Letter to Thomas Allsop, January 1, 1878

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 1 January 1878


First published, in the language of the original (English) and in Japanese, in Kehai Gakuronshu, Vol. 35, No. 1, Tokyo, 1969
Reproduced from the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


MARX TO THOMAS ALLSOP

IN LONDON

[London,] 1 January 1878

My dear Friend,

I hope one good thing the new year will do—act beneficently upon your health.

My best thanks for the Owen addresses and proclamations.[1]

The Trafalgar Square meeting of Friday last was much more important than the newspaper reports would make it appear.[2]

There was a gathering of at least 15,000-20,000 people. The Russian party, as represented by the Honourable Bradlaugh, Hales, Mottershead, Osborne, etc., was forced, after a tremendous hand to hand fight, to evacuate the place with torn dresses, swollen eyes and broken noses. A dozen wounded were delivered to the next hospital. John Bull came out as a true bull and not as a lamb. The Turkish party was in overwhelming majority. Entre nous, I had somewhat my hand in getting up this demonstration, as, in point of fact, I have since many, many months acted through some British workmen and ci-devant[3] workmen upon the very diversified layers of the Pro-Turkishers. But, of course, if I had made the least public move, the whole thing would have been spoilt. In such national affairs no foreigner must appear. If he thinks it his duty to do something, he must do so secretly, behind the scenes, by a few natives upon whose discretion he can rely. One day I shall tell you [about] the very strange relations into which I have thus entered with British Grandees who would get into a white rage if they had the least suspicion under whose advice they were acting.

I have received letters and prints from Russia. The misery now prevailing there is truly shocking. Save the governmental dependents and the by no means strong fraction of Pan-Slavists, discontent is universal. They had hoped peace would be at once concluded after the fall of Plevna.

As to Turkey, the great danger for her is Mahmud Damad who alone is responsible for the failure of the first campaign. This fact is known at Constantinople, and I wonder whether some fanatical Softas[4] will not have the good sense to 'extinguish' that scoundrel. As Hobbes said: The equality of men is proved by this... that the smallest man, the weakest man, can in one way or other kill the tallest, the biggest one."[5]

Apart from all incidents of war, with the help of that model administration the Russians owe, the winter in Bulgaria will decimate their army. Already all their pontoon-bridges, save that of Zimnicea[6] (which also will not stand the repeated attacks of the Danube ice), are swept away, and, by the by, they will be cut off from Wallachia.

In France the Dufaure cabinet will not last long. The discovery of the military conspiracy will kill it.[7]

The whole family send you their new year wishes and you know that they come from the heart.

Yours most devotedly,

Karl Marx

  1. ↑ See this volume, pp. 262 63.
  2. ↑ Presumably an error in Marx's letter: the meeting in Trafalgar Square took place not on Friday, but on Saturday, 29 December 1877. It was called by the supporters of Turkey in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78.
  3. ↑ former
  4. ↑ On 22 (10) May 1876, Constantinople witnessed a mass demonstration of the softas, Moslem students of theology and constitutional law. One of their basic demands was the convocation of a representative body to approve the state budget. The Sultan was forced to meet some of the softas' demands. Specifically, he dismissed the Grand Vizier (Prime Minister) and the Sheikh ul Islam (head of the Moslem clergy).
  5. ↑ Marx is rendering a passage from Th. Hobbes, Leviathan, or the Matter, Form and Power of the Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil.
  6. ↑ Zimnicea (Zimniza), a village in Romania near which the Russian army crossed the Danube in the early morning of 27 (15) June 1877.
  7. ↑ Following the republicans' overwhelming victory at the elections to the Chamber of Deputies on 14 October 1877 (see Note 283) the Broglie ministry was forced to resign on November 19. The attempt by Mac-Mahon and his followers to effect a coup d'état on 13 December fell through due to the resistance of the junior officer corps and especially the body of privates, who shared the republican leanings of the French peasantry. On 14 December, Jules Dufaure's government was formed. In January 1879, Mac-Mahon was obliged to resign before his term of office had expired. Jules Grévy, a moderate republican, was elected president of the Republic. The bourgeois-republican system was definitively established in France.