Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, Mid-August 1871

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 15 August 1871


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow 1946
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


ENGELS TO WILHELM LIEBKNECHT[1]

IN LEIPZIG

[London, mid-August 1871]

Wrôblewski, Longuet, Bastelica are here. Why bother to rehabilitate that good-for-nothing B. Becker? And allow that jackass Goegg to parade his own idiocies before the public?[2]

Marx's daughters are in Bagnères-de-Luchon in the Pyrenees, where they were visited by the Prefect, the great Kératry, and Delpech, the Prosecutor-General, who made it clear that it was necessary for them to leave France. Lafargue was safely...[3]

mountains to Spain. Two gendarmes were posted in their garden until their departure! But do not mention any of this in public (apart from what might be reported in the French papers), until we have them safely back here again.[4] Thiers is determined to make a complete fool of himself.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ The beginning of the letter is missing because the top of the sheet is damaged.
  2. ↑ On 9 August 1871 Der Volksstaat published a statement by Amand Goegg addressed to the editors of the Schwäbischer Merkur, in which he declared himself an advocate of individualism. On 12 August Der Volksstaat published Bernhard Becker's letter headed 'Zur Geschichte des Preußischen Regierungssozialismus' referring to the time of his expulsion from the General Association of German Workers (1865).
  3. ↑ Paper damaged and partly illegible.
  4. ↑ Towards the end of April 1871 Marx's daughters Jenny and Eleanor set out for Bordeaux to visit Laura and Paul Lafargue; in June all of them moved to Bagnères-de-Luchon. Early in August, fearful of persecution, Lafargue left for Spain and Laura followed him. Jenny and Eleanor were arrested in Luchon and later expelled from France. On this see K. Marx, 'Letter to the Editor of The Sun, Charles Dana' and Jenny Marx's Letter to the Editor of Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly (present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 396-99, 622).