MARX TO HERMANN JUNG[1]
IN LONDON
Manchester,[2] [about 8 January 1865] 58 Dover Street, Oxford Street
My dear Jung,
I felt rather shocked at reading in the 'Beehive' and the 'Miner' of this week that at our last Committee-sitting
'It was unanimously agreed to invite Messrs Beesly, Grossmith, Beales and Harrison, to the soirée which is to be held on the 16th'.[3]
I do not mention the mere anachronism, that no such resolution was taken on last Tuesday's sitting.[4]
What I object to is the positive falsehood that Mr Grossmith was invited.
This Grossmith, although he seldom or never attends our sittings, figures as a member of the Committee under all our addresses.
How could our Committee invite a member of our Committee to a soirée given by our Committee? Shall this, perhaps, form a sort of premium to be gained by regular absence from our weekly séances?
Since I cannot return to London before the end of next week, you'll much oblige me
By asking at next Tuesday's sitting, who is the writer of the report in the 'Beehive' and the 'Miner?
Who empowered that writer to make our Committee the unconscious instrument of exalting Mr Grossmith?
You will understand at once how important it is to nip in the bud any attempt at turning our Committee into the tool of local ambitions, or any sort of intrigues.
[5]
You will oblige me, by informing me, under the above address,—and supposing you to make the interpellation—what answer was given to you.[6]
Salut et fraternité.
K. Marx
- ↑ The English original of this letter is published here for the first time. The letter was first published in a German translation in Marx/Engels, Werke, Bd. 31, Berlin, 1965, and in an English retranslation in Karl Marx, On the First International. Arranged and edited, with an introduction and new translations by Saul K. Padover, New York, 1973.
- ↑ Marx stayed with Engels in Manchester approximately from 7 to 14 January 1865.
- ↑ The Bee Hive Newspaper, No. 169, 7 January 1865; The Miner and Workman's Advocate, No. 97, 7 January 1865.
- ↑ Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in the Labour Monthly, No. 4, London, 1923.
- ↑ b on 3 January
- ↑ At its meeting of 29 December 1864, the Central Council decided to invite the bourgeois radicals Beesly, Beales and Harrison to a soirée to be held on 16 January 1865 to celebrate the founding of the International Working Men's Association. This decision was recorded in the Minutes of that meeting. The report of the meeting was not published, and Cremer, when sending the report of the next meeting, of 3 January 1865, to the newspapers, included the above-mentioned decision in it and recorded it for a second time in the Minute Book. Moreover, on his own initiative, Cremer inserted in the decision Grossmith's name who, as a Central Council member, did not have to be specially invited. As is evident from Jung's reply letter to Marx of 11 January, Marx's protest against the inclusion of Grossmith's name was read out at the Central Council meeting of 10 January; Cremer admitted his mistake, and Grossmith's name was deleted from the Minutes of the meeting of 3 January.