Letter to Karl Marx, February 13, 1865

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 13 February 1865


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913
Printed according to the original
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


ENGELS TO MARX[1]

IN LONDON

[Manchester,] 13 February 1865

Dear Moor,

Your SUGGESTIONS came just in time yesterday and have both been used. How necessary the one about the demands of the louts in particular was,[2] was further brought home to me by Nos. 20 and 21 of the Sow's-Dirt[3] which arrived today.

By the by, our attitude seems to be bearing fruit in spite of everything. There is a certain revolutionary note in No. 21 which was entirely absent before. By the by, I've written to Liebknecht that there's no point in raising a storm, they must just drop their flirting with reaction and make sure the aristocracy and reaction get their SHARE, too, but for the rest abuse neither them nor the bourgeoisie, which is superfluous in quiet times.[4]

But one can see that Izzy[5] has given the movement a Tory-Chartist character,[6] which it will be difficult to get rid of and which has given rise to a tendency in Germany which was previously unheard of among the workers. This nauseating toadying to the reaction comes through everywhere. WE SHALL HAVE SOME TROUBLE WITH THAT. You wait and see, the louts will be saying, what's that Engels after, what has he been doing all the time, how can he speak in our name and tell us what to do, the fellow's up there in Manchester exploiting the workers, etc. To be sure, I don't give a damn about it now, but it's bound to come, and we shall have Baron Izzy to thank for it.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ Marx is referring to the London Trades Council, first elected at a conference of trade union delegates held in London in May 1860. It headed the London trade unions numbering many thousands of members and was influential amongst the British workers. In the first half of the 1860s the Council directed the British workers' campaign against intervention in the USA, in defence of Poland and Italy, and later for the legal status of the trade unions. The leaders of the following large trade unions played a big role in the Council: the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (Robert Applegarth), the Shoemakers' Society (George Odger), the Operative Bricklayers' Society (Edwin Coulson and George Howell) and the Amalgamated Engineers (William Allan).
    The London Trades Council's representatives took part in establishing the International Working Men's Association (the First International) and were members of its Central (General) Council. But, while maintaining contacts with the International Association and collaborating with it, the London Council, influenced by some reformist trade unionists, refused (finally in January 1867) to officially affiliate to it as an English section.
    The Trades' Unionists Manhood Suffrage and Vote by Ballot Association was founded in September 1864. Odger was its President, Hartwell its Secretary, and Trimlett its Treasurer. Subsequently all of them became members of the Central (General) Council of the International Working Men's Association.
  2. ↑ See previous letter.
  3. ↑ Der Social Demokrat
  4. ↑ This letter by Engels has not been found.
  5. ↑ Lassalle
  6. ↑ The Tory Chartists or Tory philanthropists—representatives of a trend among England's conservative politicians and writers in the 1830s-50s, including the Young England group, whose members (Disraeli and Ferrand among them) founded a separate group in the House of Commons in 1841. Voicing the discontent of the landed aristocracy at the growing economic and political power of the bourgeoisie, the Tory philanthropists criticised the capitalist system and supported the half-hearted measures for improving the condition of the workers. However, they adopted a hostile attitude to the independent revolutionary working-class movement.