ENGELS TO MARX
IN LONDON
Manchester, 10 March 1868
Dear Moor,
Do not forget to return to me the things from Meissner,[1] otherwise I cannot reply to him.
If the Dutch[2] do not write to you soon, I shall see what I can do. I suppose something can still be managed.
The storm in commerce is beginning to die down, so I can work again in the evening. What you say about the Fortnightly is quite right; what is published there can be used again afterwards in Germany. The matter should be undertaken as quickly as possible.[3] But you will understand it is not possible to do much in the evening when you only get your midday meal at 7.30 or 8 in the evening.
Eichhöffchen[4] enclosed.—You will see that besides his brother[5] he also has other 'grounds' to lecture on political economy.[6]
So, the Russians have again postponed the business in Turkey.[7] As long as they have no railways, I really cannot believe that they seriously intend any serious action. Moreover, they have an awful famine in the interior.
The costs of the Bismarckian gloire, etc., are beginning to tell. 1864—population of Prussia 19,250,000. 1867—19,668,000 for the old Provinces. According to the rate hitherto—250,000 per year, it should have been 20 million. The rate has thus been reduced to one half. In the administrative districts of Münster, Minden, and Koblenz (inter alia) the population has actually declined. Biggest increase in Berlin and Düsseldorf administrative district.
Your
F. E.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ the Philipses
- ↑ Engels wrote the review of Volume One of Marx's Capital for The Fortnightly Review much later, in May and June 1868. As can be seen from their subsequent correspondence, Marx and Engels exchanged opinions several times on the content and form of the article. In spite of Professor Beesly's request, the review was rejected by the editorial board and has only been preserved in manuscript form (see present edition, Vol. 20).
- ↑ Albert Eichhoff
- ↑ A reference to the Communist League, the first German and international communist organisation of the proletariat formed under the leadership of Marx and Engels in London early in June 1847, as a result of the reorganisation of the League of the Just (a secret association of workers and artisans that appeared in the 1830s and had communities in Germany, France, Switzerland and England). The programme and organisational principles of the Communist League were drawn up with the direct participation of Marx and Engels. The League's members took an active part in the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Germany in 1848-49. Though the defeat of the revolution dealt a blow to the League, in 1849-50 it was reorganised and continued its activities. In the summer of 1850, disagreements arose in the League between the supporters of Marx and Engels and the sectarian Willich-Schapper group which tried to impose on the League its adventurist tactics of immediately unleashing a revolution without taking into account the actual situation and the practical possibilities. The discord resulted in a split within the League. Owing to police persecutions and arrests of League members in May 1851, the activities of the Communist League as an organisation practically ceased in Germany. On 17 November 1852, on a motion by Marx, the London District announced the dissolution of the League. The Communist League played an important historical role as the first proletarian party based on the principles of scientific communism, as a school of proletarian revolutionaries, and as the historical forerunner of the International Working Men's Association.
- ↑ A reference to newspaper reports of lectures 'The Causes of Modern Trade Crises' read by Wilhelm Eichhoff from February to May 1868 in Berlin. These reports were published in Die Zukunft and the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. In his lectures Eichhoff quoted from Marx's Capital and the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Marx and Engels.
- ↑ A reference to a report in The Times of 3 March 1868 that the Russian government had instructed its representatives in Turkey and in the Balkans to make every effort to refrain from conflicts with Turkey.