Letter to César de Paepe, about November 25, 1865

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 25 November 1865


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 31, Moscow, 1963
Printed according to the Minutes of the meeting of the Brussels section of the International Working Men's Association of 25 November 1865
Translated from the French
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


MARX TO CÉSAR DE PAEPE[1]

IN BRUSSELS

[London, about 25 November 1865]

I. Questions relating to the Association

1) Question of organisation. 2) System of friendly societies for the members of the Association. Moral and material support for the Association's orphans.

II. Social questions 1) Co-operative labour. 2) Reduction of the hours of labour. 3) Children's labour. 4) [Trades' Unions,] their past, their present, and their future. 5) [Combination] of efforts, by means of the International Association, in the struggle between capital and labour.

6) International credit, banking institution, mode of operation. 7) Direct and indirect taxation.

8) Standing armies and their effects upon production.[2]

III. Questions of International Politics The need to reduce Muscovite influence in Europe by applying the rights of self-determination of nations, and the re-establishment of Poland upon a democratic and social basis.

IV. Question of Philosophy The religious idea and its relation to social, political and intellectual development.

  1. ↑ On 25 November 1865 César De Paepe read a letter from Marx at a meeting of the Brussels Section of the International Association. (The Institute of Marxism-Leninism does not have the original of this letter at its disposal.) The Minutes of this meeting recorded only that part of the letter which enumerated the points of the programme of the Geneva Congress drawn up by Marx and approved by the London Conference of the International (see Note 246). The differences from the similar text cited by Marx in his letter to Jung of 20 November (see this volume, p. 200) are possibly due to the inaccuracies in the record of the above-mentioned Minutes.
  2. ↑ The French text mistakenly has here: 'Association'. 9*