Letter to Karl Marx, May 4, 1852

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 4 May 1852


First published in part 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 39


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 4 May 1852

Dear Marx,

Your fat American parcel has not yet arrived.[1] I have made inquiries at Pickford's, since the houses in my street have been renumbered, which gives rise to confusion. But at Pickford's there is no parcel for me. Either you didn't send the thing off or, if by post, perhaps not in the prescribed manner, or else something has happened to it. So try and find out what has become of the thing.

I shall be having a visit from my respected pater here this week, when the whole bloody matter of the firm will be settled and my position, too, will be further regulated. Either the contract will be renewed and the firm will continue as it is, which is not very probable, or I shall try so to arrange matters that my old man quits by the end of the year at the latest, and perhaps even by the end of June. Then there'll be the hellish liquidation which, however, should be more or less completed in 6 to 8 months, after which I shall turn my hand to something else, either go to Liverpool or God knows what. This will probably be decided within the next fortnight. I am glad that my old man will soon be here so that the inevitable mess is over as soon as possible and I know where I am.

I return Cluss' letter herewith. I have Jones' articles here, but not those of Harney, which you might send me some time so that I can acquaint myself with both sides and observe Father Harney in his new role. The industrious Jones will soon drive this indolent cur from the field if only he can hang on for a while. And he will certainly be able to raise the circulation[2] to 4,000 a week, which alone means a profit (3,600 covers costs).

The arrival of my old man will, of course, put back my Dana plans[3] by a week or a fortnight. On the other hand you could meanwhile continue, through Szemere, to negotiate with the publisher over the sketches, to look through your correspondence and the N. Rh. Z. (especially votes and speeches in the National Assembly) apropos the heroes to be depicted and, if the matter reaches a favourable conclusion, you could come up here for a week and we'd have a go at the thing.[4] I really think it could be done in such a way that no one will discover its paternité,[5] and even if they did, little harm would be done.

According to a letter from Ebner, he is still negotiating over your Economy[6] with Löwenthal, who wants to establish himself in Brussels and in the meantime remains a partner in the Frankfurt business.

How is Freiligrath progressing with my brother-in-law?[7] Don't forget to let me know about Pindar, c'est une bête ennuyeuse et assez confuse.[8] Is he a member of the League?[9]

The copies of the Turn-Zeitung advised by Weydemeyer have still not arrived; there must have been some oversight on his part.

Write soon.

Your

F. E.

In the case of parcels which do not go by post, it would be best if, instead of the old No. 70, you include the old and new nos. In the address, thus:

No. 44/70, Great Ducie St., Strangeways, Manchester. Szerelmey's thing[10] tomorrow perhaps.

  1. ↑ See this volume, pp. 91 and 100.
  2. ↑ of The People's Paper
  3. ↑ i.e. work on the series Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany.
  4. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, The Great Men of the Exile.
  5. ↑ here: authorship
  6. ↑ Marx refers here to his work on political economy which he started as early as 1843. He conceived it as a critique of bourgeois political economy and an analysis of the economic structure of bourgeois society in his time and its ideological basis. His initial research resulted in the writing of Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (see present edition, Vol. 3) which were to serve as a basis for the whole work. On 1 February 1845, Marx signed a contract with Carl Leske, a Darmstadt publisher, for the publication of his two-volume 'Kritik der Politik und National-Ökonomie'. This plan did not materialise as a whole, however, because Marx was busy writing other works (The Holy Family, The German Ideology, etc.). The contract with Leske was cancelled in February 1847. Marx returned to his economic studies when he was in London, in the period of emigration, after the defeat of the 1848-49 bourgeois-democratic revolutions. From the spring of 1850 onwards he regularly visited the library of the British Museum, where he made a deep and thorough study of the economy of different countries, England in particular, critically analysed works by classic bourgeois economists, and made extracts from books by English, French, American and other economists and from official documents and periodicals. The notes and extracts made by Marx in the 1850s fill several dozen special notebooks. At that period Marx was especially interested in the history of landed property and rent, the history and theory of money circulation and prices, and economic crises. In 1851 and 1852 Marx renewed his attempts to find a publisher for his work on economics, but he could not find one either in Germany or in America. The vast stock of facts and theoretical material on political economy accumulated between 1850 and 1853 was systematised and arranged in the manuscripts of 1857-58 (also known as the Grundrisse), part of which, after a further revision, was published in 1859 as the first part of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Work on the economic manuscripts of the 1850s was an important stage in Marx's writing his main economic treatise, Capital, published in 1867
  7. ↑ Emil Blank (see this volume, p. 89).
  8. ↑ a tedious and rather muddle headed creature
  9. ↑ the Communist League
  10. ↑ See this volume, p. 93.