| Category | Template | Form |
|---|---|---|
| Text | Text | Text |
| Author | Author | Author |
| Collection | Collection | Collection |
| Keywords | Keywords | Keywords |
| Subpage | Subpage | Subpage |
| Template | Form |
|---|---|
| BrowseTexts | BrowseTexts |
| BrowseAuthors | BrowseAuthors |
| BrowseLetters | BrowseLetters |
Template:GalleryAuthorsPreviewSmall
Special pages :
Letter to Karl Marx, February 11, 1870
| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 11 February 1870 |
Printed according to the original
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 43
ENGELS TO MARX[1]
IN LONDON
Manchester, 11 February 1870
Dear Moor,
Your tonsil business, following the abscess in your auxiliary gland, doesn't make me very happy. In any case, it shows that something is not quite kosher about your lymphatic system. If the business does not clear up soon, I would ask Allen, who made such a correct prognosis about my glandular business. Yours, however, is obviously chronic, whilst mine was extremely acute; but better is better.
I am sending you, enclosed, what I've written for Liebknecht[2] as an introduction to the Peasant War. Since, in this connection, it is not possible to steer clear of the year 1866, which has hitherto been avoided, we shall have to reach an agreement on what to say about it. Other remarks would also be welcome.
Further, Wilhelmchen's reply.[3] Totally Wilhelm. He didn't know at all that the 18th Brumaire had been published. On the other hand, I should immediately send him my address. Since he had no longer sent me his sheet, his excuse is that I must have left my address. And now this penance—belatedly throwing the whole Volksstaat from 1 October onwards at my head!
I would ask for the earliest return of these two documents, so I might send Wilhelmchen what he wants and have him leave me in peace.
Today I returned to you, per Globe Parcel Co., all copies of Cloche, Lanterne, Marseillaise, Figaro, etc. that I had here. The relevant number of Cloche is among them.[4] Since Jennychen collects these things, it is best if she has them all together. I have only kept one Marseillaise here, containing the business about the guncotton[5]; I wish to examine Chlormeier[6] further about it.
Dakyns wanted to visit you before Christmas, and wrote to Moore for your address. He, whose insight into character and sense of judgement is not, however, always unexceptionable, gave him such a picture of your inaccessibility at home that I said immediately that poor Dakyns would be quite unnecessarily intimidated. So I wanted to give you Dakyns' address last time, but forgot; but I told Moore immediately that he should not put such nonsense into Dakyns' head.
The sentence quoted from Flerovsky[7] is the first Russian sentence I have understood completely without a dictionary. What is the Russian title of the book? I shall acquire it for myself. What I wanted to send you was not Herzen, but the German translation of Земля и воля, Land and Freedom, by the aristocrat Lilienfeld,[8] which also describes the bad results of freedom for the peasants, and the resulting decay of agriculture.[9] I wrote to you about this more than a year ago,[10] and since then Borkheim has also acquired it and, I believe, translated passages from it for you. As soon as I have read it through, I'll send you it.
Ferret's letter[11] also returned, enclosed. It's a good thing Bakunin has gone to Tessin. He won't create much trouble there, and it proves the business in Geneva is over. Since there are simply such ambitious vain incompetents in every movement, it is au fond[12] good that they join together in their own way, and after that move into the public eye with their cosmic whimsies. Then it soon becomes possible to demonstrate to the world that it is all gas. And this is better than if the struggle stays in the field of private gossip, in which people who have something to do are never a match for those who have the whole day for forming cliques. But an eye must be kept on the fellows, so they do not manage to occupy the field somewhere or another without resistance. Spain and Italy will have to be left to them, of course, at least for the time being.
It would be a very good thing if Mr Rochefort, or as Lizzie says RUSHFORTH, were to go missing in prison for a while.[13] The petite presse is quite a good thing, but when it supplants everything else I lose my taste for it. It still has in its bones the whole quality of its origins in the bas-empire[14]! And when Rochefort preaches unity of the bourgeois and the worker, it is even funny. On the other hand, the 'serious' leaders of the movement are, for their part, really comically serious. It is truly marvellous. The SUPPLY of heads, which, until '48 the proletariat obtained from other classes, appears to have dried up completely, and in all countries. The workers seem to be increasingly constrained to do it themselves.
What is l'illustre Gaudissart[15] up to? I hear and see nothing of him. Hasn't he got any business again yet?
Best greetings.
Your
F. E.
- ↑ An excerpt from this letter was published in English for the first time in: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Selected Letters. The Personal Correspondence, 1844-1877, Ed. by F. J. Raddatz, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto, 1981.
- ↑ F. Engels, Preface to the Second Edition of 'The Peasant War in Germany'
- ↑ Engels is referring to Wilhelm Liebknecht's letter of 8 February 1870. To explain why he did not know about the publication of the second edition of Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (see present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 99-197), Liebknecht wrote that Otto Meissner had not informed either Der Volksstaat or Die Zukunft about this, and as he put it, 'a week ago, I did not know for sure if the book had appeared'.
- ↑ Probably a reference to the book by P. Lanfrey, Histoire de Napoléon I, Tomes I-IV, Paris, 1867-1870. Excerpts from Chapter VII, Volume IV, 'Le Guet-apens de Bayonne', were printed in La Cloche, Nos. 44-46, 1-3 February 1870.
- ↑ A reference to the article by Alfred Naquet featured by La Marseillaise, No. 43, on 30 January 1870: 'La Revolution et la science. De la fabrication du coton-poudre et de son application, soit comme poudre de guerre, soit comme poudre de mine'.
- ↑ Carl Schorlemmer
- ↑ See this volume, p. 423.
- ↑ In the original: Lilienthal.
- ↑ On 12 April 1870, the General Council instructed Marx and Dupont to draw up a protest, on behalf of the International, concerning the harsh verdict brought in against the participants in the March strike at Eugène Schneider's metal works in Creuzot. However, the large-scale police reprisals against members of the International which began in France in late April forced the General Council to revise its plans and replace the protest with a leaflet, written by Marx, 'Concerning the Persecution of the Members of the French Sections. Declaration of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association' (see present edition, Vol. 21, p. 127).
- ↑ See this volume, pp. 55-56.
- ↑ A reference to Perret's letter to Jung of 4 January 1870. It was quoted by Marx in his letter to De Paepe, 24 January 1870 (see this volume, p. 413).
- ↑ basically
- ↑ A reference to the arrest of Rochefort on 7 February 1870, in La Villette, a workers' suburb of Paris, for his article about Victor Noir's murder (see Note 516) published by La Marseillaise, 12 January 1870.
White smocks was a name for French police agents. In June 1869, the Police Prefecture of Paris made an attempt to provoke a spontaneous outburst among the workers using the 'white smocks' who staged manifestations, built barricades, sang the Marseillaise, etc. Engels expressed his apprehensions that similar provocations would be staged after Rochefort's arrest. - ↑ Lower Empire (designation of the late Roman, or Byzantine Empire, and also of any empire on the decline); here, the Second Empire in France.
- ↑ Sigismund Borkheim