Letter to Karl Marx, October 22, 1867

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 22 October 1867


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, 22 October 1867

Dear Moor,

The letters from Becker and Eccarius returned enclosed.[1] The lack of money is, of course, a great misfortune for the party, and a yet greater one for those poor devils.

Siebel has written to me from Honnef on the Rhine that he is coming here at the beginning of November to embark at Liverpool again for Madeira. He says I should send him the articles[2] by return; this evening I shall set to work to knock a few into shape for him. What I am writing for the German press is, of course, all dressed up in disguise; I shall have to write differently for America, since one can take greater liberties there.

Sam Moore has written from Eisenach; he seems to be making considerable progress with his German.

I am greatly amused by Liebknecht. It is truly fortunate that he is still thoroughly infected with the South-German-Federalist nonsense and can consequently attack Bismarckism with great SINGLENESS OF PURPOSE and with undaunted moral indignation. A somewhat more critical and more dialectical outlook would only sow confusion in his mind and lead him astray. He has obviously taken Lupus in the Frankfurt Parliament[3] as his model and has properly earned his call to order by describing the Reichstag as the fig-leaf of naked absolutism. You will have seen that he has inserted a paragraph for the protection of factory children in the combination law.5

The Party of Progress" has rejected the Commission of Inquiry as not being within the competence of the Reichstag.[4] The Confederation is, however, competent to deal with all matters of trade and industry, only the Reichstag cannot appoint a commission, although it can indeed request the Federal authority to do so.

In the interest debate Bismarck has rejected the idea of granting the mortgage banks state assistance, saying that if it is a question of state support, this could only be approved for the workers'[5] associations at most. So, the scoundrel still thinks he can dupe the workers.

Victor Emmanuel appears to be playing a most risky game. For all that, the Roman fracas is not yet over.[6] The air is becoming more electric every day, and I should not be at all surprised if the storm were to break right next spring.

Best regards to your wife, the girls and Doctor Eisenbart.3

Your

F. E.

I'm glad the Borkheim business is straight now. Under no circumstances can I give Gottfried Ermen a pretext just now to terminate his contract with me on the grounds of direct breach of contract. I hope the money drives away your carbuncles; don't forget to take plenty of exercise in the open air.

I shall be glad to do the thing for The Fortnightly Review?'09 But you must let me know about how much space I am allowed for it. I presume you will prefer me to summarise, so as briefly to give the main points of the book[7] —origin of capital—surplus-value—working day—revision of Ricardo's laws, etc., etc., after all I really cannot criticise the thing. I should also like to know approximately when the thing must be complete. It is too late for the 1 November number, so for the 1 December number it will have to be.

  1. ↑ The Civil War in America broke out in April 1861. The Southern slaveholders rose against the Union and formed the Confederacy of the Southern States. The war was caused mainly by the conflict between the two social systems: the capitalist system of wage labour established in the North and the slave system dominant in the South. The Civil War, which had the nature of a bourgeois-democratic revolution, underwent two stages in its development: the period of a constitutional war for maintaining the Union and the period of a revolutionary war for the abolition of slavery. The decisive role in the defeat of the Southern slaveholders and the victory of the North in April 1865 was played by the workers, farmers and the Negroes. The causes and the nature of war in America were analysed by Marx in the articles published in the Vienna newspaper Die Presse (see present edition, Vol. 19). The discontinuance of cotton imports from America as a result of the blockade of the Southern States by the Northern fleet caused a crisis in the cotton industry of several European countries. In England, for two or three years beginning in 1862, over 75 per cent of the spinners and weavers in Lancashire, Cheshire and other counties were fully or partly unemployed. Despite privation and distress, the European proletariat gave all possible support to the American fighters against slavery.
  2. ↑ on the first volume of Capital
  3. ↑ On 26 May 1849, in the discussion of the drafts for an Appeal to the German people in the Frankfurt National Assembly, W. Wolff made a vivid speech exposing the enemies of the revolution and the indefinite conciliatory stand of the liberals and moderate democrats. He described the Imperial Regent, Archduke John, as the betrayer of the people. The chairman hurriedly called him to order.
  4. ↑ In his letter of 8 October 1867 Wilhelm Liebknecht informed Marx that he and another Reichstag deputy, Reincke, intended to table the proposal that a commission should be appointed for inquiry into the workers' condition in Prussia. To substantiate this proposal Liebknecht wanted to acquaint himself with the powers of similar commissions in England and asked Marx to send him the relevant legislative acts. Marx sent him the following acts: An Act for Facilitating in Certain Cases the Proceedings of the Commissioners appointed to make Inquiry respecting Trades Unions and other Associations of Employers or Workmen which had been passed by the British Parliament on 5 April 1867, and An Act to Extend the 'Trades Union Commission Act, 1867' which had been passed on 12 August 1867.
  5. ↑ See this volume, p. 455.
  6. ↑ Paul Lafargue (Engels jocularly calls Lafargue by the name of a wandering German physician, which became synonymous with a quack)
  7. ↑ the first volume of Capital