Letter to Friedrich Engels, May 27, 1859

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 27 May 1859


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
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 27 May [1859]

Dear Engels,

£ 5 received. You must COLOUR YOUR WAR-ARTICLES A LITTLE MORE seeing that you are writing for A GENERAL NEWSPAPER, not for a scientific military journal.

Something more descriptive and individual could easily be gleaned from the Times CORRESPONDENT, etc. I can't interpolate it myself as this would lead to unevenness of style. Failing this Dana will go and insert some utter nonsense off his own bat.

Today I am sending you 2 numbers (the last ones) of the Presse as samples, so that you can see whether you can use the PAPER.

At 7 o'clock yesterday evening Mr Liebknecht turned up with 6 lines for Das Volk having, by his failure to appear (and the idiot is always taking on all manner of things), thrown the entire setting INTO DISORDER, or so Biskamp tells me. I had told the blockhead exactly which bits of your pamphlet were to be reproduced. Instead he tries to make a LEADER of it, in which, of course, he doesn't succeed. Bürgers redivivus[1] but far WORSE, since Bürgers could at least be used for purposes of attack in societies, etc.

Garibaldi has, in my opinion, deliberately been consigned to a position that will spell his ruin.

Unlike Kossuth who, with Klapka, has already 'recognised' 'Constantine' as the Russian king of Hungary, Mazzini (undoubtedly a greater authority on Italian patriotism than Mr Lassalle) is behaving very well.[2] I shall try and lay hands on the last, concluding number of his Pensiero ed Azione.[3] Send me your last copy of Po and Rhine for Mazzini. I shall write a short accompanying note, or better still, write it yourself. Salut.

Your

K. M.

Still nothing from Berlin today. I. e. 16 days to correct the misprints in the last 3 sheets[4] !

  1. ↑ reborn
  2. ↑ Boustrapa—nickname of Louis Bonaparte, composed of the first syllables of the names of the places where he and his supporters staged Bonapartist putsches: Boulogne (August 1840), Strasbourg (October 1846) and Paris (coup d'état of 2 December 1851).—31, 94, 170, 230, 256, 290, 336, 425, 435
  3. ↑ In his article 'Mazzini's Manifesto' Marx reproduced in English Mazzini's manifesto 'La Guerra' which appeared in Pensiero ed Azione, No. 17, 2 16 May 1859.
  4. ↑ Marx means his A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.