Letter to Friedrich Engels, October 30, 1856 (2)

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 30 October 1856


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913; and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929.
Part of this letter was first published in English in Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1955
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40

To Friedrich Engels in Manchester

[London,] 30 October 1856 9 Grafton Terrace, Maitland Park, Haverstock Hill

Dear Engels,

The article on Bazancourt[1] is splendid. Enclosed the last bit of the Mieroslawski.[2] [3] If I have seemed lazy about writing it is largely because my wife has been ill these past few months.

As you will yourself observe in the Mieroslawski, 1. the very man who holds un royaume diplomatique in Poland to be impossible, wanted to bring about une révolution diplomatique there, i.e. under the AUSPICES OF Louis Bonaparte and Palmerston; 2. the fate of the 'democratic' gmina of the Lechites[4] in Poland is an inevitable one; the actual dominium[5] is usurped by the Crown, aristocracy, etc.; the patriarchal relations between dominium and peasant communities lead to serfdom; optional land-division creates a kind of peasant middle estate, the ordre équestre,[6] to which the peasant can rise only so long as wars of conquest and colonisation are still in progress, though both these necessarily tend to accelerate his DOWNFALL. AS soon as the borderline is reached, this ordre équestre, incapable of sustaining the role of a true middle estate, turns into the lumpenproletariat of the aristocracy. A similar fate overtakes dominium and peasant among the Romanic population of Moldavia, Wallachia, etc. This type of development is interesting in that it shows how serfdom comes into being as a result of purely economic factors, without the intermediate link of conquest or racial dualism.

Your Manchester Guardian has the singular distinction of being regarded as the immediate cause of Bonaparte's statement against the English press. Please send me X[7] from time to time. Having discovered that Bonaparte's 1847 is approaching, Palmerston is bending every effort to jockey him into precisely the same position as he jockeyed Louis Philippe during the Sonderbund War[8] — into an alliance with Russia against England. Whereas on the one hand he takes him in tow against Austria in the filthy Neapolitan affair, in Turkey he sides against him with Austria.[9] Once again the French newspapers are full of MISGIVINGS about the machinations of perfidious Albion. The commercial crisis would certainly seem to have reached its consummation in the Russian railways. The bankruptcy of the CONTRACTORS to the 'palace of international industry'[10] affords a GLIMPSE into the participation of English capitalists in continental enterprises. In Germany the setting-up of industrial and banking undertakings goes on briskly. The Berlin National-Zeitung contains whole columns devoted solely to enumerating the names of these CONCERNS.

I learnt from Putnam's man, Olmsted, and an American travelling companion who was with him that Gurowski (the Pole) had acquired much influence with Dana. At the same time these gentlemen told me that the said worthy fellow received regular cash grants direct from the Russian ambassade[11] in Washington. This Gurowski advocated Pan-Slavism in opposition to ourselves, which was the only reason why your article[12] was rejected. When returning my manuscript on the Danubian Principalities,[13] Mr Dana forgot TO BLOT OUT a comment written in French by this self-same Gurowski, who remarks on my statistical data relating to the Romanian population:

'Tous ces chiffres sont exagérés pour faire mousser l'idée de nationalité Roumaine. Ils sont démentis par les faits, l'histoire et la logique.'[14]

So we can boast of having, or rather of having had, our articles inspected and censored directly by the Russian embassy. In the end Dana appears also to have seen through Gurowski.

Today a letter from Collet to whom I had sent some new stuff.[15] The fellow agrees to everything, except that he doesn't say anything about MONETARY TERMS although I expressly asked him about this point in my last letter. So I shall have to PUT ON THE SCREW all over again, since this is the only point of interest to me in my INTERCOURSE WITH THOSE CALIBANS[16] .

Write to me soon concerning yourself and those about you. With kindest regards from my wife and children. Children very well.

Your K. M.

  1. ↑ Engels made excerpts from Bazancourt's book between June and September 1856. In the autumn of that year he summed up the results of his critical analysis in an article entitled 'Saint-Arnaud'. Marx sent the article to the American journal Putnam's Monthly, but the editors returned it unpublished.—45, 51, 71, 73, 80, 93, 106, 124, 126, 128
  2. ↑ Excerpts from L. Mieroslawski's book De la nationalité polonaise dans l'équilibre européen.
  3. ↑ Ludwig Mieroslawski, De la nationalité polonaise dans l'équilibre européen (The Polish Nation Within the European Balance of Power). Ludwik Adam Mieroslawski (1814-1878) – Polish politician and military figure, took part in Polish uprising of 1830-31, headed uprising in Poznan (1848), during Baden-Palatinate insurrection was in command of revolutionary army (1849), in 1850s sought support in Bonapartist circles, at beginning of Polish uprising of 1863 was in command of insurgent detachment, later emigrated to France – Progress Publishers.
  4. ↑ See this volume, p. 75.
  5. ↑ landed property
  6. ↑ The ordre équestre (literally: the order of horsemen)—the social estate of the knights. In medieval Poland peasants who turned up for military service with a warhorse and arms of their own were enlisted in the cavalry, which entitled them to be elevated to knightly status.—80
  7. ↑ Presumably the sign of the correspondent who wrote the anti Bonapartist articles in The Manchester Guardian.
  8. ↑ In November 1847 Switzerland was plunged into a civil war unleashed by the ''Sonderbund,'' a separatist union of seven economically backward Catholic cantons  which resisted progressive bourgeois reforms. The Guizot government of  France, supported by the governments of Austria and Russia, came out in  support of the Sonderbund and the Catholic Church. However, Lord  Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, seeking to weaken France, prevented  her direct intervention in Swiss affairs and thereby contributed to her further  rapprochement with Russia. The rout of the Sonderbund army by the Federal  forces on 23 November deprived the European powers of a pretext for further  diplomatic moves in the Swiss conflict.
  9. ↑ In October 1856 France and Britain, fearing that the reign of reaction and  terror in the Kingdom of Naples (the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) might set  off a revolutionary explosion, demanded that Ferdinand II, the Neapolitan  King, should pursue a more flexible policy. Ferdinand II, confident of Austria's  backing, refused to comply, whereupon France and Britain put their naval  squadrons in the Mediterranean on the alert. However, the planned expedition  against Naples did not take place owing to differences caused by Napoleon Ill's  intention to instal a prince of the Bonaparte dynasty on the Neapolitan throne.  By the autumn of 1856, the struggle had intensified for the union of the  Danubian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia and for an end to their  dependence on the Ottoman Empire. The British government, apprehensive of  France's intention to instal a member of the Bonaparte dynasty as head of the  united state, and fearing the growth of Russian influence in the principalities,  actively supported Austria's and Turkey's opposition to the movement for  unification (this is what Marx had in mind speaking about Palmerston's alliance  with Austria on the Turkish issue). However, despite the diplomatic complica  tions and the resistance of the reactionary aristocrats, the principalities merged  in 1862 to form the single state of Romania.
  10. ↑ This refers to the Crystal Palace in London (see Note 89).
  11. ↑ embassy
  12. ↑ Between January and May 1856 Engels wrote a series of articles on Pan-Slavism  for the New-York Daily Tribune, which did not print them. The manuscripts  have not been preserved.
  13. ↑ This presumably refers to Marx's articles on the Danubian Principalities of  Moldavia and Wallachia written for the'' New-York Daily Tribune.'' As can be seen  from Marx's letter to Engels of 22 September 1856 (this volume, p. 68), they  were not published, and have never been found. The articles touched on  Swedish history, probably in connection with the conclusion on 21 November  1855 of a defence treaty aimed at Russia between the Kingdom of Sweden and  Norway on the one hand, and Britain and France on the other.  Marx contributed to the'' New-York Daily Tribune'' from August 1851 to  March 1862. At his request many of the articles for the'' Tribune'' were written by  Engels. In fact it was not until August 1852 that Marx began sending his own  articles. By agreement with the editors some of the articles dealing with  individual European countries were datelined Paris, Berlin or Vienna (see this  volume, pp. 352, 361, 368 and 410).  Marx's and Engels' articles in the'' New-York Daily Tribune'' dealt with key  issues of foreign and domestic policy, the working-class movement, the  economic development of European countries, colonial expansion, and the  national liberation movement in colonial and dependent countries. Many of  them were reprinted in die'' Tribunes'' special editions—the'' New-York Weekly '' ''Tribune'' and the'' New-York Semi-Weekly Tribune''—and were quoted by other  American newspapers, in particular by'' The New-York Times.'' Some were  reproduced in the Chartist'' Peoples Paper,'' London. The'' Tribune'' editors  sometimes took liberties with the articles, printing them unsigned in the form  of editorials, and making insertions, some of which were in direct contradiction  to the content of the articles (see, e.g., this volume, pp. 81 and 100-01). A  number of articles were not printed at all. Marx repeatedly protested against  these practices. In the autumn of 1857 he was forced to reduce the number of  his contributions in view of the'' Tribune's'' financial difficulties resulting from the  economic crisis in the USA. After the outbreak of the American Civil War, he  ceased contributing altogether, mainly because the'' Tribune'' had come under the  sway of people who advocated a compromise with the slave-owning states and  abandoned its initial progressive stand.
  14. ↑ All these figures are exaggerated for the purpose of inflating the idea of Romanian nationality. They are contradicted by the facts, by history and by logic.
  15. ↑ This refers to a work planned by Marx on the history of-British and Russian  diplomacy in the eighteenth century, of which he only completed five chapters  of the Introduction. For these he made use of pamphlets, diplomatic  documents and unpublished manuscripts, mostly of the period of the Northern  War (the Russo-Swedish war of 1700-21), which he found in the British  Museum Library. His negotiations with Nikolaus Trübner for publication of the  work ended in failure. The chapters of the Introduction appeared by  instalments in Urquhart's Sheffield Free Press from late June to early August 1856  as they were sent in by Marx. Eventually publication was stopped because of  arbitrary editorial abridgements and printing errors. In June 1856 the London  Free Press began reprinting the text from the Sheffield paper, and on 16  August 1856 it started reproducing the chapters from the beginning, with  publication continuing until 1 April 1857. In both papers the unfinished work  was printed under the title Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century (see present edition, Vol. 15).  In 1899 Eleanor Aveling, Marx's daughter, published it in London in book  form under the heading Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century.
  16. ↑ Caliban is a character in Shakespeare's The Tempest.