Letter to Karl Marx, February 2, 1860

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 2 February 1860


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
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 2 February 1860

Dear Moor,

Conferred with Lupus last night. It was only while reading Lassalle's letter[1] out to him that I became fully aware not only of the chap's philistinism and arrogance, but also of his 'method'. Even in the paltriest of trifles, the fellow is Absolute Spirit Old Hegelian style and, just as he proposes in economics to assume the role of a higher unity between you and the economists, the finite contradiction,[2] so too he is already assuming the role of a higher unity between you and Vogt. Yours, the 'principle', Vogt's the 'Italian policy'[3] —and very nice too! What egregious schoolmaster presumption to start off by telling us we should declare Vogt hadn't been bribed, and then to proceed to take seriously, and thus reduce to absurdity, the one good joke in Fröbel's statement![4]

Lupus wonders whether, under Prussian law, the National-Zeitung mightn't be compelled to accept a statement from you. I, too, believe the Press Law contains some such article. IF SO, we should invoke it immediately on receipt of the pamphlet[5] ; for, as Lassalle rightly remarks, habent sua fata libelli[6] ; what that will be in the pamphlet's case one cannot tell, and the quicker the rejoinder, the surer will be its effect.

Quoad[7] our pamphlet, we are at a disadvantage in being personally on the defensive and unable to return lies for lies. Then there's another disadvantage—namely, that the public= Philistia already detests us in advance, for while we do not actually stand convicted of odium generis humani,[8] we are guilty of odium generis bourgeois,[9] and that amounts to exactly the same thing.

On the other hand, we are at an advantage in being able to provide an exposé of our Italian policy which puts the matter on a totally different plane, leaves aside the personal aspect and places us in a favourable position, not perhaps in the eyes of the Berlin liberals, but in those of the greater part of Germany, in that we stand for the popular, national side. The Savoy affair in particular is something of a godsend to us.[10]

Now it seems to me that, as soon as the pamphlet arrives (couldn't Lass. send it by post?), you should pack your bags and come up here, when we can decide once and for all what to do and how and where. I should gladly seize on the opportunity to come to London, but, as your wife is to be kept in the dark, it would be better if you were to come up here, the more so since, if any work is to be done, I couldn't stay so long in London. Another thing to be decided is whether I should appear on the title page; there's only one reason I can see against it, which, however, seems to me quite conclusive; but we'll discuss that when we meet.

The Savoy piece shall be done[11] and Lassalle and Duncker written to tomorrow. The epistle destined for L.[12] had, of course, not yet been sent.

It is extraordinary that I should have first learned of Heise's death via Dundee[13] and London. After all, the little chap[14] was here last Thursday or Friday and came to see me. I was out, however, and he also missed me at the club that evening. But, if he'd known about it, he'd surely have got someone else to tell me, as he usually does. He saw Charles, too.

Salut.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ See this volume, pp. 16 and 19.
  2. ↑ Engels evidently means the book Lassalle was writing, Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch... (see Note 36).
  3. ↑ An allusion to the fact that, during the 1859 Italian war, Lassalle in effect supported Napoleon III's interference in Italy's affairs, camouflaged as struggle for its 'liberation', and was in agreement with Vogt on this issue. Lassalle set forth his views on the problem in the most concentrated form in his pamphlet Der italienische Krieg und die Aufgabe Preußens. Eine Stimme aus der Demokratie, published anonymously in Berlin at the beginning of May 1859. In it, he also backed the Prusso-Bonapartist policy of neutrality for the German states in the Italian war and favoured the defeat of Austria, which Prussia should exploit to unite Germany from above.
  4. ↑ In his statement of 20 January 1860, published in the Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 24, on 24 January, the journalist Julius Fröbel, a petty-bourgeois democrat, described Vogt as a paid Bonapartist agent, and his conduct as 'high treason against the German nation'. Engels ridicules Lassalle, who, in a letter TO MARX at the end of January 1860, argued against this statement.
  5. ↑ C. Vogt, Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung, Geneva, 1859.
  6. ↑ Books have their fate (Terentianus Maurus, De litteris, syllabis et metris, 'Carmen heroicum', 258).
  7. ↑ As regards
  8. ↑ hatred of the human race
  9. ↑ hatred of the bourgeois
  10. ↑ Engels means the annexation of Savoy and Nice by France as a result of the war it waged in alliance with Piedmont against Austria in 1859. This act exposed Napoleon III's aggressive designs.
  11. ↑ F. Engels, Savoy, Nice and the Rhine.
  12. ↑ See this volume, p. 13.
  13. ↑ A reference to Peter Imandt, who lived in Dundee, Scotland. See this volume, p. 16.
  14. ↑ Ernst Dronke