Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, February 20, 1852

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 20 February 1852


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 39


MARX TO JOSEPH WEYDEMEYER

IN NEW YORK

[London,] 20 February 1852

Dear Weydemeyer,

I can send you nothing this week for the simple reason that for a week or more I have been so beset by money troubles that I have not even been able to pursue my studies at the Library,[1] let alone write articles.

However, I think that by Tuesday (the 24th) and Friday (the 27th) I shall be able to send you Nos. 5 and 6 of my article,[2] which are the concluding ones.

I received your letter, along with Cluss' concluding remarks on 18 February. You have been particularly unfortunate in two respects: 1. unemployment in New York; 2. the raging westerlies, which have driven vessels bound from London to America off course. For, with the exception of the early days, contributions have been sent you from England (by me, Engels, Freiligrath, Eccarius, etc.) as regularly as any newspaper could hope for. However, the people here have begun to flag because no news has arrived from America, albeit a multitude of ships. I did not think fit to inform anyone other than Engels and Lupus of the suspension of your paper.[3] It would only make people more dilatory.

If, by the by, you wish to receive regular support from here, you will have to fulfil the following conditions:

1. Write every week and give the date of the letters you have received from us.

2. Keep us fully au courant with everything over there and regularly supplied with relevant documents, etc., newspaper cuttings, etc.

You will realise, mon cher, how difficult it is to contribute to a paper on the other side of the ocean without any knowledge of its readers, etc. But if you fulfil the above conditions I can guarantee you the necessary contributions. I am here at their backs, WHIP in hand, and shall have no difficulty in keeping their noses to the grindstone. From Germany, too, I have received promises on your behalf of contributions and collaboration. If I only knew that the paper would survive, I would have someone in Paris who is READY to send you a weekly contribution gratis. I shall write to the man,[4] who is one of my best and most intelligent friends. The worst of it is that no one likes to work pour le roi de Prusse,[5] and daily reports lose all value if not published immediately on arrival. Since, then, you are unable to make any payment, it is all the more necessary to convince people that they are doing real party work and that their letters are not being pigeonholed.

It seems to me that you are making a mistake in having your letters delivered instead of doing what every newspaper must do, that is, advise the Post Office that you will have them collected regularly on the arrival of a vessel. In this way misunderstandings and delays are more easily avoided.

Apropos. Do not print Hirsch's statement[6] if you have not already done so.

A mass of blackguards is leaving here for New York (amongst them tailor Lehmann and tailor Joseph Meyer). Some of them will approach you in my name. But don't trust anyone who does not bring with him a few lines in my writing. The fellows will serve well enough to answer questions about Willich, etc. Lehmann and Meyer are devotees of Jesus Willich.

As for Dana, I think it was foolish of him to accept articles from Simon.[7] If my money-box allowed, I should immediately refuse to send him any further contributions. Let him publish attacks on myself and Engels but not by such an impertinent nincompoop. It's sheer stupidity to permit Agitation and Emigration,[8] those twin fictions which exist only on newspaper pages, to be presented to the American public as historical realities by a vain fellow who has imposed upon Germany the Prussian Emperor,[9] the March Associations and the Imperial Regent, Vogt, and now, with his bankrupt accomplices, would like to impose himself afresh upon the people, along with Parliament and a somewhat modified Imperial constitution. Rien de plus ridicule que ce gredin-là qui du haut des Alpes laisse tomber des paroles d'homme d'état![10] I should have credited Dana with more tact. Ludwig Simon—von Trier! When will this fellow drop his patent of parliamentary nobility?

Here in London, you know, all these fellows have completely drifted apart. The only thing that keeps them in any way together is the prospect of being redeemed by Gottfried Christ Kinkel's money. On the other hand we have that idiot Ruge, together with Ronge and two or 3 other jackasses, who conceal their lazy still-life by calling it 'agitation', just as a stagnant swamp might be dubbed 'open sea'.

Europe, of course, is now busying itself with other troubles than these. Ledru-Rollin himself has collapsed here like a punctured balloon since 2 December[11] and the arrival of new revolutionary elements from France. Mazzini is making ultra-reactionary speeches, one of which I shall shortly analyse for you.

As regards Ernest Jones' Notes to the People, in which you will find all the day-to-day history of the English proletariat, I shall send you it as soon as my financial circumstances permit. I have to pay 8 shillings every time I send a parcel to America.

Give Cluss my warm regards. We are eagerly awaiting his letters. Why haven't you sent us his statement[12] ?

I, together with my wife, Freiligrath and wife,[13] and Lupus, all send our heart-felt greetings to your wife, whom please assure of our sincere regard. We hope that the new world citizen will make his appearance cheerfully in the New World.

Farewell.

Your

K. Marx

If it does not work out with your newspaper, could you not bring out my pamphlet,[14] sheet by sheet or, if possible, in sections as sent to you? Otherwise it will take too long.

  1. ↑ of the British Museum
  2. ↑ K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
  3. ↑ Die Revolution
  4. ↑ R. Reinhardt
  5. ↑ for the king of Prussia, i.e. for nothing
  6. ↑ On 12 January 1852 Hirsch made a statement, but as early as February 1852 he was found to be a Prussian police spy and was expelled from the Communist League. For this reason Marx, in a letter of 20 February 1852 (see this volume, p. 41), asked Weydemeyer not to publish Hirsch's statement. When in the spring of 1853 Hirsch published his anti-Marx and Engels article 'Die Opfer der Moucharderie' in America, in an attempt to justify the splitting activity of Willich and Schapper, Cluss and Weydemeyer, in order to expose Hirsch, published his first statement in the Belletristisches Journal und Criminal-Zeitung, No. 7, 29 April 1853
  7. ↑ In particular L. Simon's 'Movements of the German Political Exiles', New-York Daily Tribune, No. 3369, 4 February 1852.
  8. ↑ Agitation and Emigration were the names Marx gave to two rival German petty-bourgeois refugee organisations in London which appeared in the summer of 1851—the Agitation Union headed by Ruge and Goegg and the German Emigration Club headed by Kinkel and Willich. The aim of both these small organisations was to raise money for an 'immediate revolution' in Germany
  9. ↑ Karl Vogt was a member of the Imperial Regency of five formed in Stuttgart on 7 June 1849 by the rump of the National Assembly which moved there from Frankfurt. The attempts of the Regency to implement by parliamentary means the Imperial Constitution, drawn up by the Frankfurt Assembly and rejected by the German princes, failed
  10. ↑ There's nothing more ridiculous than this scoundrel who, from Alpine heights, lets fall these statesmanlike pronouncements.
  11. ↑ coup d'état in France on 2 December 1851
  12. ↑ Straubinger—German travelling journeyman. Marx and Engels ironically applied the name to some participants in the German working-class movement of the time who were connected with guild production and displayed petty-bourgeois sectarian tendencies
  13. ↑ Ida
  14. ↑ K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.