Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, June 27, 1850

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 27 June 1850


First published: in Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXV, Moscow, 1934.
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38, pp. 238-239

MARX TO JOSEPH WEYDEMEYER IN FRANKFURT AM MAIN[1]


London, 27 June [1850]
64 Dean Street, Soho Square

Dear Weydemeyer,

Send the money to Naut. The fellow's not a bad old jackass. I shall explain the matter to you some other time. Pray do not be offended by my wife's agitated letters.[2] She is nursing her child,[3] and our situation here is so extraordinarily wretched that an outburst of impatience is excusable.

Lüning's critique—I have seen 1 and 2[4] —shows that he doesn't understand what he is trying to criticise. Maybe I shall explain a few things to him in our Revue.[5]

This is an important day. There is a possibility that today the Ministry may fall.[6] Then a truly revolutionary movement will get under way here. We ourselves may be the Tories' first victims. Then our long-intended expulsion might actually come about.

Your
K. Marx

  1. ↑ This letter was first published in English with abridgments in: K. Marx and F. Engels, Letters to Americans. 1848-1895, New York, 1953. However, a slip of the pen on the part of the author, substituting July for June, was not taken into account and in the present edition it has been corrected on the basis of Weydemeyer's reply to Marx of 3 July 1850.
  2. ↑ See this volume, pp. 555, 559.
  3. ↑ Heinrich Guido
  4. ↑ O. Lüning's review of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue in the Neue Deutsche Zeitung, Nos. 148 and 149, 22 and 23 June 1850. The end of the review was published in Nos. 150 and 151, 25 and 26 June.
  5. ↑ Marx's intention to reply to Lüning's criticism remained unfulfilled. However, in a statement to the editor of the Neue Deutsche Zeitung (published on 4 July 1850) Marx and Engels protested against Lüning's attempts to distort their views on the dictatorship of the proletariat and the role of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung as the mouthpiece of the working class.
  6. ↑ The foreign policy of the Russell cabinet was debated in the House of Commons on 24-27 June 1850. Despite strong Tory opposition the Whig Government was given a vote of confidence by majority of 46.