (payable 2 months after date). When writing to him, I reminded him of our long-standing friendship, as this was, in fact, against the PRINCIPLES of the Tribune. However, my letter crossed his, so just now it behoves us to keep him happy, quite apart from the necessity of his continuing to believe that we can do everything. So, if it is at all possible, you would oblige me more than I can say by doing the thing. Ten pages was the maximum prescribed by Dana. FIVE DO ALSO,[3] if not otherwise feasible. The point is that something should go off.

How WITH Lamoricière?[4]

What do you think of the Garibaldi situation? Kossuth was balked by Mazzini's intervention; he had been sent by Bonaparte. Garibaldi was to have by-passed Rome and marched on Venice direct.

Now, ad vocem[5] Vogt. The thing's[6] being printed here.

1. Money. All I have to pay is £25. £12 from Borkheim, Lassalle has promised me £8. There remains £5. The other printing costs, ditto distribution costs will be met by Petsch, the publisher. We are SHARERS TO EQUAL PARTS in the profits, after deduction and refund of the costs. I told Petsch this was now the only condition upon which I would have the thing published in London.

2. The thing is not confiscable. This was a misapprehension on Lassalle's part. I had told him, on the contrary, that, though not confiscable, it could not appear in Berlin because no publisher there would print it because of the communist trial.[7]

3. We are no longer in the 1850-58 era. Petsch has his agents in Leipzig, Berlin, and Hamburg. So, the thing will be distributed through ordinary booksellers' channels in Germany. In Belgium, Switzerland, and America, Petsch will sell direct through his agents there, thus saving a great deal of time. Advertisements in the newspapers, booksellers' notices, etc., will be attended to here, with my assistance. We shall send Siebel 50 copies to be distributed to journals, etc. Confiscation I hold to be out of the question. Vogt is not the Prince Regent,[8] and Stieber has officially fallen into disgrace. I am deliberately keeping myself en réserve where politics are concerned.

4. We are saving time, for in Germany we might spend months yet doing the rounds; also time on proof-correcting, etc. It is Petsch's first publication (along with an anti-About pamphlet of Borkheim's[9]), and he will go to no end of pains, if only in his own interests.

5. If the thing goes well, as I have every reason to suppose, Petsch will publish pamphlets, whether by you or me, in German or English and put an end to BURKING by German publishers. (2 sheets already printed.)

On this occasion, therefore, necessity would appear to have been a-virtue. Qu'en pensez-vous?[10] I believe that Po and Rhine[11] ditto Savoy[12], etc., would have created much more of a stir had they come out here in London.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

Apropos. You rightly considered Ex-Reichs-Vogt an unsuitable title. Karl Vogt seems unsuitable to me because I don't want to put 'Karl Marx' after Karl Vogt. Hence my proposed title, Dâ-Dâ-Vogt. For, as I reveal in the section containing the critique of Vogt's Studien, Dâ-Dâ is an Arab writer who is made use of by Bonaparte in Algiers as Vogt is in Geneva. Dâ-Dâ will PUZZLE your philistine, and it's funny.

  1. ↑ This refers to Engels' stay with Marx in May 1860 (see Note 166).
  2. ↑ The New American Cyclopaedia was a sixteen-volume reference work prepared by a group of progressive bourgeois journalists and publishers on the New-York Daily Tribune editorial board (Charles Dana, George Ripley and others). It appeared between 1858 and 1863 and was reprinted unchanged in 1868-69. A number of eminent US and European scholars wrote for it. Notwithstanding the editors' express condition that articles should be non-partisan in character, those of Marx and Engels reflect their revolutionary proletarian, materialist views. Marx and Engels contributed to the Cyclopaedia from July 1857 to November 1860. Their articles for it have been included in Vol. 18 of the present edition.
  3. ↑ Five will also do
  4. ↑ See this volume, p. 195.
  5. ↑ as regards
  6. ↑ K. Marx, Herr Vogt.
  7. ↑ In late 1859, the German socialist Eichhoff was brought to trial by the Prussian authorities for publishing in the London weekly Hermann a series of articles exposing the part played by Wilhelm Stieber, chief of the Prussian political police, in organising the trial of the Communist League members in Cologne in 1852. In December 1859, Hermann Juch, the editor of the weekly, asked Marx for information on the Cologne trial, which he needed for Eichhoff's defence (see Marx's letter to Engels of 13 December 1859, present edition, Vol. 40 and also pp. 80-81 of this volume). In May 1860 a Berlin court sentenced Eichhoff to 14 months imprisonment.
  8. ↑ William, Prince of Prussia
  9. ↑ [S. L. Borkheim,] Napoleon III und Preussen, London, 1860.
  10. ↑ What do you think?
  11. ↑ F. Engels, Po and Rhine.
  12. ↑ F. Engels, Savoy, Nice and the Rhine.
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