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Special pages :
Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, May 16, 1846
First published: in Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, 1968.
To Weydemeyer in Schildesche Near Bielefeld
Brussels, 14-16 May 1846[edit source]
Dear Weiwi,
Herewith a belated letter. All manner of things have intervened. I had already intended to write to you from Liège[1] as arranged. But because of money problems I was averse to doing so. I readily put off such problems from one day to the next. But eventually, of course, one has to take the plunge.
You will shortly be getting an official letter from here.[2] The manuscripts will be with you shortly. [The German Ideology and other works intended for publication in the planned quarterly] The second volume is almost ready. As soon as the manuscripts for the first volume arrive (better to send them in two consignments) it would be most desirable that printing should begin.[3]
As to your idea about Limburg, it may be all right for pamphlets; books of more than 20 sheets are best printed in Germany proper. I think I've found a way of doing this which 1. will nominally leave Meyer out of it altogether, 2. will make things very difficult for the governments and 3. strongly commends itself insofar as the dispatch arrangements would be placed in very efficient hands.
Vogler, who resides here and has a commission agent in Leipzig, a man chiefly engaged in the dissemination of books liable to confiscation, would, you see, take over the whole book-selling side. The books themselves would be printed in Germany. In each case the editor would appear as publisher, i.e. ‘Published by the Author’. Vogler has offered his services on the following terms which I quote word for word from one of his letters to me:
‘In return for 10 per cent of the receipts at the Fair I undertake responsibility for all charges such as dispatch, carriage, delivery, cash collection, commission and the like, provided the books are delivered to me carriage paid Leipzig.'
Thus Vogler would make out the invoices here, and the books would be sent from the place of publication direct to his commission agent in Leipzig. The place of publication should not, of course, be in Prussia. Vogler’s account would be settled at each Easter Fair.
It seems to me that for the time being this would be the best course for books of more than 20 sheets. For pamphlets, your suggestion is certainly a good one. As regards a joint-stock bookseller I shall see what I can do. At all events it will create difficulties.
If Meyer agrees to Vogler’s proposal we could start at once — it would only be necessary to find some place of publication outside Prussia.
I had got thus far when your next letter arrived, the one addressed to Ph. Gigot as well as to me personally. Engels is sitting beside me at this moment to reply to the part concerning us all.[4] I frankly admit that the news it contains has affected me rather disagreeably.
I am, as you know, in a serious financial predicament. In order to make ends meet for the time being here, I recently pawned the last of the gold and silver as well as a large part of the linen. Moreover, so as to economise, I have given up our own establishment for the present and moved to the Bois Sauvage here. Otherwise I should have had to hire a new maid as the youngest child is now being weaned.
I have vainly cast around in Trier (chez my mother) and in Cologne chez one of her business acquaintances with a view to borrowing the 1200 fr. I need to set my affairs in order again. Hence the news about the booksellers is all the more unwelcome since I had hoped to get this money as an advance on the Political Economy.[5]
No doubt there are sundry bourgeois in Cologne who would probably advance me the money for a definite period.[6] But some time ago these people adopted a line that in principle is diametrically opposed to my own, and hence I should not care to be beholden to them in any way.
As to the fee for the publication, only the half for volume 1 is due to me, as you know.
As though one’s own misfortunes were not enough, I, as editor of the publication, am also getting a stream of urgent letters, etc., from every quarter. There is, in particular, the unpleasant matter of Bernays. As you know, he had already received 104 fr. on account through you. Bernays had given a bill of exchange due 12 May (to his baker), he couldn’t pay, so it had to be protested, which gave rise to further expenses, etc., etc. Now the baker wants to have him locked up. He wrote to me; I, of course, couldn’t help him, but to put the matter off temporarily, took the only possible course:
1. wrote a fruitless letter to Herwegh[7] in Paris, asking him to forward the amount to Bernays pending the appearance of his essay[8];
2. wrote a letter in French to Bernays to keep his creditor at bay if need be, in which I informed him that, on publication, he would receive a fee amounting to so and so much. Whereupon the citizen granted him an extension until 2 June. Bernays is liable for the expenses of the protest, etc., 120 fr. (I can’t remember the exact sum).
As you can see, misère on all sides! At this moment I'm at a loss what to do.
Some other time I shall write you a more substantial letter. You must excuse my silence on the grounds that all this financial stress has come on top of much work, domestic duties, etc.
Farewell.
Yours
M.
My wife and I send our warm regards to your betrothed. [Louise Lüning] Be it noted, and to anticipate any misunderstandings, that Hess has nothing more due to him from the two volumes I am now editing; on the contrary he still has some to hand back to us.[9]
My private address: An Bois Sauvage. Chez M. Lannoy, Plaine Ste Gudule, N. 19.
When writing to me privatum address letters: A Mr Lannoy, Plaine Ste Gudule, Bruxelles, under cover.
- ↑ The visit to Liège in the first half of May 1846 mentioned here by Marx seems to have been his second visit there; there is some evidence that Marx stopped in Liège at the beginning of February 1845 on his way from Paris to Brussels.
- ↑ This seems to refer to the undiscovered reply by the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee’ to Weydemeyer’s letter of 30 April 1846.
- ↑ A reference to the two volumes of a quarterly journal the publication of which was negotiated in 1845 and 1846 with a number of Westphalian socialists, the publishers Julius Meyer and Rudolph Rempel among others. Marx and Engels intended to publish in it their criticism of The German Ideology which they started to write in the autumn of 1845. It was also planned to publish a number of polemical works by their fellow-thinkers, in the first place those containing criticism of German philosophical literature and the works of the ‘true socialists’.
In November 1845 Hess reached an agreement with Meyer and Rempel on financing the publication of two volumes of the quarterly. Further negotiations were conducted by Weydemeyer, who visited Brussels in February 1846 and returned to Germany in April on the instruction of the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee. In a letter to the Committee of 30 April 1846 from Schildesche (Westphalia) he wrote that no headway was being made and that he proposed that Meyer should form a joint-stock company in Limburg (Holland), as in Germany manuscripts of less than 20 printed sheets were subject to preliminary censorship. He also recommended that Marx should sign a contract with the Brussels publisher and bookseller C. G. Vogler for the distribution of the quarterly and other publications. The contract was not concluded because Vogler could not assume even part of the expenses.
Weydemeyer continued his efforts, but succeeded only in getting from Meyer a guarantee for the publication of one volume. But as early as July 1846 Meyer and Rempel refused their promised assistance on the pretext of financial difficulties, the actual reason being differences in principle between Marx and Engels on the one hand and the champions of ‘true socialism’ on the other, whose views both publishers shared.
Marx and Engels did not abandon their hopes of publishing the works ready for the quarterly, if only by instalments, but their attempts failed. The extant manuscript of The German Ideology was first published in full in the Soviet Union in 1932. - ↑ The reference is to Joseph Weydemeyer’s letters to Engels and Gigot of 13 May, and to Marx of 14 May 1846 with the current information on the negotiations with the publishers Meyer and Rempel on the publication of a quarterly. Weydemeyer wrote to Marx that because of the financial difficulties the Westphalian publishers would be able to pay in the near future only a limited sum of his fee on account.
Engels’ reply mentioned here to Weydemeyer’s first letter has not been found. - ↑ On 1 February 1845 Marx signed a contract with the publisher Leske for the publication of his Kritik der Politik und National-Ökonomie. But as early as March 1846 Leske suggested that Marx find another publisher and, in case he did find one, return him the advance received. Therefore Marx hoped to repay Leske either when he signed a contract with a new publisher or out of the sum received for financing the planned publication. But Marx was unable either to sign a new contract or to fulfil his intention to write a work on economics, and in February 1847 the contract with Leske was cancelled.
- ↑ Marx has in mind a group of bourgeois-democratic intellectuals, Georg Jung among others, who contributed to the Rheinische Zeitung and were already enthusiastic about socialist ideas in 1842. Georg Jung, however, who was on friendly terms with Marx and supported his criticism of the Young Hegelians, left the socialist movement in 1846.
- ↑ Marx’s letter to Herwegh has not been found.
- ↑ A reference to the fee due to Bernays for an article which seems to have been an extract from his manuscript on crimes and criminal law, then being prepared for printing by the publisher Leske but was demanded back by the author because of careless typesetting. Marx wanted to include this article in the quarterly journal the planned publication of which was discussed with Westphalian publishers in 1845 and 1846. Thanks to Marx’s mediation, Bernays, who was in need of money, received two advances on his article. But as the planned publication of the quarterly did not take place, Bernays’ work, in the form he had conceived it, was not published.
- ↑ Marx writes here about the advance which Hess had probably already received from Meyer and Rempel for his collaboration in preparing the quarterly planned by Marx and Engels. Hess wrote articles on A. Ruge ('Dottore Graziano, der Bajazzo der deutschen Philosophic') and G. Kuhlmann ('Der Dr. Georg Kuhlmann aus Holstein oder die Prophetic des wahren Sozialismus') for the first two volumes of the quarterly. Later Hess tried in vain to have the first article published separately, and finally, on 5 and 8 August 1847, it was printed in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung under the title ‘Dottore Grazianos Werke. Zwei Jahre in Paris. Studien und Erinnerungen von A. Ruge’. The article on G. Kuhlmann, edited by Marx and Engels, was included in The German Ideology and published as Chapter V of Volume 11.