Letter to Friedrich Engels, September 13, 1851

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 13 September 1851


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. I, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English in abridged in Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975).
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38, pp. 455

To Engels in Manchester


[London,] Saturday, 13 September 1851
28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Engels,

Did you in fact—while your brother[1] was there—get a letter from me? I ask, because you don't mention it, not on account of its contents. It contained only gossip, although even that might as well be kept on record. But I would rather it didn't fall into the hands of strangers.

Your various letters, including the one with the five pounds, have arrived here safely.

Kinkel is now making his tour of northern England. Hasn't he been to Manchester yet?

Little has happened here since the matter referred to in my last letter. A week ago yesterday (Friday), Count Reichenbach[2] announced his resignation from the general refugee society. You, too, Brutus? Sigel, etc., who had still not definitively resigned, have now done so. Willich, however, is conducting a campaign against the 'Lumpenproletariat' among the refugees. As yet I've had no report of the sitting held yesterday evening.

There has also been a split in the Italian committee[3] . An appreciable minority has resigned. Mazzini gives a sorrowful account of the event in the Voix du Peuple.[4] The main causes would appear to be:

D'abord Dio. Ils ne veulent pas de dieu. Ensuite, et c'est plus grave, ils reprochent à Maître Mazzini de travailler dans l'intérêt autrichien en prêchant l'insurrection, d. h. en la précipitant. Enfin: Ils insistent sur un appel direct aux intérêts matériels des paysans italiens, ce qui ne peut se faire sans attaquer de l'autre côté les intérêts matériels des bourgeois et de la noblesse libérale qui forment la grande phalange mazzinienne.[5]

This last matter is exceedingly important. If Mazzini, or anyone else puts himself at the head of the Italian agitators and fails this time to transform the peasants, franchement and immédiatement,[6] from métayers[7] into free landowners,—the condition of the Italian peasants is atrocious, I have thoroughly mugged up the beastly subject—, the Austrian government will, in the event of revolution, have recourse to Galician methods[8] . In the Lloyd[9] it has already threatened 'a complete transformation of the state of tenure' and the 'extermination of the turbulent nobility'. If Mazzini's eyes have not yet been opened, then he's a dunderhead. Admittedly certain agitational interests are involved here. Where will he find the 10 million fr. if he antagonises the bourgeoisie? How retain the services of the nobility, if he informs them that their expropriation comes first on the agenda? Such are the difficulties encountered by a demagogue of the old school.

Unfortunately those arrested in Paris include that rascal Schramm. The day before yesterday Liebknecht had a letter from the rogue, and we are faced with the agreeable prospect of having this dissolute character once again in our midst. But he'll get a bit of a shock, ce monsieur là![10] You would greatly oblige me by sending me the essay for Dana by Tuesday morning.[11]

Herewith letter from Dronke. By the by, should you write him a letter, you must send it direct to his address. Schuster's is by no means safe. In a day or two I'll send you a note for him, to which you can add something before forwarding it to the little fellow.


  1. ↑ probably Hermann Engels
  2. ↑ Oskar Reichenbach
  3. ↑ After the fall of the Roman republic in July 1849 many deputies of the Constituent Assembly emigrated to Britain, where they formed a provisional Italian National Committee, in which Mazzini and his followers were included. The Committee was empowered by those who had elected it to raise loans in the interest of Italy's liberation and to deal with all questions relating to Italian citizens – Progress Publishers.
  4. ↑ Marx probably means La Voix du Proscrit
  5. ↑ Firstly, Dio. They don't want a god. Next, and more serious, they blame Maître Mazzini for working for the Austrian interest by preaching insurrection, i.e. by precipitating it. Finally, they insist on a direct appeal to the material interests of the Italian peasants, and this cannot be made without a corresponding attack on the material interests of the bourgeoisie and liberal nobility, who form the great Mazzinian phalanx.
  6. ↑ outright and immediately
  7. ↑ tenant share-croppers
  8. ↑ Marx here has in mind the policy of the Austrian government designed to suppress the Polish national liberation movement by exploiting the class and national antagonisms between the Ukrainian peasantry in Galicia and the Polish nobility. During the revolutionary events of 1848 the Austrian government abolished statute-labour and a few other feudal services of the peasants in Galicia, in an effort to win the support of the Galician peasantry in the fight against the Polish national liberation movement. But the reform was quite inadequate since it left untouched the lands of the landowners and placed the terrific burden of redemption payments on the shoulders of the peasants, which it took them several decades to pay off – Progress Publishers.
  9. ↑ That is, Journal des Österreichischen Lloyd, a semi-official daily newspaper published in Vienna – Progress Publishers.
  10. ↑ will that gentleman
  11. ↑ F. Engels, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany, Article II.