Letter to Friedrich Engels, January 7, 1858

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 7 January 1858


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsei 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
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 7 January 1858

DEAR Frederic,

I received your article[1] at 5 o'clock on Tuesday afternoon. It is HIGHLY AMUSING and will delight the Yankees. The news from India, by the by, is no longer quite so favourable to the worthy English. POOR Havelock!

I have definitely not had your letter about Lassalle.[2] So it has either got held up somewhere in Manchester or has been intercepted down here.[3]

Lupus' letter to the family, who send you their regards, HAS

PRODUCED A GREAT SENSATION.

Pieper was here during the Christmas holidays. He arrived in a state of alcoholic remorse and was more vapid and boring THAN EVER. The older the fellow grows the worse he becomes. He seems to have acquired the pleasant habit of drinking first thing in the morning, not tea or coffee, but a PINT [OFJ STOUT, which gives him A SHEEPS EYE for the rest of the day. Indeed, the combination of dilettantism and sententiousness, fadaise[4] and pedantry makes him ever harder to stomach. And, as often in the case of such laddies,

there lurks, beneath an apparently sunny temperament, much irritability, moodiness and crapulous despondency. H e has pre- sented the children with two daguerreotypes of his charming person which are truly sublime and might be entitled 'Pieper with countenance exposed'. Both confected on the very morning of his arrival by rail in London. T h e first, still d r u n k with sleep, A MOST ABJECT PICTURE OF MENTAL AND MORAL DEJECTION: great, big mouth, flaccid jowl, blurred, sprawling features, in his eyes A STUPENDOUS EXPRESSION OF NOTHINGNESS. In the 2nd our friend had already pulled himself together and remembered that he was the handsome and aimable Pieper. It is the awakening of complacency and its victory over L ITER DEGRADATION. T h e first portrait—PIEPER AS HE IS, the 2nd AS HE APPEARS TO HIMSELF and the world in general. As little Jenny aptly remarked, all that was wanting to put the fellow in a nutshell was his drama, WHAT IS THE MATTER? I enclose an interesting document which the Urquhartites, with that IMPERTURBABLE importunity of theirs, have extracted from the BOARD OF TRADE.[5] In addition to the BAD STATE of England's balance of trade during the past 3 years, it will show you inter alia how much money was being made by Prussia at the time of the Russian war; further, that our HANSA TOWNS are AT THE HEAD of those regions whose balance of trade favours England. T h e momentary LULL in the crisis is, or so it seems to me, most advantageous to our interests—PARTY INTERESTS, I mean. Even in 1848, after the first LULL, England suffered some very severe blows at 2 or 3 INTERVALS, and at that time the crater had already shifted from where it had been in April 1847, etc.

T h e 'Neapolitan Question', which has caused earnest politi- cians such a lot of head-scratching, has now been resolved by the EARTHQUAKE IN A MOST DELIGHTFUL MANNER. At least that's what the POTHOUSE POLITICIANS OF THE MORNING ADVERTISER say. You won't forget to send the Guardian, will you? Above all I beg you to take care of your health. Times will get better and will make considerable CLAIMS on your BODY. SO temper it and see that it comes to no harm.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

Apropos. In his last number of the Pionier Heinzen remarks that, while it was quite comprehensible that the stultified workers in Germany should have been deluded by two sophists into believing they formed a distinct class because they plied a plane, it

was altogether too much of a good thing when, as now, the cry of class was raised among the workers at every MEETING in America! H e shouts about the obfuscation of the masses, who are not susceptible of wisdom. Proclaims 'spiritual revolution' and, in opposition to the class prophets, a new triumvirate—Goethe, G. St.-Hilaire and Karl Heinzen!!! In recent weeks the Credit mobilier[6] has pushed u p the price of its shares to an exceptional height by the ANNOUNCEMENT OF A DIVIDEND

OF 25 p.c., THIS TIME undoubtedly paid OUT OF CAPITAL.

  1. ↑ F. Engels, 'The Siege and Storm of Lucknow'.
  2. ↑ See this volume, p. 240.
  3. ↑ Engels' reply to Marx's letter of 22 December 1857 (see this volume, pp. 227-28) has not been found.—239, 242, 250
  4. ↑ vapidity
  5. ↑ Marx refers to statistical data on England's balance of trade and the cost of her imports and exports during the Crimean war, 1854-56. He obtained these figures from a report of the Manchester Foreign Affairs Committee (see Note 57), which was sent to him by the editors of the Urquhartite newspaper The Free Press before it was published. The Free Press itself did not publish it until 13 January 1858. Marx used these figures in his article 'British Commerce' (see present edition, Vol. 15).—243
  6. ↑ Engels means the establishment of banks similar to the Société générale du Crédit mobilier, a big French joint-stock bank founded by the Péreire brothers in 1852. The Crédit mobilier was to mediate in credit transactions and help in setting up industrial concerns and building railways in France, Spain, Austria, Russia and other countries. It was closely associated with Napoleon Ill's government and under its protection engaged in large-scale speculation. It went bankrupt in 1867 and was liquidated in 1871.—34, 68, 119, 126, 128, 133, 142, 145, 216, 225, 231, 240, 244, 291, 296, 349, 360, 437