Letter to the Editors of the Gazzettino Rosa

Author(s) Frederick Engels
Written 7 February 1871


First published in Gazzettino Rosa, No. 50, February 20, 1872 and in II Libero Pensiero, February 22, 1872
Printed according to the Gazzettino Rosa
Translated from the Italian
Source : Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 23
Collection(s): Gazzettino Rosa

Engels wrote this letter after a campaign of slander against the International in the newspaper II Libero Pensiero, edited by Luigi Stefanoni.

To undermine the influence of the International Working Men's Association, Stefanoni presented himself in November 1871 as the initiator of the "Universal Society of Rationalists", allegedly destined to put into practice the principles of the International but without "its negative features". He put forward a Utopian idea of redeeming land from landowners and setting up agricultural colonies as a universal means to solve the social question. His programme was rejected by the Italian workers and his scheme for founding the Society of Rationalists was never implemented.

Engels nicknamed the rationalists "prebendaries" (from the Latin word "praebenda"—possessions of the Catholic Church accumulated through gifts and legacies), alluding to their plan of solving the social problem by creating a land fund out of donations.

This letter was published in English for the first time in The General Council of the First International. 1871-1872. Minutes, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1968.

INTERNATIONAL WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION

256, High Holborn, London.—W. C.

London, February 7

TO THE CITIZEN EDITOR OF THE GAZZETTINO ROSA

Citizen,

For several months now, the Libero Pensiero of Florence has not ceased to attack the International, as if the great workers' association could get jealous of the society of rationalist prebendaries promoted by this newspaper. Up till now it seemed superfluous for me to reply to these attacks, but when the aforementioned publication sinks to the level of spreading rumours of a Bismarckian sort in Italy against the International and its General Council, it is time to protest. I have therefore sent the following letter to the Libero Pensiero, and I should like you to publish it in the Gazzettino Rosa as well.

Fraternal greetings,

F. Engels,

General Council Secretary for Italy

TO MR. LUIGI STEFANONI, EDITOR OF IL LIBERO PENSIERO

Dear Sir,

Issue number 1 of the Libero Pensiero, January 4, 1872, contains an article, "L'Internazionale ed il Consiglio supremo di Londra", to which I must submit a brief reply.

It says in the article:

"We should like to ask what mandate Mr. Engels has to represent Italy."

I do not claim and have never claimed to represent Italy. I have the honour of being, in the General Council, the secretary with special responsibility for corresponding with Italy, a capacity in which it is my duty to represent the Council, not Italy.

The article then gives translations of several items of correspondence from London taken from the Neuer Social-Demokrat of Berlin, items which are full of the most infamous slanders against the General Council and the whole International. To these I shall not reply. One does not engage in dispute with that newspaper. It is well known throughout Germany what the Neuer Social-Demokrat is: a newspaper funded by Bismarck, the organ of Prussian governmental socialism. If you require more detailed information about this paper, write to your correspondent Liebknecht in Leipzig and you will get all you want. Allow me merely to add that if you are keen to have such slanders against the International you will find them in abundance in the Figaro, Gaulois, Petit-Journal and the other newspapers of the Parisian demi-monde, in the London Standard, the Journal de Genève, the Vienna Tages-Presse and the Moscow Gazette[1] authorities which will relieve you of having to quote this poor devil Schneider.

In an editorial note it says:

"Perhaps this alludes to the communist secret society set up by Karl Marx in Cologne in 1850; when it was uncovered, as usual, many poor devils fell into the clutches of the Prussian police, while the principal organisers fled in safety to London."

Whoever told you this was lying. I was a member of this society.[2] It was founded neither by Marx, nor in 1850, nor in Cologne. It was already in existence at least ten years previously. Marx and I had already been in England for a year, exiles driven out by the Prussian government, when the Cologne section, through its own imprudence, fell into police hands. If you want further information you can ask Mr. Becker, mayor of Dortmund and member of the Prussian and German parliaments; Klein, doctor and municipal councillor in Cologne; Bürgers, editor of the Wiesbadener Zeitung; Lessner, tailor and member of the General Council of the International in London. All of these were sentenced in this trial against the communists.[3]

I beg you to publish this correction in your next issue.

Yours sincerely,

Frederick Engels

  1. ↑ MocKoeaiia ebdoMocmu.—Ed
  2. ↑ A reference to the Communist League, the first international communist organisation of the proletariat, formed under the leadership of Marx and Engels in London early in June 1847, as a result of the reorganisation of the League of the Just (a secret association of workers and artisans that appeared in the 1830s and had communities in Germany, France, Switzerland and England). The programme and organisational principles of the Communist League were drawn up widi the direct participation of Marx and Engels. The League's members took an active part in the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Germany in 1848-49. In the summer of 1850, disagreements arose in the League between the supporters of Marx and Engels and the Willich-Schapper sectarian group which tried to impose on the League the adventurist tactic of embarking on revolution immediately, irrespective of the actual situation. The discord resulted in a split within the League. Owing to police persecution and arrests of League members in May 1851, the activities of the Communist League as an organisation in Germany practically ceased. On November 17, 1852, on a motion by Marx, the London District announced the dissolution of the League.
  3. ↑ The Cologne Communist trial (October 4-November 12, 1852) was organised and stage-managed by the Prussian government. The defendants were members of the Communist League, arrested in the spring of 1851 on charges of "treasonable plotting". The forged documents and false evidence presented by the police authorities were not only designed to secure the conviction of the defendants but also to compromise the proletarian organisation as a whole. Seven of the defendants were sentenced to imprisonment in a fortress for terms ranging from three to six years. The dishonest tactics of the Prussian police state to combat the international working-class movement were exposed by Engels in his article "The Late Trial in Cologne" and, in greater detail, by Marx in his pamphlet Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne (see present edition, Vol. 11).