Letter to Friedrich Engels, December 3, 1852

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 3 December 1852


First published considerably abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 1, Berlin, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

London, 3 December 1852 28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Frederic,

You would long ago have had an answer to your letter (enclosing the article for Dana[1] ), had I not been occupied with the dictation of the final version of my pamphlet,[2] and then delayed by visits from Weerth, Strohn, Damm, etc.

In all probability the pamphlet will be printed in Switzerland by Schabelitz JUNIOR, who has left his old man and set up his own bookshop. Moreover, if Cluss thinks he can recoup the cost of production, he can have the thing printed in Washington. Printed it must be, if only so that it may be available as a public document after the outbreak of the revolution. I have made some further, very interesting discoveries about the Cherval conspiracy, etc., which I hope you will be reading in print.[3]

Weerth called on Sunday evening, and found me very busy and not in the best of moods. He asked me 'what did I propose, actually, to write about the Cologne affair?'—and this in somewhat superior, nasal tones. I asked 'what did he propose to do in the West Indies?' and, after a quarter of an hour or so, he made off. On Tuesday evening he reappeared and said he had not wished to come back, actually, but had yielded to Freiligrath's insistence. For on Sunday I had seemed to him very busy and out of temper. I took the liberty of pointing out to Mr Weerth that, for 9/10ths of the time I had known him, he had always been out of temper and MALCONTENT, which was something he couldn't say of me. After I had given him a piece of my mind, he pulled himself together and became the old Weerth again. He seems to me to have become damned bourgeoisified and to be taking his career too much au sérieux.[4] Strohn at least is the same as ever, and pas trop fin[5]

Today Mr Bangya has received the following letter from me: 'I have today received from Engels a letter containing some highly curious pieces of information.[6]

'Engels has not written to the address indicated by you for, as he points out, what is actually proved by an answer to a letter that is sent not direct but only poste restante, through the medium of a second address?

'Instead, Engels asked some business friends in Berlin to make inquiries. After the most painstaking investigations they now tell him that:

'1. no such firm as Collmann exists. '2. no such person as Collmann exists at the address indicated, 58 or 59 Neue Königsstr. '3. no one at all by the name of Collmann is to be found in Berlin.

'Engels further draws my attention to the fact that the two letters signed Eisermann and the letter signed Collmann were written by the same hand, that all 3 possess the unusual quality of being loose bits of paper bearing no postmark, that in the first two Eisermann, and in the third Collmann, figures directly as publisher, etc., and that on pretexts that are mutually incompatible the thing has been allowed to drag on for nearly 7 months.[7]

'Now that Collmann has proved to be as much of an illusion as was previously the non-existent publisher of the Constitutionelle Zeitung Eisermann, I ask you yourself, how can all these contradictions, improbabilities and mysteries over something so simple as the publication of a pamphlet[8] be rationally explained?

' "Trust" will not conjure away facts, nor do people who respect one another demand unquestioning faith of one another.

'I confess that, the more I turn this matter over in my mind, the more I am compelled, even with the best will in the world, to find it damned obscure; also that, were it not for my feelings of friendship towards you, I would unhesitatingly echo Engels' concluding remark: "Après tout il paraît pourtant qu'on a voulu nous jouer"[9]

Yours etc.,

Marx

'P.S. Engels finally draws my attention to the fact that, even were the manuscript in question to reappear for a few days in London,[10] absolutely nothing would be proved and nothing gained. What could it prove, save the existence and identity of the manuscript, of which nobody is in doubt.'

Tomorrow we shall see what reply comes from Mr Bangya. Bonaparte is spending some glorious months honeymooning with his empire. The fellow has always lived on tick. Simply make loan institutions in France as universal and as accessible as possible to all classes of Frenchmen—and the whole world will believe that the millennium is here. On top of that, a bank of one's own, no less, for STOCKJOBBERY and RAILWAY HUMBUG.[11] The fellow never changes. Not for one moment does the chevalier d'industrie[12] deny the pretender, or vice versa. If he doesn't go to war and that right soon, he'll founder on his finances. How good that Proudhon's plans for salvation should find realisation in the only form in which they are practicable—that of the credit racket and more or less barefaced fraud.

I am looking forward very much to your arrival here.[13]

Your

K. Marx

[14]

  1. ↑ F. Engels, 'The Late Trial at Cologne'.
  2. ↑ K. Marx, Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne.
  3. ↑ The reference is to the so-called Franco-German plot (see Note 143) inspired to a great extent by Cherval, an agent of the Prussian and French police. On this see Marx's Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne, present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 407-20
  4. ↑ seriously
  5. ↑ not too clever
  6. ↑ See this volume, pp. 257-58.
  7. ↑ Facts proving Bangya's provocative role in the matter of publishing Marx's and Engels' manuscript The Great Men of the Exile were cited by Marx in the article 'Hirsch's Confessions' (see present edition, Vol. 12)
  8. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, The Great Men of the Exile.
  9. ↑ 'It looks as though they have been trying to hoodwink us after all.'
  10. ↑ In a letter to Bangya of 28 October 1852 the fictitious publisher Collmann (see Note 288) expressed readiness, for the authors' reassurance, to place the manuscript at their disposal for 48 hours
  11. ↑ After the Bonapartist coup d'état of 2 December 1851 intensive preparations were made to proclaim France an empire. On 21 and 22 November 1852 a referendum was held on the issue: on 2 December France was officially proclaimed an empire, and the Prince President Louis Napoleon became Emperor Napoleon III. In the period preceding the proclamation of the empire numerous decrees concerning, among other things, the economy and finance were promulgated. Here Marx has in mind two decrees of 18 November 1852: on the foundation of the Société générale du Crédit mobilier and on the handing over of several railways to the Compagnie du chemin de fer de Lyon à Avignon founded on 8 July 1852 (both decrees were published in Le Moniteur universel, No. 325, 20 November 1852). The Crédit mobilier became a big joint-stock bank which acted as intermediary in credit and stockjobbing operations and took part in building railways in France and other European countries
  12. ↑ swindler
  13. ↑ Engels went to London in the second half of December 1852 and stayed there until 10 January 1853
  14. ↑ ibid., p. 252.