Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, May 4, 1866

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 4 May 1866


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow, 1946
Published in English in: Wilhelm Liebknecht-Briefwechsel mit Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, The Hague, 1963
Published in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


MARX TO WILHELM LIEBKNECHT

IN LEIPZIG[1]

[London,] 4 May 1866

My dear Friend,

As I am at this moment, after so long an interruption of work,[2] very busily engaged in making up for lost time, you will excuse me for writing this time only a few lines.

I shall send you to-day the last number of The Commonwealth. The financial position of the paper is such that it struggles from week to week and is altogether disabled from paying one farthing for Foreign Correspondence. Its circulation is increasing, but you know that a penny paper wants at least 20,000 subscribers, and cannot even then make the two ends meet without a goodly number of advertisements. The Commonwealth is of too recent an origin to come up to those requisites.

The Congress at Geneva has been postponed for the 3d of September next.[3] The society is rapidly spreading, particularly in France. Italian societies have also recently joined.[4] The propaganda in London has taken a new start, principally due to the circumstance that the successful strikes of the London tailors and wireworkers were due to our intervention which prevented the import of workingmen from France, Switzerland, Belgium, which had been contemplated by the masters. This proof of its immediate practical importance has struck the practical English mind.[5]

For the same purpose you find, on the last page of this letter, an 'avis'[6] to the German tailors which I call upon you to have inserted in such German papers as you have access to.[7] At the same time you will oblige me by sending me a copy or two of some papers in which the 'avis' will have been inserted, telling me at the same time the names of all other papers that should have reprinted it. Kugelmann might also be useful for this purpose.

My best compliments to Mrs. Liebknecht.[8] I feel exceedingly thankful for her friendly interest in my welfare.

Yours fraternally

A. Williams[9]

  1. ↑ The letter bears the stamp: International Working Men's Association / Central Council / London.
  2. ↑ on Capital
  3. ↑ The London Conference of the International Association (see Note 246) decided to hold the first congress of the International in Geneva in May 1866. Later, however, the Central Council found it necessary to postpone the congress. All sections of the International agreed with this decision, except for the Paris Section whose Proudhonist leaders wanted to hold the congress as soon as possible because they calculated to impose their programme and principles on it. The congress met on 3-8 September 1866.
  4. ↑ See this volume, p. 47.
  5. ↑ On the London tailors' strike see Note 325. On 23 April 1866, the London wire-workers went on strike, demanding a 10 per cent wage increase. The same day, the strike committee sent out letters to all towns in England, Scotland and Ireland requesting the wire-workers there not to take jobs in London during the strike. With the help of the Central Council of the International, similar letters were sent to France and Germany. At the Central Council meeting of 24 April 1866, B. Patis, a member of the London Association of Wire-Workers, thanked the Council for its help to the strikers and promised that the wire-workers would join the International.
  6. ↑ 'warning'. Marx means his article 'A Warning'.
  7. ↑ On 26 March 1866, Edinburgh tailors went on strike. With a view to preventing the importation into Scotland of German and Danish tailors to be used as strike-breakers, German tailors living in London formed a committee headed by Lessner and Haufe, and decided to act jointly with the Central Council of the International. At Marx's request, Lessner and Haufe sent him on 3 May details about the events in Edinburgh for use in a report for the German press. On 4 May, Marx wrote and sent Liebknecht, on behalf of the Central Council, a short article, entitled 'A Warning', which was published in several German papers (see present edition, Vol. 20). At the same time a leaflet written by Lessner and Haufe was issued in London. They appealed to the German workers in London to raise funds and support the strikers. Moreover, the Central Council sent Haufe and Hansen to Edinburgh to wreck the employers' plans. The Central Council's efforts contributed to the success of the strike, and promoted the International's influence in Britain.
  8. ↑ Ernestine Liebknecht
  9. ↑ Marx's conspiratorial pseudonym