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Letter to Karl Marx, December 6, 1867
| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | December 6, 1867 |
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44
Manchester, 6 December 1867
Dear Moor,
Enclosed letters from Kugelmann (with enclosure), Liebknecht and Siebel, as well as three acknowledgments from Rau, Hildebrand and Schulze-Delitzsch.[1] Please send back by return the ones from Kugelmann, with the enclosure, and Siebel, the post for Siebel is going off on Monday evening, and I also have to write to Kugelmann. What do you think of the little Swabian paper[2]? Kugelmann certainly does seem to be resorting to desperate means though.
I have written at length to Liebknecht and demanded that he should attack not only the Prussians but their opponents, too, the Austrians, Federalists, Guelphs[3] and other advocates of the smaller states. As I suspected, the fellow has become narrow-minded in exclusively South German fashion. He and Bebel have signed an address to the Viennese City Council,[4] in which Austria is hailed as the newly-arising state of freedom in the South, in contrast to the North's condition of servitude! ITS ALL VERY WELL for him to make a few vague speeches in the Reichstag, but a little newspaper[5] is a different matter altogether, we shall be held responsible for it, and we really cannot allow ourselves to be confused with Austrians, Federalists and Guelphs.[6] I have also written to him about his stupidity in suspending social agitation.[7]
This evening I shall be sending Jenny the trial of Adelaide Macdonald, who fired a pistol at the policeman.[8] Her relationship with Allen is not clear. Allen was betrothed to another girl and was to marry on the Monday after the 'OUTRAGE'.
In haste.
Your F. E.
LOAN ALL RIGHT, I presume?
Enquiries today about life assurance.
- ↑ A reference to Ludwig Kugelmann’s letters to Marx of 23 November and to Engels of 25 November (with enclosed reprints of Kugelmann’s note on Volume One of Capital in the Deutsche Volkszeitung) and of 30 November 1867, and to Wilhelm Liebknecht’s letter to Engels of 26 November 1867. In seeking to persuade German economists and philosophers to respond to Marx’s book, Kugelmann sent reprints of his own and Engels’ (from Die Zukunft) reviews of it to Faucher, Schulze-Delitzsch, Dühring, Röscher, Hildebrand and Rau, about which he told Marx in his letter of 23 November 1867.
- ↑ Der Beobachter
- ↑ Guelphs (Welfs)—members of a separatist party formed in Hanover following its annexation by Prussia in 1866. It consisted of supporters of the restoration of the independent Hanover monarchy headed by the house of Welfs which was once on the throne there.
- ↑ 'Adresse an den Wiener Gemeinderat', Neue Preußische Zeitung, 1 December 1867.
- ↑ Demokratisches Wochenblatt
- ↑ Engels’ letter to Liebknecht mentioned here has not been found. In his reply to this letter of 11 December 1867, Liebknecht said that he agreed with Engels’ remarks on the policy pursued by the working-class representatives in Germany but that he had a different opinion on individual practical questions of agitation. In particular, he explained the reason for the address that he and Bebel had sent to the Vienna City Council by their confidence that Austria was on the eve of a revolution (‘She has to experience her own 1789’), which was to have an impact on the whole of Germany.
- ↑ A reference to No. 139 of Der Social-Demokrat of 29 November 1867 with its two supplements which carried a detailed report about the general meeting of the General Association of German Workers on 24 November 1867. Among the speakers was one of the publishers of Der Social-Demokrat, the Lassallean J. B. von Hofstetten, who included in his speech passages from Capital distorting their meaning and naming neither the work nor its author. Marx responded to this with an article, ‘Plagiarism’, which was published unsigned in Die Zukunft, No. 291 (Supplement) of 12 December 1867 (see present edition, Vol. 20). The mentioned letter of Marx to Guido Weiß, the editor of Die Zukunft, has not been found.
- ↑ On 4 November 1867 Adelaide Macdonald who supported the Fenians made an attempt on the life of a policeman guarding the house of a witness at the Fenian trial in Manchester (see Note 497) who had given evidence against William Allen. She was arrested, put on trial and sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.