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 Ludwig Kugelmann, December 5, 1868
First published: abridged in Die Neue Zeit, Stuttgart, 1901-1902 and in full in Pisma Marksa k Kugelmanu (Letters of Marx to Kugelmann), Moscow-Leningrad, 1928.
To Ludwig Kugelmann in Hanover
London, 5 December 1868
Dear Kugelmann,
Have you got Dietzgenâs address? Quite a while ago he sent me a fragment of a manuscript on âintellectual capacityâ, which, despite a certain confusion and too frequent repetitions, contained much that was excellent, and â as the independent product of a worker â even admirable. I did not reply immediately after reading it through, since I wanted to hear Engelsâ opinion so I sent him the manuscript. A long time passed before I got it back. And now I cannot find Dietzgenâs letter with his new address. He wrote me, to wit, in his last letter from Petersburg, that he would return to the Rhine and settle there. Have you perhaps received his address from him? If so, be so kind as to send it to me by return. My conscience â one never becomes completely free of this sort of thing â is pricking me for leaving Dietzgen so long without a reply. You also promised to tell me something about his personality.
I have received BĂźchnerâs lectures on Darwinism. He is obviously a âbook-makerâ and probably for this reason is called âBĂźchnerâ. His superficial babble about the history of materialism is obviously copied from Lange. The way such a whipper-snapper disposes of, e.g., Aristotle â quite a different sort of natural philosopher from BĂźchner â is really astonishing. It is also very naive of him to say, referring to Cabanis, âyou might almost be listening to Karl Vogtâ. As if Cabanis copied Vogt!
Some time ago I promised to write you a few words about the French Branch. These ragamuffins are, a half or 2/3 of them, maquereaux [pimps] and such-like rabble, and all of them â after our people had withdrawn â heroes of the revolutionary phrase, who, from a safe distance, of course, kill kings and emperors, in particular Louis Napoleon. In their eyes we are, naturally, reactionaries, and they drew up, in all due form, an indictment against us, which was, in fact, submitted to the Brussels Congress â in the closed sessions. The fury of these blacklegs was heightened by the fact that they had been taken over by Felix Pyat, a failed French fourth-class author of melodramas, who, in the revolution of â48, was only used as a Toastmaster â (the name given by the English to the men paid to announce the toasts at public banquets, or to supervise the order of the toasts) â a man who has a perfect monomania âto shout in a whisperâ and to play the dangerous conspirator. Pyat wanted to use this gang to convert the âInternational Working Menâs Associationâ into his following. In particular, the aim was to compromise us. Thus, at a public meeting which the French Branch announced and trumpeted by poster as a meeting of the International Association, Louis Napoleon, alias Badinguet, was in all due form sentenced to death, the execution naturally being left to the nameless Brutuses of Paris. Since the English press paid no attention to this farce, we also would have passed it over in silence. But one of the gang â a certain VĂŠsinier, a circulator of chantange [blackmail] literature â spread the whole muck in the Belgian paper La Cigale, which claims to be an organ of the âInternationalâ, a sort of âcomicâ paper, the like of which certainly cannot be found anywhere else in Europe. There is, you see, nothing comic about it except its seriousness. From the Cigale the stuff found its way into the Pays, journal de l'Empire. It was naturally grist to the mill of Paul de Cassagnac. Thereupon we â i.e. the General Council â officially announced, in 6 lines in the Cigale, that F. Pyat had absolutely no connection with the âInternationalâ, of which he was not even a member. Hinc illae irae! This frog-and-mouse war ended when the French Branch rancorously withdrew from us, and it now goes about its business on its own, under Pyatâs auspices. They have established here, in London, as a succursale, a so-called German Agitational Association, consisting of a dozen and a half, headed by an old refugee from the Palatinate, the half-crazy watchmaker Weber. Now you know all there is to know about this solemn, highfalutin and important event. Just one thing more. We had the satisfaction that Blanqui, through one of his friends, writing ditto in the Cigale, made Pyat absolutely ridiculous, leaving him only the alternative of being either a monomaniac or a police agent.
Yesterday evening I received a letter from Schweitzer announcing that he was off to the cachot [gaol] again, and that the outbreak of civil war â that is, war between him and W. Liebknecht â is unavoidable. I must say that Schweitzer is right on one point, that is, Liebknechtâs incompetence. His sheet is really wretched. How can a man whom I crammed orally for 15 years (he was always too lazy to read) have such things published as, for instance, Society and State, in which âthe socialâ (and thatâs a fine category too!) is treated as the secondary, and âthe politicalâ as the essential ? This would be incomprehensible were it not that Liebknecht is a South German, and seems always to have confused me with his old superior, the ânobleâ Gustav Struve.
Lafargue and wife have been in Paris for 2 months. There, however, they donât want to recognise the medical qualifications he achieved in London, and demand that he take 5 new âParisâ exams!
As the result of a settlement, my âeconomicâ (not politico-economic) circumstances will take a satisfactory form from next year.
With best greetings to your dear wife and Fränzchen.
Yours
Karl Marx
Is your wife also active in the German ladiesâ great emancipation campaign? I think that German women should begin by driving their husbands to self-emancipation.