Letter to Étienne Cabet, April 5, 1848

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Karl Marx
Written 5 April 1848


Source: Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38, p. 169;
First published: in English in the journal Science and Society, 1940.
Collection(s): Science & Society

To Étienne Cabet in Paris

Paris, 5 April 1848

Dear Citizen,

During the last two days of our stay in Paris we presented ourselves at your house several times. But we always found your offices [of Le Populaire] so crowded with people that our all too limited time prevented us from taking our turn and waiting. We therefore regret that we have to leave without having had one last interview with you.

Mr Ewerbeck, who will be delivering this, will take it upon himself to inform us of the address we should use when writing to you.[1]

We do not doubt for one instant that we shall shortly be able to give you favourable news of the progress of the communist movement in Germany.

Meanwhile, please accept our respectful greetings.

Y ours very sincerely
K. Marx, F. Engels

  1. ↑ About 6 April 1848 Marx and Engels returned to Germany from emigration to take part in the revolution that was developing there. On their way to Cologne, the centre of the Rhine Province — the most economically developed region in Germany — which they chose as the place for the planned publication of a revolutionary newspaper, they made a stop at Mainz on 8 April. Here they discussed with the local communists (Karl Wallau who had arrived from Paris earlier, Adolf Cluss and others) the plan of actions to prepare for the creation of a mass party of the German proletariat, with the Communist League as its nucleus. Marx and Engels arrived at Cologne about 11 April.
    There is no information about the letters which Marx and Engels promised to write to Cabet from Germany.