Letter to Johann Baptist von Schweitzer, January 16, 1865

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 16 January 1865


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXV, Moscow, 1934
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


MARX TO JOHANN BAPTIST VON SCHWEITZER

IN BERLIN

[Draft]

To. J. B. v. Schweitzer ('Social-Demokrat')

London, 16 January 1865

Sir,

Despite its brief existence, your Social-Demokrat has already carried two attacks on the International Association'. I am only awaiting the third' before my friends and I publicly dissociate ourselves from any connection with your paper. In the event of such a dissociation, I should be compelled to deal critically with certain things which, in deference to party interests, I have hitherto not aired, and this may not be at all to the liking of certain gentlemen. The first attack on the 'International Association' was contained in an inane passage in B. Becker's 'Message'.[1]

I did not hold you responsible for it for the very reason that it was a 'message' and you unfortunately have an official connection with the 'General Workers' Association2 (emphatically not to be confused with the working class).

The bare-faced, lying gossip of Mr Moses Hess[2] is another matter; if you had had the slightest consideration for me and my friends you would under no circumstances have accepted it, you could only have accepted it with the intention of provoking me.

With regard to Moses' fabrication itself, I shall be making a public statement about it after I have obtained certain information from Paris.[3] Regarding your acceptance of that abomination of an article, I should be obliged if you would inform me whether I am to consider same as a declaration of war by the 'Social-Demokrat'?

Your most obedient servant

K. Marx[4]

  1. ↑ Marx is referring to 'Botschaft des Präsidenten', a message by Bernhard Becker, President of the General Association of German Workers, to the delegates of the general assembly of the Association that opened on 27 December 1864 in Düsseldorf (see notes 16 and 82). It was published in Der Social-Demokrat, No. 3, 30 December 1864 and contained a hint that the Association could not establish close ties with the International because that would allegedly damage its organisation and did not promise to be of any practical value.
  2. ↑ [Moses]H[ess], 'Paris, 10. Jan. [Arb. Associationen. Internat. Arb. Assoc. Avenir national], Der Social Demokrat, No. 8, 13 January 1865.
  3. ↑ In his report from Paris, dated 10 January 1865 and published in Der Social-Demokrat on 13 January, Moses Hess misrepresented the efforts of the Central Council of the International Association to draw French workers into its ranks. He alleged that the Council was essentially unscrupulous in selecting its representatives in Paris and accused Tolain and certain other French members of the International of having ties with the Bonapartists (see Marx's letter to Engels of 25 January 1865). Hess repeated this accusation in his report from Paris printed in the newspaper on 1 February, following which Marx and Engels wrote a statement to Der Social-Demokrat refuting this false accusation (see present edition, Vol. 20, p. 36).
  4. ↑ Here a strip of paper is cut off at the bottom of the page, presumably bearing Marx's signature. The paragraph that follows is a postscript in the left hand corner of the first page of the letter.