Letter to Friedrich Engels, December 1, 1851

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 1 December 1851


First published slightly abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 1, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38

To Engels in Manchester

[London,] 1 December 1851

28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Engels,

I enclose herewith: 1. Extract from Cluss' letter (from Washington) to Wolff[1] ; 2. Letter from Pieper[2] from Brussels.

As to No. 1, Lupus forgot to extract two more items of information which you will find not uninteresting. Firstly: the article 'Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany' has appeared in German in the New-Yorker Abendzeitung, has been reprinted in various papers and has created a furore. Cluss doesn't say whether or not this is a translation from the Tribune. I've written direct to Dana about it.[3] Secondly: Mr Wiss, Kinkel's principal tool, has publicly declared that 'economically' he shares our views. You can see how the curs operate.

As for Mr Tupman, he mentions neither our letter from Manchester nor a subsequent letter written him from here by my wife at my behest.[4]

But as to the people in Cologne,[5] it is typical of these dastardly emigre swine, who root about in all the cess-pits of the press, that they should maintain la conspiration du silence in this matter so as not to detract from their own importance. This must now be counteracted. Today I have sent letters to Paris attacking Prussian justice, in order to raise the matter in the press there.[6] Lupus has undertaken to do the articles for America and Switzerland. Maintenant[7] you must hammer out for me something for England, along with a private letter to the editor of The Times, to which the thing must tentatively be sent. If The Times, which at present is seeking to regain its popularity and would certainly feel flattered if treated as the only influential paper on the Continent and which is in any case hostile to Prussia—if The Times were to accept the thing, we could exert some influence in Germany. Stress should be laid on the state of the judicial system generally in Prussia.

Should this attempt not succeed—it can in any case do no harm—then write from Manchester direct to The Sun. If they receive the thing before The Times, the latter would not accept it under any circumstances.[8]

You can hardly be aware that addresses have reached O'Connor from almost every city in England and have been published in The Northern Star and Reynolds's Newspaper in which Thornton Hunt was described as 'INFAMOUS' and the scene at 'Copenhagen Fields' roundly denounced.[9] In addition there was a meeting of all the Chartist sections in London at which abuse was heaped upon Th. Hunt, who was present. When the executive committee is renewed, he will definitely be thrown out. In his desperation, this allie of the great Ruge now publicly proclaims himself a communist.

E. Jones—drawing on my letter[10] —has attacked Kossuth sans miséricorde:

* 'I tell him that the revolutions of Europe mean the crusade of labour against capital, and I tell him they are not to be cut down to the intellectual and social standard of an obscure semi-barbarous people, like the Magyars, still standing in the half-civilisation of the 16th century, who actually presume to dictate to the great enlightenment of Germany and France, and to gain a false won cheer from the gullibility of England.'*[11]

You'll have seen that Kinkel will, tout bonnement,[12] set himself up here, after the pattern of the provisional government in France. I, for my part, believe it would be a good idea if, as soon as we know that Weydemeyer is editor of the Abendzeitung, you were to communicate, initially in the form of pamphlets, fragments from K. Schnapper[13] [14] whose first confessions I long to see. (See continuation after Pieper's letter.)[15]

Apropos! I'd almost forgotten an important item in the chronique scandaleuse. Stechan, Hirsch, Gümpel, etc., in short the working men who have arrived from Germany, have announced their intention of calling on me. I shall receive them today. They have already considerably fallen out with Schapper and Willich. Stechan has publicly denounced Dietz as a spy before the Workers' Society[16] and, though a few voices declared him to be an agent of Marx, effected the establishment of a committee in which, however, the chief role is played by the friends and patrons of Dietz—Schapper and Willich. At all events I shall use these Straubingers[17] to precipitate fresh crises in the wretched hostel for tailors and idlers.

I herewith acknowledge receipt of the £3.

Salut.

Your

K.M.

  1. ↑ Wilhelm Wolff (Lupus)
  2. ↑ Wilhelm Pieper
  3. ↑ Marx's letter to Charles Dana has not been found.
  4. ↑ Neither the letter Marx and Engels wrote to Pieper from Manchester during Marx's stay there from 5 to 15 November 1851, nor the letter Jenny Marx wrote to him on her husband's request has been found.
  5. ↑ the Communist League members arrested and under investigation
  6. ↑ The statements Marx sent to Paris to be published in the French press did not appear in the papers and their originals have not survived.
  7. ↑ Now
  8. ↑ Engels supported Marx's initiative of denouncing in the English press the Prussian Government's arbitrary treatment of the arrested Cologne communists under investigation. At Marx's request he wrote a letter to the editor of The Times at the end of January 1852 and prepared a similar letter for The Daily News, but the newspapers did not publish them. Only a rough copy of the letter 'To the Editor of The Times' written by Marx and Engels is extant (see present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 210-11).
  9. ↑ On 2 November 1851 a meeting was held at Copenhagen House (Copenhagen Fields) in London to mark Kossuth's arrival (in October 1851) in England. The reformist Thornton Hunt, chairman of the Chartist committee responsible for organising the meeting, tried to prevent O'Connor from attending on the pretext that he was insane. This aroused violent protests on the part of the Chartists and O'Connor was admitted to the meeting. To justify himself Hunt made a demagogic declaration in The Northern Star on 29 November describing himself as a zealous defender of people's interests and calling himself a communist. As Marx foresaw, Hunt was not elected to the new Executive of the National Charter Association.
  10. ↑ Marx's letter to Ernest Jones has not survived.
  11. ↑ E. Jones, 'What is Kossuth', Notes to the People, Vol. II, No. 31, 1851.
  12. ↑ quite simply
  13. ↑ Snapper, i.e. Schapper
  14. ↑ Despite a temporary break with Harney in whose journal The Friend of the People Engels intended at one time to publish a series of articles criticising the petty-bourgeois emigrants and the Willich-Schapper sectarian adventurist group (see Note 352), he did not give up the idea of denouncing in the press the pseudo-revolutionary illusions and voluntarism of the petty-bourgeois emigrants. At the end of November and beginning of December 1851, Engels was...
  15. ↑ The continuation is on the third page of Pieper's letter to Marx sent from Brussels on 27 November 1851.
  16. ↑ The London German Workers' Educational Society (see Note 52) had its premises in Great Windmill Street.
  17. ↑ Straubingers—travelling journeymen in Germany. Marx and Engels used this term for German artisans, including some participants in the working-class movement of that time, who were still largely swayed by guild prejudices and cherished the petty-bourgeois illusion that it was possible to return from capitalist large-scale industry to petty handicraft production.