1881
Dear Longuet,
With the immense agglomerate of old newspapers it would take me too much time to find out The Eastern Post which contains the controversy of the General Council (inclus, its Communard members) with the illustrious Bradlaugh.376 However, I suppose Lessner will have the Post ready at hand. This, however, is for you the least important thing. That Bradlaugh denounced the Communards, that he reproduced the worst calumnies, as you told him then in the Post,h of such papers as the Liberté, the Soir, that he fell foul of the manifesto of the General Council on 'The Civil War in France'/ etc., this will hardly damage him in the eyes of the Paris bourgeoisie. Still the thing may be shortly hinted at as characteristic of the man. In an answer of the General Secretary of the General Council (it was Hales, but that man must not be honoured by naming him) to Bradlaugh (in The Eastern Post, September 1871), he said amongst other things:
'...The wanton destruction of private dwellings (by Thiers' bombardment) was the work of Mr Bradlaugh's friends... Rochefort has been sentenced under the Republic to transportation for life for a press offence. Fancy Mr Bradlaugh being transported for life for his utterances!'"1
The important thing is that Bradlaugh was denounced by the General Council (extracts of whose sittings were reported by The Eastern Post) as a Courtesan of Plön-Plön (he was at London then) and because of his suspect relations in Paris. " In the sitting of the General Council of December 19, 1871 I (informed by the Frenchman, who wrote under the name Azamouth or another Turkish name, and who was informed by a lady — probably the Brimont, present at social gathering later on referred to) denounced a recent trip of Bradlaugh's to Paris, where he associated with Détroyat and Emile de Girardin. In his honour the latter gave a dinner where equivocuous, i. e. Bonapartist, ladies assisted and where Bradlaugh rendered himself ridiculous by the boastful display of his pretended London influence.
If Bradlaugh says that the Brimont was a great patriot, at the time he made her acquaintance, he may be fully believed. Before the battle of Sedan all Bonapartists were so far patriots that they wished victory to their Emperor.b After the battle of Sedan they still remained patriots, because, from their standpoint, France could only be saved by Louis Bonaparte's restauration, even if that restauration must be accomplished by the aid of Bismarck.
It is self-understood that you must not name me. As to the details of Bradlaugh's intimacy with the Brimont, Blanc {le vieux)c is the man to furnish them.
In his controversy with the General Council Bradlaugh got the help — of the Soir (Paris journal). In the Council's sitting of January 2, 1872 Serraillier communicated:
'He had read an article in Le Soir written in defence of Bradlaugh. It said he (Bradlaugh) had honoured the Journal (Le Soir) by contributing to it and was a safe governmental man, and had nothing to do with demagogic intrigues.'
When Gladstone dissolved Parliament (the occasion on which he was overthrown by Disraeli), Bradlaugh's lecturing room was decorat-ed by immense placards with the inscription 'Farewell to Iconoclast, the People's Redeemer! Welcome to the great dreadnaught of St Stephen's!' " But he had counted without his host. He was not elected member of Parliament, despite his public begging letters (for a good testimonial) to Bright and other leaders of the 'great liberal party', who replied in a very cool way. It was also no use boasting of having dined with a life-Bishop (of the church of England).
In the last election[1] Bradlaugh was happier for this reason: He was one of the noisiest demagogic supporters of Gladstone's pro-Russian campaign against Disraeli — in fact one of the most turbulent tools of the Party who wanted to get in 'Place and Pelf again, coûte que coûte.(1)
Moreover, no constituency was to be hazarded in the impending, decisive electoral battle. The prudery of the Whig and radical party had to be thrown overboard. Now Bradlaugh's election at Northampton was not safe, despite the strong contingent of shoemakers in that town who belong to his 'sect'; but these shoemakers had before voted for him like one man, and he had failed. But then there was another liberal candidate, difficult to place, because notorious for his 'affaires véreuses en matière de finances'b and moreover damaged by some scandals of another sort (des gifles refus).c This man was Labouchere. He is one of the three proprietors of The Daily News, hence the partner ofthat gros bonnet" of the liberal party — the pietist capitalist Samuel Morley. Difficult as it was to carry through either Bradlaugh or Labouchere, it was feasible to do so by making a couple of them. Samuel Morley's — the pietist's — public recommendation (by printed letter) of the atheist Bradlaugh secured him the religious element of Northampton, while Bradlaugh secured to Labouchere the infidel shoemakers of that town. Thus both together passed as members for Northampton.
The utter meanness of Bradlaugh shines most in the manoeuvres by which he has succeeded to oust all the other popular preachers of free thought (the scientific preachers address themselves to other couches socialesd) such as Mrs Law, who wanted not to be his personal séides,f
by appropriating to himself all the funds of the party. He even succeeded to have all lecturing halls in London shut to them, while he built out of the party's funds a lecturing hall for his own personal use. Mrs Law etc. were so confined to lecturing in the provinces. If it interests you (but I think it is not worth while entering into details), you can have full information on this point from the persons concerned.
Salut
K. M.
( Verte)h
37. Marx to an Unknown Correspondent. 31 January
Can you give me some information on a person named E. Fortin who has written me several letters addressing me as: 'Mon cher maître.' His demand is very 'modest'. While he studies the Capital he proposes to make monthly résumés which he is kind enough to be willing to send over to me monthly, whereupon I shall correct them monthly, elucidating the points he might have misunderstood. In this quiet way, when he had done with the last monthly résumé, and I sent it back corrected — he would have a manuscript ready for publication and — as he says — inundate France with torrents de lumière. "
Now I shall — even for mere want of time — not answer to his call, but at all events I must reply to his letter. He may be a well-intentioned man. Before writing him I should like to have some information. He resides at present at Beauvais, 22, rue de la Porte de Paris.
37
MARX TO AN UNKNOWN CORRESPONDENT [7 8]
IN LONDON
[London,] 31 January 1881 41 Maitland Park Road, N. W.
Dear Sir,
Please to forward me the papers etc. enumerated in the enclosed list. At the same time you would greatly oblige me by the information whether there exists a short compendium of the Factory and Workshops' Acts?
I possess myself the several Acts, but a member of the French Chamber of Deputies has asked me to procure him such a compen-dium where he might find the whole matter together. Has not been something of the sort been published by Mr Redpath, Factory Inspector? (1)
Yours truly,
Karl Marx
38. Engels to Karl Kautsky. 1 February[7 9]
122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.
Dear Mr Kautsky,
Having been long prevented, I am at last able to reply to your letter.[80]
Now, in view of the fact that you intend to come here shortly, it would be a somewhat unnecessary labour to let you have a detailed critique in writing of the book you have been good enough to send me; since I shall, in all probability, have the pleasure of discussing it with you in person, I shall confine myself to just a few points.
1. What you say on p. 66 etc. is invalidated by the fact that other, real differences exist between surplus value and profit on capital besides the percentage estimate based on the variable or total capital. The main passages from Capital relating to this are summarised in Anti-Dühring, p. 182.[81]
2. Even if the armchair socialists[82] persist in demanding that we proletarian socialists should help them solve the problem of how to avoid what looks like imminent over-population and the threat of collapse this poses to the new social order, that is very far from being a reason why I should do them such a favour. To resolve all the doubts and scruples of these chaps which they owe to the excess of their own muddle-headed wisdom, or even to refute, for example, all the monstrous twaddle which Schäffle alone has assembled in his many fat tomes,[83] is, in my opinion, a sheer waste of time. It would fill a fair-sized book were one merely to attempt to put right all the misquotations from Capital inserted by these gentlemen between invert-ed commas.They should first learn to read and copy before demand-ing to have their questions answered.
Moreover, I do not regard the question as in any way a burning one at a moment when American mass production, as yet only in its infancy, and really large-scale agriculture are threatening to all but suffocate us by the sheer volume of the means of subsistence produced; on the eve of an upheaval of which one of the first consequences must be to populate the globe — what you say on the subject on pp. 169-70, skates too lightly over this point — and which, moreover, will of necessity call for considerable demographic growth in Europe.
Euler's calculation [84] has about as much merit as the one concerning the kreutzer which, invested at compound interest in the year dot, doubles every 13 years and therefore now amounts to some
1 x 2 [144] ——— gulden, a silver nugget larger than the earth. When you 60 say on p. 169 that social conditions in America are not very different from those in Europe, this holds good only so long as you consider nothing but the large coastal cities, or even the outward legal forms those conditions assume. There can be no doubt that the vast mass of the American people live in conditions that are exceedingly favourable to demographic growth. The stream of immigrants is proof of this. And yet it has taken more than 30 years to double itself. Alarm-ism doesn't come into it.
The abstract possibility that mankind will increase numerically to such an extent that its propagation will have to be kept within bounds does, of course, exist. But should communist society ever find itself compelled to regulate the production of humans in the same way as it has already regulated the production of things, then it, and it alone, will be able to effect this without difficulty. In such a society it would not, or so it seems to me, be particularly difficult to obtain deliberately a result which has already come about naturally and haphazardly in France and Lower Austria. At all events, it's for those chaps to decide whether, when and how it's to be done and what means they wish to use. I don't consider myself qualified to supply them with suggestions and advice about this. Indeed, these chaps will, presumably, be every bit as clever as we are.
Incidentally, as early as 1844 I wrote {Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, p. 109): 'For even if Malthus were completely right, this' (socialist) 'transformation would have to be undertaken straight away; for only this transformation, only the education of the masses which it provides, makes possible that moral restraint of the propagative in-stinct which Malthus himself presents as the most effective and easiest remedy for over-population.'(1)
That must suffice until I am able to discuss the other points with you in person. You are quite right to come over here. You are one of the few among the younger generation who really tries to learn something, and hence it will do you a lot of good to get out of the atmosphere of non-criticism in which all the historical and economic literature currently being produced in Germany is going to wrack and ruin.
With sincere regards,
Yours,
F. Engels
39. Engels to Eduard Bernstein. 2 February
Dear Mr Bernstein,
Enclosed a letter to Kautsky,(1) which kindly forward; I don't know whether the Vienna address I was given is still the right one.
The 5 nos. of the Sozialdemokrat since the year began testify to a significant step forward. Gone are the melancholy, despairing tones of a 'beaten man', the complementary grandiloquence of stuffy re-spectability, the incessant revolutionary rhetoric à la Most alternat-ing with philistine tameness, finally the constant preoccupation with Most. The tone has become lively and purposeful. The paper will no longer act as an opiate if it stays like this; rather it will put new heart into our people in Germany. As you have the Neue Rheinische Zeitung you would do well to take a look at it occasionally. The mockery and contempt with which we treated our opponents were precisely what brought us in almost 6,000 subscribers in the 6 months prior to the state of siege[85] and, although we started again from scratch in November, we again had the full tally and more by May '49. The Kölnische Zeitung has now admitted that in those days it only had 9,000.
As it seems that you are short of material for your feuilleton, you might, sometime, reprint the poem from No. 44 of 1848: 'This morning I went to Düsseldorf; possibly with the title 'A Socialist-Eater of 1848' (feuilleton to the Neue Rheinische Z^eitung of 14 July 1848) and, under it, the author: Georg Weerth (died Havana, 1856).[86] So just keep it up!
Yours,
F. E.
'Thou shalt not steal' and the apology for the execution of Louis X V I [8 7] are very good.
40. Marx to Carl Pearson. 15 February[88]
IN LONDON
[London,] 15 February 1881 41 Maitland Park, N.W.
My dear Sir,
I should have answered before but for great pressure of work during the last days.
Will you give me the pleasure to call on me on Thursday next," 8 o'clock p. m.?
Yours truly,
Karl Marx
41. Marx to Nikolai Danielson. 19 February(1)
My dear Sir,
In all haste these few lines in answer to your friendly letter. Since my return from Ramsgate[38] my health was generally improving, but the detestable weather, lasting for months, we are passing through, has blessed me with a perpetual cold and coughing, in-terfering with sleep, etc. But the worst is that Mrs Marx's state becomes daily more dangerous notwithstanding my resort to the most celebrated medical men of London, and I have besides a host of domestic troubles, which it would be tedious entering upon. On the other hand, I had and have to struggle through an immense lot of blue books[8] [9] sent to me from different countries, above all from the United States, so that my working time is hardly sufficient for the task, since all night labour has for many years absolutely been inter-dicted by my medical advisers. Hence an awful correspondence-indebtedness starts me in the face. Just now my whole family is in a hubbub because of the removal of my eldest daughter, Madame Longuet, with her children,a from London to Paris, where her husband b— (since the amnesty; he was in the interval Professor of King's College, London) [69] — has become one of the editors of the Justice (he inspired Clemenceau's semi-socialistic speech at Marseillesc). You understand how painful — in the present state of Mrs Marx — this separation must be. For her and myself our grandchildren, three little boys, were inexhaustible sources of enjoyment, of life.
Now first as to the enclosed manuscript.[90] Its author, Mr Lafargue, is the husband of my second daughter,d and one of my direct disciples. He has requested me to try whether through your interference he could become a contributor to a Petersburg Review, the Omeuecm-eeHHbiH 3anucKu or the Cjioeo. (I think they are the only ones where he might have a chance.) If so, you would be empowered to change or suppress anything not suitable to the St Petersburg Meridian. As to his 'name', the initials would do. At all events it will interest you to read the manuscript.
I have read with the greatest interest your article [5 6] which is in the best sense of the word 'original'. Hence the Boycotting. If you break through the webs of routine thought, you are always sure to be 'boy-cotted' in the first instance; it is the only arm of defence which in their first perplexity the routiniers know how to wield. I have been 'boycot-ted' in Germany for many many years, and am still so in England, with that little variation that from time to time something so absurd and asinine is launched against me that I would blush to take any public notice of it. But try on: The next thing to do — in my opinion— is to take up the wonderfully increasing indebtedness of the landlords, the upper class representatives of agriculture, and show them how they are 'crystallised' in the retort under the control of the 'new pillars of society'.
I am very anxious to see your polemics with the Cjioeo.(2) ' As soon as I shall sail in more quiet waters I shall enter more fully upon your Es-quisse. " For the present I cannot omit one observation. The soil being exhausted and getting not the elements — by artificial and vegetable and animal manure, etc.— to supply its wants, will with the changing favour of the seasons, of circumstances independent of human influence— still continue to yield harvests of very different amounts, though, summing up a period of years, as f. i. from 1870-80, the stag-nant character of the production presents itself in the most striking character. Under such circumstances the favourable climatic conditions pave the way to a famine year by quickly consuming and setting free the mineral fertilizers still latent in the soil, while vice versa a. famine year, and still more a series of bad years following it, allow the soil-inherent minerals to accumulate anew, and to work efficiently with returning favour of the climatic conditions. Such a process goes of course everywhere on but elsewhere it is checked by the modifying intervention of the agriculturist himself. It becomes the only regulat-ing factor where man has ceased to be a 'power' — for want of means.
So we have 1870 an excellent harvest in your country, but that year is a climax year, and as such immediately followed by a very bad one; the year 1871, the very bad harvest, must be considered as the starting point for a new little cycle, till we come to the new climax year 1874, which is immediately followed by the famine year 1875; then the up-wards movement begins again, ending in the still worse famine year 1880. The summing up of the years during the whole period proves that the average annual production remained the same and that the mere natural factors have alone produced the changes comparing the single years and the smaller cycles of years.
I wrote you some time ago,h that if the great industrial and commercial crisis England has passed through went over without the cul-minating financial crash at London, this exceptional phenomenon was only due to — French money. This is now seen and acknowledged even by English routiniers. Thus The Statist (January 29, 1881) says:
'The money market has only be[en] so easy as it has been during the past year through an accident. The Bank of France in the early autumn permitted its stock of gold bullion to fall from £ 3 0 Millions to £ 2 2 Millions... Last autumn undoubtedly there was a very narrow escape.' (!)
The English railway system rolls on the same inclined plane as the European Public Debt system. The ruling magnates amongst the different railway-nets directors contract not only — progressively — new loans in order to enlarge their networks, i. e. the 'territory', where they rule as absolute monarchs, but they enlarge their respective networks in order to have new pretexts for engaging in new loans which enable them to pay the interest due to the holders of obligations, preferential shares, etc., and also from time to time to throw a sop to the much ill-used common shareholders in the shape of somewhat increased dividends. This pleasant method must one day or another terminate in an ugly catastrophe.
In the United States the railway kings have become the butt of attacks, not only, as before this, on the part of the farmers and other industrial 'entrepreneurs' of the West, but also on the part of the grand representative of commerce — the New York Chamber of Commerce. The octopodus railway king and financial swindler Gould has, on his side, told the New York commercial magnates:
You now attack the railways, because you think them most vulnerable considering their present unpopularity; but take heed: after the railways every sort of corporation (means in the Yankee dialect joint stock company) will have its turn; then, later on, all forms of associated capital; finally, all forms of capital; you are thus paving the way to — Communism whose tendencies are already more and more spreading among the people.
M. Gould 'a le flair bon '.* In India serious complications, if not a general outbreak, is in store for the British government. What the English take from them annually in the form of rent, dividends for railways useless to the Hin-doos, pensions for military and civil servicemen, for Afghanistan and other wars, etc. etc.— what they take from them without any equivalent and quite apart from what they appropriate to themselves annually within India, speaking only of the value of the commodities the Indians have gratuitously and annually to send over to England, it amounts to more than the total sum of income of the 60 millions of agricultural and industrial labourers of India). This is a bleeding process, with a ven-geance! The famine years are pressing each other and in dimensions till 19 1881
now not yet suspected in Europe! There is an actual conspiracy going on wherein Hindus and Mussulmans cooperate; the British government is aware that something is 'brewing', but this shallow people (I mean the governmental men), stultified by their own parliamentary ways of talking and thinking, do not even desire to see clear, to realize the whole extent of the imminent danger! To delude others and by deluding them to delude yourself — this is: parliamentary wisdom in a nutshell! Tant mieux!'
Can you tell me whether Prof. Lankester's 'Chapter on Deteriora-tion' [92] (I have seen it quoted in your article) is translated into Russian? He is a friend of mine.
Last month we had here Russian visitors, amongst others Prof. Sie-ber (now settled at Zurich) and Mr KablukofT(Moscow). They were all day long studying at the British Museum.
No news of our 'mutual' friendb? Apropos. Janson's last statistical workc — comparing Russia with Europe — has made much sensation. I should be glad to see it. [9 3]
With best compliments
Yours very truly,
Karl Marx
Should Lafargue's article find no 'home' in Petersburg, be so kind as to return it to me. [9 4]
42. Marx to Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis. 22 February[9 5]
IN THE HAGUE
London, 22 February 1881 41 Maitland Park Road, N.W.
Dear Comrade,
My prolonged silence is due to the fact that I wished to enclose in my reply to your letter of 6 January a conspectus of the amendments that you might care to make in the event of a 2nd edition of Kapitaal en Arbeid.[96] As a result of domestic disturbances, unforeseen labours and other disruptions, I have not yet got this done and shall therefore be sending off this letter without the enclosure for the present, lest my continued silence be misconstrued by you. The amendments I consider necessary relate to details; the main thing, the spirit of the thing, is there already.
I have to thank you for the kind dedication,[9] [7] since you, personally, have thereby thrown down the gauntlet before our bourgeois antagonists.
The author(1) of Mannen van beteekenis, [9 8] an inspector of schools OR SOMETHING OF THAT SORT, wrote to me requesting material for a biographical memoir and, in addition, got his publisher to approach my brother-in-law, Juta, with a view to his persuading me to accede to a request of the kind I habitually turn down. The gentleman — the author of Mannen — wrote to me saying he did not share my views but recognised their importance, protested his esteem, etc. The selfsame individual subsequently had the effrontery to embody in his pamphlet a libellous fabrication by that notorious Prussian spy, Stieber, and likewise, — on the inspiration, no doubt, of one of the armchair socialists[82] in Bonn, — to accuse me of deliberate misquotation, nor, in so doing, did the estimable fellow even go to the trouble of reading up my polemic against the worthy Brentano in the Volksstaat,[9 9]
where he would have seen that Brentano, who had originally denounced me in the Concordia (manufacturers' sheet) for 'formal and substantive falsification', later extricated himself with the lie that he had misunderstood me, etc. A Dutch journal proposed to open its columns to me for the chastisement of the 'inspector of schools', but on principle I do not reply to pin-pricks of this kind. I have never, even in London, taken the slightest notice of such literary yapping. Any other course would mean wasting the better part of my time on making rectifications all over the place, from California to Moscow. In my younger days I sometimes did some hard hitting, but wisdom comes with age, at least in so far as one avoids useless DISSIPATION
OF FORCE.
The forthcoming Zurich Congress's 'question' which you mention would seem to me a mistake. [10]° What is to be done, and done immediately at any given, particular moment in the future, depends, of course, wholly and entirely on the actual historical circumstances in which action is to be taken. But the said question, being posed out of the blue, in fact poses a fallacious problem to which the only answer can be a critique of the question as such. We cannot solve an equation that does not comprise within its terms the elements of its solution. Come to that, there is nothing specifically 'socialist' about the predi-caments of a government that has suddenly come into being as a result of a popular victory. On the contrary. Victorious bourgeois politicians immediately feel constrained by their 'victory', whereas a socialist is at least able to intervene without constraint. Of one thing you may be sure — a socialist government will not come to the helm in a country unless things have reached a stage at which it can, before all else, take such measures as will so intimidate the mass of the bourgeoisie as to achieve the first desideratum — time for effective action.
You may, perhaps, refer me to the Paris Commune but, aside from the fact that this was merely an uprising of one city in exceptional circumstances, the majority of the Commune was in no sense socialist, nor could it have been. With a modicum of COMMON SENSE, it could, however, have obtained the utmost that was then obtainable — a compromise with Versailles beneficial to the people as a whole. The appropriation of the Banque de France alone would have rapidly put an end to the vainglory of Versailles, etc., etc.
The general demands of the French bourgeoisie before 1789 were, mutatis mutandis,(2) just as well-defined as are today, with a fair degree of uniformity, the primary, immediate demands of the proletariat in all countries where there is capitalist production. But could any 18th-
43. Engels to Jenny Longuet. 24 February
century Frenchman, a priori, have the least idea of the manner in which the demands of the French bourgeoisie would be implement-ed? A doctrinaire and of necessity fantastic anticipation of a future revolution's programme of action only serves to distract from the present struggle. The dream of the imminent end of the world inspired the struggle of the early Christians against the Roman Empire and gave them confidence in victory. Scientific insight into the inevitable disintegration, now steadily taking place before our eyes, of the prevailing social order; the masses themselves, their fury mounting under the lash of the old governmental bogies; the gigantic and positive advances simultaneously taking place in the development of the means of production — all this is sufficient guarantee that the moment a truly proletarian revolution breaks out, the conditions for its immediate initial (if certainly not idyllic) modus operandi"(1) will also be there. My own conviction is that the critical conjuncture for a new international working men's association has not yet arrived; hence I consider all labour congresses and /or socialist congresses, in so far as they do not relate to the immediate, actual conditions obtaining in this or that specific nation, to be not only useless but harmful. They will invariably fizzle out in a host of rehashed generalised banalities.
Yours most cordially,
Karl Marx
43
ENGELS TO JENNY LONGUET [101]
IN PARIS
[London,] 24 February 1881
My dear Jenny,
Well may the illustrious Regnard recommend his factum to your 'charity'.[102] This Jacobin defending English respectable Protestantism and English vulgar Liberalism with the historical appareil of that same vulgar Liberalism is indeed an object of deepest charity. But to his 'facts'.
1) The 30,000 protestants' massacre of 1641. The Irish Catholics are here in the same position as the Commune de Paris. The Ver-saillais massacred 30,000 Communards and called that the horrors of the Commune. The English protestants under Cromwell massacred at least 30,000 Irish and, to cover their brutality, invented the tale that this was to avenge 30,000 protestants murdered by the Irish Catholics.
The facts are these. Ulster having been taken from its Irish owners who at that time 1600-1610 held the land in common, and handed over to Scotch protestant military colonists, these colonists did not feel safe in their possessions in the troublous times after 1640. The puritan English Government officials in Dublin spread the rumour that a Scotch Army of Covenanters[103] was to land in Ulster and exterminate all Irish and Catholics. Sir W. Parsons, one of the two Chief Justices of Ireland, said that in a 12-month there would not be a Catholic left in Ireland. It was under these menaces, repeated in the English Parliament, that the Irish of Ulster rose on 23rd October 1641. But no massacre took place. All contemporaneous sources ascribe to the Irish merely the intention of a general massacre, and even the two protestant Chief Jus-tices (proclam. 8th February 1642) declare that 'the chief part of their plot, and amongst them a general massacre, had been disappointed.' The English and Scotch however, 4th May 1642, threw Irish women naked into the river (Newry) and massacred Irishmen. (Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, 1865.)
2) L'Irlande la Vendée de l'Angleterre. [104] Ireland was Catholic, Protestant England Republican, therefore Ireland — English Vendée. There is however this little difference that the French Revolution intended to give the land to the people, the English Commonwealth intended, in Ireland, to take the land from the people.
The whole Protestant reformation, as is well known to most students of history save Regnard, apart from its dogmatical squabbles and quibbles, was a vast plan for a confiscation of land. First the land was taken from the Church. Then the Catholics, in countries where Protestantism was in power, were declared rebels and their land confiscated.
Now in Ireland the case was peculiar.
'For the English,' says Prendergast, 'seem to have thought that god made a mistake in giving such a fine country as Ireland to the Irish; and for nearly 700 years they have been trying to remedy it.'
The whole agrarian history of Ireland is a series of confiscations of Irish land to be handed over to English settlers. These settlers, in a very few generations, under the charm of Celtic society, turned more Irish than the aborigines. Then a new confiscation and new col-onization took place, and so in infinitum.
In the 17th century, the whole of Ireland except the newly Scotchi-fied North, was ripe for a fresh confiscation. So much so, that when the British (puritan) Parliament accorded to Charles I an army for the reduction of Ireland, it resolved that the money for this arma-ment should be raised upon the security of2,500,000 acres to be confiscated in Ireland. And the 'adventurers' [105] who advanced the money should also appoint the officers of that army. The land was to be divided amongst those adventurers so that 1,000 acres should be given them, if in Ulster for £ 200.- advanced, in Connaught for £ 300, in Mun-ster for £ 450, in Leinster for £ 600. And if the people rose against this beneficent plan they are Vendéens! If Regnard should ever sit in a National Convention, he may take a leaf out of the proceedings of the Long Parliament, [106] and combat a possible Vendée with these means.
The Abolition of the Penal Laws [1 0 7]! Why the greater part of them were repealed, not in 1793 but in 1778, when England was threat-ened by the rise of the American Republic, and the second repeal, 1793, was when the French Republic arose threatening and England required all the soldiers she could get to fight it!
The Grant to Maynooth by Pitt. [108] This pittance was soon repealed by the Tories and only renewed by Sir R. Peel in 1845. But not a word about the other cadeau que faisait à l'Irlande ce grand homme {c'est la première fois qu'il trouve grâce devant les yeux d'un Jacobin),(2) that other 'dotation' not only 'considérable' but actually lavish — the 3 Million £ b y which the Union of Ireland with England [109] was bought. The parliamentary documents will show that the one item of the purchase money of rotten and nomination boroughs alone cost no less a sum than £1,245,000 (O'Connell, Memoir on Ireland addressed to the Queen).
Lord Derby instituted le système des écoles nationales. l ' ° Very true but why did he? Consult Fitzgibbon, Ireland in 1868, the work of a staunch Protestant and Tory, or else the official Report of Commissioners on Education in Ireland, 1826. The Irish, neglected by the English government, had taken the education of their children into their own hands. At the time when English fathers and mothers insisted upon their right to send their children to the factory to earn money instead of to the school to learn, at that time in Ireland the peasants vied with each other in forming schools of their own. The school-master was an ambulant teacher, spending a couple of months at each village. A cottage was found for him, each child paid him 2d. a week and a few sods of turf in winter. The schools were kept, on fine days in summer, in the fields, near a hedge, and then known by the name of hedge-schools. There were also ambulant scholars, who with their books under the arm, wandered from school to school, receiving lodging and food from the peasants without difficulty. In 1812 there were 4,600 such hedge-schools in Ireland and that year's report of the Commissioners says that such education
was 'leading to evil rather than good', 'that such education the people are actually obtaining for themselves, and though we consider it practicable to correct it, to check its progress appears impossible: it may be improved but it cannot be impeded'.
So then, these truly national schools did not suit English purposes. To suppress them, the sham national schools were established. They are so little secular that the reading-book consists of extracts both from the Catholic and Protestant Bibles, agreed upon by the Catholic and Protestant Archbishops of Dublin. Compare with these Irish peasants the English who howl at compulsory school attendance to this day!
44. Marx to Vera Zasulich. 8 March
44
MARX TO VERA ZASULICH ' ' »
IN GENEVA
London, 8 March 1881 41 Maitland Park Road, N.W.
Dear Citizen,
A nervous complaint which has assailed me periodically over the last ten years has prevented me from replying any sooner to your letter of 16 February. I am sorry that I cannot provide you with a concise exposé, intended for publication, of the question you have done me the honour of putting to me. Months ago I promised the St Petersburg Committee to let them have a piece on the same subject. ' ' [2]
I hope, however, that a few lines will suffice to dispel any doubts you may harbour as to the misunderstanding in regard to my so-called theory.
In analysing the genesis of capitalist production I say: 'At the core of the capitalist system, therefore, lies the complete separation of the producer from the means of production ... the basis of this whole development is the expropriation of the agricultural producer. To date this has not been accomplished in a radical fashion anywhere except in England... But all the other countries of Western Europe are undergoing the same process' (Capital, French ed., p. 315).
Hence the 'historical inevitability' of this process is expressly limited to the countries of Western Europe. The cause of that limitation is indicated in the following passage from Chapter XXXII:
'Private property, based on personal labour ... will be supplanted by capitalist private property, based on the exploitation of the labour of others, on wage labour' (I.e., p. 341).
In this Western movement, therefore, what is taking place is the transformation of one form of private property into another form of private property. In the case of the Russian peasants, their communal property would, on the contrary, have to be transformed into private property.
Hence the analysis provided in Capital does not adduce reasons either for or against the viability of the rural commune, but the special study I have made of it, and the material for which I drew from
45. Engels to S. F. Kaufmann. 11 March
original sources, has convinced me that this commune is the fulcrum of social regeneration in Russia, but in order that it may function as such, it would first be necessary to eliminate the deleterious influences which are assailing it from all sides, and then ensure for it the normal conditions of spontaneous development. I have the honour to be, dear Citizen,
Yours very faithfully,
Karl Marx
45
ENGELS TO S. F. KAUFMANN
IN LONDON
[Draft]
[London,] 11 March 1881 122 Regent's Park Road, N.W.
Dear Mr Kaufmann,
In reply to your esteemed note of the 9th inst. I regret that I am unable to fall in with your wishes regarding the guarantee. My experiences with guarantees have been such that I have resolved once and for all to advance the money straight away myself, if I can, rather than give a guarantee. However the money is not available; if I had it and could do without it, I should regard it as my prime duty to hand it over to the party in Germany to whom we now owe every penny we can spare.a Trusting that you will find elsewhere the means of obtaining the funds you need,
I remain,
Yours very truly
46. Engels to Eduard Bernstein. 12 March[1 3]
Dear Mr Bernstein,
Herewith some material on the anti-adultery commandment. ' ' [4]
Whether you'll be able to use it, I confess I don't know. It's a ticklish subject and you must know whether more harm than good will be done by touching on it. At all events I wanted to show you one way of dealing with this commandment without relapsing into moral philistinism, and it may be useful to you anyway to have the historical material on the case, in so far as it was available to me.
For the rest, the papera is doing very well on the whole and some of the nos. are very good; rather less doctrinaire articles, like the one on state socialism,b would do no harm. How can one lump together Turgot, one of the leading economists of the 18th century, with Necker, that highly practical man of haute finance,c precursor of your Laffittes and Péreires and, worse still, the wretched Calonne, the man of hand-to-mouth expedients, who was a genuine après moi le déluge0 ' ' [5]
aristocrat? How can one place these — Turgot in particular and even Necker — cheek by jowl with Bismarck who, at the most, wants money regardless, à la Calonne, and the said Bismarck in his turn quite summarily cheek by jowl with Stoecker on the one hand and Schäffle and Co. on the other, every one of whom in his turn pursues quite different lines? If the bourgeois lump them all together, that is no reason why we should proceed as uncritically. Here, precisely, are the roots of doctrinairism, in that one believes the self-interested and narrow assertions of one's opponent and proceeds to construct on those assertions a system which naturally stands or falls with them. With Bismarck it is a case of money, money and again money, and the pretexts he gives change in accordance with purely external considerations. Give him a differently composed majority in the Reichstag and he'll jettison all his present plans and prepare conflicting ones. That's why one can never ever infer a declaration of modern society's bankruptcy from anything that is done by an animal as irrational in theory and inconsistent in practice as Bismarck. Still less from the intellectual St Vitus dance of a fool like Stoecker. Nor yet from the twaddle of'thinking men' à la Schäme. Their 'thinking' (and this is pretty well all they do 'think') is not directed towards declaring modern society bankrupt. On the contrary, they are, of course, simply living in the hope of patching it up again. But what kind of a thinking man is e.g. Schäffle? In his Quintessenz" the silly Swabian admits that he pondered one of the (simplest) points in Capital for ten years before getting to the bottom of it; in fact the bottom he got to was pure nonsense. ' ' (1)
It is nothing but self-interested misrepresentation on the part of the Manchester bourgeois to describe as 'socialism' all interference by the state with free competition: protective tariffs, guilds, tobacco monopoly, nationalisation of branches of industry, the Overseas Trading Company, ' ' ' royal porcelain factory. That is something we should criticise, but not believe. If we do the latter and base a theoretical argument thereon, this will collapse together with its premisses,— simply upon it's being proved, that is, that this alleged socialism is nothing but feudal reaction on the one hand and, on the other, a pretext for extortion, its secondary object being to turn as many proletarians as possible into officials and pensioners dependent on the state, and to organise, alongside the disciplined army of officials and military, a similar army of workers. Compulsory suffrage imposed by se-nior functionaries instead of by factory overseers — fine socialism that! This is where you get if you believe what the bourgeois himself doesn't believe but only pretends to, namely that the state = socialism.
Otherwise I find that your views on the attitude to be adopted by the paper coincide entirely with my own, and I'm also glad that of late there has no longer been such liberal use of the word revolution as there was at the outset. That was quite all right earlier on, after the sorry opiate-mongering of 1880, ' ' [8] but it would be preferable, and this, too, with an eye to Most, to be wary of high-flown rhetoric. One may express revolutionary thoughts without forever harping on the word revolution. The pitiful Most is, by the way, quite beside himself; he's at a loss where to pull in and now, on top ofthat, the success of Fritzsche and Viereck in America ' [1 9] has taken the last bit of wind out of his sails.
The paper can now really serve to encourage and cheer up our people in Germany, something a number of them, or at least their so-called leaders, are much in need of. I've received a few more jere-miads and answered them in accordance with their deserts. Viereck was very down in the mouth at the start, but a few days in the fresh air of London were enough to restore his resilience. The paper must import that fresh air into Germany and by far the best way of doing so is to mock our adversaries, treat them with contempt. Once the people learn to laugh at Bismarck & Co. again, much will have been gained. But it mustn't be forgotten that this is the first time such a thing has happened to the people, at any rate the vast majority, or, more especially, that a large number of agitators and editors will have the discomfort of being jolted out of their very comfortable berths. Such being the case, it is just as necessary to cheer people up as it is constantly to remind them that Bismarck & Co. are still the same jackasses, the same scoundrels and the same poor wretches, im-potent in face of the historical movement, as they were before the attempted assassinations. ' [2 0] So any joke at the expense of this rabble is of value.
As regards Ireland, only this much: The people are far too canny not to know that an uprising would spell their ruin; it would stand no chance save in the case of war between England and America. ' [2] ' Meanwhile the Irish have forced Gladstone to introduce continental standing orders in Parliament, ' [2 2] thus undermining the whole of the English parliamentary system. They have further forced Gladstone to forswear all his cant and to become more Tory than even the worst of TORIES. The Coercion Bills [123] have gone through, the Land Bill [124]
will either be thrown out by the Upper House, or else it will be castrat-ed, and then the fun will begin, in other words, the covert disintegration of the parties will become overt. Since Gladstone's nomination, the WHIGS and moderate TORIES, i. e. the big landowners generally, have been secretly combining to form a big landed property party. As soon as this comes to fruition, and family and personal interests have been adjusted, or as soon as the new party is driven out into the open in consequence of, say, the Land Bill, the administration and the present majority will disintegrate. Then the new bourgeois-radical party will come out in opposition to the new conservative party, but with nothing to fall back on save the workers and the Irish peasants. And so that there may be no recurrence of bilking and trickery here, a proletarian-radical party is in process of formation under the leadership of Joseph Cowen (M. P. for Newcastle), an old Chartist who is half, if not wholly, communist and a very worthy chap. Ireland is responsible for all this, Ireland is the driving force in the realm. This for your private information. More on the subject anon. Regards,
Yours
F.E.
Since Kautsky — will you give him my regards? — will be coming over here soon, there's no point in answering him at length. My regards to Beust should you see him.
47. Engels to Johann Philipp Becker. 28 March
122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.
Dear Old Man,
I shall send you some money the instant you put me in a position to do so by letting me hacveyour new address. For I have to produce this, and such addresses as I find in the Précurseur do not seem to me really fit to be produced if they are not to create difficulties. The moment I have had a reply you will at once get 100 frs and a lengthy reply from
Your
F. Engels
48. Engels to August Bebel. 30 March
Dear Bebel,
Viereck (a postcard from whom I enclose) wants me to give you an account of the Boston meeting; but here too, as commonly in combined operations, there has been hitch after hitch; 1. Harney wrote a week later; 2. he forgot to enclose the newspaper report which I did not get till yesterday. Today I gave this to Kautsky, who is over here, for him to work on for the Sozialdemokrat. [126]
The meeting in Boston was first-rate; ill-advertised but nevertheless attended by 1,500 people, '/s German. The first speaker was Swinton, an American communist who came to visit us here last summer [4 3] and is the proprietor of a big New York paper.[8] Then Fritzsche. Finally, Wendell Phillips, the great anti-slavery man who, with the exception of John Brown, did more than anyone else for the abolition of slavery and the prosecution of the war, and is the foremost speaker in America — maybe in the world. He returned thanks to the Germans and gave them credit for the fact that in 1861, in every large city, it was the German gymnasts who shielded him with their own bodies from the American mob, and who kept St Louis in the Union. [127] To give you just one example of how he spoke:
a The Sun 'Being as far as I am away from the field of battle, I would not presume to criticise the method of combat. I look at Russia, 4,000 miles away, and see what a nightmare weighs on the shoulders of the people there. I only hope that someone will be found to relieve them of it. And if the dagger alone can do it, I say: Welcome to the dagger! Is there any American here who would disapprove? If he would, then he should look (pointing to a picture on the wall) at Joe Warren who died at Bunkers Hill.'"
That was on the 7th of March. On the 13th a bomb did what the dagger had been unable to do. [128]
According to today's Standard, Most is to be prosecuted by the British government because of the article on the assassination attempt! [129] If the Russian Embassy and Gladstone are absolutely intent on making a great man out of the silly nincompoop, no one can stop them. At the same time, it's far from certain that Most will be found guilty. The moral indignation about the bomb in the big newspapers was largely a matter of observing the proprieties, something your bourgeois here never omits to do, if only for appearances' sake. The humorous papers, which reflect public opinion far more faithfully, have taken an altogether different view of the case and, by the time the trial draws to a close, much may have changed in this respect, so that it's far from certain whether the 12 jurymen will reach the unanimous verdict that is called for.
To return to our American friends, Wendell Phillips' champion-ship (induced by a young American journalist, Willard Brown, who was over here last year, when he consorted much with Marx and generally did his utmost for them with the American press and gave them the boosting they needed) is of the first importance. Their success has altogether exceeded my expectations and shows that Bismarckery has fallen greatly in the esteem of the Germans, even middle-class Germans, in America. However \_^ 's(1) hopes of a second trip with Liebknecht would hardly seem practicable; it is inadvisable to turn up twice in rapid succession. Moreover, such a trip — anyhow inadmissible before next year — ought to have been rendered unnecessary by the great event in Petersburg and its inevitable consequences. Alexander III, whether he wants to or not, will have to take some decisive step to get things moving, but before that there might be a short period of intensive persecution, and Switzerland will no doubt soon embark on mass expulsions. Meanwhile old William,h if not actually on his last legs, becomes dottier and dottier, Bismarck grows daily more rabid and seems absolutely intent on playing the part of a rampaging Prussian Roland, the bourgeois parties go further off the rails every day, while the government's taxation mania sees to the rest. Even if we all sat with our hands in our laps, events would forcibly propel us to the fore and pave the way for victory. It is a real pleasure to see a revolutionary world situation we have long predicted mature into a general crisis, blinkered opponents do our work for us, and the inexorability of a development that is heading for universal collapse prevail in, and as a result of, the general confusion.
Regards from Marx and from your
F.E.
49. Engels to Gottlieb Lemcke. 2 April
Dear Mr Lemcke,
I have just heard that one of my brothers[3] will be passing through London with his family this evening, and this will mean my spending with them the few hours they will be pausing here. I therefore greatly regret that I shall be unable to take advantage of your kind invitation to the opening ceremony of the new club-house. [130] Hoping that the club will prosper and flourish, I remain
Yours very truly,
F. Engels
50. Engels to Johann Philipp Becker. 4 April[131]
Dear Old Man,
I am writing to you just before the post goes, having only this moment got the money order, four pounds sterling = 100 frs 80 cts, which I trust will be paid over to you without delay. Your address was indispensable,b as the post office here insists on it, otherwise no money order. I shall press Liebknecht about his false promisesc; those fellows must do something for you. I'm glad, by the way, that our people have plucked up courage again; for a time most of them were suffering from a bad attack of cold feet; the paper, ' too, is giving a good account of itself. That philistine Most is definitely in luck; his Freiheit was on its last legs, whereupon the British government felt im-pelled to give it a helping hand, and did so in the most brilliant manner. ' [2 9] Such colossal stupidity passes all belief, but it so happens that we have the liberals at the helm and they are capable of any stupidity, any dirty trick. They went ahead in such a hurry that so far they don't even know under which Act they will charge Most! But Bismarck needed this coup for his socialist debate in the Reichstag [132]
and, since Gladstone, our premier, is an enthusiastic admirer of the bumped-off Alexander,d there was no difficulty about the thing. It will be all the more difficult for them to draw up an indictment, let alone produce a jury that will find Most guilty. So Most will become famous on the cheap, even if only for a brief spell, while Bismarck, even though he, too, may be gently rubbing his hands just now, will ultimately find himself discredited yet again.
Kindest regards from Marx and your
F. Engels
51. Marx to Jenny Longuet. 11 April
51
MARX TO JENNY LONGUET [133]
IN ARGENTFX'IL
[London,] 11 April 1881
My dear Jennychen,
It's been boring ever since you left — without you and Johnny and Harra! and MR 'TEA!' a Sometimes I hurry across to the window when I hear children's voices which sound like those of our children, momentarily oblivious of the fact that the little chaps are on the other side of the Channel!
One comfort is that you have found a nice place to live and that it suits the children; otherwise everything seems to be RATHER WORSE than in London, with the exception, however, of the climate, whose beneficial effect — beneficial also to asthma — you will discover BY AND BY.
I have found yet another doctor for Mama, one recommended to me by Prof. Lankester, namely Dr Donkin; HE SEEMS A BRIGHT AND INTELLIGENT MAN; but for Mama's complaint it does indeed strike me that ONE MAN [is] AS GOOD, AND PERHAPS BETTER, THAN ANOTHER MAN. However, the CHANGE OF MEDICAL ADVISERS serves to distract her and, during the initial period — which doesn't usually last long — she is full of praise for the new Aesculapius. Longuet's eyeglass turned up immediately after his departure; it was, in fact, tucked away in your bedroom. Hirsch has been selected to bring it to you, but that gossip-hunter seems hardly able to tear himself away from London at a moment when there is so much to be smelt out. The 'great' Most affair [129] alone is an inex-haustible source of fresh water (if by no means a 'cooling stream') for the said hart.b Now he threatens to postpone his departure till 18 April. Then, too, he has found a kindred spirit in Kautsky — on whom he had frowned so grimly; even Engels takes a much more tolerant view of this jokerc since the latter gave proof of his considerable drinking ability. When the charmer— the little joker,c I mean — first came to see me, the first question that rose to my lips was — are you like your mother(1)? Not in the least, he exclaimed, and silently I con-gratulated his mother. He's a mediocrity, narrow in outlook, over-wise (only 26 years old), a know-all, hard-working after a fashion, much concerned with statistics out of which, however, he makes little sense, by nature a member of the philistine tribe, for the rest, a decent fellow in his own way; I unload him onto amigob Engels as much as I can.
The day before yesterday the Dogberry CLUB ' c * was here; yesterday, besides the 2 Maitland girlsd — and, briefly, Lankester and Dr Donkin — we were invaded by Hyndman and his wife,c both of whom have too much staying-power. I quite like the wife on account of her brusque, unconventional and determined manner of thinking and speaking, but it's amusing to see how admiringly she hangs on the lips of her complacent chatterbox of a husband! Mama grew so weary (it was close on half past ten at night) that she withdrew. But there was some BYPLAY which tickled her. For Tussy has discovered a new infant prodigy amongst the Dogberries — one Radford; this youth is already a BARRISTER-AT-LAW, yet looks down upon the jus ' and works in the same LINE as Waldhorn. HE LOOKS WELL, CROSS between Irving and the late Lassalle (but has nothing in common with the latter's cynical, smarmily importunate mannerisms à la marquis-cum-Jew), AN INTELLIGENT AND SOMEWHAT PROMISING BOY. WELL, that's him in a nutshell. So shockingly did Dolly Maitland pay court to him that during supper Mama and Tussy were constantly exchanging signals. Finally, Mr Maitland also turned up, pretty well sober, and began a verbal duel with his instructive neighbour, Hyndman, on the subject of Gladstone in whom Maitland, a spiritualist, believes. *I — rather annoyed by a bad throat — felt glad when the whole lot vanished. It is a strange thing that one cannot well live altogether without company, and that when you get it, you try hard to rid yourself of it.*
Hartmann is working hard in Woolwich as a COMMON WORKMAN; it is becoming increasingly difficult to converse with him in any language. The Russian REFUGEES in Geneva insist that he should disavow Rochefort and do so publicly. This he neither will nor can, even had this not been made impossible by the immoderate letter sent to Rochefort by the Petersburg Committee and published by him in the Intransigeant. [135] The Genevans have, indeed, long been trying to convince Europe that it was, in fact, they who were directing the movement in Russia; now that the lie they themselves had disseminated has been taken up by Bismarck et cie and constitutes a threat to them, they as-sert the opposite and vainly endeavour to convince the world of their innocence. In fact, they are mere doctrinaires, muddle-headed anar-cho-socialists, and their influence on the Russian 'theatre of war' is
ZERO.
Have you been following the course of the legal proceedings against the assassins in St Petersburg?[136] They are sterling chaps through and through, sans pose mélodramatique,b simple, matter-of-fact, heroic. Shouting and doing are irreconcilable opposites. The Petersburg Executive Committee,[70] which took such vigorous action, issues manifestoes of exquisite 'moderation'. It is remote indeed from the bungling way in which Most and other puerile ranters advocate TYRANNICIDE as a 'theory' and 'PANACEA' (the same thing was done by ENGLISHMEN as innocent as Disraeli, Savage Landor, Macaulay and Mazzini's friend, Stansfeld); they, on the other hand, are at pains to teach Europe that their modus operandi* is a specifically Russian and historically inevitable mode of action which no more lends itself to moralising — for or against — than does the earthquake in Chios.[137]
In this connection there was a fine old scandal in the House of Commons (as you know, so as to oblige Bismarck and Gorchakov these miserable Gladstonites are making an onslaught, in the person of the pitiful Most, [129] on the freedom of the press in England, in which they are unlikely to succeed). Lord Churchill, a bumptious Tory youth, and member of the Marlborough FAMILY, questioned Sir Charles Dilke and Brassey, both UNDERSTRAPPERS in the CABINET, about the financial support afforded to the Freiheit. This was flatly denied and Churchill was compelled to name his authority. He named the ubiquitous Mr Maltman Barry! I enclose a cutting about this affair from the Weekly Dispatch (the Dilkes' paper, edited by the -PHILOSOPHICAL RADICAL, Ashton Dilke, brother of the great 'Dilke'), and a statement by Maltman Barry in The Daily News. Clearly Dilke is lying. How pitiful that this braggart, the self-appointed future 'President of the English republic' should, for fear of losing his post, allow Bismarck to dictate upon what journals he ought or ought not to bestow -£ 1! Only suppose it became known that, immediately after Hart-
11 1881
mann's arrival in London, Ashton Dilke invited him to a LUNCHEON! But Hartmann turned this down, not wanting to 'exhibit' himself.
Apropos the Comtist renegade Maxse. This laddie is done far too great an honour in La Justice which handles him with kid gloves. In the eyes of this peculiar clique — ENGLISH LIBERALS and their even worse subspecies, the so CALLED RADICALS — it is indeed a crime on the part of La Justice that, flouting all tradition and contrary to agreement, it fails to treat these SHAMS AND HUMBUGS in the accepted manner, to perpe-tuate the legend that is current about them in the liberal press on the Continent! If one considers the enormous effrontery with which the London press attacks socialist parties in all European countries, and how difficult it is for anyone who thinks it worth the trouble to say a word in return or even to get a brief answer into that press — it is really a bit too much to have to recognise the principle that, should a Paris newspaper venture to criticise that arch-hypocrite and CASUIST of the old-fashioned school, the 'great' Gladstone, it is duty-bound to put entire columns at the disposal of M r Maxse and his prose, in order that he might repay Gladstone IN KIND for the avancement* provided by the latter!
Assuming the policy adopted by Gladstone (man of the COERCION ' [2 3]
and ARMS ACT ' [3 8] ) vis-à-vis Ireland to be as right as it is in fact wrong, would this constitute any reason to talk of that man's 'générosité and 'magnanimité'? As though there was any question of any such things between England and Ireland! Maxse really ought to be told that, while such Pecksniffian expressions may have free currency in London, they do not have it in Paris!
Get Longuet to read Parnell's speech in Cork in today's Times.b
H e will find in it the substance of what ought to be said about Gladstone's new LAND ACT[12]*; in this connection it should not be forgotten that Gladstone, by his disgraceful preliminary measures (incl. abolishing the freedom of speech of members of the Lower House), [1 2 2] has brought about the conditions under which mass EVICTIONS are now taking place in Ireland, while the ACT is pure humbug, seeing that the LORDS who can get anything they want from Gladstone, and no longer have to tremble before the Land League I 3 9 — w i l l DOUBTLESS throw it out or else so castrate it that the Irish themselves will end u p by voting against it.
Give the children a hundred kisses from me; regards to Longuet. Write and tell me, DEAR CHILD, about the state of your health. Adio.
Your
OLD NICK*
DEAR JOHNNY, HOW DO YOU LIKE FRANCE?[11]
52. Engels to Eduard Bernstein. 14 April[1 4 0]
Dear Mr Bernstein,
Very many thanks for the excerpt — for numerous reasons, however, it is desirable that we should read the full text of the relevant speeches. Kautsky will already have asked you to let us have the shorthand report ' (1) ' for a day or two. So much has been said in the Reichstag and Landtags that would have been better left unsaid that we cannot express an opinion on such matters unless we are fully acquainted with the case.
Your announcement that you wished to resign from the paperb
came as a most unpleasant surprise. We can see absolutely no reason for it and it would give us great pleasure if you were to reconsider your decision. You have edited the paper ably from the outset, have given it the right tone, at the same time developing the humorous side it needed. Erudition in a newspaper editor is far less important than the ability speedily to interpret things from the aspect that matters, and this you have nearly always done. Kautsky, for example, would never be able to do that; he always has too many secondary viewpoints, which is perfectly all right for longish articles in a revue, but in the case of a paper, where rapid decisions are called for, frequently makes it impossible to see the wood for the trees, and that mustn't happen in a party organ. Alongside you, Kautsky would be quite all right, but on his own he would, I'm afraid, be all too often prevented by qualms of conscience over theory from following up a crucial advantage as unswervingly as is required by the Sozialdemokrat. I don't see who could take your place at this juncture, so long as Liebknecht remains in jail [1 4 2] and doesn't go to Zurich, which would be senseless except in an emergency, since there's much more need of him in the Reichstag. So you'll have to stay on after all whether you like it or not.
If we have not yet come forward directly and by name in the Sozialdemokrat, the fault, I do assure you, does not lie with your editorship of this paper up till now. On the contrary. It lies with the very statements made in Germany I alluded to at the beginning. Admittedly, we have been promised that this won't recur and that the revolutionary nature of the party is to be plainly spelled out and adhered to. But we should like to see evidence of it first, nor do we have any great confidence (rather the reverse) in the revolutionary bent of certain of these gentlemen, and that is precisely why it is most desirable that we should have the stenographic reports of the speeches made by all our deputies. After you have used them you can easily send them over here for a day or two; I guarantee their prompt return. That will help to clear away the last obstacles that still exist — through no fault of our own — between ourselves and the party in Germany. This in confidence.
It would seem that Gladstone has paved the way for the triumph of Most. It's hardly likely that 12 jurors will be found who will unanimously find Most guilty, and, if only one finds him innocent, the case will fall to the ground. Admittedly, he can be brought before another jury, but this hardly ever happens. On top ofthat, however, the 1861 Act, [143] under which Most is being charged, has never been applied before and by and large it is the opinion of jurists that the wording is inapplicable to the case.
Argyll's resignation from the Ministry because the Irish LAND BILL ' [2 4] confers on tenants a measure of co-ownership of the land is an ill omen for the fate of the BILL in the Upper House. Meanwhile Parnell has made a successful start in Manchester to his English agitational tour. The position of the grand liberal coalition is becoming ever more critical. But then over here everything moves slowly, if the more surely for that.
So don't be deterred by the initial difficulties; don't lose heart but carry on editing just as before. If the worst comes to the worst, you could write to Leipzig and ask them to send you an assistant. That would probably be the best way of overcoming the difficulties you have to contend with. Then, when you have taught the new man the ropes, there will still be time enough to talk of resigning.
Kindest regards.
Yours
F. Engels
53. Engels to August Bebel. 28 April
Dear Bebel,
In response to your inquiry I asked my source (a stockbroker) whether the person concerned would do better to continue paying the GREAT BRITAIN MUTUAL & Co. (Office 101, Cheapside, it's the same surely? GREAT BRITAIN MUTUAL INSURANCE?) or to stop payment of the calls, and received the reply:
tulate you on both your speeches. The one on the Accident Bill pleased us particularly. It strikes the right note — high-minded, yet based on a real knowledge of the facts, and ironically superior. Your criticism of the Bill was all that could have been said or desired. I have been expressly asked to tell you all this on Marx's behalf as well as my own. It was the best speech of yours we have ever read, and the debate gave one the impression that the turner, Bebel, was the only educated man in the whole of the Reichstag.
At the 2nd reading you might possibly include the following: You might perhaps ask us, gentlemen, how we can prevail upon our con-sciences to grant money to this government, even though it be for the relief of workers who have met with an accident? Gentlemen, after what the Prussian Landtag and you yourselves have done in the matter of subventions, the power of the Reichstag in financial affairs, its ability to wring concessions from the government by virtue of the fact that it holds the purse-strings, has gone by the board. The Reichstag and Landtag have thrown away their entire budgetary authority with nothing to show for it in return, and here it is certainly no longer a case of a paltry million or two.— All those subventions, moreover, were for purposes of exploitation (protective tariffs, purchase of the railways at 30% above their value — Rhenish Rail were standing at less than 120, rose to 150 as a result of the government's offer to purchase, now 160!), and this time it is, after all, at least supposed to be for the workers.
For the rest, the terms of acceptance you proposed fully protect you to your rear.
But what a typically inflated, maliciously stupid, Prussian Junker-cum-bureaucrat Brother von Puttkamer is! [145]
Your
F.E.
Marx sends kindest regards. Ede writes to say that he is staying on for the time being.(1)
54. Marx to Jenny Longuet. 29 April
54
MARX TO JENNY LONGUET [146]
IN ARGENTEUIL
[London,] 29 April 1881 41 Maitland Park, N. W.
My dear Jenny,
I congratulate you upon the happy delivery; at least I presume that everything is right from your taking the trouble to write. My 'womankind' expected the 'newcomer' to increase 'the better half of the population; for my own part I prefer the 'manly' sex for children born at this turning point of history. They have before them the most revolutionary period men had ever to pass through. The bad thing now is to be 'old' so as to be only able to foresee instead of seeing.
The 'newcomer'a steps in pretty closely to your own birthday, Johnny's, and mine. He, like ourselves, patronizes the merry month of May. I am of course charged by Mama (and Tussy, though she finds perhaps yet the time to write herself) to wish you all possible good things, but I do not see that 'wishes' are good for anything except the glossing over one's own powerlessness.
I hope by and by you will find the servants you want and get your ^ménage'b into some quiet routine. I felt rather anxious about the too many troubles weighing upon you just now, at such a critical moment.
Johnny, according to your last letter, is recovering his health. He is in fact the most delicate of the three boysc whom I have the honour to know personally. Tell him that while walking yesterday through the park — our own Maitland Park — that glorious person, the park-keeper, suddenly approached, asked for news about Johnny, and at last communicated me the important fact that he will 'retire' from his office and make place to a younger 'force'. With him one of the pillars of the 'Lord Southampton' disappears. [147]
There is little going on in 'our circle' as Beesly daubed it. Pumps still awaits 'news' from Beust; has in the meanwhile thrown an eye 29 1881
upon 'Kautsky' who, however, did not yet 'declare'; and she will always feel grateful to Hirsch for having not only virtually 'declared', but, after a refusal, renewed his 'declaration', just before his trip to Paris. This Hirsch becomes more and more a nuisance. My 'opinion' of him grows less and less.
The last London craze was the Disraeli exaltation which gave John Bull the satisfaction of admiring his own magnanimity. Is it not 'grand' to act the sycophant with regard to a dead man whom just before his kicking the bucket you had saluted with rotten apples and foul eggs? At the same time this teaches the 'lower classes' that however their 'natural superiors' may fall out amongst each other during the struggle for 'place and pelf, death brings out the truth that the leaders of the 'ruling classes' are always 'great and good men'.
It is a very fine trick of Gladstone — only the 'stupid party' does not understand it — to offer at a moment when landed property in Ireland (as in England) will be depreciated by the import of corn and cattle from the United States — to offer them at that very moment the public Exchequer where they can sell that property at a price it does no longer possess! [148]
The real intricacies of the Irish land problem — which indeed are not especially Irish — are so great that the only true way to solve it would be to give the Irish Home-rule and thus force them to solve it themselves. But John Bull is too stupid to understand this.
Engels comes just, sends you his best compliments, and as it is almost post-time, so that I cannot afterwards finish this letter, I must abruptly end it.
With my compliments to Johnny, Harry and the 'good' Wolf[3]
(who is indeed an excellent boy) and also to father Longuet.
Yours,
Old Nick
55. Engels to Jenny Longuet. 31 May
55
ENGELS TO JENNY LONGUET
IN ARGENTEUIL
London, 31 May 1881
122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.
My dear Jenny,
Many thanks for your kind letter, it is really too good of you to sit down and write to us in the midst of the trouble you have to pass through. But let me at once pass to the main thing. I have every reason to hope that unless unforeseen accidents occur, you still will soon have your Mama" with you. Mohr told me on Sunday that the doctor b thinks she is getting strong enough for the journey. There are great changes in her state from time to time, sometimes she goes about in the day and even to theatres in the evening, but at other times she suffers from very bad pains and scarcely leaves her bed for a couple of days. But these attacks seem to pass off as they come and not to leave her visibly worse. Still she is upon the whole losing flesh and this seems to be the only constant symptom which if not arrested may turn out serious. What the nature of the complaint is I am totally ignorant of and am apt to conclude that the doctors are equally in the dark, anyhow they don't seem to agree at all about it. When Tussy wrote to you, your Mama was just suffering from one of these attacks, and I believe there was a slight misunderstanding about what the doctor said, namely that she was then temporarily not in a fit state to travel. The doctor himself wishes her very much to go, as he anticipates a good effect from the change.
Now about Mohr's Turkish baths, they need not frighten you, he is taking them merely for the sake of his rheumatically stiff leg which bothers him in walking. As to his cold, the present warm weather will soon reduce it to an infinitesimal quantity and a change to the seaside will finish it off— that is my opinion. I have just taken him up to Hampstead Heath, I hope the walk will do him good. Your Mama was out, so she cannot be so very bad just now.
I am glad that amidst all the petites misères de la vie de campagnec you still are well pleased with house, garden and climate which after all are the main thing, to the rest you will either gradually find remedies or — get used to them. My especial envy is directed of course to the wine cellar and the cellars generally for which we may sigh in vain here in London.
You must indeed have risen tremendously in the eyes of old Collett since you and Longuet have got Clemenceau round to the only 'correct' view about Tunis. [149] I can very well imagine the old man's enthusiasm at seeing the truly orthodox policy preached in a large Paris daily. Fancy the old buffer, who all his life has defended the power of the Crown, now talking of a saviour of the Republic.
We are going on here much in the usual way, excepting that we have Mrs Pauli here who brings her eldest step-daughter to Manchester where she is going to stay some time with an old friend of Pauli's. She is not quite so stout as she was but quite as lively. Last Sunday by a godsend we got some Waldmeister,(1) and with the help of a dozen of Moselle we brewed three bowls of Maitrankb which were duly emp-tied by a — rather numerous — company. There were fourteen of us, and they were very jolly. Lenchen was there also and told me this morning it had not very well agreed with her: 'she never had such a Katzenjammer" in her life' (please don't let it out!). Mrs Pauli is very sorry she cannot see you here this time and wishes to be most kindly remembered to you.
Hartmann called yesterday with the news that he is off to America, it is a good thing for him, he could never settle down here properly until he got work for a short time in Siemens' electric factory in Wool-wich but that is at an end now too. He talks of coming back in a few months.
Pumps is going on as usual, suffers now and then from headaches, my only complaint is an increasing left-ear deafness, I hope the summer may cure it.
Kind regards to you and Longuet. Pumps sends her love and I join her in it.
Yours affectionately,
F. Engels
56. Marx to John Swinton. 2 June
IN NEW YORK
London, 2 June 1881 41 Maitland Park Road, N. W.
Dear Mr Swinton,
I need hardly recommend you the bearer of these lines, my excellent friend, Mr Hartmann. I send you through him a photogram of mine; it is rather bad, but the only one left to me.
As to the book of Mr Henry George,(1) I consider it as a last attempt— to save the capitalistic regime. Of course, this is not the meaning of the author, but the older disciples of Ricardo — the radical ones — fancied already that by the public appropriation of the rent of land everything would be righted. I have referred to this doctrine in the Misere de la Philosophie (published in 1847 against Proudhon).b
Mrs Marx sends you her best compliments. Unfortunately her illness assumes more and more a fatal character.
Believe me, dear Sir,
Yours most sincerely,
Karl Marx
The 'Viereck' was so stultified at his arrival in the US that he con-founded my friend Engels with myself and transformed my compliments to you in those of Engels; he did the same with regard to another American friend of minec by whose letter I was informed of the quid pro quo.
57. Marx to Friedrich Adolph Sorge. 2 June[150]
Dear Sorge,
I recommend to you most heartily the bearer of this card, my friend Hartmann.
58. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge. 2 June
My dear Sorge,
In the person of the bearer I introduce to you our friend Leo Hartmann, of Moscow celebrity. To recommend him specially to your attention could be superfluous. If during his stay in America you can in any way be of service to him you will by that render a service to the common cause and a personal favor to Marx and myself.
Yours truly,
Fr. Engels
59. Marx to Jenny Longuet. 6 June
59
MARX TO JENNY LONGUET
IN ARGENTEUIL
[London,] 6 June 1881
My dearest Don Quixote,
I am really wrong to have not written before this, but you know my good intentions and weak doings in this line. There passes, however, no day, when my thoughts are not with you and the lovely children.a
As to my health you need not trouble you[rself]; I had a nasty cold, almost as sempiternal as was the Stockschnupfenb of Seguin se-lig c — but it is now rapidly passing away.
As to Möhmchen, you are aware that there is no cure of the illness she suffers from, and she gets indeed weaker. Fortunately the pains are not such as they mostly are in such cases, the best proof of which is that she attends still several times during the week at London thea-tres. She keeps in fact wonderfully up, but travelling to Paris is quite out of the question. I consider it a most happy event that Lina Schoe-ler surprised us yesterday and is to stay about a month.
Has Johnny got Reineke or rather Renard the Foxd I sent him? and has the poor fellow somebody to read it for him?
To-day (Bank Holiday) ' [5] ' and yesterday infernal rainy and cold weather, one of the bad tricks the celestial father has always in store for his London plebeian cattle and sheep. Yesterday he spoiled by the rain the Hyde Park Demonstration of Parnell's. [152]
Hartmann has on Friday last left for New York and I am glad that he is out of harm's way. But foolishly, a few days before his departure, he asked the hand of Pumps from Engels — and this by writing, telling him at the same time that he believed he committed no mistake in doing so, alias, he (Hartmann) believed in his (Hartmann's) acceptance on the part of Pumps — the which girl had indeed rather hardly flirted with him, but only to stir Kautsky. I learn now from Tussy that the same Hartmann had offered himself to her before her voyage to Jersey. But the present case is the worse as the distinguished 6
Perovskaya, the victim of the Russian movement, had lived with Hartmann in 'free' marriage. And she has hardly died on the gal-lows. [153] From Perovskaya to Pumps — rather too bad this, and Mama is quite disgusted with it and the whole male sex!
Longuet's article on Ireland was good. We all thought there had something happened seeing that for some time he seemed more and more to disappear from the columns of the Justice. Have you seen or heard anything of the illustrious Hirsch? He sent me today two New York papers.
There is only one news worth reporting. A Yankeea is said to have invented a coal-cutting machine which would do away with the greatest part of the present labour of the colliers — viz. the 'hewing' of coal in the coal-measures and mines, leaving to the miners only the task of breaking the cut of coal and loading it into trucks. If this invention prove successful — as there is every reason to believe — it will give an immense stir in Yankeeland and do great damage to John Bull's industrial supremacy.
Mama also asks me to tell you that the pretext for Lina's [Schoe-ler] presence is the wedding of Lisa Green, daughter of theb successful admirer of Martin Tupper.
Laura does everything to amuse and cheer Möhmchen. Helen0 sends you her love. And now kiss many many times for me Johnny, Harra and the noble Wolfd. As to the 'great unknown' one/ I dare not make so free with him.
How is your asthma? Does it still cling to you? I hardly understand how you manage to get breathing time with 4 children and only nominal servants.
Farewell, my dear child,
Old Nick
a Jeffrey-b This part of the sentence is in German in the original.-" Demuth-d Edgar Longuet -c Marcel Longuet
60. Engels to Jenny Longuet. 17 June
60
ENGELS TO JENNY LONGUET
IN ARGENTEUIL
London, 17 June 1881
122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.
My dear Jenny,
I hasten to reply to your letter of the 15th received this morning only. When I wrote to you last,(1) the doctorb insisted upon your Mama going to Paris and it was herself who resisted, saying she did not feel strong enough for the journey. A few days later the doctor found that she had indeed become so much weaker that he could no longer advise her to go to Paris. She is indeed getting extremely thin and ema-ciated and complained to me today a great deal about increasing weakness, especially when dressing, she has begun to stay the greater part of the day in bed and the doctor made her get up and go out for a walk while I was there. He has now told Mohr that the best thing to do is for both of them to go to Eastbourne, and that at once. We tried to persuade her, but of course she offered all kinds of resistance: now she ought to go to Paris if anywhere, and so forth, so we told her that a fortnight's stay at Eastbourne would perhaps restore her forces sufficiently to enable her to go to Paris afterwards, etc., etc. I left them at it, and you will probably hear the result in a day or two from Tussy who said she would write to you soon.
Whatever the nature of the complaint may be, this constant and increasing loss of flesh and strength seems a very serious feature, especially as it does not seem to come to a stop — most of the doctors said that this was not in itself a dangerous symptom unless it went beyond a certain point; that they had known cases where the weakening all of a sudden had been arrested and strength recovered. I hope the seaside will have that effect, if we only had her there already.
To Mohr the change will be equally favourable, he wants a bit of bracing up too, his cough is not so bad at nights and he sleeps better, that is one thing.
A very great piece of good luck has been the arrival of Lina Schoe-ler who is now staying at your house, as lively and good-natured as ever, and a good deal more deaf. Her presence cheers your Mama up a good deal, I hope she will stay for some time.
Sam Moore has passed his final examination as Barrister successfully last week.
I hear from Tussy that you have got a fresh servant and that she seems to suit you, so your household troubles bid fair to diminish too.
I close this letter so as to send it by early mail in the morning, hoping thus it may reach you to-morrow night. Miss Parnell's letter I shall return in a few days. Kind regards to Longuet and Johnny from yours affectionately
F. Engels
61. Marx to Friedrich Adolph Sorge. 20 June[154]
Dear Sorge,
Today I had broken off some other work I was doing, meaning to embark at long last on a lengthy letter to you and now, as ill luck would have it, I've had one visitor after another and thus hardly have time enough left to drop you a few lines before the post goes. Hence a brief survey.
Your son(1) pleases everyone he meets here. Since I have been suffering continuously for 6 months and more from a cough, cold, sore throat and rheumatism, which only seldom permit me to go out and keep me out of society, he and I have an hour or so of private conversation ABOUT ONCE A WEEK and I find that he has, au fond,(2) absorbed rather more of our views than would appear. He is an altogether capable, decent lad with, moreover, cultivated manners and a pleasant temperament. He is, besides, and that is all-important, FULL OF ENERGY.
My last visitors, only just gone, were Viereck and his newly married wife, also née Viereck.b I had not seen the gentleman since he came back from America. ' ' [9] A few days ago he sent Kautsky to see me with sundry scraps of paper for me to sign (one written by Liebknecht and also signed by him in his own and Bebel's names). All of them related to certain agreements respecting the Lingenau legacy[45]
negotiated by Viereck with the 'New Torker Volkszeitung' et cie. I refused to sign since, in this matter, I am obliged, as I explained, to deal only with our chief executor, Sorge. At the same time I gave Viereck to understand that, in my view, the first thing to be done was to pay you the 120 dollars for the lawyer in St Louis out of what still remained of the American fund in New York. Viereck now tells me today that — upon my accepting responsibility vis-à-vis the Leipzigers — he at once sent off instructions to that effect to New York. He arrived INTHE NICK OF TIME, for otherwise a formal protest would have gone off from me to Leipzig tomorrow, a protest against the modus operandi' of the Leipzig party leaders who had hitherto conducted themselves in this matter as if the decision rested solely with them.
Now, postfestum,c Viereck has mentioned your claim in respect of an advance of 80 dollars. I told him that, after the court decision, should this be unfavourable, we, the executors, would indemnify you, as we damned well ought.
Before getting your copy of Henry George, ' I had already had 2 others, one from Swinton and one from Willard Brown. I therefore gave one to Engels and one to Lafargue. Today I shall have to confine myself to a very brief assessment of the book. Theoretically, the man is totally arrière. ' He has understood nothing of the nature of surplus value and hence, after the English pattern, but lagging far behind the English, he loses himself in speculations about those portions of surplus value that have become independent — about the relations between profit, rent, interest, etc. His basic tenet is that everything would be in order were rent to be paid to the State. (You will also find payment of this kind among the transitional measures in the Communist Manifesto.a) This view owes its origin to the bourgeois economists; it was first advanced (if we disregard a similar postulate in the late 18th century) by the earliest radical disciples of Ricardo immediately after the latter's death. In 1847, in my anti-Proudhon book, I commented on it thus: 'Nous concevons que des économistes, tels que Mill' (se-nior, not his son John Stuart who repeats the same thing in somewhat modified form), 'Cherbuliez, Hilditch et autres, ont demandé que la rente soit attribuée à l'Etat pour servir à l'acquittement des impôts. C'est la franche expression de la haine que le capitaliste industriel voue au prop-riétaire foncier, qui lui parait une inutilité, une superfétation, dans l'en-semble de la production bourgeoise.''b
As already mentioned, we ourselves adopted the appropriation of rent by the State amongst many other transitional measures which, as is likewise indicated in the Manifesto, are and cannot but be contradictory in themselves.
But making a socialist PANACEA of this desideratum of the English radical bourgeois economists, declaring this procedure to be a solution of the antagonisms inherent in today's mode of production — this was the prerogative oï Colins, a native of Belgium and on old, retired officer of Napoleon's Hussars who, in the latter days of Guizot and the early ones of Napoleon le petit, I 5 5 sent out into the world from Paris bulky volumes on the subject of this, his 'discovery',' likewise making the further discovery that, while there is indeed no God, there is an 'immortal' human soul, and that animals have 'no sensitivity'. For had they any sensitivity, i. e. soul, we would be cannibals and a kingdom of righteousness could never be set up on this earth. His 'anti-landed property theory', along with his soul, etc., theory, has for years been advocated month after month in the Paris journal Philosophie de l'Avenir by his few remaining disciples, mostly Belgians. They call themselves 'collectivistes rationnels' and have applauded Henry George.
In the same vein as them, and at much the same time, one Samter, amongst others, a shallow-pated Prussian banker and lottery collec-
20 1881
tor from East Prussia, distended this 'socialism' to fill a hefty tome.(3)
All these 'socialists' since Colins have this in common — they allow wage labour and hence also capitalist production to subsist, while en-deavouring to delude themselves and the world into believing that the transformation of rent into taxation paid to the State must bring about the automatic disappearance of all the abuses of capitalist production. So the whole thing is merely an attempt, tricked out with socialism, to save the capitalist régime and, indeed, to re-establish it on an even broader basis than at present.
Again, this cloven hoof, which is at the same time an ass's hoof, is unmistakably in evidence in the declamations of Henry George. It is all the more inexcusable in his case in that he ought, on the contrary, to have asked himself the question: How comes it that in the UNITED STATES, where the land was relatively — i. e. by comparison with civilised Europe — accessible to the great mass of the people and TO A CERTAIN DEGREE (again relative) still is, the capitalist economy and the corresponding enslavement of the working class have developed more rapidly and brazenly than in any other country?
On the other hand, George's book, like the sensation it created in your midst, is significant in being a first, if unsuccessful, attempt at emancipation from orthodox political economy.
H. George, by the by, seems to know nothing of the history of the earlier American ANTI-REXTERS ' [5 6] who were men of practice rather than theory. In other respects he is a talented writer (talented, too, in the matter of boosting the YANKEES), as is shown by, e. g., his article on California in the Atlantic. [157] He also has the revolting presump-tiousness and arrogance that is the unmistakable hallmark of all such PANACEA-mongers.
Between ourselves, my wife's illness is, alas, incurable. In a few days' time I shall be taking her to the SEASIDE at Eastbourne.
Salut fraternel.b
Your
K. Marx
62. Marx to Henry Mayers Hyndman. 2 July
IN LONDON
[Draft]
Eastbourne, Sussex, 2 July 1881 43 Terminus Road
My dear Sir,
The state of Mrs Marx's health which becomes daily more critical and demands my continual attendance upon her, will account for my belated reply to your letter d. d. June 5.
I confess to some astonishment at the discovery that, during your stay at London, you should have so closely kept the secret of your plan, then matured and executed, to publish, with certain modifica-tions, the rejected article of The Nineteenth Century as chapters II and III ofEngland for All, that is to say of your comments on the Federation's Foundation Program. [158]
In your letter which does not at all refer to the surprise thus kept in store for me, you say:
'If you think I ought to acknowledge your book by your name, etc'
That question, it seems to me, ought to have preceded your publication instead of coming behind it.
You favour me with two reasons for freely using the Capital, a work not yet Englished, without mentioning the book itself or its author.
One reason is, that 'many (Englishmen) have an horror of Socialism and that name'. Was it with a view to assuage this 'horror' that you evoked [on] p. 86 'the demon of Socialism'?
Your second and last reason is, that 'the Englishmen have a dread of being taught by a foreigner'!
I have not found it so during the times of the 'International', nor of Chartism. , 5 9 But let that pass. If this dread of 'the' Englishmen frightened you, why tell them in the preface p. VI that the 'ideas' etc. of chapters II and III, whatever else they may be, bear at all events the stigma of being no home-make? The Englishmen you have to deal with can hardly be so dense as to fancy that the above-said passage points to an — English author.
Apart, however, from your rather humorous reasons, I am decidedly of opinion that to have named the Capital and its author, would have been a big blunder. Party programs ought to keep free of any apparent dependence upon individual authors or books. But allow me to add that they are also no proper place for new scientific developments, such as those borrowed by you from the Capital, and that the latter are altogether out of place in a commentary on a Program with whose professed aims they are not at all connected. Their introduction might have had some fitness in the Exposé of a Program for the foundation of a distinct and independent Working Class Party.
You are good enough to inform me that your brochure 'though marked "price half-a crown" is not published', but 'merely' to be 'distributed to members of the Democratic Federation, etc' I am quite sure that this was your intention, but I know that it is not opinion of your printer. A friend of mine saw your brochure in my study, wanted it, copied its title and place of printing, ordered it through his booksellers Williams and Norgate on the 13th of June and got it by them with their account note d. d. 14th June.
And this brings me to the only point of practical import. In case the public press should pounce upon your brochure, I might be obliged to speak, considering that chapters II and III consist in part of passages simply translated from the Capital, but separated by no marks of quotation from a remainder, much of which is not exact or even implies misunderstandings.
I have written with that full frankness which I consider the first condition of friendly intercourse.
Best compliments of Mrs Marx and myself to Mrs Hyndman.
Yours very truly,
K. M.
63. Engels to Marx. 7 July
63
ENGELS TO MARX
IN EASTBOURNE [1 6 0]
[London,] 7 July 1881 122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.
Dear Moor,
In my last letter I quite forgot to mention money; owing to Schorlemmer's presence I have been somewhat restricted in my movements. You can now have £100 à £120, and it's simply a question of whether you want it all at one go and how much is to be sent there and how much is for here. When you get this letter, make up your mind straight away so that I get your answer by tomorrow. For Schorlemmer and Pumps are going to the theatre tomorrow evening, while I shall remain at home. I can then at once make out a CHEQUE in favour of Lenchen and take it to her. You or your wife can of course decide what is to be done with the money.
Tussy and Dolly Maitland acted very well; the girl showed a great deal of SELF POSSESSION and looked quite charming on the stage. Tussy was very good in the emotional scenes, though it was somewhat apparent that she had taken Ellen Terry for her model, as Radford had Irving, but she'll soon wean herself from that; if she really wants to make her mark in public she must unquestionably STRIKE OUT A LINE OF HER OWN, and she'll do that all right.
I hear that the sea air has not yet had the desired effect on your wife; that often happens in the early days; it may, and I trust will, come later.
Pumps is going to Manchester with Schorlemmer on Mondaya to bring back little Lydia; I hear you have written to Tussy asking her to join you. I may perhaps come later when Pumps is back. We shall probably be going to Bridlington Quay ' [6] ' shortly and then to Jersey with Schorlemmer when he returns from Germany; at any rate that's what we've planned to date.
Best wishes from us all to your wife and yourself.
Your
F. E.
]9J3 Published in English for the first time
a 11 July
64. Engels to Norris A. Clowes. 22 July
122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.
Norris A. Clowes Esq.
Dear Sir,
I am sorry my time will not allow me to write to you the statement you desire." However, if you wish to make yourself acquainted with the present state of the Labour Movement in Great Britain, you will find the necessary information in the weekly Labour Standard published at 2 Whitefriars St. of which twelve numbers have up to now been issued. Most of the non-signed leaders are written by me. [163]
If you wish to enter into communication with Mr Most, you had better write to the Editor of the Freiheit,(1) 252 Tottenham Court Road, W., London, who will be able to tell you whether such communication will be possible under present circumstances.
I shall be glad to see you in case you should come to London.
I remain
Yours very truly,
F. E.
65. Marx to Jenny Longuet. 22 July
65
MARX TO JENNY LONGUET
IN ARGENTEUIL
[London,] 22 July 1881
*My dear Jenny,
The doctor[3] has just left Mama, and we shall start on Tuesday or Wednesday next. You will be informed by telegram of the exact day.
Please write at once, because Mama will not get away from London before you have written her which things from London may be required by you. You know she is fond of that sort of commission-business.*
I enclose £5, since you will have to pay cash for the hire of bed-linen etc.; the remainder will be paid when I arrive. Only on these terms will I agree to the arrangement you have suggested.
As *to the story Hirsch has told you with respect to Lafargue, it is a mere lie. Lafargue, as I was sure from the beginning, has never written anything of the sort to his Paris correspondents.
Adio, dear child, with lOOOnd kisses to the children
Old Nick*
66. Marx to Engels. 27 July
66
IN LONDON
Argenteuil[164], 27 July 1881 11 Boulevard Thiers
Dear Engels,
I can't write at any greater length today as I have a mass of letters to get off and on this, our first day, the little ones(2) have rightly laid claim to me.
The journey from London to Dover went off as well as could be expected, i. e. my wife, who was most unwell when we set out from Maitland Park, did not notice any change for the worse as a result of the journey. On the boat she at once went to the ladies' cabin where she found an excellent sofa to lie on. The sea was quite calm and the weather couldn't have been finer. She landed in Calais in better shape than when she had left London and decided to carry on. The only stations where our TICKETS allowed us to break the journey to Paris were Calais and Amiens. She thought the latter place (ABOUT 2 HOURS'journey from Paris) too close to stop at. Between Amiens and Creil she felt diarrhoea coming on, and the griping pains also grew more violent. At Creil the train stopped for only 3 minutes, but she had just enough time to do what was necessary. In Paris, where we arrived at 7.30 in the evening, we were met at the station by Longuet. However the direct train from this station to Argenteuil left too late for us to wait for it. So, after the douaniers* had examined our trunks, by CAB to St Lazare station and from there, after waiting some while, by RAILWAY to our destination which we did not reach, however, until ABOUT 10 O'CLOCK. She was in very poor shape, but this morning (at any rate now, ABOUT 10 O'CLOCK) feels better than she used to do in London at a similar hour. At all events, the return journey will be made in much easier stages.
Longuet is introducing me to his doctor[1] today, so that we can act immediately in the event of the diarrhoea recurring.
67. Engels to Marx. 29 July
We found everyone well here, except that Johnny and Harry had slight colds as a result of the change of temperature (all the children, especially Johnny, had been affected by the days of extreme heat). As a summer residence the house is first-class, must obviously have once served as such for a richard.a
WITH BEST COMPLIMENTS TO Pumps.
Your
Moor
It would seem that Tussy has written to her correspondent over thereb telling him of my arrival and hence, or so Longuet tells me, this is already an open secret. The 'anarchists', he says, will impute to me the malicious intention of swinging the vote. [165] Clemenceau told him that I had absolutely nothing to fear from the police.
67
ENGELS TO MARX
IN ARGENTEUIL
Bridlington Quay, Yorkshire 29 July 1881 1 Sea View
Dear Moor,
I got your letterc yesterday morning before we left ' [6] ' and was very glad to hear that you did, after all, have a reasonably good journey. But you are right in proposing to break the return journey; it's far too risky, letting such an invalid remain on the go for 12 hours.
I only hope that the change of air and scene doesn't fail to produce the desired effect.
We left at 10.30 and arrived here at 5.5, minus my trunk, which had gone astray, but turned up before evening. After perhaps a quarter of an hour's search we found lodgings that were first-rate and not too dear (2 doors away from last year's, but a great improvement in every way). We had some rain yesterday, but today it seems to be slowly clearing up. The day before yesterday, by way of insuring myself against rainy weather such as we have again become familiar with lately in London, I went to fetch the Skaldin and the first two volumes of Maurer's Fronhöfe" from Tussy.
Our present plan is to remain here for 3 weeks or, perhaps, 4, de-pending on the weather and other circumstances. I have got some CHEQUES with me, so if you need anything, don't hesitate to let me know roughly how much you want. Your wife must not and shall not want for anything; if there's something she would like to have or something you know would give her pleasure, then have it she must.
Tussy dropped in to see us the day before yesterday, so I accompanied her home to fetch the books and drink the inevitable glass of Pilsener with her. Here one can pretty well do without German beer, for the BITTER ALE in the little café on the pier is excellent, and has a head on it like German beer.
Write again soon and tell me how things are. Warm regards from all of us to your wife and Jenny. Pumps sends her special love to Johnny, as do I. Our regards, too, to Longuet.
Your
F. E.
68. Marx to Engels. 3 August
68
MARX TO ENGELS [1 6 6]
AT BRIDLINGTON QUAY
Argenteuil, 3 August 1881 11 Boulevard Thiers
DEAR FRED,
Drawing so heavily on your EXCHEQUER is a great embarrassment to me, but the anarchy which has wrought havoc with the housekeeping over the past 2 years and given rise to all sorts of arrears has been op-pressing me for some considerable time. On the 15th of this month I have £30 to pay in London, and this has been a weight on my mind since the day we left.
When we shall return is far from clear. Every day we experience the same ups and downs here as we did in Eastbourne, [16]° only with the difference — as for instance yesterday — that there are sudden and frightful bouts of pain. Our Dr Dourlen, who is an excellent doctor and fortunately lives quite close by, immediately intervened and used one of the powerful opiates which Donkin had been deliberately keeping up his sleeve. After that shea had a good night and today feels so well that she got up for once as early as 11 o'clock and is finding dis-traction in the company of Jenny and the children.b (The diarrhoea was STOPPED on the 2nd day after our arrival. From the start Dourlen had said that if it was merely an ACCIDENT, it didn't matter; but it might also be a symptom of an actual intestinal infection. Fortunately this was not the case, therefore.)
The temporary 'improvements' do not, of course, inhibit the natural course of the disease, but they delude my wife and fortify Jenny — despite my objurgations — in the belief that our stay in Argenteuil should last as long as possible. I know better how things stand, and my anxiety is all the greater for that. Last night, IN FACT, was the first occasion on which I had anything like a decent sleep. My thoughts, they are so dull and dead as turned a mill-wheel in my head.c And this is why I have so far remained exclusively in Argenteuil, neither visiting Paris nor writing so much as a line to anybody there encou-raging them to come and visit me. Longuet has already heard Hirsch,d in the office of La Justice, express legitimate surprise at this 'abstention'.
And, INTO THE BARGAIN, a Kotzebue-like drama has been played out here during the past 5 days.
Jenny had, for cook, A VERY LIVELY YOUNG GIRL FROM THE COUNTRY with whom she was satisfied in every respect, since she also behaved most amiably towards the children. Her only testimonial from her last MIS-TRESS, wife of Dr Reynaud (another Argenteuil doctor), was a 'nega-tive' one to the effect that she had quitted her service voluntarily. Old MOTHER Longuet who, so far as she is able, exercises a dictatorship over Jenny, was by no means satisfied with this, nor could she think of anything better to do than to go and write, off her own bat, to Madame Reynaud.
Madame Reynaud is a pretty coquette and her husband a dissolute jackass; hence things happen in this couple's house that are much gos-siped about in Argenteuil. They didn't know that their former maid had again taken service in the same locality, and with none other than Mr Longuet, an intimate friend of Dr Dourlen's whose wife was an intimate enemy of Madame Reynaud's! THIS WAS TO BE LOOKED
AFTER.
So one fine morning along comes Madame Reynaud — not, hitherto, personally acquainted with Jennychen —, tells the latter that the girl had had improper affairs with men (et Madame?) and, what is worse, is a thief having, dans l'espèce,c stolen a gold ring of hers; she assures Jenny that she means to settle the matter en famille,' without appealing to the 'autorités' etc. Well and good, Jennychen SUMMONS THE GIRL, Madame Reynaud chats with and AT THE SAME TIME threatens her, the girl confesses, returns the ring — whereat Dr Reynaud denounces the unfortunate creature to the juge de paix.r UPSHOT: yesterday she was brought before the juge d'instruction' at Versailles. As you know, the Code, ' [6 7] being a relic of Roman Law whereby/amt-lia = servi,' refers to Assizes petty crimes which would ordinarily come before a police court.
In the meantime Jenny had made every imaginable representation to the juge de paix, an excellent man, but the matter had ceased to rest with him the moment he had been officially notified of it. Nevertheless, Jenny's statements, which he wrote down, and la Reynaud's extra-judicial procedure, which she also placed on record, will be of some benefit to the girl.
Jenny's defence of the girl surprised the juge de paix, but he took it all in a very light vein. Mais vous ne voulez pas défendre le vol? he asked her.— Mais non, Monsieur, commencez par arrêter tous les grands voleurs d'Argenteuil, et de Paris par dessus le marché!(1)
The immediate upshot is that she has no cook. The stupid GIRL from London — sister of our one-time Carry — is GOOD FOR NOTHING IN THAT LINE and in any case has her hands full with the 4 children.
Apropos. Nordau — who is taking Hirsch's place on the Vossische Zeitung — was awarded a French order! Whereupon Hirsch denounced him to La Justicel The latter attacked the government for decorating such a traducer of France (he is a German-Hungarian Jew who attacked Tissot on Bismarck's behalf in his le vrai pays des milliards[168]), likewise Bleichröder who wished to encumber la belle France with indemnities of 10 rather than 5 milliards. [169]
That jackass Nordau, presently in Paris, replied to La Justice, in a letter in which he made himself out to be the CHAMPION of France. Whereupon he was unmasked in La Justice and, the day after, in La République française.
Salut.
Your
Moor
69. Engels to Marx. 6 August
69
ENGELS TO MARX
IN ARGENTEUIL
Bridlington Quay, Yorkshire 6 August 1881 1 Sea View
Dear Moor,
Your letter arrived on the evening of the day before yesterday, to all intents open, thanks to the envelope. A trip to Flamborough Head had been arranged for yesterday, so I haven't got round to replying to you until today.
As regards the paltry £30, don't let it give you any grey hairs. Unless I hear to the contrary I shall send off in plenty of time a CHEQUE for that amount to Tussy whom you will be instructing. Should you need more, however, let me know and I shall make the CHEQUE larger. For I only brought a few CHEQUE forms with me and have to be economical with them.
Very many thanks for the news of the patient.(1) If I were you, I would stick as closely as possible to the period laid down by Donkin; I'm sure the local doctorb will also back you up there. Should the bouts of pain grow more frequent, they might well occur while you were en route and that could land you in a very serious predicament.
The business with the maid is at any rate funnier for us than for poor Jennychen. How fortunate that she should at least have Lenchen there just now. It is impossible to know which of the two French bourgeoises is the more admirable, old Mother Longuet who, on the pretext of finding Jennychen virtuous maids, sees to it that she is per-petually maidless, or the good doctor's wifec who gives her word (without which she would never have got her ring back) only to break it in the interests of public morality as soon as the ring is returned to her.
Up here everything follows its usual somewhat dreary SEASIDE course, except that I've unfortunately had to give up bathing, as it was making me deafer and deafer. I find this most disagreeable, but there's nothing else for it if I'm not prematurely to go about Allsop-fashion. I am writing to Laura today, inviting her to spend some time here; she can then so arrange things that she will be back in London at the time of your return, or at any rate shortly afterwards. [17]°
Enclosed a letter from Gumpert which will surprise you. I need hardly say that the person concerned is the sister, resident in Manchester, of Berta Böcker of London.(2)
The award of an order to Nordau is really incomprehensible. It was only a short while ago that I saw his vile book, Aus dem wahren Milliardenlande, reviewed with the utmost satisfaction in the Kölnische Leitung.b But it agrees in one respect with Bleichröder as also with Nordau's conclusions, namely that there is still a remarkable amount to be got out of the country. Of this the starving Prussian Junkers will take mental note.
My ink is running out; there is still just enough left for Laura, so I shall close, with warm regards to you all from
Your
F. E.
You're quite right not to bother about Paris any more than you think fit, whatever Hirsch and all the rest may say.
70. Marx to Carl Hirsch. 6 August
71. Marx to Engels. 9 August
IN PARIS
Argenteuil, 6 August[3] 1881 11 Boulevard Thiers
Dear Hirsch,
I have been here for nearly a fortnight ' [6 4]; haven't visited Paris or any of my acquaintances. My wife's condition has permitted neither the one nor the other.
Because of her growing weakness, it is possible that I shall have to leave much earlier than I originally planned and I therefore intend
(if NO ACCIDENT INTERFERES) tO COme tO P a r i s TOMORROW MORNING w i t h Lenchen and Johnny. I shall take a cab to your house and, if your time permits, count on your accompanying us. ' (1) ' Regards to Kaub.
Your
K. Marx
71
MARX TO ENGELS
AT BRIDLINGTON QUAY
[Argenteuil,] 9 August 1881
DEAR FRED,
Have just received your letter. I am registering this one; Longuet says that, while there can be no question of Stieberian tampering with letters, registered ones, especially at little places like Argenteuil, are handled with greater despatch.
On Satuday(2) we took my wife to Paris; she watched it go by from an open carriage, which pleased her much (on myself it made the impression ofa foire perpétuelleb). A few pauses, of course, and SITTING DOWN BEFORE cafés. On the way back she felt momentarily sick, but wants to go there again.
Her condition is, as usual, sometimes too much to bear, sometimes better for hours on end. She grows steadily thinner and at the same time weaker. Yesterday there was slight cutaneous bleeding which the doctorc considers a symptom of debility. I told him we must seriously consider going home; he said we could wait a day or two before finally deciding. She herself, after I had spoken to her about leaving at the end of this week, played a trick on me by sending out a mass of washing which will not be returned until the beginning of next week. At all events I shall let you know by telegraph when we are leaving (should there not be time SIMPLY to notify you beforehand by letter). Oddly enough, though I get damned little rest at night and my days are racked with worry, everyone tells me how well I look — as is, indeed, the case.
Jennychen's asthma is bad, the house being a very draughty one. The child is heroic, as always.
On Sunday I was to show Helend round Paris. I wrote and advised Hirsche of it beforehand — and IN THE NICK OF TIME. He was just on the point of leaving for Germany (to the intense annoyance of Kaub and the chagrin of his wife). He wants to show the party leaders in Germany that there's nothing out of the way about expos-ing oneself to apprehension by the police. He made off yesterday.
A pleasant couple, Jaclard and his Russian wife/ came to déjeunerg
here yesterday. Today we expect, for the same PERFORMANCE, Lissagaray and our doctor's wife (along with her sister).
From Jaclard we learned that he had attended an election meeting at Batignolles where the following put themselves up as candidates: Henry Maret, our Dr Regnard and — Pyat, who turned up — SELF-UNDERSTOOD with the permission of the police — suddenly and unex-pectedly. Pyat was frightfully jeered at. When he mentioned the 9 1881
Commune there was a general cry of ' Vous l'avez lâchéePa Regnard fared no better. In order to appear paradoxical and profound, the idiot opened with the declaration: 'Je suis contre la UbertéPb GENERAL HOWLING! His subsequent declaration that it was 'liberté des congrega-tions'[1] c he had meant availed him nothing. T h e champion of anti-clericalism ' [7 2] was a flop, likewise Henry Maret.
It may be that the extreme left will slightly increase its numbers, but the chief upshot of this will PROBABLY be victory for Gambetta. Things being what they are in France, the shortness of the election period will decide the issue in favour of faiseursd with numerous 'strongholds' in their possession, prospective bestowers of places in the machinery of government, and the men who control the 'exchequer', etc. T h e 'Grévystes' e could have licked Gambetta if, after the latter's recent FAILURES, they had had the energy to throw his appendages, Ca-zot, Constans and Farre, out of the cabinet. Since they didn't, the place-hunters, speculators on the Bourse, etc., etc., are saying to themselves, 'GAMBETTA IS THE MANP THEY HAVE NOT DARED TO ATTACK HIM IN
HIS STRONGHOLDS, YOU CANNOT RELY UPON THEM.The general onslaughts daily made upon him in the radical and reactionary press CONTRIBUTE
TO ENHANCE HIM DESPITE ALL HIS TOMFOOLERIES. O n top of which the peasants regard Gambetta as the nee plus ultra[1] in possible repub-licanism.
At the same time as this letter, another will go off to Tussychen, telling her what to do. I shall need a little more money, since this time the journey is going to cost a lot (the doctor thinks, moreover, that a few days in Boulogne might do the patient good because of the sea air), we shall have to meet a large doctor's bill and also make some compensation to Jennychen for all the expenses we have put her to.
So Gumpert is founding a 3rd (or is it 2nd?) family? Good luck to him. It seems a sensible thing for a doctor to do. M y wife has heard a number of people extolling the Böcker woman of Manchester.
Salut.
Your
Moor
72. Marx to Laura Lafargue. 9 August
Beesly is making ever more of an ass of himself. Weiler ought to put a stop to the glorification of Max Hirsch in The Labour Standard.'[1]*
Bd. 4, Berlin, 1931 t l m e
72
MARX TO LAURA LAFARGUE [7 2]
IN LONDON
[Argenteuil,] 9 August 1881 Dear Laurachen,
I can only write you a line or two as the post is about to go. Mama is in a serious condition as a result of her growing weakness. It was therefore my intention (as we shall only be able to travel by easy stages this time) to set off at all costs at the end of the week, and I informed the patient accordingly. Yesterday, however, she thwarted my plan by sending out our washing. So there can be no question of our leaving before the beginning of next week.
We may — depending on the state she is in — stop in Boulogne for a few days. The doctor* thinks that (given favourable conditions) the sea air might momentarily have an invigorating effect.
Next time (but for this purpose you must write at once giving me your latest address) I shall send you a fuller report. Best wishes to Paul.b
Your
OLD NICK
73. Engels to George Shipton. 10 August
IN LONDON
[Draft]
Bridlington Quay, 10 August 1881
Dear Mr Shipton,
I return the proof-sheet[1][7] [4] altered as you wish. The first passage you seem to me to have misunderstood and the second alteration is merely formal.a Anyhow, I do not see what good such alterations can do if asked for on Tuesday, received here on Wednesday, to arrive again in London on Thursday after the publication of the paper.b
But there is another thing. If such very mild and innocent things as these begin to appear to you too strong, it must occur to me that this must be the case, in a far higher degree, with my own articles, which are generally far stronger. I must therefore take your remarks as a symptom, and conclude that it will be better for both of us if I dis-continue sending you leading articles. It will be far better than going on until, upon some inevitable point, we come to an open rupture. Moreover my time will certainly not allow me to go on writing leaders regularly, ' [6] [3] and on this ground alone I had come to some similar resolution to be executed, as I then thought, after the Trades Union Congress.[175] But the sooner I stop the better will be perhaps your position before that Congress.
There is another point: I consider you ought to have sent me before publication the copy or proof of the article on the Max Hirsch Trades Unions in Germany,0 as to the only man on your staff who knew anything of the matter and could make the necessary notes to it. Anyhow it will be impossible for me to remain on the staff of a paper which, without consulting me, lends itself to writing up these Trades Unions, comparable only to those worst English ones which allow themselves to be led by men openly sold to, or at least paid by the middle class.
74. Engels to Marx. 11 August
I need not add that otherwise I wish every success to The Labour Standard and if desired shall now and then contribute occasional information from the continent.
Yours truly
F. E.
M . „„.-Published in English tor the lirst ' time
74
ENGELS TO MARX
IN ARGENTEUIL
Bridlington Quay, Yorkshire 11 August 1881 1 Sea View
Dear Moor,
Your registered letter arrived yesterday evening but it, too, was open, this time completely. I enclose the envelope for you to see; it just wasn't stuck down.
I've this moment sent Tussy a CHEOJJE for £ 50, REGISTERED. If you want all or part of the remaining £ 20 (over and above the £ 30 you spoke about) sent to Paris, Tussy can arrange things more quickly than if payment was made by a CHEQUE on London posted straight to you over there. She can easily get hold of a money order on Paris.
As regards the French elections I am entirely of your opinion. This Chamber won't continue sitting much longer anyway; once the scrutin de liste' has come through, it will soon be dissolved again.
Yesterday morning I informed Mr Shipton that he wouldn't be getting any more leading articles from me.b Kautsky had sent me an insipid thing on international factory legislation in a poor translation which I corrected and sent to Shipton.[174] Yesterday the proof and a letter arrived from Shipton who thought 2 of the passages 'too strong', having, what's more, misconstrued one of them; he asked me whether I would be prepared to tone them down. I did so and replied as follows:
1. What did he mean by submitting me the request for amendments on Tuesday"—i.e. Wednesday up here — when my reply couldn't have reached London until Thursday, after the paperb had come out.
2. If he thought this too strong, how much more so my own far stronger articles? Accordingly it would be better for us both if I gave up.
3. My time no longer permitted me to write a leading article regularly each week and I had already planned to inform him of this after the TRADE UNION CONGRESS (September).[175] Under the circumstances, however, it would no doubt improve his position vis-à-vis that congress were I to give up then and there.
4. He damned well ought to have shown me the Max Hirsch article before it was printed. ' [7] d I couldn't remain * on the staff of a paper which lends itself to writing up these German Trade Unions, compar-able only to those very worst English ones which allow themselves to be led by men sold to, or at least paid by the middle class*/ Apart from that I wished him the best of luck, etc. He will get my letter this morning.
I didn't tell him the most vital reason of all, namely, the total inef-fectiveness of my articles so far as the rest of the paper and its readers are concerned. Any effect there may be takes the form of an invisible response on the part of unavowed apostles of FREE TRADE. The paper remains the same old omnium-gatherum of probable and improbable CROTCHETS; in matters of politics it is + ,c but if anything more Glad-stonian. The RESPONSE, which once showed signs of awakening in one or 2 nos., has died away again. The BRITISH WORKING MAN just doesn't want to advance; he has got to be galvanised by events, the loss of industrial monopoly. En attendant, habeat sibi.'
We have been here for a fortnight now, weather changeable, mostly cold and often threatening, but not very often actually wet. We shall stay at least another week, perhaps a fortnight, but certainly no longer.
Since I've been here I have been taking The Daily News instead of the Standard. It is even more stupid, if that's possible. Preaches anti-vivisectionism! Also as deficient in news as the Standard.
Hirscha may suffer for his pleasure jaunt. But he can't help being what he is.
Best wishes to everyone.
Your
F. E.
time
75. Engels to George Shipton. 15 August
IN LONDON
[Draft]
Bridlington Quay,
15 August 1881
Dear Mr Shipton,
I cannot make it out, how you could so strangely misunderstand Mr Kautsky's article.[174] To the first passage you objected because State interference went against the grain of'many prominent men in the Unions'. Of course it does, because they are at heart Manchester School ' [7] [6] men and so long as their opinions of such are taken into account, no working-class paper is possible. But my addition to the passage in question must have convinced you, that the State interference here alluded to, was such, and such only, as has been in England the law of the Land for years: factories and workshops' acts,[177] and nothing further: things not objected to by even your 'prominent men'.
As to the second passage, Mr Kautsky says: an international regu-lation of the war of competition is as necessary as that of open warfare; we demand a Geneva Convention [178] for the workpeople of the world. The 'Geneva Convention' is an agreement entered into by the various Gov-ernments for the protection of wounded and ambulances in battle. What therefore Mr Kautsky demands, is a similar agreement between the various Governments for the protection of the workpeople not of one state only, but of all, against overwork especially of women and children. How out ofthat you can make an appeal to the workpeople of the world to meet in a Convention of delegates at Geneva, I am utterly at a loss to understand.(1)
You will own that the occurrence of such misunderstanding on your part cannot at all encourage me to alter my resolution.b
As to the Hirsch article, ' " I do know Mr Eccarius and only too well for a traitor to the cause and it will be utterly impossible for me to write for a paper which opens its columns to him.
Moreover, I do not see any progress. The Labour Standard remains the same vehicle of the most various and mutually contradictory views on all political and social questions which it was, perhaps una-voidably, on the first day of its existence, but which it ought no longer to be by this time, if there was an undercurrent among the British working class tending towards emancipation from the liberal Capitalists. Such undercurrent not being shown itself up to now, I must conclude it does not exist. If there were unmistakable signs of its existence, I might make an extra effort to assist it. But I do not think that one column a week drowned as I might say amongst the remaining multifarious opinions represented in The Labour Standard could do anything towards producing it.
And as I told you, I had resolved to stop writing after the Trade Unions Congress, ' [7 5] because of want of time; so whether I write a few articles more till then, would make no difference.
So waiting and hoping for better times, I remain
Faithfully yours,
F. E.
76. Marx to Engels. 16 August
76
MARX TO ENGELS
AT BRIDLINGTON QUAY
[Argenteuil,] 16 August 1881
DEAR Engels,
We shall have to leave tomorrow, as I have received a letter from Miss Maitlanda saying that Tussy is * very ill, will not allow Miss Maitland to attend her any longer, has called no doctor,* etc. Lenchen will possibly, indeed probably, have to accompany Mama to London; I shall have to set off at once (i. e. TO-MORROW and then carry on non-stop).
Your
K. M.
I at once wrote to Dr Donkin about Tussy; however he may no longer be in London.
time
77. Marx to Pyotr Lavrov. 16 August
My dear LavrofF,
I must leave to-morrow and will therefore have no occasion to see
78. Engels to Marx. 17 August
you again for this time. But having once found my way to Paris, I shall put in my appearance from time to time.
En attendant au revoir
Tout à vous'
K. Marx
78
ENGELS TO MARX
IN LONDON
Bridlington Quay, Yorkshire 17 August 1881 1 Sea View
Dear Moor,
Your telegram just received. I hope your wife managed the journey all right and conclude from the above that you evidently arrived by the night boat. Drop me a line to say how things are going.
As regards our departure, we ourselves were very much in the dark. Owing to a variety of circumstances we were unable to make preparations for tomorrow when our week expires. On receiving your telegram we arranged with the LANDLADY that we should pay another half week's rent and shall now be arriving back in London on Monday b evening if nothing crops up in the meantime. The weather: pretty well continuously overcast, threatening and cold; since yesterday it has been decidedly wet and in conditions like that Bridlington Quay becomes a downright bore.
Gambetta HOOTED DOWN très-bien' in Charonne." [9]
Your
F. E.
79. Engels to Eduard Bernstein. 17 August[180]
Dear Mr Bernstein,
Having spent the past 3 weeks at the seaside here, ' [6] ' I am making the most of the bad weather that has set in to drop you a few lines before I leave for home on Monday, the 22nd. If I have time, I shall also write to Kautsky,b but he will in any case very shortly be getting a reply and a copy of his article in The Labour Standard. ' [7 4]
I presume the anti-Semitica got back to you all right; I sent them to Kautsky as you hadn't let me have a more precise address. ' [8] ' Never have I seen anything so stupid and puerile. This movement is of importance only in the sense that in Germany — thanks to the co-wardice of the bourgeoisie — any movement instigated from above is of importance, namely as an electioneering ploy to obtain a conservative majority. As soon as the elections are over, or even earlier if the movement (as now in Pomerania) overshoots the mark set by those in higher places, it will, on orders from above, collapse like a pricked balloon and 'never more be seen'c. Movements of this kind cannot be treated with too much contempt and I am glad that the Sozialdemokrat did so. ' [8] [2] I have, by the way, heard from C. Hirsch who, acting on a sudden whim, took a jaunt to Berlin, whence he writes[183]:
on orders — from above. I have gone into the poorest of haunts and no one has taken exception to my nose; nowhere, either in omnibuses or trains, have I heard a word spoken against the Jews. The semi-official papers, which hawk round anti-Semitic goods, have very few readers. Germans have a natural aversion to Jews, but I notice that the hatred felt for the government by working men as well as by petty-bourgeois and philistine progressives is far more virulent.'
Of the thousand and one secret police in Berlin, he says that everyone is aware who they are and
'in consequence they know nothing. They are so naive that they always frequent the same pubs and sit at the same tables'.
Your articles on the subject of'intellects' [184] are very good. Again, your treatment of Bismarck's mania for nationalisation as something we should not endorse but which, like everything else that happens, nevertheless turns out nolens volens" in our favour, is quite outstanding, and likewise your treatment of 'intellects' as being those of people who, in so far as they are worth anything, come to us of their own accord but, in so far as we have first to recruit them, can only do us harm through what remains of the old leaven. There is much else of equal merit, though anyone could, of course, find occasional fault with the way things are put. The last number, too, was very good as a whole — the right kind of tone, brisk, assured, which the leaders had lost after the assassination attempts [1 2 8] and the exceptional law,(1) is back again and makes up for what Frederick William IV used to call 'trouser trumpetings'. You've given Bradlaugh a first-class drubbing.b
A few notes as to detail:
1. There's no need to be so complimentary about Vallès.[185] He is a wretched man of letters, or rather, literatus, an absolutely worthless peddlar of stock phrases who, for want of talent, took up with extrem-ists so as to dabble in tendencies — so-called isms — and thus find a market for his indifferent belletristic wares. During the Commune he did nothing but pontificate and, if he exerted any kind of influence, it was for the worse. Don't allow Parisian cliquishness (for which Malon also has a great proclivity) to mislead you about this drôle de fanfaron.' What kind of politician he is may be seen from his letter to Grévy ' [8 6] when the latter became president, advising him to introduce the socialist republic par ordre du muftïA, etc., a letter which retarded the amnesty by many months.
2. The Spaniards are by no means a bunch of anarchists. There's a quite outstanding nucleus in Madrid (the erstwhile nueva federaciôn madrilena [187]) and, in addition, some very good elements, notably in Valencia and in certain of the smaller Catalonian industrial towns, not to mention others dispersed elsewhere. The most energetic and clear-sighted is our friend José Mesa, presently in Paris, a quite excellent fellow who also collaborates with Guesde and the rest of them over there, and keeps them in touch. If you want news about Spain, write to him in French (Malon will be able to forward the letter direct or through Guesde— I haven't got his address up here). You can mention my name.
On the whole I consider that a young man who is doing so well in and by his post as you, ought by rights to stick to that post. It is, I think, most questionable whether Kegel, who in any case is still in jug, would prove equally adaptable. What his theoretical standpoint is, I do not know, and in any case there is nothing to show that his qualifications are suited to anything more than a local paper, and a humorous one at that. LET WELL ALONE, as the English say; don't try and improve on what is good. I must confess that the thought of any change fills me with mistrust and uneasiness.
Well, now for the Revolutionary Congress.[188] Lafargue has got hold of an Italian who was a delegate but — why I don't know — was thrown out. In addition, Lafargue has met various other members of that gang, likewise anarchists, at the house of a French wine and provisions merchant. It appears that:
1. The congress consisted of twenty-odd people, mostly resident in London with mandates from elsewhere. Also a few Frenchmen and Italians and one Spaniard. They held their sessions in public. But not a soul turned up, neither dog, nor cat, nor reporter. After this vain wait for a public had lasted 3 or 4 days and still continued in vain, they took an heroic resolution and declared the sessions were to be secret
2. The first thing that was noted was the general disappointment caused by the ineffectuality of the anarchist movement as a whole, and the certain knowledge that nowhere at all was there anyone at all behind the vociferous few. Everyone knew this to be true of himself and his own locality and, although everyone had hoodwinked everyone else into believing the most colossal lies about the colossal strides made by the movement in his own district, everyone had none the less believed the lies told by everyone else. So colossal was the collapse of their illusions that, even in the presence of strangers, they were unable to suppress their astonishment at their own ineffectuality.
3. The congress was retrieved up to a point, first by the meeting to which, of course, they invited reporters, and next by the silly questions asked in Parliament by idiotic Tories and even more idiotic Radicals. In view of the present plague of nihilists, it was only to be expected that the press should make capital out of a meeting attended by at most 700 men.
So when the Freiheit speaks of delegate No. 63, etc., ' [8 9] this refers to the number of the mandate made out by 1, 2 or 3 men, either in blank or in the name of a man wholly unknown to them and resident in London, or by 10-20 in the name of a delegate travelling to London. The number of delegates actually present was nearer 20 than 30, and of those who actually went there from elsewhere, certainly below 10.
NB. All this to be used with circumspection, as I have it third-hand. E. g. your allusion to it might take the form of a question — whether that was how it happened. ' [9 0] The gentlemen always fasten on one in-accurate word. It's the same old story as in the case of all anarchist congresses. You should read in Fictitious Splits in the International what the fellows wrote about their own Congress of the Federation Jurassienne, or the account in the Alliance of Socialist Democracy of the first congress after the split.'[91] With those chaps, the first form anarchy assumes is that all want to be officers, and none rankers. Take, for instance, that raging anarchist Adhémar Schwitzguébel
{quel nom!") whose objection to acceptance of office from the state as a betrayal of the cause doesn't prevent him from being a lieutenant dans l'armée fédérale suisse (2)l
Kindest regards to yourself and also to Kautsky who will get a letter when next it rains.
Yours,
F. Engels
80. Engels to Marx. 18 August
80
ENGELS TO MARX
IN LONDON
Bridlington Quay, 18 August 1881 1 Sea View
Dear Moor,
Not until last night did I get your Argenteuil letter explaining your sudden arrival. I trust Tussy's indisposition is of no real significance— she wrote me a cheery letter only the day before yesterday; at all events, I shall presumably hear further details tonight or tomorrow morning, and also whether your wife accompanied you as far as Boulogne or Calais or whether she stopped off before that.
Yesterday, then, I at last plucked up the courage to make a thorough study of your mathematical mss. [192] without any reference to manuals and was glad to find I had no need of them. I offer you my congratulations. The thing is so crystal clear that one can only marvel at the obstinacy with which mathematicians insist on shrouding it in mystery. But that is what comes of those gentry's one-sided mentality.
To write firmly and categorically —- = -could never enter their
dy heads. And yet it is obvious that — can only be the pure expres-dx sion of a process undergone by x and y when the last trace of the terms x and y has disappeared and all that remains is the expression, free from all quantity, of the process of variation they are undergoing. There is no need to fear that some mathematician may have anticipated you in this. The above method of differentiating is, after all, much simpler than any other — so much so that I myself have just used it to deduce a formula that had momentarily slipped my mind, afterwards verifying it in the usual way. The process would undoubtedly create a great stir, especially since it clearly demonstrates that the usual method, ignoring dx dy, etc., is positively wrong. And the particular beauty of it is that only when — = -is the operation dx 0 absolutely correct mathematically.
So old Hegel was quite right in supposing that the basic premiss for differentiation was that both variables must be of varying powers and at least one of them must be to the power of at least 2 or '/2-(1) Now we also know why.
When we say that in y = f(x), x and y are variables, this is an assertion which, so long as we continue to maintain it, has no implications whatsoever and x and y still remain, pro tempore? factual constants. Only when they really change, i. e. within the function, do they become variables in fact, nor does the relationship implicit in the original equation — not of the two quantities as such, but of their variabi-
Ay lity — come to light till then. The first derivate -— shows this rela-; b Ax tion as it occurs in the course of true variation, i. e. in any given varia-
dy tion; the final derivate = — shows it purely and simply in its general-
ly . A y ity and hence, from — we can arrive at any — we choose, while dx Ax this itself never covers more than the particular case. But in order to proceed from the particular case to the general relation, the particular case as such has to be eliminated. Hence, after the function has gone through the process from x to x' with all this implies, one can simply let x' revert to x; it is no longer the old x, a variable only in name; it has undergone real variation, and the result of that variation remains, even if we again eliminate that variation itself.
Here at last we are able to see clearly what has long been maintained by many mathematicians who were unable to produce rational grounds for it, namely that the differential quotient is the prototype, while the differentials dx and dy are derived: the derivation of the formula itself requires that the two so-called irrational factors should originally constitute one side of the equation and only when one has dy reduced the equation to this, its original form, — = f(x), can one do
dx anything with it, is one rid of the irrational factors, replacing them with their rational expression.
The thing has got such a hold over me that it not only keeps going round in my head all day, but last night I actually had a dream in
81. Marx to Engels. 18 August
which I gave a fellow my studs to differentiate and he made off with the lot.
Your
F. E.
81
MARX TO ENGELS
AT BRIDLINGTON QUAY
[London], 18 August 1881
DEAR FRED,
No doubt you will by now have had the brief note I wrote you day before yesterday from Argenteuil and have gathered from it that I am here without my wife (not with her as you necessarily supposed in your letter).
On hearing the news of Tussy's condition I resolved to leave that very same day if possible; my wife, on the other hand, was to set off today with Helena and travel FIRST CLASS, first to Amiens and spend the night there; then, the next day, to Boulogne and rest there for at least a day, but 2 or 3 days if she wished; thence to Folkestone and, de-pending on circumstances, from there straight on to London or else (and this seemed to me best), by a later train of her own choosing. It was, of course, distressing to part from her, but the REAL SUPPORT FOR HER IS Helen; MY OWN PRESENCE wasn't absolutely necessary. Moreover, my departure compelled her finally to make up her mind to tear herself away from Argenteuil, which after all had got to happen in view of her growing weakness.
So I left Paris on Tuesdayb evening at 7.45 by EXPRESS TRAIN via Calais, and arrived in London at ABOUT 6 O'CLOCK (MORNING).
I at once telegraphed Dr Donkin who was here by 11 o'clock and 18 1881
had a long consultation with Tussy. HER STATE IS ONE OF UTTER NERVOUS DEJECTION. She has been eating next to nothing for weeks, less than Dr Tanner during his experiment. [1 9 3] Donkin says there's no organic trouble, HEART SOUND, LUNGS SOUND, etc.; fundamentally the whole condition is attributable to a PERFECT DERANGEMENT OF ACTION OF STOMACH which has become unaccustomed to food (and she has made matters worse by drinking a great deal of tea: he at once forbade her all tea) and a DANGEROUSLY OVERWROUGHT NERVOUS SYSTEM. Hence SLEEPLESSNESS, NEURAL-
GIC CONVULSIONS, etc. It was a miracle, he said, that a COLLAPSE of this kind hadn't happened before. H e intervened at once and, what is most important of all in this little person's case, brought it home to her that, if she was an obedient patient, there would be no danger, but that if she insisted on having her own way, all would be perdu." (Indeed he is convinced that this is so.) Fortunately she promised to do as he said, and when she makes a promise she keeps it. Later on, he says, she will have to go away in order to distract herself.
Another reason for hastening my departure was the knowledge that Donkin intended to take his HOLIDAYS in the Hebrides from 17 August. H e is staying here until Saturday on Tussy's account and will then leave a remplaçant* for her and my wife.
At the latest meeting of électeurs M r Gambetta learnt something inside the MEETING-HALL ' [7] b that he had learnt only at the hands of the crowd outside the meeting-hall at the first Belleville MEETING. [1 9 4] This second meeting also consisted solely of people who had been invited by his own COMMITTEE, and none of them was admitted except after a twofold triage' by the stewards appointed by the comité. Hence the uproar was all the more significant. O n both occasions Galliffet! was the cri that predominated. Thus Gambetta learnt the lesson that effrontery of the Italian variety is out of place in Paris. H a d Rochefort been able to speak in public and had he thus been enabled to offer himself then and there as a competing candidate, Gambetta would certainly have been defeated. As a result of what happened at the time of the Commune, the Belleville working-class population lost about 20,000 men, most of whom have been replaced by lower middle-class philistines. And even the remaining or newly arrived working-class population of Belleville (both arrondissements) is one of arrié-rés, stick-in-the-muds, whose ideal, if it goes beyond Gambetta, stops at Rochefort; both were returned as deputies there in 1869.
82. Marx to Jenny Longuet. 18 August
As to the state of the parti ouvrier* in Paris, someone who is wholly impartial in this respect, namely Lissagaray, admitted to me that, although only existing en germe,b it alone counts for anything vis-à-vis the bourgeois parties OF ALL NUANCES. Its organisation, though still tenuous and plus ou moins fictive,'[1] is nevertheless sufficiently disciplined for it to be able to put up candidates in every arrondissement—to make its presence felt at MEETINGS and annoy the OFFICIAL SOCIETY PEOPLE. I myself have been following this aspect in Paris papers of every complexion and there's not one that doesn't grind its teeth at that GENERAL NUISANCE—/« parti ouvrier collectiviste.A [1 9 5]
As regards the latest splits among the leaders of the parti ouvrier, it would be best if I told you about this in person later on.
With best wishes to Pumps and Mrs Rendstone.
Your
Moor
82
M A R X T O J E N N Y L O N G U E T
IN ARGENTEUIL
[London,] 18 August 1881
My dear sweet child,
I came to London, i. e.(1) in Maitland Park about 7 o'clock. Tussychen is looking pale and thin, since weeks she eats almost nothing (literally); her nervous system is in a state of utter dejection; hence continuous sleeplessness, trembling of the hands, neuralgic con-vulsions of the face, etc.
I telegraphed at once to Dr Donkin; he put in his presence at 11 o'clock (yesterday morning), had a long consultation with and examination of Tussy. He says that there is no organic disease, heart sound, lungs sound, etc., but only action of stomach quite deranged by her foolish way of living, and nervous system fearfully over-wrought.
He has succeeded to frighten her into obedience to his prescrip-tions, and you know, if she once gives way and promises, she will keep her promise. With all that, her recovery cannot but be slow, and I arrived in the very nick of time. There was the greatest danger in case of any further delay.
Donkin was about — as he had informed me before our departure— to leave this day London for the Hebrides. Because of Tussy, and hoping still to hear something of Maman, he will now stay till the end of the week.
Tell me about the state of Maman, whether she has left you, etc. How is Longuet and Harraa? and yourself and the other dear children b?
How do you go on with your new servant? Apropos. Sarah0 (Engels' Sarah), now for some hours daily the helpmate of Tussy, a girl of the best character and fitness for every thing, told Tussy that she had nothing liked better than to go with you, but Pumps did never tell her about Lizzy's having left you and about your want of a remplaçantd for her. She has also told Tussy and again myself, that she is still ready to come over to you. Only she dares not travel alone to France, but this matters little. I myself can bring her over later on.
And now adio, dear child. The pleasure to be with you and the dear children has given me a more substantial satisfaction than I could have found anywhere else.
My compliments to that excellent Dr Dourlen. With 1000 kisses for the children
Yours,
Old Nick
Tussy sends her best wishes to Wolfc and the whole family.
83. Marx to Engels. 19 August
83
MARX TO ENGELS
AT BRIDLINGTON QUAY
[London,] 19 August 1881, 11.30 p.m.
Mama and Helen* have JUST arrived via Folkestone, after stopping at Boulogne.
What I didn't write and tell you — Longuet and little Harry are very ill. Nothing but misfortune in the family at the moment.
Salut.
K.M.
1913 Translated from the French
84. Marx to Jenny Longuet. 20 August[196]
My Sweetheart,
You may find it difficult to make head or tail of the above scrawl. But in effect, Mama and Helen arrived safely last night.
85. Engels to August Bebel. 25 August
IN LEIPZIG
London, 25 August 1881
Dear Bebel,
I would have replied sooner to your letter of 13.5.[197] But, after the Leipzig 'local', [198] I waited to see whether you might perhaps send me another forwarding address; as you haven't I am using the old one, and also enclosing a letter from Tussy Marx to Mrs Liebknecht, for whom we haven't got an address either.
Bernstein still writes to say he wants to leave the Sozialdemokrat, and now proposes that Kegel be taught the ropes and, once he knows them, appointed in his place. My view is that any change would be for the worse. Bernstein has made good, so greatly exceeding our ex-pectations (for instance, his articles on 'intellects'[184] were, trifles apart, quite excellent and written along exactly the right lines) that it would be hard to find anyone better. Kegel hasn't proved himself, at any rate in this sphere, and, as things stand now, all experimentation should be avoided. I have urgently requested Bernstein to stay,[3] and believe you could do no better than give him similar advice. In his hands the paper is getting better and better, and so, too, is he. He has genuine tact and is quick on the uptake — just the reverse of Kautsky, who is an exceptionally good chap, but a born pedant and hair-splitter in whose hands complex questions are not made simple, but simple ones complex. Like all the rest of us, I am very fond of him as a person and, in longer articles of the review type, he might occasionally do something pretty good, but even with the best will in the world he can't go against the grain, c'est plus fort que lui.b On a newspaper, a doctrinaire of this kind is a real disaster; even Edec was forced to append a critical note to one of his articles in the last Sozialdemokrat. On the other hand, he has written a fly-sheet for the consumption of peasants in Austria" in which he gives proof of something of his mother's[15] gift for short story writing; aside from one or two erudite expressions, it's really good and should be effective.
I wrote to Liebknecht about the speeches in the Landtag, and in reply [199] was told that these had been a matter of'tactics' (but I had pointed out that it was precisely those tactics that prevented us from siding openly with him) and that speeches of a different kind would shortly be made in the Reichstag. True, this has now been done by you [2 0 0]—but what is one to think of Liebknecht's unfortunate and wholly unnecessary remark about the 'Reich Chancellor's honesty' [2 0 1]? It may have been meant ironically, but that's not evident from the report, and what capital the bourgeois press made out of it! I have sent no further reply — it does no good, after all. But Kautsky, too, has told us not only that Liebknecht is writing letters all over the place — e.g. to Austria — saying Marx and I are in complete agreement with him and had sanctioned his 'tactics', but also that people believe him. This really can't go on indefinitely! Again, the Freiheit has got a lot of fun of HartmannV speech on the Accident Bill[202]
which, if the passage they quote is genuine, was certainly a pretty wretched affair.
In France, working-class candidates obtained 20,000 votes in Paris and 40,000 in the provinces [203] and, if their leaders hadn't perpetrated one stupidity after another since setting up the collectivist workers' party, things would have gone even better. But there, too, the masses are better than most of their leaders. For instance, several Parisian candidates lost thousands of votes through using empty revolutionary verbiage (as much part of the business in Paris as patter is of trade) in the provinces as well where it was taken seriously and people asked: 'How can you make a revolution without weapons and organisation?' For the rest, developments in France are taking their regular, normal and very necessary course along peaceful lines, and that is a very good thing just now, for otherwise the provinces could not be swept earnestly into the movement.
I understand very well that your fingers should itch, when everything's going so nicely for us in Germany and you, having your hands tied, cannot reap the fruits of victories that are all but falling into your laps. But this does no harm. Many people in Germany have set too much store by overt propaganda (Viereck, who was completely cast down by the impossibility of making overt propaganda, is just one striking example of this), and too little by the real impetus of historical events. It can do nothing but good if experience acts as a cor-rective in this case. The fact that we cannot reap the fruits of our vic-tories at the moment in no way means that they are lost to us. The gal-vanising of the indifferent, inert masses can only be effected by actual events and even if, in present circumstances, those thus galvanised are left in a state of some considerable bewilderment, the word of deliver-ance will, when the time comes, strike home with all the more force; the effect upon state and bourgeoisie will be all the more drastic when the 600,000 votes [204] are suddenly multiplied threefold, when, besides Saxony, all the big towns and industrial districts fall to us and even rural workers are, for the first time, so situated as to be intellectually accessible to us. To take the masses by storm in this way is of far greater value than to win them over gradually by overt propaganda which, under present circumstances, would in any case quickly be stamped on. As things are now, the Junkers, clergy and bourgeois cannot allow us to cut the ground from under their feet and hence it is better to let them take care of this themselves. For a time will surely come when a different wind will blow. Meanwhile it's you people who must in person go through the mill, it's you who must endure the infamies of the government and the bourgeoisie, and that's no laughing matter. But mind you don't forget any of the dirty tricks played on yourselves and on all our people; the day of retribution is nigh and it must be exploited to the full.
Your
F.E.
Viereck is in Copenhagen. Address poste restante, Copenhagen.
86. Engels to Karl Kautsky. 27 August
Dear Mr Kautsky,
In a day or two you will be getting by post 1. The Labour Standard containing your article," in connection with which there have been sundry comic interludes, 2. a Nature of 18 August, 3. your ms. back.
After I had somewhat revised what was an altogether bungled translation, I sent it to Shipton for a leading article. However, the worthy Shipton got it all wrong and complained to me,(1) but as usual too late. God knows what the man took the bit about 'State interference' in favour of the workers to mean — certainly not what it said, nor that such State interference has long existed in England in the shape of FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS ACTS. ' [7] [7] Still worse: into the words WE DEMAND A GENEVA CONVENTION ' [7] [8] FOR THE WORKING CLASSES he read a demand by you for the convening of a conference of delegates in Geneva to settle the matter!! What can one do with such an oaf? I made this business the occasion to go ahead with my decision and break with The Labour Standard, as that paper is getting worse rather than better.
In Mature you will find a speech made by John Simonb before the international Medical Congress here [2] °[5] in which the bourgeoisie is virtually put on the mat by medical science. J. Simon is MEDICAL OFFICER TO THE PRIVY COUNCIL,[206] virtual head of Britain's entire public health in-spectorate, and the same who is so frequently and approvingly quoted by Marx in Capital, a man — perhaps the last of the old really professional and conscientious officials of the 1840-60 period who, in the performance of his duty, everywhere found that bourgeois interests were the first obstacle he was obliged to combat. Hence, his in-stinctive hatred of the bourgeoisie is as violent as it is explicable. Now he, a doctor, finding his own special field invaded by the Church-led bourgeoisie and their anti-vivisection movement, has turned the tables on them. Instead of preaching dull and colourless sermons like Virchow, he goes into the attack comparing the/««; scientific experi-ments made by doctors on animals with the vast commercial experi-ments made by the bourgeoisie upon the popular masses, thereby placing the question for the first time in its true perspective. An extract from this would make a splendid feuilleton for the Sozialdemokrat. [2] °(2)
The Congress, by the way, declared unanimously that vivisection was essential to science.
Your fly-sheeth shows that you have inherited something of your mother's[15] gift for short story writing. It pleased me more than anything you have written hitherto. A little more polishing might have enabled you to improve one or two expressions and turns of speech, and I would advise you to do this in the case of a second edition. Literary German is a very clumsy idiom for narrative prose and erudite words such as reaction, which mean nothing to the peasant, ought to be avoided. The thing is worthy of being seriously revised by you along these lines. It is the best fly-sheet I have ever seen.
Your Mostian chaps in Austria will have to learn by painful experience; there are no two ways about it. It's a process during which many otherwise good elements come to grief, but if those elements are positively intent on conspiring for the fun of it and with no particular purpose in mind, there's no helping them. Luckily the proletarian movement has an enormous reproductive capacity.
Viereck and wifed had an awful lot of bad weather in Scotland, after which they left for Copenhagen where they have now arrived. They will be remaining there for the time being — address poste restante, Copenhagen.
Our French friends, it seems, are still not satisfied with the many stupidities perpetrated over the past 2 years out of officiousness, cliquism, an itch for oratory, etc. Le Citojen has, it seems, been sold to the Bonapartists who have not yet unceremoniously kicked our men out, but have stopped their pay and otherwise treated them en canail-le,A as though trying to push them into striking and so get rid of them. On top of that, all our chaps have fallen out with one another, as so often happens when things go wrong. One of the most unhappy is Brousse, a thoroughly honest chap but a consummate muddle-head and one who positively insists that the entire movement should devote itself to converting erstwhile anarchist friends. It was he, too, who was originally responsible for the crazy resolution concerning the rejection of candidature.[208] For the rest, the steady, peaceful course of events in France can, in the long run, only prove favourable to us. Not until the provinces have been drawn into the movement, as has been happening since 1871, and emerge, as they are increasingly doing, as a power in the land — along normal legal lines, that is,— can an end be put in the interests of us all to the spasmodic form hitherto assumed by developments in France, derived from coups in Paris and for years retarded by reaction in the provinces. Then, when the time has come for Paris to act, it will not have the provinces against it, but behind it.
Kindest regards from all,
Yours
F. Engels
87. Marx to Karl Kautsky. 1 October[2 0 9]
Dear Mr Kautsky,
I enclose a line to your motherb together with the enclosed note for my daughter.b 21° It would have saved time if you had sent me your mother's Paris address.
I would have asked your mother to spend a few days at my house and at the same time take a look round London with me. My wife's
88. Marx to Minna Kautsky. 1 October
fatal illness, which day by day is drawing closer to its consummation, prevented this. I am her garde malade."
I get the Arbeiterstimme regularly; it edifies but does not surprise me, for I've known my Swiss for decades.
With regard to Mr McGuire, it would appear from your letter that he is in London. How comes it that none of our New York friends gave him letters of recommendation? I have, prima facie,h always been somewhat suspicious of YANKEE socialists and know in particular that the kind that Shipton keeps in touch with are *very crotchety and sectarian. With all that, Mr McGuire may be an excellent party man.*
Yours very sincerely,
Karl Marx
their compliments.
88
MARX TO MINNA KAUTSKY
IN PARIS
London, 1 October 1881 41 Maitland Park Road, N. W.
Dear Madam,
I enclose herewith a note for my daughter.210 Argenteuil is quite close to Paris, about 20 minutes from the Gared St Lazare.
I would have taken the liberty of inviting you to stay at my house in London — and your son will have told you how greatly everyone in the family admires your works— had not my wife's shocking and, I fear, fatal illness put a stop, as it were, to our intercourse with the outside world.
With sincerest wishes for your future prosperity,
Yours very truly,
Karl Marx
' Published in English for the first time
89. Engels to Eduard Bernstein. 25 October[2 1 1]
Dear Mr Bernstein,
I am most grateful to you for having written to me about the Egalité business.[212] Aside from the point at issue, this provides me with an opportunity of letting you know what is Marx's attitude, and hence also my own, towards the French movement. And from this one instance you will be able to gauge our attitude towards other non-German movements, in so far as these are in sympathy with us and we with them.
I am glad that you are not at present in a position to give financial support to the Egalité. Lafargue's letter was another of those coups de tête' which the French, in particular those south of the line Bordeaux-Lyons, now and again find themselves unable to resist. So certain was he of perpetrating a stroke of genius and a blunder rolled into one, that he didn't even tell his wife(1) (who has prevented many such things) about it until after the event. With the exception of Lafargue, who is always in favour of'something being done', n'importe quoi,b we over here were unanimously against Egalité No. 3.d I confidently predicted that, with their 5,000 frs (if as much), they would last out for 32 numbers. If Guesde and Lafargue are intent on acquiring the reputation in Paris of tueurs dejourneaux,(2) we can't stop them, but nor shall we do anything else. If, contrary to all expectation, the paper improves again, and if it gets really good, we shall always be able to see what can be done if it finds itself in a predicament. But it's absolutely essential that these gentlemen should learn at last how to stand on their own feet.
The fact of the matter is that, during the past 12 or 15 months, our French friends, who are trying to set up the parti ouvrier,b have made one blunder after another, and this applies to all of them without exception. The first was committed by Guesde when, for absurdly pur-ist reasons, he prevented Malon from accepting the editorship of the labour department on the Intransigeant at a salary of 12,000 frs. That was when the whole squabble began. This was followed by the unpardonable folly over the Emancipation, when Malon allowed himself to be misled by the false promises of the Lyonnais (the worst working men in France), while Guesde showed himself no less feverishly anxious to have a daily paper à tout prix.c Next came the hair-splitting over the matter of candidature,[208] in which connection it is more than probable that Guesde was guilty of the solecism you reprobate, though it is obvious to me that Malon was seeking to pick a quarrel. Finally, the ingress into, followed by the egress from, the Citoyen français, of Mr Bourbeau, alias Secondigné, an adventurer of the worst repute — his egress being due simply to non-payment of salary, not to any political motive. Next, Guesde, in very mixed company, joined the most recent Citoyen, and Malon and Brousse the miserable Prolétaire which they — or Malon at any rate — had always secretly opposed as a vulgar loutish rag.
The Prolétaire was the organ of the very narrowest clique of the most inveterate scribblers among the Parisian workers. It was axio-matic that access could be had and contributions made only by genuine manual workers. The most bigoted Weitlingian 'scholar'-baiting was the order of the day. The sheet was in consequence quite without substance, while preening itself on being la plus pure expressiond of the Parisian proletariat. Hence, for all its apparent cordiality, it always secretly looked upon other papers, including the 2 Egalités, as mortal enemies and intrigued against them.
When Malon now maintains that the French workers' party is en-deavouring to create an organ for itself in the Prolétaire, and questions the need for a competing Egalité, no one is better aware than Malon, 1. that the two first Egalités also existed alongside the Prolétaire simply because 2. nothing could be made of the Prolétaire, and Malon knows the Prolétaire people just as well as Guesde does, and 3. that the few blockheads on the Prolétaire, together with Malon and Brousse, don't by any means make up the whole of the French workers' party. Hence he knows that all this is a red herring and that it is he who is seeking to create an organ for himself'in the Prolétaire, having made things too hot for himself everywhere else.
But the link that binds Malon and Brousse to this potty little sheet is their common jealousy of Marx. To the majority of French socialists it is an anathema that the nation which confers upon the world the boon of idées françaises * and has a monopoly of ideas — that Paris, centre des lumièresh — must now all of a sudden import its socialist ideas ready-made from a German, Marx. But there's no denying the fact and, what is more, Marx's genius, his almost excessive scientific scru-pulousness and his incredible erudition place him so far above all the rest of us that anyone who ventures to criticise his discoveries is more likely to burn his fingers than anything else. That is something which must be left to a more advanced epoch. If, then, French socialists (i. e. the majority) are obliged, whether they like it or not, to bow to the inevitable, it will not happen without a certain amount of grumbling. It is the Prolétaire people who say, of both Guesde and Lafargue, that they are Marx's mouthpieces or, translated into more familiar idiom, that ils veulent vendre les ouvriers français aux Prussiens et à Bismarcks And in everything M. Malon writes, this grumbling is most plainly audible and, what's more, in most ignoble form: Malon is at pains to find or impute other progenitors (Lassalle, Schäffle and actually De Paepe!) on whom to father Marx's discoveries. Now it is, of course, perfectly in order to disagree with party members, no matter whom, as to their mode of procedure in this or that case, or to dis-pute or differ on a point of theory. But thus to contest the right of a man like Marx to his own achievements is to betray a pettiness such as is found, one might almost say, only in a compositor,— a race of whose self-conceit you will surely have had ample experience. I simply cannot understand how anyone can be envious of genius; it's something so very special that we, who have not got it, know it to be unattainable right from the start; but to be envious of anything like that one must have to be frightfully small-minded. The furtive way Malon goes about it, doesn't improve matters. The fact that it is he who eventually comes out worst, betraying his lack of knowledge and discernment at every turn, is something of which he might at some time be made unpleasantly aware, should it at any time become necessary to scrutinise Malon's goodly Histoire du Socialisme 'depuis les temps les plus reculés'* (!!) and other productions with an eye to their substance.
Brousse is, I think, the most hopelessly muddle-headed man I have ever known. He has dropped the anarchy — i. e. opposition to political activity and voting — out of anarchism, while at the same time retaining all its other catchwords and, more notably, its tactics. Thus, in tedious articles in the Prolétaire directed against Guesde
(but not naming him), he is currently brooding on the insoluble question of how to set up an organisation in such a way as to preclude a dictatorship (Guesde's!!). If this consummate literary and theoretical ignoramus, whose forte, however, is cliquism, is again able to play a part, the blame must be shared by Lafargue, Guesde and Malon.
Lastly Guesde. In matters of theory this man is by far the most lucid thinker amongst the Parisians, and one of the few who takes no exception at all to the German origins of present-day socialism. Hinc Mae lacrimae} Which is why the gentlemen of the Prolétaire are letting it be known that he is merely Marx's mouthpiece, a rumour which, with lugubrious mien, Malon and Brousse carry further afield. Outside that clique no one dreams of such a thing. What there is to it, we shall see anon. That he is domineering may well be true. Every one of us is domineering in the sense that he would like to see his views pre-dominate. If Guesde seeks to do this by direct and Malon by tortuous means, it says much for Guesde's character and for the superiority of Malon's worldly wisdom — especially in dealing with people like the Parisians who obstinately dig their heels in if you try to dictate to them but are only too delighted to let you lead them by the nose. Come to that, whenever I have heard anyone who is worth his salt described as domineering, I have only been able to conclude that there was nothing that could really be said against the man. Guesde's failings are of quite a different kind. First, the Parisian superstition that the word revolution is something one must continually bandy about. And secondly, boundless impatience. He is suffering from a nervous complaint, believes he has not much longer to live and is absolutely determined to see something worthwhile happen before he goes. That, and his morbid excitability, provide the explanation for his exaggerated and sometimes destructive thirst for action.
If, in addition, you take the inability of the French, especially the Parisians, to conceive of differences that are other than personal, and it is obvious enough how it was that these gentry, as soon as they had scored a few small successes, saw themselves already at the goal, sought to divide as yet inexistent spoils, and fell out with each other in the process.
Guesde's pamphlets and articles, by the way, are the best to have appeared in the French language, and he is, moreover, one of the best speakers in Paris. Also, we have always found him forthcoming and reliable.
Now for ourselves. We, i. e. Marx and I, do not even correspond with Guesde. We have only written to him for specific reasons of business. We have no more than a general idea of what Lafargue says in his letters to Guesde, nor have we by any means read everything Guesde writes to Lafargue. Heaven only knows what plans the two of them have exchanged of which we have no inkling. Every now and again Marx, like myself, has transmitted advice to Guesde via Lafargue, but it has hardly ever been taken.
It is true, however, that Guesde came over here when the question arose of drafting a programme for the French workers' party.[68]
The considérants to this was dictated to him by Marx," here in my own room, in the presence of Lafargue and myself: the worker is free only when he is the owner of his instruments of labour — this may assume either individual or collective form — the individual form of ownership is being daily and increasingly superseded by economic developments, hence, all that remains is that of communal ownership, etc.— a masterpiece of cogent reasoning, calculated to explain things to the masses in a few words; I have seldom seen its like and, even in this concise version, found it astonishing. The remaining contents of the programme were then discussed; we added this and took out that, but as for Guesde being Marx's mouthpiece, how little this holds water is evident from the fact that he insisted on including his nonsense about the minimum du salaire* and since not we but the French were responsible for the thing, we eventually gave him his head, although he admitted that, theoretically, it was absurd.
Brousse was in London at the time and would have liked to join us. But Guesde was short of time and anticipated, not incorrectly, that Brousse would engage in tedious arguments about ill-digested anarchist terms; he therefore insisted that Brousse should not attend this meeting. C'était son affaire} But Brousse has never forgiven him for it and it's to that time that his intrigues against Guesde go back.
This programme was subsequently discussed by the French and accepted with a few alterations, including Malon's which were by no means improvements.
Then, too, I wrote 2 articles for the Egalité No. II on Le socialisme de M. Bismarck' and that, so far as I'm aware, is the sum total of our active participation in the French movement.
But what mainly annoys the small-minded carpers who count for nothing, yet like to think themselves all-important, is the fact that Marx, thanks to his theoretical and practical achievements, has attained a position in which he enjoys the complete trust of the best people in all the labour movements in the various countries. At critical junc-tures it is to him they turn for advice, when they generally find that his advice is the best. He occupies that position in Germany, in France, and in Russia, not to speak of the smaller countries. Hence it is not Marx who imposes his opinion, let alone his will, on these people; rather it is these people who come to him of their own accord. And it is precisely on this that Marx's peculiar influence rests, an influence of the utmost importance to the movement. Malon also wished to come here, but to procure a special invitation from Marx through Lafargue, which naturally he didn't get. We were as prepared to deal with him as we are with anybody else de bonne volonté,6 but invite him! Why? Who has ever had an invitation of that kind from us?
Marx's attitude, and hence also my own, towards the French is the same as towards the other national movements. We are constantly in touch with them in so far as it is worth our while and opportunities present themselves, but any attempt to influence people against their will would only do us harm, destroy the old trust that dates from the International. And we have, after all, too much experience in revolu-tionaribus rebus" to do that. Now for two more FACTS.
1. It was Guesde, and with him Lafargue, who, in the Egalité, brought quite undeserved fame to Malon, turned him, as it were, into a legend, and this simply because Guesde thought, in typically French fashion, that as a writer one had to have a working man beside one.
2. And here is something the recipient of the letter has authorised me to tell you: Lissagaray, who was the chairman of the meeting at which Malon arraigned that blackguard Lullier, writes to say that, just as the meeting was supposed to begin, Lullier sent word to Malon requesting a short discussion. Malon departed, didn't return, and finally his Comité went in search of him (Lissagaray was the chairman of the Comité and the meeting) only to find him toping most jovially and on the brink of a peaceable understanding with Lullier, the man he had (rightly) described as the dirtiest of blackguards. Had not Malon had to leave at 9 o'clock for the congress at Zurich,[213] there would have been the risk of a full reconciliation. And he describes himself as a man of politics!
Mesa's address is: J. Mesa, 36 Rue du Bac, Paris. Marx knows nothing about this letter. He has been in bed for the past 12 days with bronchitis and all kinds of complications, but since Sunday(3) — due precautions having been taken — there has no longer been any danger. I've been anxious enough, I can tell you. Now things are looking up and tomorrow, 27 October, we shall, I trust, show the world that we are still there as large as life.[2] ' b Kindest regards to Kautsky.
Your
F. E.
As regards the Egalité, I think it would be best if our people were not to found a new paper for the time being, at any rate until the state of affairs within the party has become a little less obscure. If they do want to start one, however, neither we nor anyone else can stop them, though I don't see how it's going to be managed this time without a row between the Egalité and the Prolétaire. This wouldn't be a major disaster, but it would still be a perhaps unnecessary case of teething trouble.
What kind of operation is Kautsky having? — I trust he won't let himself be cut up into a complete Malthusian!
90. Engels to Johann Philipp Becker. 4 November
Dear Old Man,
Your postcard re the congress[2] ' [5] arrived too late for me to write to you about it. Since then we have also had sundry calamities over here. Mrs Marx has been in bed for months, critically ill, and then Marx went down with bronchitis accompanied by all sorts of complications which, at his time of life and considering the general state of his health, was certainly no laughing matter. Fortunately the worst is over and, so far as Marx is concerned, all danger has been completely eliminated for the time being, though he has to spend the greater part of the day in bed and is greatly weakened.
Herewith money order for 4 pounds sterling = 100 frs 80 c. which is what I have to send you this time. I trust it will come in handy for, delighted though I am to hear that you have been able to make a start at earning a living, it is after all only a start and I'm only sorry that of late I myself have been somewhat short and therefore unable to step into the breach any sooner.
I'm always glad when a so-called international congress passes off, as it did on this occasion, without anyone making an ass of himself in public. You always get such a hotchpotch of people attending these affairs, some of whom have no other object than to look important in public and who for that very reason are capable of any stupidity. Well, this time it went off without any mishap.
Our people in Germany have given a splendid account of themselves at the elections.[216] In 23 or 27 constituencies (I can't find out the exact number) they were in the second ballot, despite the fact that on this occasion all the other parties turned out to the very last man. And this under the stress of the exceptional law [16] and state of siege,[65]
without a press, without meetings, without any means of public agitation and in the certain knowledge that by way of return the livelihood of some thousands within the party would again be sacrificed. It is altogether splendid and the impression it has made throughout Europe, and particularly here in England, has been quite tremendous. How many seats we get is neither here nor there. Enough anyway to say what is necessary in the Reichstag. But the fact that we have gained ground in the larger towns instead of losing it — that is first rate and here's three cheers for our lads in Germany!
Your old friend,
F.E.
91. Engels to Eduard Bernstein. 30 November[2 1 7]
Dear Mr Bernstein,
If any one outside event has contributed to putting Marx more or less to rights again, then it is the elections.[2] ' [6] Never has a proletariat conducted itself so magnificently. In England, after the great defeat of 1848,[218] there was a relapse into apathy and, in the end, resignation to bourgeois exploitation, with the proviso that the TRADES UNIONS fought individual battles for higher wages. In France the proletariat disappeared from the stage after the 2nd December.[219] In Germany, after 3 years of unprecedented persecution and unrelenting pressure, during which any form of public organisation and even communication was a sheer impossibility, our lads have returned, not only in all their former strength, but actually stronger than before.(1) And stronger in one crucial respect, in that the movement's centre of gravity has shifted from the semi-rural districts of Saxony to the large industrial towns.
The bulk of our people in Saxony consist of hand-loom weavers, who are doomed to obsolescence by the power-loom and are only just enabled to keep going by starvation wages and secondary occupa-tions (gardening, toy carving, etc.). These people find themselves in an economically reactionary situation and represent an obsolescent stage of production. So they are not born representatives of revolutionary socialism — not, at any rate, to the same degree as are the workers in large-scale industry. Hence they are not reactionary by nature (as, for instance, the remaining hand-loom weavers eventually became over here — the hard core of the 'CONSERVATIVE WORKING MEN') but cannot be relied upon in the long run. This is also very largely due to their appallingly miserable condition, which means that they have far less power of resistance than townsmen, and also to their disper-sion, which makes them easier to enslave politically than the inhabitants of large towns. The facts reported in the Sozialdemokrat" fill one with admiration for the heroism with which so many of those poor devils continued to stand firm.
But they are not the right kind of nucleus for a great national movement. In certain circumstances — as in 1865-70 — their poverty ren-ders them more readily receptive to socialist views than the inhabitants of large towns. But this same poverty also makes them unreliable. A drowning man clutches at any straw, nor can he wait for a boat to push off from the bank and come to his rescue. The boat is socialist revolution, the straw, protective tariffs and state socialism. It is significant that there, in our old constituencies, it was almost only conservatives who stood any chance against us. And if, on a previous occasion, Kayser could talk such rubbish about protective tariffs [22]° without anyone's venturing any real objection, whose was the blame — as Bebel himself remarked in a letter to me [221] —if not the constituents', and Kayser's in particular?
Now everything's different. Berlin, Hamburg, Breslau, Leipzig, Dresden, Mainz, Offenbach, Barmen, Elberfeld, Solingen, Nuremberg, Frankfurt am Main, Hanau, as well as Chemnitz and the Erz-gebirge districts — that's backing of quite a different order. A class that is revolutionary by reason of its economic situation has come to be the nucleus of the movement. Aside from that, the movement is evenly distributed over the entire industrial area of Germany and, from being restricted to a few local centres, has only now come to be a national movement. And that is what frightens the bourgeois most of all.
As regards those who have been elected, we shall have to hope for the best, although I find it very difficult to do so where some of them are concerned. But it would be a disaster if, this time, Bebel were not to be returned.[222] For there will be many new elements — each armed, no doubt, with his own little schemes — whom Bebel alone, with his unerring tact, would be able to keep in order and prevent from making asses of themselves.
As regards the French, it would now be best simply to let Messrs Malon and Brousse have their head, and show what they can do. But it's unlikely to come to that. One of these days the Egalité will appear; Brousse will, as before, be guardedly libellous, launching attacks in the Prolétaire without naming names, while the others, falling headlong into the snare, will, in their attacks, name names from the outset, whereupon they will be hailed as disturbers of the peace, sectarians, spreaders of dissension and budding dictators. Nothing can be done to stop this. The fellows are completely incapable of waiting until their opponents have got into a mess of their own con-triving, but must perforce take issue with them and thus give them a longer lease of life. Left to their own devices Malon and, more especially, Brousse would scupper themselves (and probably each other) within 6 months. But as things are, it may take longer.
Like almost all such congresses, the Congress of Rheims [223] served to impress the outside world but, seen in the cold light of day, was a swindle. Of the 'federations' represented there, only the Centre, Nord and Est really exist; the others exist only on paper. The Algerian federation had elected the bourgeois Henry Maret {radical deputy) as its delegate!!, which just shows what kind of allies Malon has got. Guesde had wanted only properly organised federations to be represented on the Comité national—but his proposal was turned down. This was misrepresented, i. e. suppressed, in the official account in the Prolétaire.' Thus, half the delegates to the congress and on the Comité national represent nothing at all, or at best only castles in Spain. The haste to declare the Prolétaire, already completely taken over by Malon and Brousse, an official gazette was due solely to the desire to steal a march on the forthcoming Égalité. As usual, none of the resolutions on organisation were determined by expediency but by the opportunist considerations of the parties concerned.
Here is something that will give you an idea of Malon's Marxo-phobia: last spring he asked Lafargue, when the latter was in Paris, to obtain from Marx a foreword to the new edition of Malon's Histoire du Socialisme; needless to say, Lafargue laughed in his face and told him he must have a very poor idea of Marx if he thought him capable of lending himself to such humbug.
G. Howell, luckily not returned as 'labour candidate' for Stafford, is undoubtedly the biggest blackguard of all the politicanti(2) ex-working men here. He was until recently secretary of the TRADES UNIONS PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE (needless to say, a salaried post) and took occasion to cook the books, this being only hushed up with some difficulty; however, he was given the sack.
Within the next few days I shall write to K. K. of Käsburgb about the Polish affair.[224] In the meantime, give him my best regards.
Marx is still very run down, isn't allowed to leave his room or engage in any serious occupation, but he is visibly gaining weight. His wife is growing ever weaker.
With best regards,
Yours,
F.E.
92. Marx to Jenny Longuet. 7 December
92
MARX TO JENNY LONGUET »[40]
IN ARGENTEUIL
London, 7 Décembre 1881
My dear, sweet Jennychen,
You will, assuredly, find it quite natural that I should not feel in the mood for 'writing' at the moment and hence only now be sending you this brief note. Since I haven't yet even left the sick room, there was no gainsaying the doctor's interdict on my attending the funeral. Moreover I resigned myself, for only the day before her death our dear departed(1) had told her NURSE, apropos some neglected formality: 'WE ARE NO SUCH EXTERNAL PEOPLE!'
Schorlemmer came up from Manchester of his own accord. I still have to paint my chest, neck, etc., with iodine and, when regularly repeated, this produces a somewhat tiresome and painful inflammation of the skin. The said operation, which is only being performed to prevent a relapse during convalescence (now complete apart from a slight cough), is therefore doing me sterling service just at this moment. There is only one effective antidote for mental suffering, and that is physical pain. Set the end of the world on the one hand against a man with acute toothache on the other.
It now gives me extraordinary happiness to recall that, despite numerous misgivings, I ventured on the trip to Paris. Not only because of the time itself that she, of undying memory, spent with you and the little onesb — 'barely' marred by the image OF A CERTAIN DOMESTIC BULLY et Mirabeau de la cuisine,' but also the reliving ofthat time during the final phase of her illness. There can be no doubt that during that phase the presence of you and the children could not have distracted her to such good purpose as her mental preoccupation with you all!
Her resting-place is fairly close to that of dear 'Charles'.c
It is a comfort to me that her strength gave out before it was too late. Because of the highly unusual location of the growth — which meant that it was moveable, not static — the really typical and unbearable pain did not set in until the very last days (and even then could still be kept within limits by the injection of morphine which the doctor had intentionally held in reserve for the end, since with protracted use it ceases to have any effect). As Dr Donkin had predicted, the course of the illness assumed the form of a gradual decline, as in the weakness that comes of old age. Even during her last hours, there were no death agonies, a gradual falling asleep, her eyes larger, lovelier, more luminous than ever.
Apropos. Engels — as always the truest of friends — has sent you at my request a copy of the Irish World in which an Irish bishop declares himself against landownership (private). This was one of the last items of NEWS I passed on to your mamma, and she thought you might get it into A FRENCH PAPER so as to horrify the French clericals. At all events it shows that such gentlemen are able to pipe any tune they like.
(In La Justice of 2 December 1881 a certain laddie by the name of B. Gendre" seeks, under the title lLe catholicisme socialiste en Allemagne', to assuage his chauvinism by taking au sérieux,b like Laveleye before him, the fanciful statistics of our friend R. Meyer (in his book Emancipa-tionskampf des 4. Standes). The fact is that, since the German Empire came into being, the so-called Catholic socialists have only once elected a deputy to the Reichstag and that, from the moment of his election, he 'figured' only as a 'member of the Centre'.225 As to the numerical strength of the Catholic labour unions, on the other hand, our R. Meyer accords France a number disproportionately greater even than that he accords Germany.)
Have just received La Justice of 7 Décembre and see that, under the rubric Gazette du jour, there is an obituary, which says inter alia:
' On devine que sori (il s'agit de votre mère) 'mariage avec Karl Marx, fils d'un avocat de Trêves, ne se fit pas sans peine. Il y avait à vaincre bien des préjugés, le plus fort de tous était encore le préjugé de race. On sait que l'illustre socialiste est d'origine Israélite.''
Toute cette histoired is A SIMPLE «TEA-TOW, THERE WAS ,VO préjugés à vaincre' * I suppose, I am not mistaken in crediting Mr Ch. Longuet's inventive genius with this literary* 'enjolivement'/ * The same writer when speaking of the limitation of the working day and the factory acts, mentioned in another number of the Justice — 'Lassalle and Karl Marx', the former having never printed or spoken a syllable on the matter in question. Longuet would greatly oblige me in never mentioning my name in his writings.
The allusion to your Maman's occasional anonymous correspondence (in fact in behalf of Irving) [226] I find indiscreet. At the time she wrote to the Gazette de Francfort (she never wrote to the Journal de Francfort — as the Justice calls it—, a simply reactionary, and philistine paper) the latter (the Gazette) was still on more or less friendly terms with the socialist party.
As to the 'von WestphalenfsJ', they were not of Rhenish, but of* Brunswickian origin. *The father of your mother's fathera was the factotum of the* notorious * Duke of Brunswick* (during the 'seven years' war'). As such he was also overwhelmed with favours on the part of the British government and married a near relative of the Argyll's.0 His papers relative to the war and politics have been published by the Minister v. Westphalen.d On the other hand,* 'par sa mère,'e
* your mother descends from a small Prussian functionaryr and was actually born at Salzwedel in the Mark. All these things need not be known, but knowing nothing of them, one ought not to pretend cor-recting* d'autress 'BIOGRAPHIES'.
* And now, my dear child, send me a long description of the doings of Johnny et Co. I still regret that Henry was not left to us at the time he went on so well. He is a child who wants a whole family's attendance being singly, exclusively concentrated upon him. As it is, with so many other little ones requesting your care, he is rather an impedi-ment.
With many kisses to you and your 'little men'h
Your devoted father,
K. M.
I was rather disagreeably affected by Meissner's communication, that a new third edition of the Capital Vol. I has become necessary. I wanted indeed to apply all my time — as soon as I should feel myself able again — exclusively to the finishing of the 2nd volume.[227] Please write a few words in my name to Reinhardt. I could not find his address. He was an acquaintance of Mama's.*a
93. Marx to Johann Philipp Becker. 10 December[7 2]
Dear Friend,
You may have already learned from the papers of my wife's death (she breathed her last on 2 December). You will find it natural enough that, during the first days following upon this irreplaceable loss, I should have been in no state to write letters; in fact, apart from her brother, Edgar von Westphalen, in Berlin you are the only one whom I have so far informed in person; other friends and acquaintances have been notified by my youngest daughter.b
To the last my wife remained your loyal friend and was rightly in-censed by the party's failure to help you — a man who has, for so many years, been a staunch and heroic standard bearer — and your loyal spousec in your struggle for existence.
I myself am still an invalid, but on the road to recovery; so serious a grip had pleurisy combined with bronchitis gained over me that for a time, i. e. several days, the doctors doubted whether I would pull through.
Farewell, dear friend. Regards to your wife.
K. M.
[On the side reserved for the address]
M.J. Ph. Becker, Chemin des Vollandes, Eaux Vives. Geneve {Switzerland)
94. Marx to Nikolai Danielson. 13 December
My Dear Friend,
On the second of this month, after a long and painful malady, I lost my wife. I had been with her during the autumn months — as her garde-malade," first to the English seaside (Eastbourne), afterwards to Argenteuil (about 20 minutes from Paris) where she and myself enjoyed together the great pleasure to be with our eldest daughter (Madame Longuet) and her 4 little boysb (the eldest about 5 years), all exceedingly attached to their grandparents.
It was a very risky affair, on my part, to undertake this voyage to Paris, considering the enfeebled state of my dear wife. But trusting to my excellent friend, Dr Donkin, I dared it in order to procure her this last satisfaction!
Unfortunately, my own health having been more or less shaky during all this time, I suddenly underwent — after our return to London — an attack of bronchitis complicated by a pleurisy, so that during 3 out of the last 6 weeks of her life, I could not see my wife, although we were in two rooms contiguous to each other.
Till now I was not yet able to leave my house. I was very near 'leaving this bad world'. The doctors want to send me to the south of France or even to Algeria.
The letters of condolence I have received from all sides were so far a great source of consolation for me, as there rang through them (except a single Russian letter) a true ring of sympathy, of true acknowl-edgment and understanding of the rare qualities of my dear wife.
My German editora informs me that a third edition of the Capital has become necessary. This comes at a moment anything but opportune. In the first instance I must first be restored to health, and in the second I want to finish off the 2nd vol.[227] (even if to be published abroad) as soon as possible. I have now the additional interest to have it ready in order to inscribe in it a dedication to my wife.
However that may be, I will arrange with my editor that I shall make for the 3d edition only the fewest possible alterations and additions, but, on the other hand, that he must this time only draw off 1,000 copies, instead of 3,000, as was his want. When these 1,000 copies forming the 3d edition are sold, then I may change the book in the way I should have done at present under different circumstances. Believe me always
Your true friend
A. Williamsb
95. Marx to Friedrich Adolph Sorge. 15 December[2 2 8]
Dear Sorge,
Having heard our news from over here by word of mouth from your son,c you must surely have been prepared to learn of the death of my wife, my unforgettable and beloved partner (on 2 December).
I myself had not recovered sufficiently to pay her my last respects. Indeed, I have so far been confined to the house, but am to go to Ventnor (Isle of Wight) next week.
I am emerging from this last illness doubly handicapped, emo-tionally by the loss of my wife, physically in that I am left with a thickening of the pleura and increased sensitivity of the bronchial tubes.
I shall, alas, have to fritter away a certain amount of time on schemes for restoring my health.
Another edition of the German text of Capital[2] [2 7] has now become necessary. Most inopportune so far as I'm concerned.
Your Henry George is increasingly revealing himself to be a humbug.
I trust Sorge jun. arrived in good shape; give him my regards.
Your
K. Marx
The English have latterly begun to take rather more notice of Capital, etc. For instance, in last October's (or November's, *I am not quite sure *) issue of the Contemporary, there was an article by John Rae on GERMAN SOCIALISM. (1) (Very inadequate, full of mistakes, but -FAIR', as one of my ENGLISH FRIENDS remarked to me day before yesterday.) And why FAIR? * Because John Rae does not suppose that for the forty years I am spreading my pernicious theories I was being instigated by 'baa" motives.* 'I must praise his magnanimity!' *The fairness of making yourself at least sufficiently acquainted with the subject of your criticism seems a thing quite unknown to the penmen of British philistinism.
Before this, in the beginning of June, there was published by a certain Hyndman (who had before intruded himself into my house) a little book: England for All. It pretends to be written as an exposé of the programme of the 'Democratic Federation ' b— a recently formed association of different English and Scotch radical societies, half bourgeois, half prolétaires} The chapters on Labour and Capital are only literal extracts from, or circumlocutions of, the Capital, but the fellow does neither quote the book, nor its author, but to shield himself from exposure remarks at the end of his preface:
'For the ideas and much of the matter contained in chapters II and III, I am indebted to the work of a great thinker and original writer, etc., etc'
Vis-à-vis myself, the fellow wrote stupid letters of excuse, for instance, that 'the English don't like to be taught by foreigners', that 'my name was so much detested, etc' With all that his little book — so far as it pilfers the Capital — makes good propaganda, although the man is a 'weak' vessel, and very far from having even the patience— the first condition of learning anything — of studying a matter thoroughly. All these amiable middle-class writers — if not special-ists— have an itching to make money or name or political capital immediately out of any new thoughts they may have got at by any favourable windfall. Many evenings this fellow has pilfered from me, in order to take me out and to learn in the easiest way.
Lastly, there was published on the 1st December last (I shall send you a copy of it) in the monthly review Modern Thought an article: 'Leaders of Modern Thought: No. XXIII — Karl Marx. By Ernest Belfort Bax.'
Now this is the first English publication ofthat kind which is pervad-ed by a real enthusiasm for the new ideas themselves and boldly stands up against British philistinism.This does not prevent that the biographical notices the author gives of me are mostly wrong, etc. In the exposition of my economic principles and in his translations (i. e. quotations of the Capital) much is wrong and confused, but with all that the appearance of this article, announced in large letters by pla-cards on the walls of West End London, has produced a great sensation. What was most important for me, I received the said number of Modern Thought already on the 30th of November, so that my dear wife had the last days of her life still cheered up. You know the pas-sionate interest she took in all such affairs.*
96. Marx to Jenny Longuet. 17 December
96
MARX TO JENNY LONGUET [72]
IN ARGENTEUIL
London, 17 December 1881
41 Maitland Park Road, N. W.
My Dear Child,
Tussy, SUPPORTED BY Engels, is this moment taking the Christmas hamper for our little ones by CAB to the PARCEL COMPANY. Helen(1) wants me to point out specially that 1 little jacket for Harry, 1 for Eddy,b
and a woollen bonnet for Pa ' are from her; again for the selfsame Pa, a 'little blue frock' from Laura; from myself a SAILOR s SUIT for MY DEAR Johnny. On one of the last days of her life, Möhmchenc laughed so merrily when telling Laura how you and I took Johnny to Paris, and chose a suit for him there in which he looked like a little bourgeois gentilhomme.'
The letters of condolence I get from near and far, and from people of such various nationalities, professions, etc., etc., are, in their appre-ciation of Möhmchen, all of them animated by a spirit of truth and a depth of feeling rarely found in what are as a rule merely conven-tional tributes. I ascribe this to the fact that everything about her was natural and genuine, unforced and without affectation. Hence the impression she made on others was one of vivaciousness and lucidity; even Mrs Hess writes:
'In her, Nature has destroyed its own masterpiece, for never in my life have I met so witty and loving a woman.' [2 2 9]
Liebknecht writes to say that, without her, he would have suc-cumbed to the wretchedness of exile,[230] etc., etc.
How exceptionally healthy she was by nature, for all her delicate constitution, is evident from the fact that, despite being bed-ridden for so long, she did not have a sore spot on her body, much to the astonishment of the doctors; during my recent illness I already had a number of sore places after only two weeks of being confined to bed.
The weather has been very bad since I got over my illness, so I have been under house arrest up till now, but next week, on doctors' orders, I am to go to Ventnor (Isle of Wight) and from there, later on, somewhere further south. Tussy will accompany me.
You will be getting (posted at the same time as this) an article about me in the monthly review Modern Thought.(2) It's the first time an English critic has gone into the matter with such enthusiasm. It arrived in time to cheer Möhmchen up. Where the QUOTATIONS from the German 'text' are too bad (I MEAN too badly DONE INTO ENGLISH), I have got Tussy to write in corrections on such few copies as we are reserv-ing for friends. The mistakes that occur under the heading 'LIFE' are indifferent.
And now, my dear child, the best service you can do me is to keep your chin up! I hope that I shall spend many more happy days with you and worthily fulfil my functions as a GRANDPA.
With a thousand kisses to you and the little ones,
Your loving
OLD NICK
I could have written much more about Vivanti, etc., but believe that Tussy has bagged this for herself.
97. Engels to Karl Kautsky. 18 December
Dear Mr Kautsky,
I got the telegram from you and Bernstein at 3.50 this afternoon and am glad to be able to inform you that Marx has now recovered to the extent that he can be sent — initially — to the south coast of England. He will be going there in the course of this week; as soon as he has grown a little more accustomed to the open air and there is no further fear of a relapse, he will then probably move on to the south of Europe and spend some time there.
I couldn't reply to you by telegram, as it would have meant going to the CENTRAL OFFICE and, as usual, I had Pumps, her husband(1) and Sam Moore (all of whom send you their best wishes) here for a meal and later on, as you can imagine, more people dropped in. There would hardly be any point in telegraphing tomorrow as this letter will doubtless arrive just as soon ( + ).b
About the Poles, something presently[224]; things here have been rather at sixes and sevens of late.
So the Egalité is appearing again. Almost all the articles in No. 1 begin quite splendidly and end up most disappointingly.[231] I haven't seen No. 2 yet.
Best wishes to Bernstein.
Yours
F. Engels
98. Engels to Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis. 29 December
Dear Comrade,
I am glad to be able to inform you that the news according to which Karl Marx is mortally sick is wholly false and fictitious. He has now got over his illness (bronchitis and pleurisy) and, on the advice of his doctors, has today left for Ventnor (the Isle of Wight); they hope that the warm climate and dry air there will rapidly complete his recovery. I will forward your letter to him.
Yours sincerely,
F. Engels
1934 Translated from the Dutch
99
MARX TO ROLAND DANIELS [2 3 2]
IN COLOGNE
99. Marx to Roland Daniels. 31 December
My daughter[3] happened to bring this photogram with her when we left London; she told me of this when my letters to your esteemed motherb and yourself[233] had already been despatched. Hence this is being sent later.
100. Engels to Lev Hartmann. End of December
I have a letter from America for you, but I am instructed to hand it to you personally.
Can you come and receive it?
Your(1)
1882
101
Endnotes
[78] This letter was probably sent by Marx to the London bookseller Philip Stephen King (see Note 33).—55
[79] A fragment of this letter was published in English for the first time in: K. Marx, F. Engels, On Malthus, People's Publishing House, Delhi, 1956.— 56
[80] In his letter of 4 December 1880, Kautsky asked Engels to comment on his book Der Einfluss der Volksvermehrung auf den Fortschritt der Gesellschaft, Vienna, 1880. He sent a copy to Engels in December 1880 through Bernstein. Kautsky wrote that he was coming to London for a few months in order to meet Engels and Marx personally. He arrived in London in March 1881 and met Engels on several occasions.— 56
[81] 8 ' Engels is referring to the first separate German edition of Anti-Diihring, which appeared in Leipzig in 1878 (see present edition, Vol. 25, pp. 196-97).— 56
[83] By 1881, A. E. F. Schäffle had the following works printed: Das gesellschaftliche System der menschlichen Wirtschaft, Tübingen, 1873, in two volumes; Die Quintessenz des Socialismus, Gotha, 1875; Bau und Leben des socialen Körpers, Tübingen, 1875-78, in four volumes; Enzyklopädie der Staatslehre, Tübingen, 1878; Grundsätze der Steuerpolitik, Tübingen, 1880.— 57
[84] On page 169 of his book, Kautsky refers to Leonhard Euler's calculation, according to which the doubling of the Earth's population may theoretically occur in less than 12 years.— 57
[144] The reference is to the Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Reichstags. 4. Legislaturperiode. IV. Session 1881, Vol. I, Berlin, 1881 (see Note 141). The Workers' Accident Insurance Bill was part of Bismarck's so-called labour legislation. It provided for the establishment of an Imperial Accident Insurance Bank. Two-thirds of the insurance expenses were to be incurred by the employers, and one-third, by the workers; those who earned 750 marks a year or less were to have their contributions paid by the Treasury. Bebel subjected the Bill to well-substantiated and sharp criticism and demanded that the workers' accident insurance be wholly financed by the employers. The Bill was passed by the Reichstag on 27 June 1884. Bebel's speeches were also printed by Der Sozialdemokrat, Nos. 16-22, 17 April-29 May 1881. On the state of siege, see Note 65.— 87, 353, 386
[85] A reference to the state of siege declared on 26 September 1848 in Cologne by the Prussian authorities. Its consequence was the suppression of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung until 12 October 1848.— 59
[87] Engels is referring to the first of the two essays entitled 'Die zehn Gebote' carried by Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 5, 30 January 1881, which exposed the Prussian kings' policy of robbing the people, and to Eduard Bernstein's article 'Ein Gedenktag', printed under the pen-name Leo in Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 4, 23 January 1881, on the 88th anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI.— 59
[88] This is Marx's reply to the letter by the young English mathematician Carl Pearson of 9 February 1881. Pearson, who was at that time a supporter of the working-class movement, believed that the situation in England favoured the dissemination of socialist ideas, and asked Marx to entrust him with the translation of Volume One of Capital. The meeting scheduled for 17 February did not take place. The day before, Pearson let Marx know that the appointed time was inconvenient for him. There is another letter from Pearson to Marx, dated 11 April 1881, from which it emerges that Marx and Pearson failed to reach an agreement concerning the translation. Volume One of Capital was translated into English by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling and appeared in print in 1887.— 60
[69] From 1874, Charles Longuet taught French at King's College, and Jenny Longuet, German at the Clement Dun school.— 45, 61
[92] Degeneration. A Chapter in Darwinism (London, 1880), a work by Edwin Ray Lankester, appeared in Russian translation in St Petersburg in 1883 under the title BupoMcàmie. rjiaea un meopiu paseumia (dapeuuu3Ma).— 64
[93] A copy of Janson's book was sent to Marx by Danielson, as is clear from his letter of 24 February (8 March) 1881. The notebooks with excerpts and synopses from Russian books and other sources on Russia filled in by Marx in January-February and May-June 1881 contain excerpts from this book.— 64
[94] The address on the envelope containing this letter was written in Eleanor Marx's hand: N. Danielson, Société du Crédit mutuel, Pont de Kazan, maison LessnikofF, St Petersburg, Russia.— 64
[95] This letter was published in English for the first time in: International Press Correspondence, Berlin, 1931, No. 13, II-III, Special Number.— 65
[96] This refers to Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis' work Karl Marx. Kapitaal en Arbeid (see Note 25). The second edition of the book appeared in 1889.— 65
[98] Mannen van beteekenis in onze dagen (The Outstanding Men of Our Day) — a book series published in Haarlem in 1870-82. The tenth volume of the series, edited by N. C. Balsem, contained a biography of Marx written by Arnold Kerdijk.—
[99] Marx's polemic with Lujo Brentano was set off by the latter's article in the Berlin magazine Concordia, No. 10, 7 March 1872. Brentano, who had the article published anonymously, tried to discredit Marx as a scholar by accusing him of scientific incompetence and deliberate misquotation of the sources he used. When on 1 June 1872 Der Volksstaat carried Marx's reply (see present edition, Vol. 23, pp. 164-67), Concordia (No. 27, 4 July) responded with another article by Brentano (also anonymous) to which Marx replied in Der Volksstaat, No. 63, 7 August 1872 (see present edition, Vol. 23, pp. 190-97). After Marx's death, the campaign of slander launched by Brentano was taken up by the British bourgeois economist Sedley Taylor, who was exposed by Engels in June 1890 in the preface to the fourth German edition of Volume One of Capital and in 1891 in the pamphlet 'In the Case of Brentano versus Marx' (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 95-176). In the section of the pamphlet called 'Documents' Engels reproduced both of Marx's letters to Der Volksstaat.— 65
[10] Despite the Anti-Socialist Law, most of the primary organisations continued to function, using every available legal opportunity to make known the proletariat's feelings and sentiments (e.g., a meeting held at the funeral of Wilhelm Bracke, one of the party leaders). The obstacles put up by the authorities, failed to stop the socialists from carrying out a major campaign to collect funds for the persons deported from Berlin, renewing the contacts lost in the initial confusion, and setting up illegal organisations.— 9
[101] Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in: Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971. The end of the letter is not extant.— 67
[102] Albert Regnard, a French writer and historian, wrote to Marx's daughter Jenny Longuet in connection with his articles on Irish history (they have not been found) because her contributions on Ireland to the French newspaper La Marseil-laise in 1870 (see present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 414-41) had found recognition among the readers.— 67
[103] Scotch Covenanters — the signers and adherents of the National Covenant, a religious and political alliance proclaimed in Scotland in 1638 after the successful uprising of 1637 against Charles I's absolutist government. Rallying round the banner of the Presbyterian (Calvinist) Church against 'Popedom', the signatories of the Covenant fought for Scotland's national autonomy. The Covenanters' war against Charles I brought forward the outbreak of the bourgeois revolution in England.—
[104] Ireland—English Vendée; Vendée — a department in Western France, the centre of a largely peasant-based royalist uprising during the French Revolution. The word Vendée came to denote counter-revolution.— 68
[105] Adventurers — in the 16th and 17th centuries, a name for members of the English commercial and financial bourgeoisie, partners in colonial and merchant companies, profiteers and bankers, who financed risky but potentially very lucrative colonial and other ventures. The name derived from the Merchant Adventurers, a trading company.— 69
[106] The Long Parliament (1640-53) — the English Parliament which was convened by Charles I and became the constituent body of the English Revolution.— 69
[107] The Penal Laws (or Code) were introduced by the English colonialists in Ireland in the late 17th and the first half of the 18th century under the pretext of a need to combat Catholic conspiracies and the enemies of the Anglican Church. To all practical purposes, the laws deprived the Irish, who were mostly Catholic, of all political and civil rights: restricted the right of inheritance, and of acquisition and alienation of property; introduced the practice of confiscating property; established onerous terms of lease for Catholic peasants, which aggravated their bondage to English landlords and land agents; banned Irish national schools; imposed harsh penalties on teachers, Irish Catholic priests, etc. It was not until the late 18th century that the growing national liberation movement in Ireland forced the authorities to abrogate a significant part of the penal laws.— 69
[108] io8 A reference to the subsidies granted to the Irish Catholic College opened in the town of Maynooth in 1795. Pitt's government tried to use the foundation of the College to win over the Catholic clergy and the leading stratum of the Irish bourgeoisie in order to split the Irish national movement.— 69
[109] The Anglo-Irish Union came into force on 1 January 1801 and deprived Ireland of the last remnants of parliamentary autonomy (the Irish Parliament was disbanded and Irish M.P.s received a number of seats in the British Parliament, where they were in the minority).— 69, 286
[13] In March-May 1880, the Reichstag debated the extension of the Anti-Socialist Law (see Note 16) until 1886. At the third reading of the Bill on 4 May, an ultra-'revolutionary' speech was made by the Social-Democratic deputy and former Lassallean Wilhelm Hasselmann, who sided with the Russian terrorists and the French anarchists and openly opposed the Social-Democrats' line. Der Sozialdemokrat (No. 20, 16 May 1880) declared that Hasselmann had placed himself outside the party. By Bebel's 'speech on the persecutions', Engels means the latter's speech in the Reichstag on 6 March, which was carried, in a slightly abridged form, by Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 11, 14 March 1880, under the heading 'Polizei-Orgien in Berlin unter dem Belagerungszustand'.— 10
[19] This letter was published in English for the First time in: Frederick Engels, Paul and Laura Lafargue, Correspondence, Vol. I: 1868-1886, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1959.—12, 27, 351
[20] A reference to the introduction to the French edition of Engels' work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, which appeared in Paris in 1880 in Paul Lafargue's translation under the title Socialisme utopique et socialisme scientifique. Engels produced the pamphlet at Lafargue's request, having rewritten three chapters of Anti-Diihring (Chapter I of the Introduction and chapters I and II of Part III) to form a popular work in its own right. It was first printed by the French socialist magazine La Revue socialiste, Nos. 3, 4 and 5, 1880, and then published, also in 1880, as a pamphlet. The French socialist Benoît Malon embarked on an introduction to it, but his effort was deemed unacceptable, and the introduction as it appeared was written by Marx, who had first consulted Engels (see present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 335-39). In the pamphlet, the introduction carried the signature of Lafargue, whom Marx requested to 'polish the phrases, leaving the gist intact' (see this volume, p. 16).— 12, 332,
[123] '2 3 The Coercion Bills were passed by the British Parliament several times throughout the 19th century in order to suppress the revolutionary and national liberation movement in Ireland. In early 1881, the House of Commons passed two bills introducing exceptional laws in Ireland. They declared a state of emergency there and assigned troops to evict tenants refusing to pay rent.— 75, 84, 172
[124] The Irish Land Bill was debated in Parliament from late 1880, but did not become law until 22 August 1881 (an Act to further amend the law relating to the occupation and ownership of land in Ireland and for other purposes relating thereto). The new Act somewhat restricted the high-handed practices of the English landlords with respect to their tenant farmers. Landlords lost the right to evict tenants provided the latter paid the rent on time, and the amount of rent payable was fixed for 15 years. Although the Land Bill gave the landlords a chance to sell land to the state at a profit, and the fixed rent remained very high, the English landlords opposed the Bill, seeking to maintain their undivided rule.— 75, 84, 86
[126] The reference is to a meeting in the United States at the time of Fritzsche's and Viereck's stay there (see Note 119). A report on the meeting held in Boston on 6 March 1881 was printed by Der Sozialdemokrat, Nos. 13 and 16, 27 March and 17 April 1881.— 77
[43] Marx met John Swinton, then responsible editor of the New York Sun, in Ramsgate in August 1880. Swinton published an account of the interview Marx granted him in The Sun on 6 September 1880 (see Vol. 24, pp. 583-85), and in the collection Current Views and Notes of Forty Days in France and England, New York, 1880.— 23, 40, 77
[127] German democratic emigrants, including members of the German gymnastic clubs, took an active part in the American Civil War of 1861-65 on the side of the North. In 1861, German emigrants residing not far from St Louis joined the Northerners' detachments and prevented Governor D. Jackson from handing the town over to the South. German gymnastic clubs — organisations of German democratic emigrants, including workers, set up in the USA by participants in the 1848-49 revolution. At a congress in Philadelphia on 5 October 1850, the gymnastic clubs joined together to form a Socialist Gymnastic Association (Sozialistischer Turnverein), which maintained contacts with German workers' organisations in America.— 77
[130] On behalf of the board of the German Workers' Educational Society in London (see Note 8) Gottlieb Lemcke invited Engels to the opening ceremony of the Society's new club-house at 49 Tottenham Street, Tottenham Court Road, London, W.—79
[131] This is Engels' reply to Johann Philipp Becker's letter of 30 March 1881.— 80
[29] The reference is to Minna Gorbunova's letter to Engels written in the first half of July 1880. She said she wanted to use in Russia the already available experience, and asked Engels to recommend her books on vocational training in England.— 17
[132] On 30 and 31 March 1881 the German Reichstag debated the report of the Prussian government and the Hamburg Senate on the introduction of the 'local state of siege' in Berlin and Hamburg-Altona (see Note 65).— 80
[133] This letter was published in English for the first time in: The Labour Monthly, London, 1931, Vol. 13, No. 7.—81
[135] In 1874, Henri Rochefort, a French journalist, writer and politician exiled from France after the defeat of the Paris Commune, found himself in Geneva, where he contacted Russian political refugees. The Executive Committee of the Narodnaya Volya (see Note 70) sent him a letter requesting him to assist the Committee's agent Lev Hartmann in organising a propaganda campaign against the tsarist government. Judging by Marx's letter, it was this letter that Rochefort reprinted in his newspaper (the Institute of Marxism-Leninism does not have the copy of Intransigeant at its disposal). The publication caused Russian refugees in Geneva to voice their protest at an open meeting. The statement that they were breaking off all contacts with Rochefort appeared in Die Freiheit on 26 March 1881.— 82
[136] The trial of the Narodnaya Volya (see Note 70) members, notably Andrei Zhelya-bov, Sofia Perovskaya, Nikolai Rysakov, Timofei Mikhailov, Nikolai Kibalchich and Gesya Gelfman, who took part in the assassination of Alexander II on 1 (13) March 1881, was held on 26-29 March (7-10 April) 1881. All of them, except Gelfman, were sentenced on 29 March to death by hanging and executed on 3 (15) April. In Gelfman's case, on account of her pregnancy the sentence was commuted to penal labour for life; she died in prison on 1 February 1882.— 83
[70] A reference to the Executive Committee of the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will) group, a revolutionary Narodnik (Populist) organisation formed in August 1879, when the secret revolutionary society Zemlya i Volya (Land and Freedom) split into Narodnaya Volya and Chorny Peredel (the Black or General Redistribution). The founders of the Narodnaya Volya were professional revolutionaries, advocates of a political campaign against the autocracy.— 44, 83
[137] Over 3,000 people perished and more than 1,000 were injured in the earthquake on the island of Chios on 3-11 April 1881. The town of Chios and the neighbouring villages were almost totally destroyed.— 83
[23] Marx wrote this on the last page of his introduction to the French edition of Engels' pamphlet (see Note 20).—15
[12] The real date of the letter, erroneously indicated by Bebel as 27 March 1880 in his letter to Engels of 22 September 1880, has been ascertained by the event mentioned in it, the Hamburg Reichstag elections on 27 April. In the second Russian edition of Marx's and Engels' Works and in Werke, the letter is dated early May 1880.— 10
[122] This may refer to the resolution passed by the House of Commons on 3 February 1881 introducing a new procedure in the British Parliament. Seeking to combat the obstructionist tactics of the Irish opposition in the House of Commons, which made it impossible to get a coercion bill for Ireland (see Note 123) passed by Parliament, Gladstone proposed a resolution granting the Speaker the right to inter-rupt any M.P. at any point and to expel him from the House.— 75, 84
[11] On behalf of the German Workers' Educational Society in London (see Note 8), H. Meyer invited Engels to its meeting of 27 March 1880, which was to discuss the Society's reorganisation.— 9
[140] MO p a r t 0f this letter was published in English for the first time in: Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971.— 85, 156, 171,
[142] 1 , 2 From mid-November 1880, Wilhelm Liebknecht served six months in the Leipzig prison for the speech he had made at a workers' meeting in Chemnitz.— 86
[143] This probably refers to the Act to Consolidate and Amend the Statute Law of England and Ireland relating to Offences against the Person passed by the British Parliament in 1861. On Most's conviction, see Note 129.— 86
[24] Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Letters on 'Capital', New Park Publications, London, 1983.—16,
[14 5] Engels is alluding to Robert Victor von Puttkamer's speech in the Reichstag on 30 March 1881 in which he accused the Social-Democrats of preparing to stage acts of terrorism and referred to Most's article (see Note 129), where the address 'brothers' was used on repeated occasions.— 88
[146] Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in: Le Monde moderne et la femme d'aujourd'hui, Vol. I, Paris, 1908.— 89
[147] Marx and his family lived not far from Maitland Park, at 41 Maitland Park Road. The street was crossed by Southampton Road, named probably after Lord Southampton.— 89
[148] A reference to one of the terms of the Irish Land Bill of 1881, which became law on 22 August 1881 (see Note 124).— 90
[149] The radical leader Georges Clemenceau criticised the government of J. Ferry when France launched a military expedition against Tunisia in April-May 1881. Clemenceau accused the government of wasting money on military ventures that only weakened France. He explained his accusations by the fact that the conquest of 'uncivilised' nations was undermining the moral prestige of the French.— 92
[150] This note, and Engels' letter to Sorge that follows, were printed in The New-York Herald as part of the interview given by Sorge to the newspaper correspondent at the request of the editors on the occasion of the Russian revolutionary Narodnik Lev Hartmann's arrival in New York from London in June 1881.— 94
[152] The protest meeting against the Coercion Bills for Ireland (see Note 123), which took place in Hyde Park on 5 June 1881, passed a resolution which held the British government responsible for the difficult position of the Irish people, demanded that the eviction of tenants who had failed to pay their rent be stopped, the arrested leaders of the Land League (see Note 139) be released, and that the Secretary of State for Ireland William Forster, who ruthlessly suppressed the national liberation movement there, resign. A long speech at the meeting was made by Charles Stewart Parnell, who censured Forster's activities in Ireland.— 95
[153] This rumour was based on an episode in the Narodnaya Volya organisation's fight against the autocracy. Sofia Perovskaya and Lev Hartmann, posing as husband and wife, took a flat in the house from which a tunnel was dug to the Moscow-Kursk railway line as part of a plan to blow up the tsar's train. The attempt, undertaken on 19 November 1879, was abortive. Perovskaya also helped with the preparations for the assassination of Alexander II, which was carried out on 1 March 1881, and was arrested shortly afterwards. On Perovskaya's execution, see Note 136.— 96
[154] Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in: Justice (London), No. 441, 25 June 1892.—98
[45] On 18 March 1876, the German socialist Ferdinand Lingenau, who had emigrated to the United States, bequeathed about S 7,000, half of his fortune, to the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany. He appointed August Bebcl, Johann Philipp Becker, Wilhelm Bracke, August Geib, Wilhelm Liebknecht and Karl Marx his executors. After Lingenau's death on 4 August 1877 in St Louis (Missouri) they tried to have the money bequeathed to the party transferred to its funds, and gave Sorge power of attorney. Sorge wrote to Marx on 13 August 1880 that he would have to drop the matter if he did not get hold of some money to continue with it. Bismarck ultimately managed to prevent Lingenau's legacy being credited to the Social-Democratic Party's funds.—24, 99
[157] Marx is probably referring to Henry George's article 'The Kearney Agitation in California' carried by The Popular Science Monthly in August 1880. Marx wrote out excerpts from it, which are still extant. The Editors are not in possession of a copy of the Atlantic Monthly.—101
[158] The reference is to the Democratic Federation, an English socialist association set up in June 1881 and headed by Henry Mayers Hyndman. Its programme closely resembled that of the Chartists (see Note 159). At the inaugural conference of the Democratic Federation, each participant received a copy of Hyndman's pamphlet England for All in which (Chapter II — 'Labour' and Chapter III — 'Capital') the author presented whole sections of Volume One of Capital as the programme of the Federation, distorting many of Marx's ideas and making no reference to either the work or its author. In 1884, the Democratic Federation was transformed into the Social Democratic Federation.—102, 162, 251
[160] Between late June and around 20 July 1881, Marx and his ailing wife rested in Eastbourne.—104, 110, 185
[163] In May-August 1881 Engels contributed to the printed organ of the British trade unions The Labour Standard, which appeared in London and was edited by George Shipton. Engels's contributions were printed anonymously nearly every week as leaders (see present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 376-418). All in all, Engels wrote 11 articles. The last one, 'Social Classes — Necessary and Superfluous', appeared in The Labour Standard on 6 August 1881, after which Engels terminated his work for the paper due to the mounting opportunist tendencies among its editors.— 105, 119,
[164] Between 26 July and 16 August 1881, Marx and his wife stayed with their daughter Jenny Longuet in Argenteuil not far from Paris.—107, 115, 185
[165] On 26 July 1881, the French government issued a decree scheduling the elections to the Chamber of Deputies for 21 August, earlier than the date originally fixed.—
[166] p a r t 0f this letter was published in English for the first time in: The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1979.—110, 176,
[67] The Alliance of Socialist Democracy was founded by Mikhail Bakunin in Geneva in October 1868 as an international anarchist organisation. In 1869 the Alliance approached the General Council of the International Working Men's Association with a request to be admitted to the International. The General Council agreed to admit individual sections of the Alliance provided the latter dissolved as an independent organisation. On entering the International, Bakunin did not actually comply with this decision and incorporated the Alliance into it under the guise of a section (called 'the Alliance of Socialist Democracy. Central Section'). Marx, Engels and the General Council fought the Alliance, exposing it as a sect hostile to the working-class movement (for details, see present edition, Vol. 23). The Hague Congress of the International (1872) dealt a severe blow at the anarchists and expelled the Alliance's leaders Mikhail Bakunin and James Guillaume from the International.—43, 181, 190, 333, 341, 370, 408
[168] In the 1870s, the French journalist Victor Tissot protested at the military indem-nity to Germany under the terms of the Versailles Peace of 1871 in his repeatedly reprinted books Voyage au pays des milliards, Les Prussiens en Allemagne. Suite du Voyage au pays des milliards and Voyage aux pays annexés. Suite et fin du Voyage au pays des milliards. Max Simon Nordau attacked Tissot's stand in his books Aus dem wahren Milliardenlande. Pariser Studien und Bilder (1st ed., Leipzig, 1878, 2nd ed., under the title Paris. Studien und Bilder aus dem wahren Milliardenlande, Leipzig, 1881), Paris unter der dritten Republik. Neue Bilder aus dem .wahren Millimdenlande (1st and 2nd editions, Leipzig, 1880 and 1881).—112
[169] The reference is to the 5 milliard francs which France paid to Germany as indem-nity under the terms of the peace treaty after its defeat in its war with Prussia in 1870-71.—112, 454
[17] The British general elections, held between late March and mid-April 1880, produced a victory for the Liberals. They obtained 349 seats in the new Parliament as against 243 received by the Conservatives. Leadership of the Cabinet was assumed by Gladstone, who opposed the policy of rapprochement with Germany.— 11
[64] Marx is probably referring to the outcome of the second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878-80. The staunch resistence of the Afghans forced Britain to abandon its plans to conquer and partition the country, and made it reach a compromise with Khan Abdur Rahman. The period also witnessed an aggravation of the situation in British-annexed Transvaal, where a Boer uprising flared up in mid-December 1880.—
[177] '7 7 Factories and workshops' acts — laws regulating labour conditions in British industry. The emergence and advancement of factory legislation was a consequence of the workers' economic and political struggle against capitalist exploitation. The first laws adopted regulated the children's, adolescents', and women's labour conditions in the textile industry (early 19th century). Step by step, the operation of the factories and workshops' acts was extended to the other industries.— 122, 140
[178] 1 7 8'The Geneva Convention of the Red Cross of 1864 — an international document signed at the conference of 16 European states in Geneva. The Geneva Convention established principles for belligerents' treatment of the wounded and the sick, and granted the right of neutrality to the medical personnel taking care of the wounded men.— 122, 140
[75] The Editors are not in possession of the original of this letter, which is reprinted from Hyndman's book The Record of an Adventurous L.ife.— 49
[180] iBo p a r t 0 r t n; s i e t t e r w a s published in English for the first time in: K. Marx and F. Engels, On Literature and Art. A selection of writings, International General, New York, 1974.— 126
[74] In late November 1879, Achille Loria sent Marx an advance copy of his book La rendita fondiaria e la sua elisione naturale, Milan, 1880.— 48
[183] Below, Engels quotes Hirsch's letter to him of 11 August 1881.— 126
[185] On 11 August 1881, Der Sozialdemokrat (the 'Sozialpolitische Rundschau' column) referred to Jules Vallès as a 'brave and highly esteemed member of the Commune'. The editors mentioned Vallès' letter printed by Le Citoyen de Paris, in which he refused to stand for election to the French Chamber of Deputies (to which he had been nominated by two Paris districts), saying that he preferred to enter parliament not through the door but on the shoulders of the insurgent people.— 127
[187] The New Madrid Federation was formed on 8 July 1872 by the members of La. Emancipation editorial board expelled by the anarchist majority from the Madrid Federation after the newspaper had exposed the activities of the secret Alliance in Spain. An active part in the organisation and work of the New Madrid Federation was taken by Paul Lafargue. The new Madrid Federation fought against the spread of anarchism in Spain, popularised the ideas of scientific socialism, and campaigned for the foundation of an independent proletarian party there. Its printed organ, La Emancipacion, had Engels as one of the contributors.—128
[188] A reference to the International Anarchist Congress, which took place in London on 14-19 July 1881. Engels' report of the congress was quoted verbatim by Bernstein in the 'Sozialpolitische Rundschau' column of Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 35, 25 August 1881.—128
[89] A reference to the publications of official documents by the governments of various countries, which Marx called the Blue Books after the publications of the British Parliament.—61, 471, 472
[91] Marx is referring to the promise of the CJIOSO (Slovo) editors 'to return to the subject of the article' (on Danielson's article, see Note 56) 'in one of the magazine's later issues' (Cjioeo, October 1880, p. 142, editorial note). However, Danielson's article was never mentioned again.— 62
[192] Engels is probably referring to his study of Marx's manuscript on the history of differential calculus, on which Marx worked in 1878-82. Marx did his first research in mathematics back in the 1860s. The extant manuscripts were published for the first time in: K. Marx, Matematicheskiye rukopisi (Mathematical Manuscripts), Moscow, 1968. They will be included in full in MEGA 1/28.—130
[193] The American physician Henry S. Tanner set a peculiar record in New York in 1880: having decided to find out how long the human organism could go without food, he fasted over a month (from 28 June to 7 August).— 133
[194] This refers to the election meeting held in the Paris district of Belleville on 12 August 1881, at which Léon Gambetta outlined his programme.—133
[19 5] Collectivists in the French socialist movement of the 1870s-80s were the followers of Marxism who advocated collectivisation of the means of production and workers' involvement in the political struggle. Their leaders were Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue (hence Guesdists, another and more common name for the French Marxists). Right from its formation in 1879, the Workers' Party was torn apart by fierce ideological dissent, which in 1882 led to its split (see Note 394). On the party programme, see Note 68.—134
[196] Marx added these lines to his wife's letter to their daughter Jenny Longuet of 20 August 1881 (see this volume, pp. 475).—136
[197] August Bebel's letter to Engels of 13 May 1881 has not been found. Engels may be referring to Bebel's letter of 13 June 1881, written in reply to Engels' letter of 28 April.— 137
[198] After a 'local state of siege' (see Note 65) was introduced in Leipzig in June 1881, many active socialists, Bebel and Liebknecht among them, were deported from the city. On 2 July 1881, they left Leipzig and settled down in Borsdorf close by.— 137,
[199] Engels' letter to Liebknecht and the latter's reply have not been found.—138
[200] Q n 4 April 1881, August Bebel criticised in the Reichstag the Workers' Accident Insurance Bill (see also notes 141 and 144).—138
[201] 20 ' Engels is referring to Liebknecht's speech in the Reichstag on 31 May 1881 on the Workers' Accident Insurance Bill (see Note 144): 'The historical process of evolution is infinitely stronger than the most powerful ruler. Prince Bismarck has himself experienced some interesting transformations, he honestly confessed ... that for a while he was bringing up the rear of the Free Traders, then of the Protectionist movement, and now of socialism' (see Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Reichstags. 4. Legislaturperiode. IV. Session 1881, Vol. II, Berlin, 1881, p. 1455).—138
[202] A reference to the speech on the Workers' Accident Insurance Bill (see Note 144) made by the German Social Democrat Georg Wilhelm Hartmann in the Reichstag on 15 June 1881, of which Die Freiheit (No. 26, 25 June 1881) wrote: 'Hartmann crawled on his belly before Bismarck and the Reichstag when the Bill was debated.' Die Freiheit quoted from Hartmann's speech referring to the Frankfurter Leitung; some of the fragments deviate from the text of the official shorthand report (see Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Reichstags. 4. Legislaturperiode. IV. Session 1881, Vol. II, Berlin, 1881, pp. 1757-59). Judging by the shorthand report, Hartmann stated that 'the Social Democrats gladly welcome the Bill submitted by the Imperial Chancellor' and that 'the main principle' of Social-Democracy was 'the aspiration to humanity' and 'the moral feeling of assistance to those in need'.— 138
[203] The reference is to the results of the elections to the French Chamber of Deputies held on 21 August 1881, at which candidates from the French Workers' Party were standing for the first time (see Note 208).—138
[204] At the 1877 elections, the German Social-Democrats received about half a million votes.—139
[206] The Privy Council—a special body under the King of England, first formed in the 13th century, consisting of secretaries of state and other officials, as well as top clergy. For a long time, it had the right to initiate legislation on behalf of the king, bypassing Parliament. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Privy Council lost a great deal of its power. It retained only the right to accept and consider appeals concerning the colonial, ecclesiastical and administrative matters. The Privy Council comprises a number of committees, including those on scientific research, industry, medicine and agriculture. At present, the Privy Council has virtually no say in the administration of the country.— 140
[209] Marx wrote this letter in reply to Kautsky's letter of 28 September 1881, in which he asked Marx to introduce his mother Minna Kautsky, who arrived in Paris m the autumn of 1881, to Marx's daughter Jenny Longuet, who lived in Argenteuil near Paris.—142
[211] 2 ' ' Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in: K. Marx, Selected Works, Vol. II, Moscow-Leningrad, 1936, New York, 1936.—144
[212] In a letter of 14 October 1881 posted on 20 October, Bernstein informed Engels that Lafargue had requested him in early October to hold a collection among his friends to help finance a new edition of L'Egalité. Bernstein asked Engels' advice on the way to treat Lafargue's request, since he felt he was not competent enough to correctly appraise the situation in the French working-class movement.— 144
[68] A reference to the Programme électoral des travailleurs socialistes, the preamble to which was dictated by Marx to Jules Guesde (see present edition, Vol. 24, p. 340). The theoretical part was followed by a minimum programme in-corporating an economic and a political section. The election programme was widely discussed at workers' meetings and adopted as the official programme of the French Workers' Party (see Note 195) at its national congress in Le Havre in November 1880.—43, 148, 342, 386, 447, 474
[213] The International Socialist Congress, originally to be held in Zurich, met in Chur between 2 and 4 October 1881 (see also Note lflO).— 150
[216] At the elections to the German Reichstag on 27 October 1881 the Social Democrats won 312,000 votes and 12 seats.— 152
[6 5] A reference to the so-called local state of siege declared by Bismarck in Berlin and its environs on 28 November 1878 on the strength of Para. 28 of the Anti-Socialist Law (see Note 16) and extended to Hamburg, its environs and the adjacent Prussian ter-ritories (see also Note 198) on 29 October 1880. Under it, meetings could be held only with police permission, distribution of printed matter in public places was pro-hibited, persons considered politically unreliable were deported, and the right to own, carry, import and pass on arms was withdrawn or restricted.— 41, 43, 152
[217] This letter was published in English for the first time in an abridged form in: K. Marx, Selected Works, Vol. II, Moscow-Leningrad, 1936, New York, 1936.—152
[218] 2 ' 8 Engels is referring to the mass demonstration in London, called by the Chartists for 10 April 1848. It was to present a petition to Parliament for the adoption of the People's Charter. The Government prohibited the demonstration, and troops and police were brought to London to prevent it. The Chartist leaders, many of whom vacillated, called off the demonstration and persuaded the masses to disperse. The failure of the demonstration was used by the Government for an attack on the workers and repression of the Chartists.— 152
[219] This refers to Louis Bonaparte's coup d'état on 2 December 1851.—153
[221] This refers to August Bebel's letter to Engels of 18 November 1879.—154
[222] The following Social-Democrats won seats in the Reichstag at the elections of 27 October 1881: Wilhelm Bios, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Dietz, Karl Frohme, Bruno Geiser, Karl Grillenberger, Wilhelm Hasenclever, Max Kayser, Julius Kräcker, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Moritz Rittinghausen, Karl Wilhelm Stolle and Georg Heinrich von Vollmar. August Bebel was not elected in either of the three constituencies where he had been nominated. Neither did he win at the second bal-lot in the Mainz constituency on 15 December.—154, 188, 259, 454
[223] The Rheims Congress of the French Workers' Party took place between 30 October and 6 November 1881. It was attended by 44 delegates. The Congress endorsed the National Committee (Comité national) of the French Workers' Party, set up on Malon's and Brousse's initiative in mid-October 1881 (see Note 250). At the Rheims Congress, Malon and Brousse managed to get a decision passed recognising that the minimum programme (see Note 68) did 'not quite' live up to 'the working people's aspirations'. The Congress resolved to leave the programme in force until a new one had been adopted. This decision was spearheaded against the Marxist groups that united around L'Egalité edited by Jules Guesde.— 154,
[40] Obshchina (Commune) — a pre-capitalist spontaneously evolved social group of agricultural producers, who own or control their means of production.— 22
[226] An allusion to Jenny Marx's reviews of the London theatrical scene in the Frankfurter Leitung, specifically, the acting of Henry Irving: 'Aus der Londoner Theater-welt' (21 November 1875); 'Londoner Saison' (4 April 1876); 'Englische Shakespeare-Studien' (3 January 1877); 'Shakespeares Richard III in Londoner Ly-ceum-Theater' (8 February 1877), and 'Vom Londoner Theater' (25 May 1877). All the reviews appeared anonymously.— 158
[228] Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in: The Socialist Review, III-VIII, London, 1908. It appeared in English in full in The Labour Monthly, No. 3, London, 1933. The first half of the letter is in German, and the second, in English.— 161
[27] The reference is to one of the notes to Chapter V of Volume One of Capital (see present edition, Vol. 35). In it, Marx replaced the term 'price of production' with its synonym, 'average price'.—16
[229] Sibylle Hess' letter to Marx of 11 December 1881.—164
[230] Liebknecht's letter to Marx of 12 December 1881. After the 1848-49 revolution in Germany, Liebknecht was in exile first in Switzerland and then in London. He returned to Prussia in 1862 after an amnesty.—164
[231] The first issue of the third series of L'Egalité appeared on 11 December 1881. Among others, it carried Guesde's programmatic article, Lafargue's article on the successes of the German Social-Democrats at the latest Reichstag elections, Guesde's report of the Rheims Congress, and Engels' speech at Jenny Marx's graveside.— 166
[232] The dedication and the letter to Roland Daniels Jun. were written by Marx on the back of his photograph taken in August 1875. The original is kept in the Karl-Marx-Haus in Trier.— 167
[233] On 31 December 1881, Marx replied to the letters from Amalia and Roland Daniels Jun. of 11 December 1881, in which they offered him their condolences on the death of his wife Jenny on 2 December. Marx's letters have not been found and probably did not reach their addressees.— 167, 180
[1] On 18 August 1879, in Ramsgate, Marx's daughter Jenny Longuet gave birth to a son, Edgar.— 3
[82] Armchair socialists {Kathedersozialisten) — followers of a trend in bourgeois socialism that emerged in Germany in the 1860s-70s. In 1873, its champions (Gustav Schmoller, Adolph Wagner and Lujo Brentano) set up a society called Verein für Sozialpolitik which had its own printed organ, Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik. Armchair socialists supported Bismarck's social policy, advocated class harmony and opposed the workers' revolutionary action.— 56, 65, 416, 449,
[86] On Engels' advice, this poem by Georg Weerth was reprinted by Der Sozialdemokrat on 11 August 1881. The title, 'Ein Sozialistenfresser aus dem Jahre 1848', was to mirror that of Ludwig Börne's well-known lampoon 'Menzel der Franzosen-fresser', Paris, 1837.—59
[38] Marx and his family were on holiday in Ramsgate from early August to 13 September 1880.—21, 24, 35, 46, 60
[8] A reference to the German Workers' Educational Society in London, which was founded in February 1840 by Karl Schapper, Joseph Moll and other leaders of the League of the Just. In 1847 and 1849-50 Marx and Engels took an active part in the Society's work, but on 17 September 1850 they and a number of their followers withdrew from it because the Willich-Schapper sectarian and adventurist faction had temporarily increased its influence in the Society. The subsequent weakening of the sectarians' influence made it possible for Marx and Engels to resume their work in the Educational Society late in 1850. When the International Working Men's Association was set up, the Society, with Friedrich Lessner as one of its leaders, became the German Section of the International in London. This letter deals with the differences of opinion associated with the need to work out a new tactics for the German Social-Democrats after the introduction of the Anti-Socialist Law in October 1878 (see Note 16).—7, 72, 252, 333, 334, 356
[9] At the Reichstag elections on 30 July 1878, shortly before the promulgation of the Anti-Socialist Law (see Note 16), the Social-Democrats won 437,158 votes.— 8
[90] Marx is referring to the manuscript of Paul Lafargue's essay the Russian translation of which '/JßHaceHie no3eMeAi>HOH COÔCTBCHHOCTH BO OpaHmV ('The Movement of Land Property in France') was published in the monthly Ustoi (Principles), Nos. 3-4 and 6, 1882.— 61
[56] This refers to the article 'OnepKn Haiuero nope<J>opMeHHaro o6ujecTBenHaro xo3HHCTBa' ('Sketches of Our Post-Reform Social Economy') Danielson published in the Slovo in October 1880 under the pen-name Nikolai —on.— 31, 61
[7] Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Correspondence. 1846-1895. A Selection with Commentary and Notes, Martin Lawrence Ltd., London [1934].—7, 60, 320, 349, 394, 403, 410,
[2] The reference is to two trade unionists, Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt, who were elected to the House of Commons in 1874.— 3
[4] A reference to Bismarck's visit to Austria in September 1879 and the Austro-German alliance concluded in Vienna on 7 October of that year. Art. 1 of the treaty stipulated that, should one of the contracting parties be attacked by Russia, the other was obliged to come to its aid. Art. 2 stated that, should one of the signa-tories be attacked by any other country, the other was to maintain benevolent neutrality. Should the aggressor have Russian support, Art. 1 was to apply. Concluded for a term of five years and later repeatedly extended, this treaty was the first in a series of agreements that ultimately led to the establishment of a military bloc headed by Germany and to a division of the European countries into two hostile camps that subsequently clashed in the First World War.— 4
[5] The originals of this letter and that of 13 December 1879 (present edition, Vol. 45, p. 427) are kept in the family archive of Lord Walstone, who presented photocopies of them to the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in 1968. The addressee was Lord Walstone's father, the English archaeologist Charles Walstone, who held his father's surname, Waldstein, at the time.— 5
[22] On the reasons for Marx's and Engels' refusal in January 1861 to collaborate with Lassalle in the publication of a newspaper, see present edition, Vol. 41, pp. 252, 261 and 281-82.—15
[128] A reference to the assassination of Emperor Alexander II of Russia on 1 (13) March 1881 by decision of the Executive Committee of Narodnaya Volya. On this organisation, see Note 70.— 78, 127
[129] Most's article 'Endlich!' on the assassination of Alexander II was carried by Die Freiheit, No. 12, 19 March 1881. On 30 March, Most was arrested in London, tried on 4 May and sentenced in June to 16 months' imprisonment and forced labour for the written defence, in a foreign language, of a political assassination.— 78, 80, 81,
[3] Bimetallism, the practice of using both gold and silver as a monetary standard by specifying that both constitute legal tender at a fixed ratio to each other. This practice existed in a number of countries in the 18th and 19th centuries but did not meet the needs of developed commodity economy and went against the very nature of money as the only commodity which was to be a universal equivalent. Liebknecht quoted from this letter by Engels in his speech in the Saxon Landtag on 16 January 1880, opposing a return to bimetallism. Engels analysed the issue of bimetallism in some detail also in his letter to Eduard Bernstein of 10 May 1882 (see this volume, pp. 256-58).—3, 256
[6] This letter is printed according to a handwritten copy made by an unknown person. Failing to decipher Marx's handwriting, he put 'Kranz?' in square brackets after the addressee's name, Kraus. Also in square brackets and with a question mark is the word 'proceeded'. The copy contains further notes made by the same person.— 6
[16] The Exceptional Law against the Socialists (Gesetz gegen die gemeingefährlichen Bestrebungen der Sozialdemokratie — the Law against the Harmful and Dangerous Aspirations of Social-Democracy) was introduced by the Bismarck government, supported by the majority in the Reichstag, on 21 October 1878 to counter the socialist and workers' movement. Better known as the Anti-Socialist Law, it made the Social-Democratic Party of Germany illegal, banned all party and mass workers' organisations and suppressed the socialist and workers' press. Socialist literature was confiscated and the Social-Democrats subjected to reprisals. However, during its operation, the Social-Democratic Party assisted by Marx and Engels up-rooted both opportunist and 'ultra-Left' elements and substantially strengthened its influence among the people. Under pressure from the mass workers' movement, the Anti-Socialist Law was abrogated on 1 October 1890. For Engels' assessment of the Law, see his article 'Bismarck and the German Working Men's Party' (present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 407-09).—11, 38, 40, 50, 127, 152, 153', 192, 209, 279, 281, 332, 349, 390, 395, 414, 430, 448
[72] This letter was published in English for the first time in: The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1979.—48, 107,
[175] The fourteenth annual British trades union congress took place in London on 12-17 September 1881.—119, 121, 123
[174] The reference is to Karl Kautsky's article 'International Labour Laws' published anonymously in The Labour Standard, No. 15, 13 August 1881.— 119, 120, 122, 126
[184] Engels is referring to two of Bernstein's articles with the same title, 'Es fehlt uns an Intelligenzen', published under the pen-name Leo in Der Sozialdemokrat, Nos. 31 and 33, 28 July and 11 August 1881.—127, 137
[15] The National Liberals (die Nationalliberale Partei) was the party of the German, mostly Prussian, bourgeoisie, which emerged in the autumn of 1866 as a result of the split in the Party of Progress (see Note 256). The policy of National Liberals showed that a considerable section of the liberal bourgeoisie renounced claims to broader political rights and capitulated before Bismarck's Junker government. After the unification of Germany, the National Liberal Party acquired its final shape as a party of the big bourgeoisie, notably the industrial tycoons.— 11
[208] In October 1880, Malon, Guesde and Brousse started the newspaper L'Emancipation in Lyons and, on Brousse's suggestion, made a written commitment not to stand for election. In November 1880, L'Emancipation ceased to exist, and the editors' commitment was no longer valid. This enabled Guesde to stand at the elections of 21 August 1881 to the French Chamber of Deputies from the town of Roubaix, for which Malon and Brousse fiercely attacked him.—142, 145, 361
[224] At the International Socialist Congress held in Chur (see Note 100), serious differences surfaced between the Polish socialist groups. Kautsky, who wrote to Engels about the matter on 8 November 1881, asked for his opinion concerning the stand Der Sozialdemokrat ought to take in this affair. Engels set forth his views in a letter to Kautsky of 7 February 1882 (see this volume, pp. 191-95).— 155, 166, 190, 191,
[227] The third German edition of Volume One of Capital, which appeared in print after Marx's death (in 1883), was edited by Engels. By the 2nd volume Marx means here the part of his work that later made up the second and the third volumes of Capital.— 158, 161, 162, 434, 465