Letter to Karl Marx, March 6, 1865

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 6 March 1865


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 3, Berlin, 1930
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 6 March 1865

Dear Moor,

Yours of the day before yesterday received, as was the Social-Demokrat today containing that droll article excommunicating us.[1] It really makes one laugh.

I have been at home with 'flu most of today, but I shall go and see the lawyer about the Lupus affair[2] as soon as possible. Everything will be straight as soon as the fellow completes; Borchardt has been paid his £100 (i.e. less the money he has already had), and the Schiller Institute also its £100, too; furthermore, I gave the lawyer approx. £150 to cover tax and am only waiting for his account now before remitting the rest to you directly. I shall put together a provisional balance sheet for you in a day or two so that you can see how things stand.

Things from Siebel and a certain Lange enclosed. Qu'en penses-tu?[3] Send the stuff back, as well as the letter from Meissner, which I must have for my correspondence with him. I am sending him the cuttings for him to see that we have also got people to push things along.

The Kölnische Zeitung has also printed our statement,[4] but only up to the words that the Social-Demokrat's tactics preclude our further participation in it.

Bruhn returned enclosed. How THE HELL CAME YOU TO OWE THAT FELLOW ANY BRASS?[5] However much it is, I shall send it to you at once.

2 COPIES of the pamphlet[6] despatched herewith. They are the last ones. But I have ordered some more. There is an announcement about the pamphlet in the Kölner Zeitung.

What kind of 'PAPERS from the Manchester press relating to the COTTON-CRISIS' are you talking about? Surely you mean from the RELIEF COMMITTEE[7] ? I have not seen Maclure for some time; as soon as I encounter him, I shall have a word with him about it.

Gumpert does not think much of Kugelmann's phosphate of lime. At all events, it is not a specific remedy. He says you ought to take arsenic. Returned enclosed.

I must now go to the Schiller Institute to chair the Comité. By the by, one of the fellows there, a chemist,[8] has recently explained Tyndall's experiment with sunlight[9] to me. It is really capital.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ This refers to Schweitzer's article published in Der Social-Demokrat, No. 29, 3 March 1865, in the section 'Politische Theil'. It said that the German Social-Democrats who were not members of the General Association of German Workers did not belong to the Social-Democratic Party. By this attack on Marx, Engels and their close associates in Germany, the editors of Der Social-Demokrat sought to weaken the impression of Marx and Engels' statement on their breach with the newspaper. See also Engels' letter to Joseph Weydemeyer of 10 March 1865 (this volume, pp. 124-25).
  2. ↑ See this volume, pp. 135-38.
  3. ↑ What do you think of it?
  4. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, 'To the Editor of the Social-Demokrat.'
  5. ↑ See this volume, pp. 117-19.
  6. ↑ F. Engels, The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party.
  7. ↑ In April 1863 the British Parliament passed the Public Works Act in view of the reduced production and mass unemployment in the cotton districts of England. This Act provided the municipal authorities of these districts with funds to pay the unemployed temporarily used for public works, mainly on laying the sewerage system, building roads, etc. The Relief Committees, which guarded the interests of the capitalists, were in charge of organising these works and paying the workers. The unemployed were forced to agree to hard labour for miserable pay. The ateliers nationaux (national workshops) were instituted by the French Provisional Government immediately after the February revolution of 1848. By this means the government sought to discredit Louis Blanc's ideas on 'the organisation of labour' in the eyes of the workers and, at the same time, to utilise those employed in the national workshops, organised on military lines, against the revolutionary proletariat. Revolutionary ideas, however, continued to gain ground in the national workshops. The government took steps to reduce the number of workers employed in them, to send a large number off to public works in the provinces and finally to liquidate the workshops. This precipitated a proletarian uprising in Paris in June 1848. After its suppression, the Cavaignac government issued a decree on 3 July, disbanding the national workshops.
  8. ↑ probably Carl Schorlemmer
  9. ↑ See this volume, p. 91.