Letter to the Editorial Boards of the Volksstaat and the Zukunft

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Marx’s letter to the editor of Der Volksstaat contained (with minor changes in the German translation) the statement by the General Council to the editor of The Times and other papers, written by him on March 21 (see this volume, pp. 286-87). The letter to the editor of Der Volksstaat was published in German in that paper, No. 26, March 29, 1871, in Die Tagwacht, No. 14, April 1, 1871 and in Der Vorbote, No. 4, April 23, 1871. It was published in French in L’Egalité, No. 6, March 31, 1871, with the first two paragraphs in abridged form. Besides the press organs of the International, the letter was published in Die Zukunft, No. 73, March 26, 1871.

TO THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE VOLKSSTAAT

The Paris-Journal, one of the most successful organs of the Paris police press, published an article in its March 14 issue, under the sensational heading “Le Grand Chef de l’Internationale” (“Grand Chef” is probably the French translation of Stieber’s “HauptChef”).

“He, “ begins the article, “is, as everyone knows, a German, what is even worse, a Prussian. He calls himself Karl Marx, lives in Berlin,” etc. “Well now. This Karl Marx is displeased with the behaviour of the French members of the International. This in itself shows what he is like. He finds that they continually spend too much time dealing with politics and not enough with social questions. This is his opinion, he has formulated it quite categorically in a letter to his brother and friend, Citizen Serraillier, one of the Paris high priests of the International. Marx begs the French members, especially those affiliated to the Paris association, not to lose sight of the fact that their association has a single goal: to organise the work and the future of the workers’ societies. But people are disorganising the work rather than organising it, and he believes that the offenders must be reminded again of the association’s rules. We declare that we are in a position to publish this remarkable letter from Mr. Karl Marx as soon as it is passed on to the members of the International.”

In its issue of March 19, the Paris-Journal does indeed have a letter allegedly signed by me which was immediately reprinted by the whole of the reactionary press in Paris and then found its way into the London papers. In the meantime, however, the Paris-Journal has got wind of the fact that I live in London and not in Berlin. Therefore, it has marked the letter as coming from London this time, in contradiction to its first announcement. This additional correction suffers, however, from the nuisance that my friend Serraillier, who is in London, and myself had to correspond with each other in a roundabout way via Paris. The letter, as I have already explained in The Times, - is a brazen fake from beginning to end.

That same Paris-Journal and other organs of Paris’s “good Press” are spreading the rumour that the Federal Council of the International in Paris has taken the decision, which is not within its competence, to expel the Germans from the International Working Men’s Association. The London dailies hastily grabbed the welcome news and published it in malicious instigating leaders about the suicide of the International at long last. Unfortunately, today The Times contains the following announcement by the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association:

“A communication according to which the Paris members of the International Working Men’s Association declared that all Germans were to be expelled from the International, thereby behaving in the manner of the Anti-German League, is doing the rounds in the English press. The communication stands in absolutely glaring contradiction to the facts. Neither the Federal Council of our association in Paris nor any of the Paris sections that it represents have ever dreamed of taking such a decision. The so-called Anti-German League, in so far as it exists at all, is exclusively the work of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. It was brought to life by the Jockey Club and kept going with the consent of the Academy, the Stock Exchange, some of the bankers and factory owners, and so forth. The working class has never had anything to do with it.

“The purpose of this calumny is immediately obvious. Shortly before the recent war broke out, the International had to be the scapegoat for all the unpopular events. The same tactics are now being repeated. While Swiss and Prussian papers, e.g., are denouncing it as the originator of the injustices against the Germans in Zürich, the French papers, like the Courrier de Lyon, the Courrier de la Gironde, the Paris Liberté and so forth, are simultaneously reporting on certain secret meetings of the Internationals in Geneva and Berne, under the chairmanship of the Prussian ambassador, at which the plan is to be devised of handing over Lyon to the united Prussians and the Internationals for the purpose of jointly plundering it.”

So much for the statement of the General Council. It is quite natural that the important dignitaries and the ruling classes of the old society who can only maintain their own power and the exploitation of the productive masses of the people by national conflicts and- antagonisms, recognise their common adversary in the International Working Men’s Association. All and any means are good to destroy it.

London, March 23, 1871

Karl Marx

Secretary of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association for Germany