Letter to Julius Campe, October 14, 1845

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 14 October 1845


Source: Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38, p. 34;
First published: in Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXV, Moscow, 1934

To Julius Campe in Brussels

The first English translation of this letter was published in Letters of the Young Engels. 1838-1845, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976.

Brussels, 14 October 1845 7, rue de l'Alliance

Dear Sir,

From your esteemed letter[1] I perceive that there is some misapprehension on your part as regards the line we would take in the work we proposed to you for publication.[2] We have no intention of defending protective tariffs any more than free trade, but rather of criticising both systems from our own standpoint. Ours is the communist standpoint, which we have advocated in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, the Holy Family, the Rheinische Jahrbücher, etc., and from which, too, my book The Condition of the Working-Class in England is written. As you will appreciate, this altogether precludes the submission of our work to the censor, and hence we cannot agree to the same. Should you, however, desist from this and be otherwise inclined to accept the work, we would beg you to be so good as to let us know before we enter into other commitments.

Yours very truly

F. Engels

  1. ↑ Julius Campe's letter to Engels mentioned here has not been found.
  2. ↑ The available sources do not allow us to establish what publication is meant here. It can only be supposed that it was connected with the intention of Marx and Engels to write a critical work against List. Many years later Engels recalled in his letter to Hermann Schlüter of 29 January 1891 that in the forties or some years later they simulated a dispute in which Marx defended free trade and Engels protective tariffs. This recollection may have been a late reflection of that intention.