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Special pages :
Letter to Karl Marx, July 25, 1876
| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 25 July 1876 |
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45
ENGELS TO MARX
IN LONDON
Ramsgate,[1] 25 July 1876
11 Camden Square
Dear Moor,
Have written to Lafargue asking him to let us know what day he is arriving, Friday or Saturday.[2]
Herewith Wilhelm's[3] letter with enclosure by Most. You see what sort of people they are—both of them. Take Wilhelm's portentous attitude to the 'attempts at a rapprochement'.[4] As though one—that is anyone—could become involved with canaille who have been convicted of such treason! And as though any kind of rapprochement could lead to anything! What is supposed to happen when they have effected it? If, circumstances being what they are and the situation what it is, these people want to resume the role of the International, LET THEM PLEASE THEMSELVES AND BAD MANNERS TO THEM!
The COLLAPSE of the Serbs is stupendous.[5] The campaign was intended to set the whole of Turkey in flames, and everywhere the tinder is damp—Montenegro has betrayed the campaign for her own private ends, Bosnia has absolutely no intention of rebelling now that Serbia proposes to liberate her, and the worthy Bulgarians aren't lifting a finger. The Serbian army of liberation is having to live at its own expense and, after a swashbuckling offensive, withdraw into its robber's lair without having been seriously defeated anywhere.— No doubt that will also serve as a lesson to the Romanians, in which case the Russian plans will be pretty well in the soup.
For the rest, I console myself here with Dühring's philosophy[6]— never before has anyone written such arrant rubbish. Windy platitudes—nothing more, interspersed with utter drivel, but the whole thing dressed up, not without skill, for a public with which the author is thoroughly familiar—a public that wants by means of beggar's soup[7] and little effort to lay down the law about everything. The man is as if cut out for the socialism and philosophy of the milliards era.[8]
Your
F. E.
- ↑ Engels was on holiday in Ramsgate between 24 July and 1 September 1876. In early August, he and his wife took Mary Ellen Burns back to her boarding house as her holidays were over. On 5 August, he returned to Ramsgate.
- ↑ Engels' letter has not been found.
- ↑ Wilhelm Liebknecht's
- ↑ See this volume, p. 184.
- ↑ In late June 1876, Serbia and Montenegro declared war on Turkey in support of the popular uprising which had flared up in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the summer of 1875 (see Note 157). However, the ill-prepared offensive of the Serbian army was halted as soon as early July and, after its defeat had opened up the road to Belgrade for the Turkish troops, Russia categorically demanded the immediate cessation of hostilities against Serbia and Montenegro and an armistice. After a ceasefire lasting six weeks, in February 1877 Turkey and Serbia signed a peace treaty on the terms of status quo ante.
On 31 March 1877, a conference of European powers in London issued a protocol that enjoined Turkey to conclude a peace treaty with Montenegro, cease its arms build-up, etc. Turkey having rejected the Russian ultimatum to comply with the London Protocol, Russia declared war on it on 24 ( 12) April 1877, and Montenegro became a Russian ally. - ↑ E. Dühring, Cursus der Philosophie...
- ↑ expression from Goethe's Faust, Part I, Scene 6 ('Hexenküche')
- ↑ Under the terms of the peace treaty signed after its defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, France paid 5,000-million-franc reparations to Germany, which contributed to the rapid growth of German economy. The period of feverish business activity, which witnessed the mushrooming of railway, industrial, construction and commercial joint-stock companies, banks and credit and social security companies and was accompanied by large-scale speculation, stock-exchange swindles and machinations, has come to be known as Gründerjahre (or the period of Gründertum). By 1873 it had resulted in a crash followed by an economic crisis, which lasted well into 1877.