Letter to Friedrich Engels, November 23, 1868

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 23 November 1868


Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 43


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

London, 23 November 1868

DEAR FRED,

The FIRST HALF arrived this morning. Enclosed 2 letters, ONE from Collet and the other from Jones. As regards Collet, I have burnt my fingers with these blasted Urquhartites[1] . You know—at least I think I wrote to you about it—that, purely for the joy of MISCHIEFMONGERING, I set new bees in their bonnets about the Peel Act of 1844 2 2 3 and its useful effect for Russia. (Incidentally the matter is correct WITHIN CERTAIN LIMITS.) Now Urquhart wants to print one of these letters over my name in his NEXT Diplomatic Review.[2]

If I refused 'my name', I would make them mistrustful. So I am IN FOR IT. It is a consolation that not a soul reads the Diplomatic Review (EXCEPT A SMALL CLIQUE). The Urquhartites, however, are burning their fingers too. In order to give the affair more weight, they obviously intend to cite me as the author of Capital, which would be AN ABOMINATION in their eyes if they knew it.

As regards Ernest Jones, I find him EXCEEDINGLY COOL. / should act for him as ELECTIONEERING AGENT (for Greenwich)! I have replied 84 that I see not a GHOST OF A CHANCE for him: 1. Baxter Langley is the local candidate, and neither Mill nor Beales COULD STAND without his PERMISSION. 2. The GENERAL COUNCIL of the 'International' does not get mixed up in ELECTIONEERING. In no case could we act against B. Langley because—and this is a fact—since the Brussels Congress 1 3 8 B. Langley and his SUNDAY LEACUE[3] have concluded an amicable agreement with us. (In fact, our sessions take place in their hall.)

3. He (Jones) is at present unpopular in London (and this is true). Reynolds's ARTICLES: 'TRAITORS IN THE CAMP', etc., had damaged him.[4]

I have just received the enclosed letter from the secretary[5] of the Workers' Educational Society here. 6 7 This shows that the Lassalleans imported from Paris and Germany, who maintain secret contacts with Schweitzer, have made use of Lessner's absence due to his wife's sickness in order fraudulently to obtain from here a vote of confidence for Schweitzer against the Nurembergers. 1 3 5 As a well-known member of the Society, I would be made responsible for this—and this appears to me to be the aim of the whole operation. Thus I am writing to Speyer without delay explaining the reasons that, under these circumstances, I must announce my resignation from the Society.[6]

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ Ibid., p. 159.
  2. ↑ Marx refers to the speech made by Louis Michel on 13 November 1851 in the Legislative Assembly (see Le Moniteur universel, No. 318, 14 November 1851, supplement 1) concerning the Bill introduced on 6 November 1851 by the royalists Le Flô, Baze and Panat, questors of the Legislative Assembly (deputies of the Assembly in charge of economic and financial matters and security). The Bill, which gave the Chairman of the Legislative Assembly the right to summon troops, was rejected on 17 November. When the vote was taken, the Montagne supported the Bonapartists, seeing the royalists as the principal danger.
  3. ↑ The National Sunday League—a philanthropic educational organisation which campaigned to get the cultural establishments—museums, concert halls, etc.—to stay open on Sundays, since the working population was unable to visit them on weekdays. Its honorary secretary was R. M. Morell, and a member of the council—the bourgeois radical Baxter Langley. The League's activities met with a strong opposition from the Anglican Church and the religious organisations which demanded a strict observance of Sundays.
    The League's premises at 256, High Holborn, London, W.C. were the venue of the General Council meetings held between June 1868 and February 1872.
  4. ↑ A reference to the anonymous article 'Look before You Leap, and Beware of Traitors' (Reynolds's Newspaper, No. 949, 18 October 1868), which sharply criticised Jones' attitude to the Whigs and accused him of being a renegade. During the Parliamentary election campaign, Jones openly supported the Whig candidates from Carlisle saying that 'the Whigs had now come round to the Democrats, and joined hands with them'. The article in the Reynolds's Newspaper quoted Jones' remarks of more than ten years before (published by the Democrat newspaper of Carlisle) which did not tally with his later actions: 'The Whigs are the political adventurers; ... they are the men who keep their hands in the pockets of the people; they are tricky politicians. On each side of them stand two classes—one on each side of them, and the thief is in the middle. The one is the Tory; the other is the Radical; and the Whig—the thief—is in the middle.'
  5. ↑ Carl Speyer
  6. ↑ See present edition, Vol. 21, 'Statement to the German Workers' Educational Society in London'.