Letter to Jenny Marx, September 23, 1871

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 23 September 1871


First published, in Russian, in Pravda, No. 126, 6 May 1958
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


MARX TO JENNY MARX

IN RAMSGATE

[London,] 23 September 1871

Dear Jenny,

T h e Conference is at last coming to an end today.[1] It was HARD WORK. Morning a n d evening sessions, commission sessions in between, HEARING OF WITNESSES, REPORTS TO BE DRAWN UP AND so FORTH. But more was done than at all the previous Congresses p u t together, because there was n o audience in front of which to stage rhetorical comedies. Germany was not represented and from Zwitzerland only Perret and Outine were there.

Last week the revolutionary party in Rome held a banquet for Ricciotti Garibaldi, and a report on it in the Rome paper La Capitale has been sent to me. O n e speaker (il signore Luciani) proposed an enthusiastically received toast to the working class and to Carlo Marx che (qui) se ne (en) è fatto (a fait) l'instancabile instrumenta (l'instrument infatigable).[2] This is a bitter pill for Mazzini!

T h e news OF MY DEATH[3] led to a MEETING of the 'COSMOPOLITAN SOCIETY' in New York whose resolutions in the World I am sending to you.[4]

Tussy has also received an anxious letter from o u r friends in St Petersburg.[5]

We had a hard time here with Robin a n d Bastelica, Bakunin's friends and fellow-intriguers. T h e revelations about Robin's activities in Geneva and Paris were, INDEED, STRANGE.[6] Jennychen's article was sent off to America today.[7]

Your

Karl

  1. ↑ This refers to the London Conference of the International Working Men's Association held between 17 and 23 September 1871 (see Note 254).
  2. ↑ 'to Karl Marx, who has made himself its indefatigable instrument'
  3. ↑ See this volume, p. 213.
  4. ↑ On receiving a false report of Marx's death, the conference of the Cosmopolitan Society adopted a resolution saying that Marx was 'one of the most devoted, most fearless and most selfless defenders of all oppressed classes and peoples'.
    The Cosmopolitan Society was one of the many democratic organisations formed in the United States in the early 1870s. It consisted of petty-bourgeois elements and workers, and also included members of the International's sections. The society disbanded in early 1872.
  5. ↑ The reference is to Danielson's letter to Eleanor Marx of 31 August (12 September) 1871 in which he asked whether Russian newspaper reports about Marx's serious illness were true.
  6. ↑ When the Swiss conflict (see Note 9) was discussed at the 1871 London Conference, Utin, Perret and Serraillier exposed the splitting activities of the Bakuninists Robin and Bastelica.
  7. ↑ Jenny Marx's letter to the American newspaper Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly about the police persecution she and her sister Eleanor had been subjected to in France in the summer of 1871 (see Note 212) was sent by Marx and published on 21 October 1871 together with his covering letter (see present edition, Vol. 22, p. 432).