Letter to Friedrich Engels, September 26, 1866

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 26 September 1866


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


MARX TO ENGELS[1]

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 26 September 1866

DEAR FRED,

Receipt enclosed for Moore (I only got the receipt from Dell yesterday).[2]

Mr Sawyer, the LANDLORD, has also written me letter that the 3 quarters (£46) are due on 2 October. I have not received a FARTHING from Holland yet and so cannot count on that.

[3] [4]

By way of demonstration against the French monsieurs—who wanted to exclude everyone except travailleurs manuels'[5] in the first instance from membership of the INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION, or at least from eligibility for election as delegate to the congress— the English yesterday proposed me as President of the CENTRAL COUNCIL. I declared that under no circumstances could I accept such a thing, and proposed Odger in my turn, who was then in fact re-elected, although some people voted for me despite my declaration. Dupont, incidentally, has given me the key to the Tolain and Fribourg operation. They want to stand as workers candidates for the Corps législatif in 1869, on the 'principle' that only workers can represent the workers. That is why it was exceedingly important for these gentlemen to get this principle proclaimed through the Congress.[6]

At yesterday's meeting of the CENTRAL COUNCIL there were all manner of dramatic scenes. E.g., Mr Cremer fell to earth with a bump when Fox was appointed General Secretary in his stead. He controlled his fury only with great difficulty. Another scene when Mr Le Lubez had to be officially informed of his expulsion from the CENTRAL COUNCIL par décret[7] of the congress. He gave vent to the turmoil in his breast in an hour-long speech, in which he spat fire and brimstone at the Parisians, represented himself in terms of astonishing self-esteem and mumbled all manner of dubious things about intrigues whereby the nationalities who were well-disposed towards him (Belgium and Italy) were prevented from attending the congress. Finally, he demanded a vote of confidence from the Central Council[8] —and this will be discussed next Tuesday.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in Karl Marx, On the First International. Arranged and edited, with an introduction and new translations by Saul K. Padover, New York, 1973.
  2. ↑ At the meeting of the General Council (as the Central Council began to be called after the Geneva Congress) on 25 September 1866 Marx informed it that he had received £5, the annual contribution, from Samuel Moore in Manchester. The receipt issued to Moore by the Treasurer of the Council, William Dell, Marx sent to Engels enclosed with this letter.
  3. ↑ Laura's jocular nickname
  4. ↑ Eleanor Marx
  5. ↑ manual workers
  6. ↑ As far back as in March 1865, the Central Council of the International adopted a resolution on the conflict in the Paris Section in which it opposed the Proudhonist thesis that only a worker was admissible as an official in the working men's organisation. During the discussion of the General Rules and the Regulations at the Geneva Congress (see Note 375), the French delegate Tolain declared that only a person directly engaged in manual labour could be a delegate to the congress. Tolain's statement met with stiff opposition. Cremer and Carter emphasised in their speeches the fact that many of the people to whom the International owed its very existence were not manual workers. They particularly noted the services of Marx who, as Cremer said, had made fight for the triumph of the working class the cause of his entire life. Tolain's amendment was rejected.
  7. ↑ by decree
  8. ↑ The reference is presumably to Wilhelm Liebknecht's letter to Marx of 20 December 1864. It clearly shows that Marx asked Liebknecht to do his utmost to get the General Association of German Workers to join the International Working Men's Association. In this way Marx hoped to encourage this workers' organisation to abandon its Lassallean reformist programme and tactics and take the path of genuinely proletarian, revolutionary struggle.