Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, June 24, 1865

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 24 June 1865


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow 1946
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


MARX TO WILHELM LIEBKNECHT

IN BERLIN

[London,] 24 June 1865

Dear Liebknecht,

You must explain to yourself my long silence by continuing indisposition and much work in intervals when I have been capable of it. Your letters, moreover, contained nothing which would have required urgent reply.

T h e Nordstern has most likely been suspended for a while owing to lack of money? At least, it has not arrived here for a couple of weeks. A fine gutter rag, to be sure! T h e declaration by various associations[1] that anyone who so much as lays a finger on the articles of faith as revealed by Lassalle is guilty of high treason, is priceless. Haut-goût[2] , INDEED! What is Mr B. Becker doing in Berlin, and how is the Social-Demokrat 'surviving'? You have quite the wrong notion of Dr Kugelmann. I have been in correspondence with him for years past. He was a socialist back in 1848, in Düsseldorf. As TO Pieper, the VERY NAME OF Kugelmann was not known to him when he was here.[3]

I have not yet written to Stumpf because I have not been writing any letters over this period. As regards the letter he entrusted to Bruhn, I have not, of course, ever set eyes upon it.[4]

T h e INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION is making great strides despite the 'ENORMOUS SUPPORT' it is receiving from Germany. 2 2 0

As regards the 'Louis Bonaparte',[5] I could see from your DROPPING OF THE SUBJECT that the matter has come to nothing. 7 9 I am RATHER glad of this, as I shall later be having it re-printed in the essay-collection all the same.

What is old Hatzfeldt doing? A n d the fracas over the will?[6]

Salut.

Your

K. M.

What are Messrs E. Bauer, Bucher et Co. up to? Edgar[7] will probably be staying here a while longer yet.[8]

  1. ↑ A reference to the various branches of the General Association of German Workers (see this volume, p. 161).
  2. ↑ strong meat
  3. ↑ In a letter written at the end of May-early June 1865, Liebknecht asked Marx whether he knew Dr Kugelmann from Hanover and supposed that Kugelmann was a friend of Pieper's and adhered to 'communism'. In the 1850s, while in exile in London, Pieper was a friend of Marx and Engels. From 1859 he lived in Bremen and late in February 1864 he visited Marx in London.
  4. ↑ Liebknecht's letter to Marx of 13 May 1865 contained a postscript from Paul Stumpf from Mainz who visited Berlin at the time. Stumpf wrote to Marx that he had sent him a letter ten days ago through Bruhn from Hamburg, in which he asked Marx for his opinion on the disagreements between the Nordstern and Der Social-Demokrat, on the situation in the General Association of German Workers and the position of its President, Bernhard Becker. Stumpf also asked Marx about his latest works and those of Engels and whether he had received the letter.
  5. ↑ K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
  6. ↑ This refers to Countess Sophie von Hatzfeldt's lawsuit and to Ferdinand Lassalle's mother who challenged Lassalle's will.
  7. ↑ Edgar von Westphalen
  8. ↑ See this volume, p. 159.