Letter to Friedrich Engels, May 28, 1851

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 28 May 1851


First published slightly abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. I, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. I, 1929
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38, pp. 366-368

TO ENGELS IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 28 May 1851

Dear Engels,

The reasons for Daniels' failure to reply (I shall, by the way, send him another letter tomorrow if I get none today),[1] are most disturbing. Nothjung has been arrested in Leipzig, at the station. I don't know, of course, what papers were found on him. Thereupon (or simultaneously, I don't know) Becker and Roser were arrested in Cologne and their houses searched, as was that of Burgers, too. The latter is in Berlin with a warrant out against him; no doubt he will soon turn up here.[2]

The measures adopted by the police against the emissaries, etc., can be attributed purely and simply to the wretched braying of the jackasses in London. These gasbags know that they are neither conspiring, nor pursuing any real goal, and that they have no organisation behind them in Germany. All they want is to seem dangerous and set the treadmill of the press turning. In this way the canaille hamper and imperil the real movement and put the police on the qui vive. Has there ever been a party like this, whose avowed aim is simply to show off?

Freiligrath instinctively chose the right moment to leave and thereby avoid capture. No sooner was he here than snares were set for him by all the emigre cliques, philanthropic Kinkel-lovers, aestheticising Howitts, etc., in order to lure him into their coterie. To all these attempts he replied very rudely, saying that he belonged to the Rheinische Zeitung,[3] had nothing to do with cosmopolitan offal, and would consort only with 'Dr Marx and his most intimate friends'.

Presently I shall have something to tell you about the Kosmos.
But first one more mot[4] about the situation in France.

I am becoming de plus en plus[5] convinced that, in spite of everything, Napoleon's chances are, for the present, better than those of any other candidate. They will en principe decide on a revision but en pratique[6] will confine themselves to a revision of the Article relating to the President.[7] Should the minority kick up too much fuss, a simple majority [resolution][8] will be taken whereby the National Assembly will be dissolved and a new one convoked, which will then function under auspiciis Faucheri[9] of the telegraph and of the law of 31 May.[10] The bourgeoisie would prefer Cavaignac; but the threat to the status quo of a radical change of choice seems to them too grave. Already a great many manufacturers have compelled their HANDS to sign petitions for a revision of the Constitution and the prolongation of presidential rule. En tout cas[11] the thing must soon be decided and nous verrons![12]

The Kosmos, then, has made a prize ass of itself.

Under the heading Kinkel's Lectures, and signed 'A Worker', it carries the following:

'While looking once at Dobler's misty images I was surprised by the whimsical question of whether it was possible to produce such chaotic creations in "words", whether it was possible to utter misty images. It is no doubt unpleasant for the critic to have to confess, at the very outset, that in this case his critical autonomy will vibrate against the galvanised nerves of a stimulating reminiscence, as the fading sound of a dying note echoes in the strings. Nevertheless I would prefer to renounce any attempt at a bewigged and boring analysis of pedantic insensitivity than to deny that tone which the charming muse of the German refugee caused to resonate in my receptive imagination. This keynote of Kinkel's paintings, this sounding board of his chords is the sonorous, creative, formative and gradually shaping "word"- modern thought. The human "judgment" of this thought leads truth out of the chaos of mendacious traditions, and places it, as the inviolable property of mankind, under the protection of spiritually active, logical minorities who will lead mankind from a credulous ignorance to a state of more sceptical science. It is the task of the science of doubt to profane the mysticism of pious deceit, to undermine the absolutism of a stupefied tradition; through scepticism, that ceaselessly labouring guillotine of philosophy, to decapitate accepted authority and to lead the nations out of the misty regions of theocracy by means of revolution into the luscious meadows of democracy' (of nonsense). 'The sustained, unflagging search in the annals of mankind, and the understanding of man himself, is the great task of all revolutionaries and this had been understood by that proscribed poet-rebel who on three recent Monday evenings uttered his "DISSOLVING VIEWS" before a bourgeois audience in the course of his lectures on the history of the modern theatre.'

'A Worker'[13]

If that's not champion drivel,
Then I really don't know what is.[14]

Vale faveque[15]


Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ Marx's letters to Daniels mentioned here have not been found.
  2. ↑ Peter Nothjung was arrested in Leipzig on 10 May 1851 during his tour of Northern Germany as emissary of the Cologne Central Authority of the Communist League. Marx was informed of this by Hermann Haupt in a letter from Hamburg of 22 May 1851. Haupt for his part referred to information sent to him by Heinrich Burgers in Berlin. The police discovered on Nothjung a mandate of the Central Authority, the March 1850 Address of the Central Authority and the new Rules of the Communist League. In the same letter Haupt wrote about the arrest of Hermann Becker and Peter Röser in Cologne on 19 May 1851. Documents compromising Heinrich Bürgers were found on them. At the time Bürgers was away, having gone to Hamburg and then on to Berlin. The police did not find anything incriminating when they searched his apartment in Cologne on 19 May. Bürgers was arrested in Dresden on 23 May 1851 according to a report in the Kölnische Zeitung on 27 May, to which Freiligrath drew Marx's attention. Arrests of the League's Central Authority members in Germany were followed by police repression against participants in the working-class movement.
  3. ↑ Neue Rheinische Zeitung
  4. ↑ word
  5. ↑ more and more
  6. ↑ in principle, in practice
  7. ↑ In 1851 Bonapartist circles strongly advocated a revision of the Constitution of the French Republic adopted on 4 November 1848, in particular the articles defining the presidential powers. Under that Constitution the president of the Republic was elected for four years and could not be reelected till four years after his term of office had expired.
  8. ↑ an ink blot in the original
  9. ↑ the auspices of Faucher
  10. ↑ The reference is to the false information which Minister of the Interior Léon Faucher sent by telegraph to the prefects during the elections to the Legislative Assembly in May 1849. In it he intimidated the voters with a possible repetition of the events of June 1848 to make them vote for the Right-wing candidates. The law of 31 May 1850, adopted by the French Legislative Assembly, abolished universal suffrage. It introduced a veiled property qualification of three years' permanent residence in the given locality and payment of personal tax.
  11. ↑ In any case
  12. ↑ we shall see
  13. ↑ In The Great Men of the Exile, in which this article from Der Kosmos was quoted, Marx and Engels note that it was written by Johanna Mockel, Kinkel's wife.
  14. ↑ Here Marx paraphrases a proverb current in Westphalia (see this volume, p. 249).
  15. ↑ Good-bye and farewell.