| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 3 March 1860 |
MARX TO FERDINAND LASSALLE
IN BERLIN
Manchester, 3 March 1860 6 Thorncliffe Grove, Oxford Road
Dear Lassalle,
I am replying by return, albeit briefly (though, I hope, intelligibly), for I am up to my eyes in work connected with the two lawsuits.
1. Ad vocem[1] Karl Vogt und die Allgemeine Zeitung and Wie man radikale Flugblätter macht, National Zeitung, Nos. 37 and 41, 22 and 25 January 1860.: My action against the 'National-Zeitung'. You cannot give an opinion on the possible outcome of this action since you don't know, on the one hand, what papers I have in my possession, or, on the other, how totally unfounded Vogt's lies are. But you ought to have favoured the attack from the very outset. The second action is against the Daily Telegraph in London, for having enlarged on and reproduced the articles in the N.-Z. The Telegraph is the vilest daily paper in London, which is saying a great deal, but it is assuredly not small. It has the largest circulation of all the London daily papers. Is specially subsidised by Palmerston. This is the reason why it devotes so much space to the mud slung at me.
I am enclosing my Knight of the Noble Consciousness herewith.
2. The superbe gestus[2] exists only in your imagination.[3] On the other hand, Engels, Wolff and my wife,[4] to whom I showed both your letters, are unanimously agreed that they betray what looks uncommonly like disconcertedness at Vogt's libellous piece[5] — always assuming that très faciunt collegium.
I sent you the note,[6] etc., in order to demonstrate to you ad oculos[7] how you would flare up when confronted with a piece of infernal rubbish which has neither appeared in print nor approaches the level of Vogt's infamies.
Vogt has charged me with punishable FACTS. In your letters I could find no trace of indignation at this worthy citizen to whom, for good measure, I am expected to make a public amende honorable. Had Vogt known of your relations with me and been in possession of Wiss's note, he would have published it as an authentic document relating to the history of the 'Brimstone Gang'. To suggest that (other than in a letter to you) I had alluded anywhere—and in public—to Blind's anti-Vogt stuff, is a flippant allegation on your part. That V. is a Bonapartist agent has become perfectly clear to me from his book.[8] When Willich (Techow merely wrote what Willich had prompted him to in 1850) slung mud of a similar kind at me in the United States in 1853,[9] Weydemeyer, Dr Jacobi and Cluss came out spontaneously, even before I myself could have been notified of it, with a public statement to the effect that the whole thing was an infamous piece of slander.[10] None of my friends in Germany had uttered a word of protest against this extravagant attack; instead they wrote admonishing me in patriarchal tones.
Hence it was wholly pertinent to use the note, etc., for the purpose of putting you in my position, or rather of instilling in you a correct, if somewhat less dispassionate and doctrinaire, view of the same.
What I sent you was not a copy of Dr Wiss's letter but the original (i.e. the copy sent me from America). Dronke knows nothing about the note.
There's no question of a dossier.[11] In a private letter to the recipient of Wiss's letter,[12] I referred to you as one of the most competent people in our party and an intimate friend of myself and Engels.[13] Evidently the recipient, whom I may not name without asking him first, showed Wiss the letter, or at any rate told him what was in it. Hinc Wiss's lacrimae.[14] I have no connection with Wiss and never have had. Earlier on, he had offered his services to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and submitted an article which I threw into the waste paper basket unacknowledged. He has published half a dozen idiotic articles against me[15] in New York (in Weitling's Republik der Arbeiter).
I used the word 'official allegations'[16] simply by way of contrast to Wiss's 'confidential letter. I can see now—I was writing in haste—how very comical it was.
Who the Düsseldorf people[17] were I cannot say without committing a breach of confidence. Suffice it to observe, however, that J did not get in contact with them. As for the ingratitude of the workers towards you, that's a mere bagatelle compared with what I have had to put up with. However it isn't Levy, either as a person or collectively. Becker, Bermbach, Erhard, Uhlendorff (the last name unknown to me) have never written me a single line either against you or about you.[18]
/ did not 'ally myself with Becker. The League's Central Authority had been transferred to Cologne.[19] It was there that the final decisions had to be taken. (This 'League', like everything connected with it, has long been a thing of the past. With two or three exceptions, its documents are in America.) Becker was enrolled there. Thus, he established liaison with me.
If you will now compare the aforementioned FACTS with your interpretation of the same, your particular aptitude for 'mistrust' will become plain to you.
As to my mistrust, / know (and you would oblige me by quoting other instances) that, during my eighteen years of public activities, there have been only two instances when this mental disorder might, with some plausibility, have been imputed to me.
a. In the N. Rh. Zeit. I accepted a denunciation of Bakunin[20] which had originated in Paris from two wholly unrelated sources. One of these sources was a Polish acquaintance of mine. The other was the Paris Lithographierte Korrespondenz, which meant that, even were I not to print the denunciation, every newspaper editor would have had it. A public accusation was in the interests of the cause and in the interests of Bakunin. I had Bakunin's counter-statement in the Neue Oder-Zeitung reprinted without delay.[21] Koscielski, whom he had sent to Cologne as his second to call me out, examined the letters from Paris, whereupon he was so convinced that it had been my duty as an editor to publish the denunciation (I printed it without comment, as though it were an article) that he wrote by return of post and told Bakunin he could no longer act as his second. K. came to be one of the N. Rh. Z.'s best and most useful friends. I printed a public apology to Bakunin in the N. Rh. Z.,[22] made it up with him personally in Berlin (August 1848) and, later, broke a lance for him in the Tribune (1851).[23]
b. In the Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial several people, particularly Schapper, O. Dietz and, to a lesser extent, Willich, are treated unjustly; however,
Schapper himself (and Dietz in a letter to Schapper) has admitted that in principle I was in the right so far as they were concerned;
that they got mixed up in acts of such folly that ' only by a miracle could they have expected to elude suspicion;
that Willich was out of his mind at the time and capable of any move against me, indeed was guilty of infamous moves against me and my friends.
Finally: The remark: 'As to my mistrust, at least you can't complain about that'[24]
was a legitimate reply to your remark: (I quote from memory) 'As regards those who know you, no harm will be done to you by Vogt's pamphlet, etc' It was to this anodyne assurance I was retorting.
As to the 'great deal of truth',[25] I must take another look at your letter in London.
I trust that all points have now been settled.
Your
K. M.
Just one thing more. You advised me to postpone the 'action' until I had actually read Vogt's book.[26] Were the excerpts in the N.-Z. not enough? Could anyone who was 'integer vitae scelerisque purus[27] ' wait any longer?
Adolf Stahr—mightn't he know the Telegraph's[28] correspondent? At all events, the latter came out with some stuff after Mrs Kinkel's death that smacked of Fanny Lewald.[29]