1 This is the earliest extant letter of Engels to Marx, written soon after Engels’ return to Germany from England. On his way back to Germany at the end of August 1844, he stopped in Paris, where he met Marx. During the days they spent together they discovered that their theoretical views coincided, and the immediately began their first joint work, directed against the Young Hegelians. Engels finished his part before leaving Paris, while Marx continued to write his. At first they intended to call the book A Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer and Co. But while it was being printed Marx added The Holy Family to the title.
This meeting of Marx and Engels in Paris marked the beginning of their friendship, joint scientific work and revolutionary struggle.
The extant original of this letter bears no date. The approximate time of its writing was determined on the basis of Engels’ letter to Marx of 19 November 1844 (see this volume, pp. 9-14).
This letter was published in English in frill for the first time in: Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence. Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1955.
2 Karl Bernays, one of the editors of the German newspaper Vorwärts!, published in Paris, was sued by the French authorities in September 1844 at the request of the Prussian Government for not having paid the caution-money required for the publication of a Political newspaper. The real reason, however, was the article ‘Attentat auf den König von Preussen’ published in Vorwärts!, No. 62, 3 August 1844. On 13 December 1844 Bernays was sentenced to two months,’ imprisonment and a fine.
3 Engels left Germany in November 1842 and lived for nearly two years in England, working in the office of a Manchester cotton-mill of which his father was co-proprietor.
4 In July 1844 Marx began to contribute to the newspaper Vorwärts!, which prior to that — from early 1844 to the summer of the same year — reflected the moderate liberalism of its publisher, the German businessman H. Börnstein, and its editor A. Bornstedt. However, when Karl Bernays, a friend of Marx, became its editor in the summer of 1844, the newspaper assumed a democratic character. By contributing to the newspaper, Marx began to influence its policy and in September became one of its editors. Other contributors were Engels, Heine, Herwegh, Ewerbeck and Bakunin. Under Marx’s influence the newspaper came to express communist views, and attacked Prussian absolutism and moderate German liberalism. At the behest of the Prussian Government, the Guizot ministry took repressive measures against its editors and contributors in January 1845, when publication ceased.
5 Engels is referring to Kritik der Politik und National-Ökonomie, a work which Marx planned to write. Marx began to study political economy at the end of 1843 and by spring 1844 he set himself the task of writing a criticism of bourgeois political economy from the standpoint of materialism and communism. The draft Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (see present edition, Vol. 3), written at that time, have reached us incomplete. Work on The Holy Family forced Marx temporarily to interrupt his study of political economy until December 1844. In February 1845, just before his expulsion from Paris. he signed a contract for his Kritik der Politik und National-Okonomie with the publisher Leske (see Note 27). In Brussels Marx continued to study the works of English, French, German, Italian and other economists and added several more notebooks of excerpts to those compiled in Paris, although his original plan for the book was not carried out.
6 The Holy Family by Marx and Engels was published not in Hamburg by Hoffmann and Campe, but in Frankfurt am Main by Z. Löwenthal, founder o i f the Literarische Anstalt publishing house (owned by Joseph Rütten since the autumn of 1844).
7 Heinrich Heine wrote to Marx from Hamburg on 21 September 1844 (see the new Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe — referred to in future as MEGA2 — Abt. III, Bd. 1, S. 443-44) telling him that a new collection of his poems, Neue Gedichte, had been published there. It contained romances, ballads and other poems including the satirical poem Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen, which was also published separately by Hoffmann and Campe. Heine sent Marx a copy of this poem for simultaneous publication in Vorwärts! and announcement of his new collection of verse in this and other newspapers (he promised to bring the ballads and other poems to Paris himself).
On 19 October 1844 Vorwärts!, No. 84, carried Heine’s preface to the separate edition of his poem. It was dated 17 October 1844 and entitled ‘H. Heines neue Gedichte’. It was preceded by an editorial introduction which accorded high praise to the poet’s new work and in fact expressed Marx’s point of view. The poem was published in full in Vorwärts! in late October-November 1844.
8 L. Feuerbach’s Das Wesen des Glaubens im Sinne Luther’s was published ill instalments in Vorwärts! from the middle of August to the end of October 1844.
9 This letter without an address on the back of it was published in English for the first time in: K. Marx and F. Engels, On Britain, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1953 and in full in Letters of the Young Engels, 1838-1845, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976.
10 The letter written by Marx and Bürgers to Engels on 8 October 1844 has not been found.
11 The disagreements between Marx and Engels on the one hand and Arnold Ruge on the other dated back to the time of the publication of the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, under the editorship of Marx and Ruge. These disagreements were due to Ruge’s negative attitude towards communism and the revolutionary proletarian movement, the fundamental difference between Marx’s views and those of the Young Hegelian Ruge, who was an adherent of philosophical idealism. The final break between Marx and Ruge occurred in March 1844. Ruge’s condemnation of the Silesian weavers’ rising in June 1844 impelled Marx to criticise his views in the article ‘Critical Marginal Notes on the Article “The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian"’ (see present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 189-206).
12 A reference to the Associations for the Benefit of the Working-Classes formed in a number of Prussian towns in 1844 and 1845 on the initiative of the German liberal bourgeoisie, who were alarmed at the rising of the Silesian weavers in the summer of 1844, and hoped that the associations would help to divert the German workers from militant struggle. Despite the efforts of the bourgeoisie and the government authorities to give these associations a harmless philanthropic appearance, they gave a fresh impulse to the growing political activity of the urban masses and drew the attention of broad sections of German society to social questions. The movement to establish such associations was particularly widespread in the towns of the industrial Rhine Province.
Seeing that the associations had taken such an unexpected direction, the Prussian Government hastily cut short their activity in the spring of 1845 by refusing to approve their statutes and forbidding them to continue their work.
13 Rationalists — representatives of a Protestant trend which tried to combine theology with philosophy and to prove that ‘divine truths’ can be explained by reason. Rationalism opposed pietism, an extremely mystical trend in Lutheranism.
14 At the meeting held in Cologne on 10 November 1844 and attended by former shareholders of and contributors to the Rheinische Zeitung, liberals Ludolf Camphausen, Gustav, Mevissen, radicals Georg Jung, Karl d'Ester, Franz Raveaux and others among them, a General Association for Relief and Education was set up with the aim of improving the workers’ condition (the measures to be taken included raising funds for mutual assistance and relief to the sick, etc.). Despite the opposition of the liberals, the meeting adopted democratic rules which provided for the workers’ active participation in the work of the Association. Subsequently a definitive split took place between the radical-democratic elements and the liberals. The latter headed by Camphausen withdrew from the Association, which was soon prohibited by the authorities.
In November 1844 an Educational Society was set up in Elberfeld. Its founders had from the very start to fight against the local clergy, who attempted to bring the Society under their influence and give its activity a religious colouring. Engels and his friends wished to use the Society’s meetings and its committee to spread communist views (see F. Engels, ‘Speeches in Elberfeld’, present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 243-64). As Engels had expected, the statute of the Society was not approved by the authorities, and the Society itself ceased 1 to exist in the spring of 1845. (On the meetings in Cologne and Elberfeld, see F. Engels, ‘Rapid Progress of Communism in Germany’, present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 229-42).
15 Originally Engels planned to write a work on the social history of England and to devote one of its chapters to the condition of the working class in England (see present edition, Vol. 4, p. 302). But realising the special role played by the proletariat in bourgeois society, he decided to deal with this problem in a separate book, which he wrote on his return to Germany, between September 1844 and March 1845. Excerpts in Engels’ notebooks made in July and August 1845, and the letters of the publisher Leske to Marx of 14 May and 7 June 1845 (see MEGA2, Abt. III Bd. 1, S. 465, 469) show that in the spring and summer of 1845 Engels continued to work on the social history of England. Though he did not abandon his plan up to the end of 1847, as is seen from an item in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung, No. 91 of 14 November 1847, he failed to put it into effect.
16 Engels did not write a pamphlet on Friedrich List’s book Das nationals System der politischen Oekonomie (Stuttgart und Tübingen, 1841) though later he continued to discuss this idea with Marx (see this volume, pp. 28 and 79), who in his turn intended to publish a critical analysis of List’s views (see K. Marx, ‘Draft of an Article on Friedrich List’s Book Das nationals System der politischen Oekonomie’, present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 265-93), Engels criticised the German advocates of protectionism, and List above all, in one of his ‘Speeches in Elberfeld’ (see present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 256-64).
17 ‘The Free’ — a Berlin group of Young Hegelians formed early in 1842. Among its prominent members were Edgar Bauer, Eduard Meyen, Ludwig Buhl ant Max Stirner (pseudonym of Kaspar Schmidt). Their criticism of the prevailing conditions was abstract, devoid of real revolutionary content and ultra-radical in form. The fact that ‘The Free’ lacked any positive programme and ignored the realities of political struggle soon led to differences between them and the representatives of the revolutionary-democratic wing of the German opposition movement. A sharp conflict arose between ‘The Free’ and Marx in the autumn of 1842, when Marx had become editor of the Rheinische Zeitung (see present edition, Vol. 1, pp. 393-95).
During the two Years which had elapsed since Marx’s clash with ‘The Free’ (1843-44), Marx’s and Engels’ disagreement with the Young Hegelians on questions of theory and politics had deepened still more. This was accounted for not only by Marx’s and Engels’ transition to materialism and communism, but also by the evolution in the ideas of the Bauer brothers and their fellow-thinkers. In the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung Bauer and his group renounced the ‘radicalism of 1842’ and, besides professing subjective idealist views and counterposing chosen personalities, the bearers of ‘pure Criticism’, to the allegedly sluggish and inert masses, they began spreading the ideas of moderate liberal philanthropy.
It was to the exposure of the Young Hegelians’ views in the form which they had acquired in 1844 and to the defence of their own new materialistic and communistic outlook that Marx and Engels decided to devote their first joint work The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer and Co. (present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 3-211).
18 Here Marx writes about the Vorwärts! Pariser Deutsche Monatsschrift which Heinrich Börnstein planned to publish instead of the newspaper Vorwärts! The prospectus of the monthly published in German and French on 1 January 1845 (a publication date helps in determining the approximate date of this letter) stated that one of the reasons for the reformation of Vorwärts! was that no caution-money was needed for publishing a journal as distinct from a newspaper. The journal of eight printed sheets was to appear on the 16th of each month. The expulsion of Marx and other contributors to Vorwärts! from France (see notes 4 and 19) prevented the publication of the first issue, the proof sheets of which had already been printed.
As is seen from this letter and that of Engels to Marx written approximately 20 January 1845 (see this volume, p. 16), Marx intended to write a critical review of Stirner’s Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum at the end of December 1844 and originally wanted to publish it in the monthly Vorwärts! There is no information on whether this plan materialised. It is only known that two years later Marx and Engels scathingly criticised Stirner’s book in their German Ideology (see present edition, Vol, 5, pp. 117-443).
19 Marx, Ruge and Bernays were expelled from France for contributing to the newspaper Vorwärts! The French authorities issued the expulsion decree on 11 January 1845, under pressure from the Prussian Government. Hearing about this, Marx hastened to warn Ruge despite the ideological conflict between them (the postmark on the envelope shows that the letter was written on 15 January). The expulsion decree was handed to Marx together with the order to leave Paris within a week. Marx prepared to leave for Brussels on 3 February (see this volume, p, 21).
20 The letter is not dated. The postmark shows that it was sent on 20 January 1845, but its contents prove that Engels wrote it over several days.
An excerpt from this letter was published in English for the first time in: Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1955; published in English in full for the first time in Letters of the Young Engels. 1838-1845, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976.
21 This letter of Marx has not been found.
22 Engels took part in preparing the publication of the Elberfeld journal Gesellschaftsspiegel, in drawing up its programme and in compiling the prospectus published in the first issue in the form of the editorial address (see present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 671-74). The prospectus reflected Engels’ intention that the journal should expose the evils of the capitalist system and defend the interests of the workers by criticising half-measures and advocating a radical transformation of the social system. But at the same time, not a few abstract philanthropic sentiments in the spirit of ‘true socialism’, emanating from Hess, found a place in the prospectus. Dissatisfaction with the position adopted by Hess was apparently one reason why Engels refused to become one of the editors. Under the editorship of Hess the journal very soon became a mouthpiece of the reformist and sentimental ideas of ‘true socialism’.-16, 23
23 Ein Handwerker (An Artisan) was the pseudonym under which Lebenslieder, a cycle of poems by J. F. Martens, was published in Vorwärts! on 24 August, 4 September and 20 October 1844, and the article ‘Über Handwerksunterricht’ on 25 December.
24 Under the press laws existing in a number of German states, only publications exceeding 20 printed sheets were exempted from preliminary censorship. The size of the Rheinische Jahrbücher exempted it from censorship, but the police of the Grand Duchy of Hesse nevertheless confiscated the first volume of the journal which was published in Darmstadt in August 1845 and banned its publication altogether. The second volume was published in Belle-Vue, Switzerland, at the end of 1846.
25 On Engels’ intention to write a book on the social history of England (it was also to deal with the history of English social thought) see Note 15.
26 Engels’ reference is to the Berlin confectioner who owned a shop in the Gendarmenmarkt where ‘The Free’ used to have their meetings.
27 The letter has no date. The approximate date of its writing is established on the basis of Marx’s mentioning in it his imminent departure from Paris due to the expulsion decree issued against him by the French authorities (see Note 19), and also his meeting with the publisher Leske during which he probably concluded the contract for publishing his Kritik der Politik und National-Ökonomie (for the text of the contract see present edition, Vol. 4, p. 675) which was signed on 1 February 1845.
This letter was first published in English in full in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, 1979.
28 The first English translation of this letter was published in Letters of the Young Engels. 1838-1845, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976.
29 On Marx’s expulsion, see Note 19.
Soon after his arrival in Brussels from Paris Marx was followed by his wife Jenny Marx and daughter Jenny (born on 1 May 1844). it was with great difficulty that Jenny Marx had managed to get the money for the journey.
30 Engels’ apprehensions proved to be well founded. When Marx arrived in Brussels the Belgian authorities demanded that Marx should undertake not to publish anything concerning current politics in Belgium. Marx was compelled to undertake such an obligation on 22 March 1845 (see present edition, Vol. 4, p. 677 and this volume, p. 31). The Prussian Government, too, did not leave Marx in peace and pressed for his expulsion from Belgium. To deprive the Prussian authorities of the pretext for interfering in his life, Marx officially renounced his Prussian citizenship in December 1845.
31 Feuerbach’s letter to Engels and that of Marx and Engels to Feuerbach have not been found.
32 The meetings in Elberfeld on 8, 15 and 22 February 1845 were described by Engels in the third article of the series ‘Rapid Progress of Communism in Germany’ published in The New Moral World in May 1845 (see present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 237-42). Engels’ speeches at the first two meetings were published in the Rheinische Jahrbücher zur gesellschaftlichen Reform (ibid., pp. 243-64). Further meetings were banned by the police.
33 The socialist circle in Westphalia and the Rhine Province, with which Engels maintained close contacts and whose members were Otto Lüning and Julius Meyer, was mentioned in the report of the Prussian police superintendent Duncker to the Minister of the Interior Bodelschwingh of 18 October 1845. This report contains the following remark concerning Engels: ‘Friedrich Engels of Barmen is a quite reliable man, but he has a son who is a rabid communist and wanders about as a man of letters; it is possible that his name is Frederick.'
34 This refers to the General Association for Relief and Education founded in Cologne in November 1844 (see Note 14)
35 Cabinets noirs (secret offices or black offices) were established under the postal departments in France, Prussia, Austria and a number of other countries to deal with the inspection of correspondence. They had been in existence since the time of the absolute monarchies in Europe.
36 The Holy Family by Marx and Engels was published about 24 February 1845.
37 The projected publication in Germany of the. ‘Library of the Best Foreign Socialist Writers’ was also discussed by Marx and Engels in their subsequent letters (see this volume, pp. 27-28). Engels mentioned it in the third article of his series ‘Rapid Progress of Communism in Germany’ published in May 1845 in The New Moral World. In early March 1845 Marx drew up a list of authors to be included in the ‘Library’ (see present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 241 and 667). This list shows that ‘Library’ was intended to he an extensive publication in German of works by French and English utopian socialists. The project was not realised because of publishing difficulties. The only work completed was ‘A Fragment of Fourier’s on Trade’ compiled by Engels and published with his introduction and conclusion in the Deutsches Bürgerbuch für 1846 (see present edition, Vol. 4, pp, 613-44).
38 Here Engels has in mind Marx’s Kritik der Politik und National-Ökonomie and probably his own work on the social history of England (see notes 5 and 15).
39 Marx’s letter mentioned here has not been found. judging by this letter of Engels, Marx expressed there his thoughts about the ‘Library of the Best Foreign Socialist Writers’.
40 Engels means the translation of Charles Fourier’s unfinished work Section ébauchée des trois unités externes published posthumously in the journal La Phalange for 1845. The same journal published Fourier’s manuscripts on cosmogony. Excerpts from his first work in Engels’ translation made up the core of the latter’s ‘A Fragment of Fourier’s on Trade’ (see present edition, Vol. 4, pp, 613-44).
41 This letter adds new aspects to the intention of Marx and Engels to criticise in the press List’s book Das nationals System der politischen Oekonomie (see Note 16). Judging by the publisher Leske’s letter to Marx of 14 May 1845, at the latter’s request conveyed to him by Püttmann, Leske had sent Marx the book he needed for this purpose: K. H. Ran, Zur Kritik über F. List’s nationales System der politischen Oekonomie, Heidelberg, 1843 (see MEGA2, Abt. Ill, Bd. 1, S. 465). However, the intention of Marx and Engels to criticise List in Püttmann’s Rheinische Jahrbücher did not materialise.
42 Engels left Barmen for Brussels early in April 1845.
43 This letter was first published in English in full in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, 1979.
44 Julius Campe’s letter to Engels mentioned here has not been found.
45 The available sources do not allow us to establish what publication is meant here. It can only be supposed that it was connected with the intention of Marx and Engels to write a critical work against List (see notes 16 and 41). Many years later Engels recalled in his letter to Hermann Schlüter of 29 January 1891 that in the forties or some years later they simulated a dispute in which Marx defended free trade and Engels protective tariffs. This recollection may have been a late reflection of that intention.
46 Queen Victoria already had five children by that time.
47 During his trip to England with Marx in July-August 1845 Engels again met in Manchester Mary Burns, an Irish working woman with whom he had become acquainted as far back as 1843. They now began their life together and Mary also left for Brussels.
48 This letter has no date. The approximate time of its writing was established on the basis of a letter written to Marx on 8 May 1846 by P. V. Annenkov (see ,MEGA2, Abt. III, Bd. 2, S. 187) who had brought this particular letter from Brussels to Paris. Annenkov wrote that he had already been in Paris over a month.
This letter was first published in English in full in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, 1979.
49 The bulk of the letter was compiled by Marx, copied by Gigot and signed by Marx. Without the P.S. by Marx and the additions by Gigot and Engels, it was first published in English in: Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1955.
50Having left Paris (see Note 19) Marx arrived in Brussels at the beginning of February. During his three-year stay there he lived mostly in the Hotel Bois Sauvage, where he and his family moved at the beginning of May 1846.
51 A reference to the Communist Correspondence Committee formed by Marx and Engels at the beginning of 1846 in Brussels. Its aim was to prepare the ground for the creation of an international proletarian party. The Committee had no strictly defined composition. Besides the Belgian communist Philippe Gigot, Joseph Weydemeyer, Wilhelm Wolff, Edgar von Westphalen and others were equal members at various times. As a rule, the Committee discussed problems of communist propaganda, corresponded with the leaders of existing proletarian organisations (the League of the Just, Chartist organisations), tried to draw Proudhon, Cabet and other socialists into its work, and issued lithographed circulars. On the initiative of Marx and Engels, correspondence committees and groups connected with the Brussels Committee were set up in Silesia, Westphalia and the Rhine Province, Paris and London. These committees played an important role in the development of international proletarian contacts and the organisation of the Communist League in 1847.
52 Marx has in mind members of the League of the Just in Paris and the German Workers’ Educational Society in London.
The League of the Just — the first political organisation of German workers and artisans — was formed between 1836 and 1838 as a result of a split in the Outlaws’ League, which consisted of artisans led by petty-bourgeois democrats. The League of the Just, whose supreme body — the People’s Chamber — was in Paris, and from the autumn of 1846 in London, was connected with French secret conspiratorial societies and had groups in Germany, Switzerland and England. Besides Germans it included workers of other nationalities. The views of the League’s members showed the influence of various utopian socialist ideas, primarily those of Wilhelm Weitling.
The German Workers’ Educational Society in London was founded in February 1840 by Kari Schapper, Joseph Moll and other members of the League of the Just, its aim being political education of workers and dissemination of socialist ideas among them. After the Communist League had been founded the leading role in the Society belonged to the League’s local communities. In 1847 and 1849-50 Marx and Engels took an active part in the Society’s work.
53 In his reply to Marx of 17 May 1846 Proudhon refused to collaborate and declared that he was opposed to revolutionary methods of struggle and to communism (see MEGA2, Abt. III, Bd. 2, S. 205-07).
51 A reference to the fee due to Bernays for an article which seems to have been an extract from his manuscript on crimes and criminal law, then being prepared for printing by the publisher Leske but was demanded back by the author because of careless typesetting. Marx wanted to include this article in the quarterly journal the planned publication of which was discussed with Westphalian publishers in 1845 and 1846 (see Note 57). Thanks to Marx’s mediation, Bernays, who was in need of money, received two advances on his article. But as the planned publication of the quarterly did not take place, Bernays’ work, in the form he had conceived it, was not published.
55 The visit to Liège in the first half of May 1846 mentioned here by Marx seems to have been his second visit there; there is some evidence that Marx stopped in Liège at the beginning of February 1845 on his way from Paris to Brussels.
56 This seems to refer to the undiscovered reply by the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee’ to Weydemeyer’s letter of 30 April 1846.
57 A reference to the two volumes of a quarterly journal the publication of which was negotiated in 1845 and 1846 with a number of Westphalian socialists, the publishers Julius Meyer and Rudolph Rempel among others. Marx and Engels intended to publish in it their criticism of The German Ideology which they started to write in the autumn of 1845. It was also planned to publish a number of polemical works by their fellow-thinkers, in the first place those containing criticism of German philosophical literature and the works of the ‘true socialists’.
In November 1845 Hess reached an agreement with Meyer and Rempel on financing the publication of two volumes of the quarterly. Further negotiations were conducted by Weydemeyer, who visited Brussels in February 1846 and returned to Germany in April on the instruction of the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee. In a letter to the Committee of 30 April 1846 from Schildesche (Westphalia) he wrote that no headway was being made and that he proposed that Meyer should form a joint-stock company in Limburg (Holland), as in Germany manuscripts of less than 20 printed sheets were subject to preliminary censorship. He also recommended that Marx should sign a contract with the Brussels publisher and bookseller C. G. Vogler for the distribution of the quarterly and other publications. The contract was not concluded because Vogler could not assume even part of the expenses.
Weydemeyer continued his efforts, but succeeded only in getting from Meyer a guarantee for the publication of one volume. But as early as July 1846 Meyer and Rempel refused their promised assistance on the pretext of financial difficulties, the actual reason being differences in principle between Marx and Engels on the one hand and the champions of ‘true socialism’ on the other, whose views both publishers shared.
Marx and Engels did not abandon their hopes of publishing the works ready for the quarterly, if only by instalments, but their attempts failed. The extant manuscript of The German Ideology was first published in full in the Soviet Union in 1932.
58 The reference is to Joseph Weydemeyer’s letters to Engels and Gigot of 13 May, and to Marx of 14 May 1846 with the current information on the negotiations with the publishers Meyer and Rempel on the publication of a quarterly. Weydemeyer wrote to Marx that because of the financial difficulties the Westphalian publishers would be able to pay in the near future only a limited sum of his fee on account.
Engels’ reply mentioned here to Weydemeyer’s first letter has not been found.
59 On 1 February 1845 Marx signed a contract with the publisher Leske (see notes 5 and 27) for the publication of his Kritik der Politik und National-Ökonomie. But as early as March 1846 Leske suggested that Marx find another publisher and, in case he did find one, return him the advance received. Therefore Marx hoped to repay Leske either when he signed a contract with a new publisher or out of the sum received for financing the planned publication. But Marx was unable either to sign a new contract or to fulfil his intention to write a work on economics, and in February 1847 the contract with Leske was cancelled.
60 Marx has in mind a group of bourgeois-democratic intellectuals, Georg Jung among others, who contributed to the Rheinische Zeitung and were already enthusiastic about socialist ideas in 1842. Georg Jung, however, who was on friendly terms with Marx and supported his criticism of the Young Hegelians, left the socialist movement in 1846.
61 Marx’s letter to Herwegh has not been found.
62 Marx writes here about the advance which Hess had probably already received from Meyer and Rempel for his collaboration in preparing the quarterly planned by Marx and Engels. Hess wrote articles on A. Ruge ('Dottore Graziano, der Bajazzo der deutschen Philosophic') and G. Kuhlmann ('Der Dr. Georg Kuhlmann aus Holstein oder die Prophetic des wahren Sozialismus') for the first two volumes of the quarterly. Later Hess tried in vain to have the first article published separately, and finally, on 5 and 8 August 1847, it was printed in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung under the title ‘Dottore Grazianos Werke. Zwei Jahre in Paris. Studien und Erinnerungen von A. Ruge’. The article on G. Kuhlmann, edited by Marx and Engels, was included in The German Ideology and published as Chapter V of Volume 11 (see present edition, Vol. 5, pp. 531-39).
63 In 1846 the Government of Frederick William IV began the transformation of the Prussian Bank into a joint-stock company in order to draw private capital to redeem the state debts. The management of the bank was left in the hands of the Government (see F. Engels, ‘The Prussian Bank Question’, present edition, Vol. 6, p. 57). The reorganisation of the Bank was completed by 1 January 1847 on the basis of a decree of 5 October 1846.
64 Judging by Marx’s letter to Leske of 1 August 1846 (see this volume, pp. 49-52), it may be assumed that in the first half of August Marx had a 12 or 14 days’ holiday with Engels at Ostend.
65 This letter of Marx has not been found.
66 C. F. J. Leske, with whom Marx had signed a contract for the publication of his Kritik der Politik und National-Ökonomie on 1 February 1845 (see Note 5; the text of the contract is published in the present edition, Vol. 4, p. 675), wrote to Marx on 16 March 1846 that he doubted the possibility of publishing the book owing to the growing repression in Prussia against opposition literature. Marx’s reply (presumably of 18 March 1846) to this letter and his other letters to Leske mentioned below have not been found.
On 31 March 1846 Leske sent Marx a second letter proposing to him to find another publisher who would agree to redeem the advance received by the author. In a letter of 29 July 1846 he asked Marx whether he had found such a publisher and informed him that, if he had not, he could publish the book with the imprint of another publishing house. He stressed the necessity of giving the book a strictly academic character. In reply Marx wrote the letter which is published here according to the extant draft, which has many author’s corrections and stylistic improvements. On 19 September 1846 Leske informed Marx that he could not publish the book because of the severe censorship.
This letter was first published in English in full in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, 1979.
67 See Notes 57 and 62.
68 On the formation of a joint-stock company for the publication and distribution of socialist and communist literature, see Note 57.
In the summer of 1846 the project found support among the members of the socialist movement in Cologne (Bürgers, d'Ester, Hess). Some German bourgeois sympathising with socialism were also expected to finance the publication. This and other similar projects were repeatedly discussed by Marx and Engels in their correspondence. The present letter also deals with this below.
69 During his trip to England with Engels in July-August 1845, Marx studied works by the English economists and utopian socialists in the library of the Athenaeum in Manchester.
70 Engels arrived in Paris on 15 August 1846 entrusted by the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee with communist propaganda among the workers, primarily among the members of the Paris communities of the League of the Just (see Note 52), and with founding a correspondence committee. After failing to draw Weitling into the activities of the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee, Marx and Engels broke with him in the spring of 1846, and particular importance was attached to the struggle against the sectarian views of his followers, who advocated crude egalitarian communism, and against ‘true socialism’, a petty-bourgeois socialist trend which spread between 1844 and 1846 among German intellectuals and artisans, including emigrants in France. ‘True socialism’ was a mixture of the idealistic aspects of Feuerbachianism with French utopian socialism in ail emasculated form. As a result, socialist teaching was turned into abstract sentimental moralising divorced from real needs.
71 A reference to the negotiations which Weydemeyer helped to conduct with Meyer and Rempel on the publication of a quarterly. Marx and Engels wanted to publish in it their manuscripts which later appeared under the title of The German Ideology (see Note 57). During the negotiations the Westphalian publishers continually twisted and turned, and finally refused to finance the publication.
Joseph Weydemeyer was an artillery lieutenant dismissed from the Prussian army for political reasons.
72 Engels refers here to the critical work against L. Feuerbach which Marx was still writing in the second half of 1846 and which was to be included in the first volume of the planned two-volume edition of polemical works directed also against Bauer, Stirner, Ruge and Grün (see Note 57). Marx did not finish this work and later it became Chapter 1 of The German Ideology written jointly by him and Engels.
73 The letter of Engels and Ewerbeck to Bernays has not been found.
74 Apart from the letters to Marx containing information on his activities in Paris, in the autumn of 1846 Engels sent several letters to other members of the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee (Ph. Gigot, W. Wolff, et al.) C/0 Marx, marked ‘Committee’ and numbered. They differed from official reports to an organisation and rather recalled private correspondence between close friends.
75 On the struggle against the Weitlingians in the League of the Just, particularly in its Paris communities, see Note 70.
76 A reference to a machine invented by Weitling for making ladies’ straw hats.
77 The congress of liberal press representatives was held in Paris in 1846. The committee it elected drew up a draft electoral reform which became the main demand of the liberal opposition to the July monarchy. The sponsors of the congress did their utmost to prevent more radical circles, including the workers who supported L'Atelier (a journal of Christian socialists), from attending it and taking part in drafting a constitution. At the same time they simulated its ,unanimous’ approval by all opposition press organs.
78 This letter has reached us in the form of an extract quoted in Bernays’ reply to Marx of August 1846. Bernays touches on criticism of various alien trends, including ‘true socialism’, as an ideological prerequisite for the creation of a revolutionary party (see MEGA2, Abt. III, Bd. 2, S. 294).
79 The letter of Marx and other members of the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee to Engels mentioned here has not been found.
80 A reference to the Paris communities of the League of the Just (see Note 52).
81 Barrière meetings were Sunday assemblies of members of the League of the Just held at the Paris city gates (barrières). As a police agent reported on 1 February 1845, 30 to 200 German emigrants gathered in premises rented for this purpose from a wine-merchant in avenue de Vincennes near the city gate.
82 By ‘tailors’ communism’ Engels means the utopian communism of W. Weitling and his followers — see Note 70).
Karl Grim, who visited Paris in 1846-47, preached ‘true socialism’ (see Note 70) and Proudhon’s petty-bourgeois reformist ideas among the German workers.
83 Adolph Junge, a cabinet-maker from Düsseldorf, was a notable figure in the Paris communities of the League of the Just in the early 1840s. At the end of June 1846, after a short visit to Cologne, he returned to Paris via Brussels where he met Marx and Engels. In Paris he vigorously opposed Grün and other advocates of ‘true socialism’ and became an associate of Engels when the latter was in Paris. At the end of March 1847, the French police expelled Junge from the country.
84 Grün’s German translation of Proudhon’s book was published in Darmstadt in February (Volume 1) and in May (Volume If) 1847 under the title Philosophie der Staatsökonomie oder Notwendigkeit des Elends.
85 By labour-bazars or labour markets Engels means equitable-labour exchange bazars which were organised by the Owenites and Ricardian socialists (John Gray, William Thompson, John Bray) in various towns of England in the 1830s for fair exchange without a capitalist intermediary. The products were exchanged for labour notes, or labour money, certificates showing the cost of the products delivered, calculated on the basis of the amount of labour necessary for their production. The organisers considered these bazars as a means for publicising the advantages of a non-capitalist form of exchange and a peaceful way — together with cooperatives — of transition to socialism. The subsequent and invariable bankruptcy of such enterprises proved their utopian character.
86 Straubingers — travelling journeymen in Germany. Marx and Engels used this term for German artisans, including some participants in the working-class movement of that time, who were still largely swayed by guild prejudices and cherished the petty-bourgeois illusion that it was possible to return from capitalist large-scale industry to petty handicraft production.
87 Engels refers to Proudhon’s letter to Marx of 17 May 1846, in which he turned down a proposal to work in the correspondence committees (see Note 53).
88 Engels had been misled by Karl Bernays and Heinrich Börnstein as he later pointed out in his letter to Marx of 15 January 1847 (see this volume, p. 109). The item in the Allgemeine Zeitung dealt with the tsarist spy Y. N. Tolstoy and not with the Russian liberal landowner G. M. Tolstoy whose acquaintance Marx and Engels had made in Paris.
89 During the campaign for the elections to the local councils in Cologne which started at the end of June 1846, it was obvious at the very first meetings that the Cologne communists had a considerable influence on the petty-bourgeois electors (the Prussian workers were virtually deprived of suffrage). In the course of the election campaign, disorders took place in Cologne on 3 and 4 August, and were suppressed by the army. The people indignantly demanded that the troops should be withdrawn to their barracks and a civic militia organised. Karl d'Ester, a Cologne communist, described these disturbances in an unsigned pamphlet Bericht über die Ereignisse zu Köln vom 3. und 4. August und den folgenden Tagen, published in Mannheim in 1846.
90 By materialists Engels meant associates of Théodore Dézamy and other revolutionary representatives of French utopian communism who drew their socialist conclusions from the teaching of the eighteenth-century French materialist philosophers. In the 1840s there existed in France a society of materialist communists which consisted of workers; in July 1847 eleven of its members were brought to trial by the French authorities.
91 By spiritualists Engels must have meant the editors of the Fraternité who were influenced by the religious-socialist ideas of Pierre Leroux, and by the ‘Christian socialism’ of Philippe Buchez and Félicité Lamennais.
92 An extract from this letter was published in English for the first time in: Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1955.
93 When the Westphalian publishers Meyer and Rempel finally refused to help in the publication of the polemical works of Marx and Engels (The German Ideology), of Hess and other authors (see Note 57), Marx demanded, through Weydemeyer, that the manuscripts ready for publication should be dispatched from Westphalia to Roland Daniels in Cologne. This decision was taken because there was a project to start a joint-stock company for the publication of socialist literature, which was supported by a group of Cologne communists (see Note 68). Here Engels asks Marx how the project was faring.
94 In July 1846 Das Westphälische Dampfboot published ‘Circular Against Kriege’ written by Marx and Engels. However, the editor of the journal, Otto Lüning, a representative of ‘true socialism’ criticised in the circular, subjected the text to tendentious editing and in a number of places glossed over the sharp principled criticism of this trend. Yet he had to admit in the conclusion that in publishing the circular the journal was criticising itself.
95 Engels’ letter to Püttmann has not been found.
In the summer of 1846 Hermann Püttmann, a radical journalist and ‘true socialist’, put out a prospectus of the journal Prometheus, whose publication was planned. Among its probable contributors he included ‘people in Brussels’, i.e. members of the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee. The only issue — a double one — of Prometheus appeared at the end of 1846. Neither Marx nor Engels contributed to it.
96 A reference to the joint address of the German Readers’ Society and German Workers’ Educational Society in London (see Note 52) on the Schleswig-Holstein problem. When the Educational Society passed it on 13 September 1846, it was printed as a leaflet; then it was published in the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung, No. 77, 18 September 1846 and, translated into English, in The Northern Star, No. 463, 27 September 1846.
As early as 17 September the leaflets were delivered to Paris and distributed by the members of the League of the Just. It was then that Engels acquainted himself with the address.
The address to the working people of Schleswig and Holstein emphasised the interests common to the workers of all countries. But the attempt to contrast proletarian internationalism with bourgeois nationalism did not escape the influence of ‘true socialism’, which opposed the struggle for bourgeois-democratic freedoms and the bourgeois-democratic national movements.
97 The Customs Union (Zollverein) of German states (initially including 18 states), establishing a common customs frontier, was founded in 1834 and headed by Prussia. By the 1840s the Union embraced all the German states except Austria, the Hanseatic towns (Bremen, Lübeck, Hamburg) and some small states. Formed owing to the necessity for an all-German market, the Customs Union subsequently promoted Germany’s political unification.
98 An allusion to the Berliner Zeitungs-Halle published by Gustav Julius from 1846 and used by him to attack the liberal bourgeoisie using typically ‘true socialist’ arguments. By these tactics the Prussian ruling circles wanted to cause clashes between the different opposition groups.
During the 1848-49 revolution, however, the Berliner Zeitungs-Halle expressed the views of the left democratic forces.
99 The government of Christian VIII tried in all possible ways to strengthen its rule over the German population in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein which had been ceded to Denmark by decision of the Vienna Congress of 18 15. On the other hand, up to 1848 the national movement in Schleswig-Holstein did not go beyond the bounds of moderate liberal opposition and pursued the separatist aim of setting up another small German state. Influenced by the revolutionary events of 1848, however, it assumed a liberation character. The struggle for the secession of Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark became a part of the progressive struggle in Germany for the national unification of the country and was supported by Marx and Engels.
100 Dithmarschen — a district in the south-west of present-day Schleswig-Holstein. It was remarkable for its peculiar historical development; in particular, up to the second half of the nineteenth century there were still survivals of patriarchal customs and the communal system preserved among the peasants even after the conquest by Danish and Holstein feudal lords in the sixteenth century.
101 A reference to the Cologne citizens’ protest against the official report of the War Minister von Boyen, the Minister of the interior von Bodelschwingh and the Chief Counsellor of Justice Ruppenthal on the Cologne disturbances of 3 and 4 August 1846 (see Note 89).
102 A reference to the General Synod convened in Berlin in the summer of 1846 on the initiative of Frederick William IV, at which an unsuccessful attempt was made to reduce the differences between the Lutheran and Reformist (Calvinist) trends of Protestantism, the contradictions between which grew more acute despite their forced union in 1817.
103 Droit d'aubaine (the right of escheat) — a feudal custom widespread in France and other countries during the Middle Ages, according to which the property of aliens dying without heirs reverted to the crown.
104 From 1841 Friedrich Walthr published the radical Trier’sche Zeitung, which during the period dealt with was a mouthpiece of the ‘true socialists’, but he had no influence on the paper’s political line.
105 A reference to the numerous anonymous pamphlets (about thirty, as Engels pointed out in his ‘Government and Opposition in France’, see present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 61-63) published in France against Rothschild (one of the authors was the French worker Dairnvaell). Directed against one of the biggest bankers of France, they testified to the growing opposition to the July monarchy regime which relied on financial tycoons.
106 Only an extract of this letter has survived. In it Engels discusses the project of starting a company for the publication of socialist and communist literature (see notes 57 and 68).
The date of this letter was established by the fact that this extract and Engels’ letter to Marx of 18 September 1846 deal with the same project.
107 A reference to assemblies of the estates introduced in Prussia in 1823. They embraced the heads of princely families, representatives of the knightly estate, i.e. the nobility, of towns and rural communities. The election system based oil the principle of landownership provided for a majority of the nobility in the assemblies. The competency of the assemblies was restricted to questions of local economy and administration. They also had the right to express their desires on government bills submitted for discussion.
108 This letter is not dated. The time of its writing was established by the fact that at the end of the letter Engels mentions a meeting of the Paris communities of the League of the Just which was to take place ‘this evening’. Judging by his letter to the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee of 23 October 1846 that meeting was held on Sunday, 18 October (see this volume, p. 82).
109 A reference to the following passage in the preface mentioned: ‘The evil is not in the head or the heart, but in the stomach of mankind. But of what help is all the clarity and healthiness of the head and the heart, when the stomach is ill, the basis of human existence spoilt’ (L. Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 1, Leipzig, 1846, S. XV).
110 Marx’s letter to Engels mentioned here has not been found.
111 Engels probably means a special pamphlet (see p. 28 and notes 16 and 41) in which he intended to develop the criticism of the German protectionists, particularly List, which he had made in his second ‘Elberfeld speech’ (see present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 256-64), The manuscript of the pamphlet has not been found.
112 A reference to the polemical material against the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee published in the Volks-Tribun by its editor Hermann Kriege in reply to the ‘Circular Against Kriege’ by Marx and Engels. On the demand of the Committee the ‘Circular’ was published in the newspaper under the title ‘Eine Bannbulle’ but was accompanied by insinuations against its authors (Der Volks-Tribun, Nos. 23 and 24, 6 and 13 June 1846).
113 In October 1846 Marx wrote a second circular against Kriege, but it has not been found so far.
114 Engels’ intention to use the projected journal Die Pariser Horen for communist propaganda did not materialise. The journal appeared from January to June 1847 and carried works by Herwegh, Heine, Freiligrath, Mäurer and other authors; in general, it was influenced by ‘true socialism’ and that this would be its line had already been proved by the editorial introduction to the first issue.
115 This letter was published in English in part for the first time in: Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1955.
116 At the beginning of this letter Engels gives the name Straubingers (see Note 86) to the members of the Paris communities of the League of the Just (see Note 52) who supported the ‘true socialist’ Karl Grün. Further on he uses it to denote advocates of ‘true socialism’ among the German artisans, including those living in the USA.
117 A reference to an uprising in Geneva which began in October 1846; as a result the radical bourgeoisie came to power and rallied the advanced Swiss cantons in their struggle against the Sonderbund, the separatist union of Catholic cantons.
118 A reference to the civil war in Portugal which was caused by the actions taken by the dictatorial ruling Coburg dynasty against the popular uprising. It broke out in the spring of 1846 and was crushed in the summer of 1847 with the help of British and Spanish interventionists.
119 This letter is not dated. The time of its writing is ascertained by Engels’ reference to a letter he wrote almost at the same time to the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee on 23 October 1846 and by the Brussels postmark of 24 October.
The letter was published in English in part for the first time in: Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1955.
120 Engels refers to the second (October) Circular against Kriege (see Note 113).
121 Weitling was in Brussels with intervals from February to December 1846, when he left for France and later to the USA.
122 Fraternal Democrats — an international democratic society founded in London on 22 September 1845. It embraced representatives of Left Chartists, German workers and craftsmen — members of the League of the Just — and revolutionary emigrants of other nationalities. During their stay in England in the summer of 1845, Marx and Engels helped in preparing for the meeting at which the society was formed, but did not attend it as they had by then left London. Later they kept in constant touch with the Fraternal Democrats trying to influence the proletarian core of the society, which joined the Communist League in 1847, and through it the Chartist movement. The society ceased its activities in 1859.
Engels’ letter to Harney mentioned here has not been found.
123 This is a postscript by Engels to the letter Bernays wrote to Marx on 2 November 1846 (see text of the letter in MEGA2, Abt. III, Bd. 2, S. 62-63).
124 A reference to Bernays’ article on crimes and criminal law (see Note 54). When speaking about printed stuff, Engels seems to have in mind proofs of Bernays’ work on the above subject, which the latter demanded back front the publisher Leske.
125 Engels’ letter to the Swiss publisher J. M. Schläpfer who printed works by opposition writers (F. Freiligrath, K. Heinzen and others), written prior to 2 November 1846, has not been found.
126 This letter is not dated. The approximate time of its writing is established from reference to the London Correspondence Committee’s letter to the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee of 11 November 1846, which was probably sent to Engels in Paris in mid-November. Other evidence for establishing the date of the letter is that it mentions Proudhon’s Philosophie de la misère, which Marx received in Brussels not earlier than 15 December 1846 (see this volume, p. 96). Judging by this letter, Engels did not yet know that Marx had obtained Proudhon’s book.
127 Disturbances among workers took place in the Faubourg St. Antoine in Paris from 30 September to 2 October 1846. They were caused by the intended raising of the price of bread. The workers stormed bakers’ shops and raised barricades, there were clashes with troops. Paris members of the League of the Just were suspected by police of participating in the disturbances.
Engels’ letter to Gigot mentioned above has not been found.
Straubingers — see notes 86 and 116.
128 Ewerbeck had left for Lyons at that time.
129 A reference to the complications which arose in the relations of Marx and Engels with the leaders of the League of the Just in London (Karl Schapper, Joseph Moll, Heinrich Bauer). The latter maintained contacts with the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee and together with Harney formed a correspondence committee in London (below Engels writes about Harney’s correspondence with Brussels and his letter of 11 November 1846 in particular). However, Schapper, Moll and Bauer, influenced by certain immature ideas of utopian ‘working-class communism’, including those of Weitling, were still very cautious at that time in regard to revolutionary theoreticians — ‘scholars’. They did not approve of Marx’s and Engels’ attacks on Kriege and other ‘true socialists’, sought ways of reconciling various trends and, with this aim in view, planned to convene a congress of participants in the communist movement early in May 1847. In this connection they issued an address to the League of the Just members in November 1846. Marx and Engels considered that to convene such a congress without thorough preparation and dissociation from the trends hostile to the proletariat would be premature. The effect of scientific communist ideas, however, proved stronger than sectarian and backward tendencies. At the beginning of 1847 the London leaders of the League of the Just themselves took a step to remove their differences and draw closer to Marx and Engels.
130 The address of the German Workers’ Educational Society in London to Johannes Ronge, leader of the bourgeois trend of German Catholics, was drawn up by Weitling in March 1845 and testified to the immature views of the leaders of the Society and the League of the Just. The document developed the idea that the Christian religion, ‘purified’ and reformed, could serve communism.
On the address of the Educational Society in London about Schleswig-Holstein, see Note 96.
131 At that time the Verlagsbuchhandlung zu Belle-Vue was owned by Johann Marmor and August Schmid. It is impossible to establish which of the two Engels means. In December 1846 the firm moved to Constance.
132 As is seen from the publisher Löwenthal’s letter to Engels of 11 March 1847 (included in MEGA2, Abt. III, Rd. 2, S. 330), Engels intended to have his ‘Die Gegenwart der blonden Race’ printed by J. Rütten of Literarische Anstalt publishers. Judging by Engels’ letter to Marx of 10 December 1851, Engels returned to this subject after the 1848-49 revolution, which had interrupted his studies (see this volume, p. 509). However, there is no, information as to whether he realised his intention.
133 The Order of the Dannebrog (Order of the Danish State Banner) — an Order of Danish knights founded in 1671.
134 Engels’ report to the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee has not been found.
135 Marx wrote this letter in reply to the request of his Russian acquaintance Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov for his opinion on Proudhon’s Système des contradictions économiques, ou Philosophie de la misère. On 1 November 1846 Annenkov wrote to Marx, concerning Proudhon’s book: ‘I admit that the actual plan of the work seems to be a jeu d'esprit, designed to give a glimpse of German philosophy, rather than something grown naturally out of the subject and requirements of its logical development.'
Marx’s profound and precise criticism of Proudhon’s views, and his exposition of dialectical and materialist views to counterbalance them, produced a strong impression even on Annenkov, who was far from materialism and communism. He wrote to Marx on 6 January 1847: ‘Your opinion of Proudhon’s book produced a truly invigorating effect on me by its preciseness, its clarity, and above all its tendency to keep within the bounds of reality’ (MEGA2, Abt. III, Bd. 2, S. 321).
When in 1880 Annenkov published his reminiscences ‘Remarkable Decade 1838-1848’ in the Vestnik Yevropy, he included in them long extracts from Marx’s letter. In 1883, the year when Marx died, these extracts, translated into German, were published in Die Neue Zeit and New-Yorker Volkszeitung.
The original has not been found. The first English translation of this letter was published in: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Correspondence. 1846-1895, Martin Lawrence Ltd., London, 1934.
136 Here Marx uses the word ‘cacadauphin’ by which during the French Revolution opponents of the absolutist regime derisively described the mustard-coloured cloth, recalling the colour of the Dauphin’s napkins, made fashionable by Queen Marie Antoinette.
137 Parliaments — juridical institutions which arose in France in the Middle Ages. They enjoyed the right to remonstrate government decrees. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries their members were officials of high birth called noblesse de robe (the nobility of the mantle). The parliaments, which finally became the bulwark of feudal opposition to absolutism and impeded the implementation of even moderate reforms, were abolished in 1790, during the French Revolution.
138 The letter was dated 1845 by mistake. The correct date was established on the basis of the contents and the postmark: ‘Paris 60, 15. Janv. 47'
An extract from this letter was published in English for the first time in: K. Marx and F. Engels, Literature and Art, International Publishers, N. Y., p. 81, 1947.
139 The reference here and below is to Marx’s possible removal to Paris and the documents he needed for that move. The text below shows that Marx had the permission of the Belgian authorities to stay in Belgium. It was issued to him after his expulsion from France in February 1845 and signed on 22 March 1845 on condition that Marx would not publish anything concerning current politics. Besides, on 1 December 1845 Marx received a certificate of renunciation of his Prussian citizenship and perhaps permission to emigrate to America for which he had applied in order to deprive the Prussian authorities of any pretext for interfering in his future. However, Marx was not able to go to Paris until after the February 1848 revolution.
140 An allusion to relations with Hess which deteriorated in February and March 1846 when Marx and Engels started a decisive struggle against ‘true socialism’ and Weitling’s utopian egalitarian communism. In air effort to avoid an open break, Marx and Engels persuaded Hess to leave Brussels in March 1846.
141 The reference is to The Poverty of Philosophy by Marx. He worked on it from the end of December 1846 to the beginning of April 1847. It came out early in July 1847 in Brussels and Paris. In it Marx compared Proudhon’s views and the theory of the British utopian communist John Bray. The latter advocated exchange of the products of labour without money as a method of transition to a society free from exploitation (see present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 138-44). Bray expounded his theory in his Labour’s Wrongs and Labour’s Remedy, Leeds, 1839. By ‘our publication’ Engels meant the manuscripts of The German Ideology intended for publication.
142 Here Engels refers to the second part of his and Marx’s joint work The German Ideology devoted to the critique of ‘true socialism’ (see present edition, Vol. 5, pp. 453-539). Engels continued his work on this section up to April 1847 and its results have reached us in the form of an unfinished manuscript ‘The True Socialists’ supplementing The German Ideology (see present edition, Vol. 5, pp. 540-81).
143 As is seen from this letter Engels originally intended to work up the article he had apparently written in the autumn of 1846 or early in 1847 on Grün’s Über Goethe for the second Part of The German Ideology, devoted to the critique of ,true socialism’. Later this article served as a basis for the second essay in the series German Socialism in Verse and Prose (see present edition, ‘Vol. 6, pp. 249-73). It is quite possible that Engels also used the manuscripts of The German Ideology for the first essay in that series. The essays on Grün were published in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung, Nos. 93-98 of’ 21, 25 and 28 November and 2, 5 and 9 December 1847.
144 Engels has in mind the time the young Goethe spent among the burghers of his native town Frankfurt am Main, and his service at the Duke of Weimar’s court: from 1782 to 1786 Goethe held several high administrative posts, was a member of the Privy Council, Minister of Education, etc.
145 Marx’s letter to Zulauff has not been found. Like the letter published here, it apparently concerned the tasks facing the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee and the communist groups close to it when Marx and Engels joined the League of the Just as a result of their negotiations at the end of January and the beginning of February 1847 with Joseph Moll, a representative of the London leaders of the League who was sent to Brussels and Paris specially for this purpose. — The negotiations showed that the League leaders were prepared to recognise the principles of scientific communism as a basis when drawing up its programme and carrying out its reorganisation. Marx and Engels, therefore, called on their followers grouped around the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee not only to join the League of the Just but also to take an active part in its reorganisation.
146 See Note 86. Here the reference is to the members of the Paris communities of the League of the Just.
147 The reference is to Engels’ as yet unfound satirical pamphlet about Lola Montez, a favourite of King Ludwig I of Bavaria. The scandalous influence of this Spanish dancer on the policy of the Bavarian Government caused ill 1847-48 the appearance of numerous pamphlets, articles, cartoons, etc. Further on, the text (see p, 114) shows that Engels tried to have this pamphlet published b), Vogler in Brussels and by the Belle-Vue publishers in Switzerland. A letter has survived which Vogler wrote on 3 April 1847 in reply to Engels’ letter of 28 March which has riot been found. Engels’ proposal was rejected because of the censorship existing in the Great Duchy of Baden where the publishers had moved by that time.
148 The reference is to the rescripts by Frederick William IV of 3 February 1847 convening the United Diet — a united assembly of the eight provincial diets. The United Diet as well as the provincial diets consisted of representatives of the estates: the curia of high aristocracy and the curia of the other three estates (nobility, representatives of the towns and the peasantry). its powers were limited to authorising new taxes and loans, to voice without vote during the discussion of Bills, and to the right to present petitions to the King.
The United Diet opened on 11 April 1847, but it was dissolved as early as June because the majority refused to vote a new loan.
149 Engels intended to have this work published as a pamphlet by Vogler in Brussels who was printing Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy. However, when Marx received the manuscript, Vogler had been arrested in Aachen (see this volume, p. 117). The part of the pamphlet which has reached us was first published in Russian in the USSR in 1929.
150 Communistes matérialistes — members of the secret society of materialist communists founded in the 1840s (see Note 90). The members of this society were tried in July 1847 and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.
151 The persecution of the Paris members of the League of the Just by the French police was reported in an item datelined Paris, 2 April 1847, published in the Berliner Zeitungs-Halle, No. 81, 8 April 1847. It said of Engels: “Several police agents have also been to Fr. Engels, who lives here in great retirement and devotes himself only to economic and historical studies; naturally they could find nothing against him.”
152 Marx’s letter to Bakunin has not been found.
153 The reference is to a cartoon by Engels of Frederick William IV of Prussia delivering the speech from the throne at the opening of the United Diet in Berlin on 11 April 1847 (see present edition, Vol. 6, p. 67). This cartoon was published as a special supplement to the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung of 6 May 1847.
154 The reference is to the congress of the League of the Just at which, as agreed between the League leaders in London (H. Bauer, J. Moll, K. Schapper) and Marx and Engels early in 1847, the League was to be reorganised. The congress was held between 2 and 9 June 1847. Engels represented the Paris communities, and Wilhelm Wolff, briefed by Marx, was a delegate of the Brussels communists.
Engels’ active participation in the work of the congress affected the course and the results of its proceedings. The League was renamed the Communist League, the old motto of the League of the Just ‘All men are brothers’ was replaced by a new, Marxist one: ‘Working Men of All Countries, Unite!’ The congress expelled the Weitlingians from the League. The last sitting on 9 June approved the draft programme and the draft Rules of the League, which had been drawn up either by Engels or with his help (see present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 96-103 and 585-88). Both documents and the congress circular to the League members were sent to the local communities and districts for discussion to be finally approved at the next, second congress.
This congress laid the foundation for the first international proletarian communist organisation in history.
155 Engels arrived in Brussels about 27 July 1847 and stayed there up to mid-October. He actively contributed to enhancing the influence of the Communist League among the German workers residing in Belgium and to the establishment of international contacts between representatives of the proletarian movement and progressive democratic circles.
155a This letter was first published in English abridged in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, 1979.
156 Marx refers here to the prospects of his and Engels’ regular collaboration in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung. Previously they had only occasionally contributed to this emigrant newspaper, though they approved of the collaboration in it of W. Wolff, G. Weerth and others of their followers. On the whole up to that time the newspaper’s line had reflected the desire of its editor-in-chief, the petty-bourgeois democrat A. Bornstedt, to combine eclectic ideological trends in opposition. But financial and other difficulties compelled him to agree to the collaboration of the proletarian revolutionaries in the newspaper. From 9 September 1847 Marx and Engels were its regular contributors, directly influenced its line and at the end of 1847 concentrated editorial affairs in their own hands. During this period the newspaper became a mouthpiece of the proletarian party then being formed, virtually the press organ of the Communist League.
157 Engels wrote this letter to Marx when the latter was on a visit to his relatives in Holland to settle his financial affairs. At the end of September 1847 Marx spent a few days in Zalt-Bommel at his uncle’s (on his mother’s side), Lion Philips, and returned to Brussels early in October.
158 The German Workers’ Society was founded by Marx and Engels in Brussels at the end of August 1847, its aim being the political education of the German workers who lived in Belgium and dissemination of the ideas of scientific communism among them. With Marx, Engels and their followers at its head, the Society became the legal centre rallying the revolutionary proletarian forces in Belgium. Its most active members belonged to the Communist League. The Society played an important part in founding the Brussels Democratic Association. After the February 1848 revolution in France, the Belgian authorities arrested and banished many of its members.
159 The international banquet of democrats in Brussels on 27 September 1847, of which Engels speaks here, adopted the decision to found a Democratic Association. Engels was elected to its Organising Committee.
The Democratic Association united proletarian revolutionaries, mainly German refugees and advanced bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democrats. Marx and Engels took an active part in its establishment. On 15 November 1847 Marx was elected its Vice-President (the President was Lucien Jottrand, a Belgian democrat) and under his influence it became a centre of the international democratic movement. During the February 1848 revolution in France, the proletarian wing of the Brussels Democratic Association sought to arm the Belgian workers and to intensify the struggle for a democratic republic. However, when Marx was expelled from Brussels in March 1848 and the most revolutionary elements were repressed by the Belgian authorities, its activity assumed a narrow, purely local character and in 1849 the Association ceased to exist.
160 The text of Engels’ speech at the democratic banquet on 27 September 1847 is not extant. The recorded speeches of some speakers were published in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung, No. 80, 7 October 1847.
161 The reference is to the newspaper Correspondence Bureau (Deutsche Zeitungs-Correspondenzbureau), set up by S. Seiler and K. Reinhardt in the spring of 1845. It supplied information and correspondence material to the German newspapers.
162 The reference is to Georg Weerth’s speech at the International Congress of Economists held in Brussels on 16-18 September 1847 to discuss free trade. Marx, Engels and Wilhelm Wolff also attended the congress, intending to make use of it to criticise bourgeois economics (the free trade doctrine, in particular) and to defend working-class interests. When Weerth made a speech along these lines the congress organisers closed the discussion on 18 September without allowing Marx to speak. Excerpts from Weerth’s speech were published in a few German, British and French newspapers. It was published in full in the Belgian Atelier Démocratique on 29 September 1847. A report on the proceedings of the congress is given by Engels in his articles ‘The Economic Congress’ and ‘The Free Trade Congress at Brussels’ (see present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 274-78 and 282-90).
163 This refers to the agreement reached with Bornstedt in September 1847 concerning Marx’s and Engels’ regular contribution to the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung (see Note 156).
164 The discussion of protective tariffs and free trade which had begun before Marx went on a visit to Holland continued at a meeting of the German Workers’ Society on 29 September 1847. To enliven this discussion Marx and Engels started a ‘sham battle’ which Engels later recalled in a letter to Hermann Schlüter of 29 January 1891: ‘...I remember only that when the debates in the German Workers’ Society in Brussels became dull Marx and 1 agreed to start a sham discussion in which he defended free trade and 1 protective tariffs.
165 Engels means the meeting of the Brussels community of the Communist League. The community and the Brussels District Committee of the League were formed on the basis of the Communist Correspondence Committee on 5 August 1847. The District Committee included Marx, Engels, Junge and Wolff (see present edition, Vol. 6, p. 601).
166 Marx seems to have in mind primarily literary works reflecting local peculiarities in the various shades of ‘true socialism’ (cf. F. Engels, ‘The True Socialists’, present edition, Vol. 5, pp. 540-81).
167 Marx’s intention to start a joint-stock company for the publication of a communist monthly in 1847, about which he also wrote to Herwegh on 26 October 1847 (see this volume, p. 141) like similar earlier plans did not materialise.
168 Engels’ letter to Louis Blanc presumably written soon after his arrival in Paris from Brussels in mid-October 1847 has not been found.
169 At that time a civil war was imminent in Switzerland between the Sonderbund (a separatist union formed by seven economically backward cantons which opposed progressive bourgeois reforms and defended the privileges of the Church and the Jesuits) and the other cantons which persuaded the Swiss Diet to declare the dissolution of the Sonderbund in July 1847. Hostilities began early in November, and the Sonderbund army was defeated by the federal forces on 23 November 1847.
Johann Jacoby, a representative of the German radicals since the convocation of the United Diet in Prussia in 1847 (see Note 148), criticised it as a substitute for people’s representation. In April and June 1847 he made a trip to Saxony, South Germany, Switzerland, visited Cologne and Brussels where he established contact with the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung.
A radical programme of political reforms was adopted at a meeting of representatives of the democratic wing of the opposition movement (F. Hecker, G. Struve, etc.) in Offenburg (Grand Duchy of Baden) on 12 September 1847.
170 The Prussian United Diet (see Note 148) was dissolved in June 1847. In calling A. Ruge the panegyrist of the Diet Engels refers to the ‘Adresse an die Opposition des vereinigten Landtages in Berlin’ of 11 June 1847 included by Ruge in the Polemische Briefe published in Mannheim that year.
171 Engels’ first article in La Réforme, ‘The Commercial Crisis in England. — The Chartist Movement. — Ireland’ (see present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 307-09), appeared as early as 26 October 1847. After that the newspaper regularly carried his articles, or summaries of The Northern Star reports on the Chartist movement which he translated into French. As a rule they were published under the headings ‘Mouvement chartiste’ and ‘Agitation chartiste’ and introduced by the editorial ‘On nuns écrit de Londres’. Engels contributed to La Réforme till January 1848. Though Engels’ views differed from those of the newspaper’s editors (especially Louis Blanc and Ledru-Rollin), his articles on the Chartist movement to some extent helped to overcome the national exclusiveness of La Réforme and exerted a revolutionary influence on its readers — the French workers and the radical middle classes.
172 Engels contributed to the Chartist Northern Star from the end of 1843 to 1848. From May 1844 he sent in regular reports about European events, primarily about the political and social movement.
173 Here Engels refers to the speech on free trade Marx intended to deliver at the International Congress of Economists in Brussels held between 16 and 18 September 1847 (see Note 162). Not being allowed to speak, Marx published it in the Atelier Démocratique on 29 September. Part of the speech was also published by Joseph Weydemeyer in 1848 under the title ‘The Protectionists, the Free Traders and the Working Class’ and excerpts from it were quoted by Engels in his article ‘The Free Trade Congress at Brussels’ in The Northern Star, No. 520, 9 October 1847 (see present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 279-90). As is seen from this letter the version sent to La Réforme was not printed, and it is not extant.
174 Engels alludes to the case of the Duke of Praslin. In August 1847 the Duchess of Praslin was found murdered in her house. Suspicion fell on her husband and he was arrested. A political scandal broke out which caused the Duke of Praslin to take poison during the investigation.
175 The management referred to is that of the Correspondence Bureau of S. Seiler and K. Reinhardt (see Note 161).
176 In the summer of 1847 the London Central Authority of the Communist League distributed for discussion in the League’s local communities and districts the ‘Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith’ drawn up by Engels and approved by the First Congress (see Note 154). In mid-October, when Engels returned to Paris from Brussels, the League’s draft programme written in the form of a catechism was already being discussed in the Paris communities. Hess proposed to the Paris District Committee his own version of the draft, which was rejected after sharp criticism by Engels. But Engels was no longer satisfied with his own version because in drafting it he had to take into account the fact that the delegates to the League’s First Congress were still influenced by utopian communism. In a new version — ‘Principles of Communism’ — drawn up by Engels this shortcoming was eliminated and the programme principles of the working-class movement were elaborated in greater detail, but still in the form of a catechism. This new document was later approved by the Paris communities as the draft programme for the Second Congress of the Communist League.
177 Engels refers to Born’s intended participation in the Second Congress of the Communist League, but Born did not go to the congress.
178 Neither Engels’ letter to the. Elberfeld communists nor their reply to it has been found. Presumably they were about the possibilities for publishing Marx’s and Engels’ works on free trade and protective tariffs (see Note 173).
179 Marx alludes here to Countess Hatzfeldt’s divorce case which lasted from 1846 to 1854.
180 Marx presumably has in mind here the refusal of Baron Arnim, Prussian Ambassador to Paris, to give Emma Herwegh, Georg Herwegh’s wife, a visa for Berlin. The fact was reported in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung on 21 October 1847. Later Emma Herwegh set out with a Swiss passport without a visa.
181 Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy was published simultaneously by Vogler ill Brussels and by Frank in Paris. As is seen from Marx’s letter to Engels of 15 October 1868, both Vogler and Frank were mere ‘commissioners’ (agents de vente), all printing expenses being paid by the author.
182 The reference is to the election of delegates from the Paris district to the Second Congress of the Communist League which was to meet in London on 29 November 1847.
183 The Lille Banquet took place on 7 November 1847 during the campaign for an election reform in France which revealed the extremely anti-democratic stand of the liberal opposition to the July monarchy and of the moderate republicans of the National party (see Engels’ ‘Split in the Camp. — The Réforme and the National. — March of Democracy’, present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 385-87).
184 An international meeting organised by the Fraternal Democrats (see Note 122) took place in London on 29 November 1847 to mark the anniversary of the Polish insurrection of 1830. Marx and Engels, who had come to London for the Second Congress of the Communist League, made speeches about Poland. The report on the meeting and accounts of the speeches made by Marx and Engels appeared in the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung, No. 140, 3 December 1847, The Northern Star, No. 528, 4 December 1847, and the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung, No. 98, 9 December 1847. Engels wrote a special item on this subject for La Réforme, which published it on 5 December 1847 (see present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 391-92).
185 Proposals to convene an international democratic congress were made both by the Fraternal Democrats and the Brussels Democratic Association. During his stay in London at the end of November 1847, Marx had talks on the subject with the Chartist leaders and representatives of the proletarian and democratic emigrants. Engels had similar talks with French socialists and democrats. In the beginning of 1848 it was agreed to convene the congress in Brussels. It was scheduled for 25 August 1848, the eighteenth anniversary of the Belgian revolution. However, these plans did not materialise because in February 1848 a revolution began in Europe.
186 Engels sent this letter to Marx on the eve of the Second Congress of the Communist League for which they both made thorough preparations and expected to reach a final agreement concerning their stand during their meeting on the way to London. What Engels writes here on certain points, e.g. a Communist League programme not in the form of a catechism or confession of faith (see notes 154 and 176) but of a manifesto, found expression in the congress decisions.
The Second Congress of the Communist League was held in London from 29 November to 8 December 1847. It was attended by delegates from Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland and Denmark. Marx represented the League’s Brussels communities, Engels the Paris communities and Victor Tedesco the Liège communities. During many days of discussion Marx and Engels defended the principles of scientific communism on which the congress based its decisions. It was resolved that in all its external relations the League would come out openly as a communist party. The congress adopted the previously drawn up Rules in an improved form, a clause clearly defining the League’s communist aim being included. On the instruction of the Second Congress Marx and Engels wrote as the League’s programme the Manifesto of the Communist Party, which was published in February 1848 (see present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 477-519).
An excerpt from this letter was published in English for the first time in: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Correspondence, 1846-1895. A Selection with Commentary and Notes, Martin Lawrence Ltd., London, 1934, and International Publishers, New York, 1935.
187 Marx’s letter to Engels written about 22 November 1847 has not been found.
188 The working man referred to was Stephan Born, who was to speak at the meeting of the Democratic Association in Brussels held to mark the seventeenth anniversary of the Polish revolution of 1830 instead of Marx who at that time was to take part in the Second Congress of the Communist League in London. Below Engels mentions Wilhelm Wolff (Lupus) and Georg Weerth as possible representatives, with Born, of the German Workers’ Society at the Brussels meeting. It was held on 29 November 1847, and Born spoke on behalf of the German workers.
A report on the meeting was published in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung, No. 96, 2 December 1847.
189 Engels refers to the Congress of Economists in Brussels where Georg Weerth made a speech on 18 September (see Note 162).
190 The reason for Marx’s visit to London was to attend the Second Congress of the Communist League. Marx and Engels profited by this occasion to attend the international meeting (mentioned in this letter) held in London to mark the anniversary of the Polish insurrection of 1830 (see Note 184).
191 Engels returned to Paris at the end of December 1847 after a few days’ stay in Brussels, where he had arrived from England soon after Marx, on about 17 December (Marx and Engels had gone to England to participate in the Second Congress of the Communist League — see Note 186). In Brussels Engels worked with Marx on the Manifesto of the Communist Party. On his arrival in Paris, Engels wished to meet Louis Blanc, as he writes at the beginning of the letter, to get him to write a review of Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy for La Réforme.
192 In 1843 Jules Michelet was dismissed from his teaching post for his democratic and anti-clerical convictions; his right to teach history at the Paris University was not restored till after the February 1848 revolution.
193 Here Engels means the United commissions, an advisory social-estate body in Prussia elected by the Provincial Diets from their own members. Engels’ article on Prussian finances, mentioned in the letter, has not been found.
194 It is not known whether Engels carried out his intention. The review of Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy did not appear in La Réforme.
195 Engels’ letter to Bernays has not been found.
196 At the end of February 1848 a revolution took place in France which was enthusiastically welcomed in Belgium. Alarmed by the scope of the democratic movement in the country, the Belgian authorities resorted to arrests and expulsion of German revolutionary emigrants. They arrested the Communist League members Wilhelm Wolff and Victor Tedesco. On 3 March Marx was ordered to leave Belgium in twenty-four hours. However, in the night of 3 March, when he was preparing to leave, the police burst into Marx’s flat, arrested him and then his wife. After 18 hours of imprisonment Marx and his family were forced to leave Belgium at once. On the invitation of Flocon, who had been elected member of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, Marx moved to Paris.
Engels, expelled from Paris at the end of January 1848 for his revolutionary activity, was in Brussels from 31 January.
The time of writing of this letter, as well as of many other undated ones, is established on the basis of the chronology of events mentioned, in particular the constitution of the new Central Authority of the Communist League on 7 March 1848, and of Jones’ departure for England, where he arrived not later than 12 March, etc.
An excerpt from this letter was published in English for the first time in Labour Monthly, 1948, No. 3, III.
197 The Second Congress of the Communist League retained the seat of the Central Authority in London. However, as a revolution had broken out in France, Schapper, Bauer, Moll and other members of the London Central Authority intended to move to the Continent and decided to transfer their powers of general direction of the League to the Brussels District Committee headed by Marx. But the persecution of revolutionaries by the Belgian authorities impelled the Brussels Central Authority that had been formed to adopt on 3 March 1848 a decision to dissolve itself and to empower Marx to form a new Central Authority in Paris. Marx arrived in Paris on 5 March and took up this appointment. On 7 March the Paris Central Authority mentioned by Marx was formed. Engels was elected in his absence.
198 The reference is to the arrest of Marx and his wife by the Belgian police (see Note 196).
199 The interpellation on the arrest and expulsion of Marx and his family was made by Bricourt at the sitting of the Chamber of Representatives of the Belgian Parliament on 11 March 1848.
200 Marx’s notes on Wilhelm Wolff’s arrest on 27 February 1848, his maltreatment by the police and prison authorities and his expulsion from Belgium on 5 March have survived. Marx published an article on the persecution of revolutionary emigrants in Belgium in La Réforme, 12 March 1848 (see present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 567-68 and 581-82).
201 The news of the victory of the February revolution in France caused a widespread popular movement in the Rhine Province of Prussia and other parts of Germany. A demonstration of about five thousand workers and artisans, organised by the local community of the Communist League, was held in Cologne on 3 March before the town hall. A petition demanding universal suffrage, freedom of speech, press and assembly, armament of the people, labour protection, children’s education at the public expense, etc., was presented to the magistrate. The meeting following the demonstration was dispersed by troops, and the Leaders of the demonstration — Andreas Gottschalk, August Willich and Friedrich Anneke — were arrested and brought to trial (they were set free on 21 March when a revolution began in Prussia). Gottschalk, Willich and Anneke belonged to a group in the local community of the Communist League which was under the influence of ‘true socialism’ and, in contrast to Kari d'Ester, Roland Daniels and Heinrich Bürgers (below Engels calls them ‘old friends'), displayed sectarian tendencies.
202 The information received by Engels concerning d'Ester was inaccurate. D'Ester was present at the sitting of the Cologne city council on 3 March 1848 and spoke for the inclusion of a number of the people’s demands in the liberal memorandum under discussion to be presented to the Berlin authorities. His proposals were rejected.
203 A movement for definitive secession from the German Empire and for bourgeois-democratic reforms arose in 1797 in the territories along the left bank of the Rhine seized by the armies of the French Republic. With the approval of the French commander-in-chief, General Hoche, a plan was drawn up in September 1797 to form a filial left-bank Rhine Republic (Cisrhenanische Republik) allied to France. However, as a result of General Bonaparte’s victory over Austria the territories along the left bank of the Rhine were directly attached to France by the Campo Formio Treaty (November 1797).
204 An extract from this letter was published in English for the first time in Labour Monthly, 1948, No. 3, III.
205 The German Democratic Society was formed in Paris after the February 1848 revolution. The Society was headed by petty-bourgeois democrats, Herwegh, Bornstedt and others, who campaigned to raise a volunteer legion of German refugees, with the intention of marching into Germany. In this way they hoped to carry out a revolution in Germany and establish a republic there. Marx and his followers in the Communist League opposed to this adventurist plan the tactics of uniting the German emigrants and organising their return to Germany individually to take part in the revolutionary struggle that was developing there. Late in April 1848 the volunteer legion moved to Baden, where it was dispersed by government troops.
Black, red and gold were the colours symbolising German unity; the unity slogan was interpreted by the petty-bourgeois democrats as a call to establish in Germany a federation of autonomous provinces on the pattern of the Swiss Confederation.
206 There is no further information about the letters Marx intended to write to Maynz and Jottrand.
207 Engels moved to Paris from Brussels about 21 March 1848.
208 Neither Engels’ letter to his mother nor his mother’s letter quoted by Engels below has been found.
209 On 24 February 1848 the people of Paris revolted, overthrew the monarchy and formed a Provisional Government, with the party of the National in the majority. Under pressure from the armed masses, however, the bourgeois republicans were compelled to include in the government four ministers from the list compiled by La Réforme, among them Louis Blanc and a worker Albert, a leader of secret republican societies and participant in the street fighting.
On 17 March there was a 100,000-strong demonstration of Paris workers demanding postponement of the elections to the Constituent Assembly (see Note 214).
210 The reference is to the organisation of a legion of German refugees to march into Germany (see Note 205).
211 This letter was published in English for the first time in Science and Society, New York, 1940, Vol. IV, No. 2.
212 The reference is to the attempts of Ledru-Rollin, Minister of the Interior, to renew the administrative staff of municipal councils and his decree of 14 March to abolish the privileged National Guard units of bourgeois and aristocrats.
213 This refers to the utopian plans for the ‘organisation of labour’ with the help of a bourgeois state proposed by Louis Blanc as president of the Labour Commission set up by the Provisional Government on 28 February 1848 (it held its meetings in the Luxembourg Palace). The Commission was dissolved by the Government after the popular action of 15 May 1848.
214 The reference is to the elections to the National Guard, fixed for 18 March, and to the Constituent Assembly of the Republic, which originally were to be held on 5 April 1848. To hold the elections in a short time would have benefited the anti-revolutionary forces. That is why the demonstration of the Paris workers on 17 March, of which Engels writes above, demanded that the Provisional Government, besides withdrawing the troops from the capital, should postpone the elections to the National Guard till 5 April and to the Constituent Assembly till 31 May 1848. The Government was compelled to comply with these demands, but the elections to the Constituent Assembly were postponed only till 23 April.
215 About 6 April 1848 Marx and Engels returned to Germany from emigration to take part in the revolution that was developing there. On their way to Cologne, the centre of the Rhine Province — the most economically developed region in Germany — which they chose as the place for the planned publication of a revolutionary newspaper, they made a stop at Mainz on 8 April. Here they discussed with the local communists (Karl Wallau who had arrived from Paris earlier, Adolf Cluss and others) the plan of actions to prepare for the creation of a mass party of the German proletariat, with the Communist League as its nucleus. Marx and Engels arrived at Cologne about 11 April.
There is no information about the letters which Marx and Engels promised to write to Cabet from Germany.
216 In mid-April Engels left Cologne and made a trip to towns of the Rhine Province of Prussia — Barmen, Elberfeld and others — to organise a subscription to the shares for the publication of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. During the trip he also acted as an emissary of the Communist League’s Central Authority. He returned to Cologne on 20 May 1848.
217 on 10 April 1848 a Chartist demonstration in London was dispersed by troops and special constables; the purpose. of the demonstration was to present the third Chartist Petition to Parliament.
Engels’ letter to Harney has not been found.
218 The subject is the prospects of the planned Neue Rheinische Zeitung, the first issue of which appeared on 31 May but was dated 1 June 1848.
Marx and Engels began to prepare for the publication of a German revolutionary newspaper as early as March 1848 when they were in Paris (see this volume, p. 173). They regarded a proletarian periodical as an important step towards creating a mass party of the German proletariat based on the Communist League. Soon after their return to Germany, however, they realised that the conditions for the creation of such a party had not yet matured. Disunity and lack of political awareness made the German workers susceptible to the artisan and petty-bourgeois influences and particularise aspirations. Moreover it was senseless for the League to continue to work underground in the context of the revolution but the League was too weak and numerically small to serve as a rallying centre. Under these conditions the newspaper was to play an especially important role in the ideological and political education of the masses. It was also to become an organ of political guidance for the Communist League members, whom Marx and Engels advised to take an active part in the workers’ organisations and democratic societies then being set up in Germany.
It was decided to call the newspaper the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in order to stress that it was to continue the revolutionary-democratic traditions of the Rheinische Zeitung which was edited by Marx in 1842 and early 1843. In view of the specific conditions and the absence of an independent proletarian party, Marx, Engels and their followers entered the political scene as the Left, in fact proletarian, wing of the democratic movement. This predetermined the stand adopted by the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which had as its subtitle Organ der Demokratie (Organ of Democracy). The editorial board included Karl Marx (editor-in-chief), Frederick Engels, Wilhelm Wolff, Georg Weerth, Ferdinand Wolff, Ernst Dronke and Heinrich Bürgers. In October 1848 Ferdinand Freiligrath also became an editor.
The consistent revolutionary line of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, its militant internationalism, its articles containing political accusations against the Government aroused the displeasure of its bourgeois shareholders in the first months of its existence and led to attacks in the feudal monarchist and liberal bourgeois press. The editors were persecuted by the police and judicial authorities. On 26 September 1848, when a state of siege was declared in Cologne, the publication of the newspaper was suspended and was resumed only on 12 October. Despite all this, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung courageously defended the interests of revolutionary democracy and the proletariat. In May 1849, against the background of the general counter-revolutionary offensive, the Prussian Government issued an expulsion order against Marx on the grounds that he had not obtained Prussian citizenship. This arbitrary act and repressions against other editors led to the paper ceasing publication. The last issue, No. 301, printed in red ink, appeared on 19 May 1849. In their farewell address to the workers the editors wrote that ‘their last word everywhere and always will be: emancipation of the working class’ (see present edition, Vol. 9, p. 467).
219 On 6 May 1848 Marx and Weerth arrived in Elberfeld to discuss with Engels problems connected with the publication of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and the activity of the Communist League.
220 An extract from this letter was published in English for the first time in: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Correspondence. 1846-1895. A Selection with Commentary and Notes, Martin Lawrence Ltd., London, 1934, and International Publishers, New York, 1935.
221 Engels’ letter to Wilhelm Blank has not been found.
222 Moses Hess, Friedrich Anneke and other sectarians in the Communist League attempted to start a new paper in Cologne to succeed the Rheinische Zeitung of the early 1840s. The newspaper’s programme, published by Hess and Anneke on 7 April, was very vague and narrowed the tasks of the planned publication, which they conceived as a local, provincial news-sheet. Hess and his followers were prevented from realising their plan by the return of Marx and Engels to Cologne.
223 There is no other information about the Italian and Spanish translations mentioned here of the Manifesto of the Communist Party. The first Spanish and Italian translations of the Manifesto appeared in 1872 and 1889 respectively.
224 Engels did not finish this translation. In the autumn of 1850 he helped Helen Macfarlane translate the Manifesto into English and it appeared in The Red Republican, Nos. 21-24, in November 1850.
225 The Elberfeld political club, which was formed soon after the March revolution in Prussia, advocated a constitutional monarchy and gradual reforms.
226 Presumably Engels means Marx’s letter to Ewerbeck concerning the Paris communities of the Communist League; this letter has not been found.
227 The shareholders of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung were to meet in Cologne in May 1848, before the newspaper started publication. The shareholders from other towns who could not attend the meeting in person sent in proxies for the newspaper’s editors or other persons in Cologne.
228 Air extract from this letter was published in English for the first time in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975.
229 Here and below Engels gives the addresses of the editorial office and the dispatch department of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung which at the beginning was printed by Clouth (12 St Agatha) and from 30 August 1848 by Dietz (17 Unter Hutmacher).
230 In the spring of 1848 the Polish national liberation uprising broke out in the Grand Duchy of Posen subject to Prussia. The Prussian General Pfuel ordered that all the insurgents who had been taken prisoner should be shaved and their hands and ears branded with silver nitrate.
In May 1848 a clash took place between the soldiers and the civic militia in Mainz, which the fortress commander Hüser used as a pretext to send troops to disarm the latter. The conflict was discussed in the Frankfurt National Assembly which, however, did not take any serious measures to stop the arbitrary actions of the Prussian military authorities.
231 The all-German National Assembly, which opened on 18 May 1848 in Frankfurt am Main, was convened for the purpose of unifying the country and drawing up its constitution. The liberal majority of the Assembly turned it into a debating club engaged in fruitless discussions such as on the disarmament of the civic militia in Mainz.
232 The editorial office of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was removed at the end of August to 17 Unter Hutmacher (see Note 229).
There is no information about the article by Köppen who might have sent it in after meeting Marx in Berlin in August 1848 when Marx went there on business connected with the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
By the ‘sleepless night of exile’ Engels presumably meant the time Marx and he spent abroad before the 1848 revolution.
233 On 26 September 1848 the Prussian authorities, fearing the growing revolutionary-democratic movement, declared a state of siege in Cologne (it was lifted on 2 October). By order of the military command political organisations and associations were banned, the civic militia disbanded, democratic newspapers, including the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, suspended, and an order issued for the arrest of Engels and a few other editors. Engels and Dronke had to leave Cologne. For a time Engels lived in hiding in Barmen. On 5 October Engels and Dronke arrived in Paris after a short stay in Belgium whence they were expelled by the police. Dronke remained in the French capital and wrote to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from there, while Engels started on foot for Switzerland via the south-west of France. About 24 October he arrived in Genoa and at the beginning of November moved to Lausanne (these facts served as a basis for establishing the date of this letter and those by Marx which followed and were not dated); Engels arrived in Neuchâtel on 7 November and in Berne on 9 November. He stayed there until mid-January 1849 when it was possible for him to return to Germany.
Engels’ letter written to Marx from Geneva has not been found.
234 In 1848 Engels lived at Plasmann’s, owner of a stationery firm and a shareholder of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. His address was: Köln, In der Höhle, 14.
235 The discontent of the bourgeois shareholders over the political fine of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung grew particularly strong after it defended the June proletarian insurgents in Paris. — These shareholders refused to finance arid support the newspaper any longer. So in August arid September 1848 Marx made a trip to Berlin and Vienna to raise funds for the further publication of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Wladislaw Kóscielski gave him about 2,000 talers on behalf of the Polish democrats.
The interruption in publication caused by the state of siege in Cologne aggravated the newspaper’s financial position. Marx was practically compelled to take upon himself most of the expenses arid he spent his share of the inheritance front his father — about 7,000 talers — to purchase an expensive quick printing press.
236 Early in July 1848 legal proceedings were instituted against Marx because of his article ‘Arrests’ Published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (see present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 176-79), exposing the arbitrary actions of the Prussian authorities. At the beginning of October 1848 the Cologne Public Prosecutor started air investigation against Marx arid other newspaper editors for publishing anonymously Georg Weerth’s series of feuilletons Leben und Taten des berühmten Ritters Schnapphanski. At the end of October 1848 the Cologne Public Prosecutor began another investigation against Marx as the newspaper’s editor-in-chief for publishing the proclamation of the republican Friedrich Hecker. The ‘insult’ to the Public Prosecutor and ‘libel’ against the police officers contained in the article ‘Arrests’ were the main accusations levelled at Marx arid Engels at the trial held on 7 February 1849. The jury acquitted them.
237 on 1 November 1848 the King of Prussia transferred power to the openly counter-revolutionary Brandenburg-Manteuffel Government. It decided on a coup d'état which was successful and led to the dissolution of the National Assembly on 5 December. The very first steps of this government aroused a protest campaign in democratic circles, especially in the Rhine Province, which sought to unite the opposition forces. In Düsseldorf, in particular, for 14 November a joint meeting was announced for this purpose of the local People’s Club, the Union for the establishment of a democratic monarchy, the General Civil Union. and the civic militia (it was probably this meeting that Marx called the democratic-monarchist club). At this meeting Lassalle put forward Marx’s plan of actions.
238 The Central Committee of German Democrats was set up in June 1848 at the first democratic congress in Frankfurt am Main convened with the am) of uniting the local democratic associations. The second all-German democratic congress in Berlin (26-30 October 1848) elected a new Central Committee.
239 This refers to the Rhenish District Committee of Democrats set up at the first district congress of democrats of the Rhine Province and Westphalia (13-14 August 1848). The committee directed the activity of the democratic organisations in the Rhineland, Marx playing a prominent role in it.
240 on 14 November 1848 Marx was summoned to the examining magistrate for ‘insulting’ the Cologne Public Prosecutor Hecker in the article ‘Public Prosecutor “Hecker” and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung’ published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 129, 29 October 1848 (see present edition, Vol. 7, pi). 485-89).
241 The Code Pénal was adopted in France in 1810 and introduced into the regions of West and South-West Germany conquered by the French. It remained in force in the Rhine Province even after its incorporation into Prussia in 1815.
242 In order to give its readers prompt information on events, the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung often put out supplements to the main issue or a second edition. If the news was very important they printed special supplements and special editions in the form of posters.
243 Marx probably made the acquaintance of Eduard von Müller-Tellering during his stay in Vienna in August and September 1848. In October and November the Neue Rheinische Zeitung published a number of articles marked 9 which were sent by E. von Müller-Tellering from Vienna. They described the situation in the city after the suppression of the popular rising in October.
244 The arrest of Andreas Gottschalk and Friedrich Anneke, the leaders of the Cologne Workers’ Association, on 3 July 1848 was the subject of Marx’s article ‘Arrests’ which served as a pretext for accusing Marx and other editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung of insulting the Public Prosecutor and libelling police officers (see Note 236). On 23 December 1848, Gottschalk and Anneke were acquitted by a Cologne jury.
245 The reference is to the state of siege declared in Cologne on 26 September 1848 and the persecution of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung editors, Engels among them (see Note 233). On 3 October, though the state of siege had been lifted, the Public Prosecutor issued a warrant for Engels’ arrest. Engels was able to return to Cologne only in mid-January 1849.
246 This is a draft reply to the letter sent from Berlin on 26 December 1848 by Wilhelm Stieber to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. fir it Stieber tried to disprove information on his spying activities in Silesia during and after the Silesian weavers’ uprising in 1844 (he went there disguised as an artist, under the name Schmidt), and on his secret mission to Frankfurt am Main in September 1848 in connection with a popular uprising there. This information was given in a report from Frankfurt am Main published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 177, 24 December. Marx agreed to make a correction as regards Stieber’s visit to Frankfurt (the supplement to No. 182 stated that he went there on private business) but did not disavow the information on his spying in Silesia. Later, in his Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne (end of 1852), exposing Stieber as an organiser of police persecution of the Communist League members and disclosing his attempts to blacken the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Marx quoted in full Stieber’s letter to the newspaper editors of 26 December 1848. Marx stressed that the reply to Stieber was sent by another editor (see present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 435-36). It may be assumed that the final version of the letter was signed by Wilhelm Wolff, who was well aware of Stieber’s activities in Silesia.
247 On the Code pénal see Note 241. The reference is to ‘Livre troisième. Titre II. Chapitre 1. Section VII. 2. Calumnies...’
248 Engels received news, probably on 11 or 12 January, that he could return to Germany without running the risk of being arrested. He immediately undertook all the formalities necessary to obtain an exit permit from Switzerland, and obtained it on 18 January 1849 (see present edition, Vol. 8, p. 515). Shortly after this Engels returned to Cologne and resumed work as editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
249 By ‘grace and favour (oktroyierte) Prussia’ Engels means Prussia after the counter-revolutionary coup d'état which resulted in the dissolution of the National Assembly on 5 December 1848 and the proclamation of the so-called imposed constitution. The Constitution introduced a two-chamber parliament: the First Chamber consisting of privileged aristocrats and the Second Chamber elected in two stages. Under the law of 6 December a considerable proportion of the workers had no right to vote. The King was invested with wide powers, including the right to convene and dissolve both Chambers, to repeal their decisions, to appoint Cabinets and to revise the Constitution itself.
250 The March Association, thus named after the March 1848 revolution, was founded in Frankfurt am Main at the end of November 1848 by the Left-wing deputies of the Frankfurt National Assembly and had branches in various towns of Germany. Fröbel, Simon, Ruge, Vogt and other petty-bourgeois democratic leaders of March associations confined themselves to revolutionary phrase-mongering and showed indecision and inconsistency in the struggle against the counter-revolutionaries, for which Marx and Engels sharply criticised them.
251 Marx’s letter to Eduard von Müller-Tellering has not been found.
At the beginning of January von Müller-Tellering was arrested and banished from Vienna (on his reports from that city published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung see Note 243). Later Tellering sent reports from Silesia and Saxony on the situation in Vienna based on the letters of his Vienna acquaintances, and also reports from Leipzig and Dresden (these were marked A).
252 Threatened with arrest after the state of siege was declared in Cologne on 26 September 1848 (see Note 233), Dronke emigrated to Paris but persisted in the desire to return to Germany. He was kept in Paris only by categorical directions from Marx, who had grounds to fear he would be arrested. It was not till March 1849 that Dronke returned to Cologne and began to work on the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
Neither Marx’s previous letter to Dronke nor his other letters mentioned below have been found.
253 An anonymous item published in the supplement to No. 233 of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung for 28 February 1849 accused von Uttenhoven, a Captain in the 8th Company of the 16th Infantry Regiment, known for his reactionary views, of misuse of and speculation in army fuel.
254 This refers to two lawsuits held in Cologne on 7 and 8 February 1849. The first was instituted by the Cologne Public Prosecutor’s office against the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, its editors Marx and Engels and the responsible editor Hermann Korff for publishing the article ‘Arrests’ (see notes 236 and 244).
The pretext for the second was the charge against Marx, Kari Schapper and the lawyer Schneider 11 of incitement to mutiny in connection with the call of the Rhenish District Committee of Democrats (see Note 239) of 18 November 1848 for refusal to pay taxes. In both cases the juries acquitted the defendants.
255 From mid-April to 9 May 1849 Marx made a trip to North-Western Germany. He visited Bremen, Hamburg and the neighbouring towns, including Hamburg. On his way back to Cologne Marx stopped at Bielefeld and Hamm. The purpose of the trip was to strengthen contacts between the Communist League members and workers’ associations in preparation for the creation of a mass proletarian party, to discuss problems of revolutionary tactics with members of the working-class and democratic movements, and to raise funds for the continued publication of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. In Marx’s absence Engels directed the newspaper.
Engels’ letter to Marx mentioned here has not been found.
256 Karl Bruhn participated in the Baden republican uprising in April 1849 and played an active role in the popular uprising in Frankfurt am Main (September 1848) in protest against the ratification by the Frankfurt National Assembly of the capitulatory truce of Malmö. Concluded between Prussia and Denmark, this truce preserved Danish rule in Schleswig-Holstein. Since the end of 1848 Bruhn had been working in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein on the instruction of the Communist League and sending reports to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from there.
257 An allusion to the cruel suppression of the popular uprising in Vienna in October 1848 by the Austrian counter-revolution. Marx made Andreas Stiftt’s acquaintance in August 1848 during his visit to Vienna (see Note 235), where he made a speech at a meeting of the Democratic Society and delivered a report and a lecture at the Vienna Workers’ Society. Stiftt was member of both these organisations and a contributor to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
258 After the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had ceased publication on 19 May 1849, Marx and Engels left for Frankfurt am Main where they tried to persuade the Left-wing deputies to the all-German National Assembly to take decisive action in support of the uprising in South-Western Germany at the time in defence of the Imperial Constitution drawn up by the Assembly but rejected by the German sovereigns. Having failed to achieve their aim they left for Karlsruhe and then Kaiserslautern — capitals of insurgent Baden and the Palatinate. Convinced that the petty-bourgeois democratic leaders of the Provisional Governments in Baden and the Palatinate lacked revolutionary energy and were helpless, Marx and Engels left at the end of May for Bingen, where they parted. Early in June Marx went to Paris, and Engels returned to Kaiserslautern to join the Baden-Palatinate revolutionary army.
259 Marx arrived in Paris about 2 June 1849 with the mandate from the Central Committee of German Democrats (see Note 238) issued to him in Kaiserslautern by d'Ester, a member of the Committee and of the Palatinate Provisional Government. Marx decided to go to France when he realised that the petty-bourgeois democrats of Baden and the Palatinate were unable to make the struggle all-German in scale, to launch a resolute offensive and bring the Frankfurt Assembly openly to join the uprising. New great events were expected in France, where the conflict between the democratic party — the so-called Montagne (mountain) — and the ruling circles was coming to a head.
In Paris Marx hoped to strengthen international contacts between the German and French democrats, for this would have been of major importance in the event of a new revolutionary upsurge in both countries.
260 Montagnards — during the French revolution of 1848-49 representatives in the Constituent and subsequently Legislative Assembly of a bloc of democrats and petty-bourgeois socialists grouped around the newspaper La Réforme. They called themselves the Montagne by analogy with the Montagne in the Convention of 1792-94.
On 13 June 1849 the Montagne staged a peaceful demonstration to protest against the sending of French troops to suppress the Roman Republic. The demonstration was dispersed by the army and the bourgeois detachments of the National Guards and there followed a counter-revolutionary offensive, persecution of democrats and proletarian activists, including emigrants. Many Montagnards were arrested or emigrated.
261 Engels’ ‘article in French’ on the national liberation struggle in Hungary was probably never written.
262 The last issue, No. 301, of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung for 19 May 1849, printed in red, was published in a greater number of copies than usual. Later it was reprinted several times and used by the Communist League members, who remained in Germany, for propaganda purposes.
263 Jenny Marx spent June 1849 in her native town of Trier. On July 7 she joined her husband in Paris accompanied by her three children and Hé1ène Demuth (the Marxes’ housekeeper).
264 At the beginning of June 1849, when in Kaiserslautern, Engels entered into close contact with d'Ester, the most energetic member of the Palatinate Provisional Government, but refused, however, to accept any civil or military post.
On 13 June Engels left for Offenburg, where he joined Willich’s volunteer corps of 800 men, mostly workers, which was part of the Baden-Palatinate insurgent army. Engels fought the whole campaign as Willich’s adjutant. Willich’s corps covered the retreat of this army under pressure from numerically superior counter-revolutionary forces and was among the last units to cross the Swiss border on 12 July 1849. On 24 July Engels arrived at Vevey (Canton Vaud) where he stayed for a month. He described the operations of the insurgent army in The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution (see present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 147-239).
Engels’ letter to Marx from Kaiserslautern has not survived.
An extract from Engels’ letter to Jenny Marx was published in English for the first time in: K. Marx and F. Engels, Correspondence. 1846-1895, Martin Lawrence Ltd., London, 1934, and International Publishers, New York, 1935.
265 On 17 June 1849 Engels fought in the battle of Rinnthal. He commanded a flank group of Willich’s corps which covered the retreat of the Palatinate army and fought the advance guard of an enemy division for many hours.
On 21 June Willich’s men, with the active participation of Engels, checked the advance of a Prussian battalion at Neuchart near Karlsdorf and forced it to retreat.
On 28 June 1849 Engels took part in an engagement at Michelbach in which the advance guard of the division to which Willich’s corps belonged after the reorganisation of the insurgent army defeated a Prussian force.
On 29 and 30 June at Rastatt the Baden-Palatinate insurgent army fought and lost its last battle against the Prussian army. At certain critical moments of the battle Engels assumed command of the vanguard.
266 The subject is Lassalle’s intention to raise funds to help Marx.
The letters to Lassalle mentioned by Marx have not been found.
An extract from this letter was published in English for the first time in: K. Marx and F. Engels, On Britain, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954.
267 These were the two factions in the so-called Party of Order — a conservative bloc of the monarchist groups formed in 1848 which had the majority in the Legislative Assembly of the French Republic (opened at the end of May 1849).
The Philippists or Orleanists were supporters of the House of Orleans (a lateral branch of the Bourbon dynasty) overthrown by the February revolution of 1848; they represented the interests of the financial aristocracy and the big industrial bourgeoisie; their candidate for the throne was Louis Philippe Albert, Count of Paris and grandson of Louis Philippe.
The Legitimists, supporters of the main branch of the Bourbon dynasty overthrown in 1830, upheld the interests of the big hereditary landowners and the claim to the French throne of the Count of Chambord, King Charles X’s grandson, who called himself Henry V. Some of the Legitimists remained outside the bloc of monarchist groups.
268 According to a decision of the Constituent Assembly the wine tax was to be abolished before I January 1850. But, as Marx predicted, it was retained by a decision of the Legislative Assembly on 20 December 1849 (see present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 117-19).
269 The Peace Society — a pacifist organisation founded by the Quakers in 1816 in London. It was actively supported by the Free Traders who assumed that in peace time free trade would enable Britain to make better use of its industrial superiority and win economic and politics supremacy.
270 The Corn Laws (first introduced in the fifteenth century) imposed high import duties on agricultural produce in the interests of landowners in order to maintain high prices for these products on the home market. In 1838 the Manchester factory owners Cobden and Bright founded the Anti-Corn Law League, which demanded the lifting of the corn tariffs and urged unlimited freedom of trade for the purpose of weakening the economic and political power of the landed aristocracy and reducing worker’s wages. The struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy over the Corn Laws ended in 1846 with their repeal.
The Navigation Acts were passed by the British Parliament in 1651 and subsequent years to protect British shipping companies against foreign rivals. They were repealed in 1849.
271 Marx mentions the Holy Alliance in connection with the attempts of feudal-monarchical circles in Prussia, Austria and tsarist Russia to form a coalition similar to the counter-revolutionary Holy Alliance founded in 1815 by the European monarchs, and which ceased to exist after the 1830 revolution in France.
272 On 19 July 1849 in an atmosphere of repression against democrats and socialists following the events of 13 June in Paris (see Note 260), the French authorities notified Marx that an order had been issued for his expulsion from Paris to Morbihan, a swampy and unhealthy département in Brittany. Marx protested and the expulsion was delayed, but on 23 August he again was ordered by the police to leave Paris within 24 hours.
Marx compares the d département of Morbihan with the Pontine marshes in Italy, mentioned by Strabo in his Geography, Book 5, Ch. 3, § 5, and other ancient authors, which are a breeding-ground of malaria and other diseases.
273 Marx’s suggestion was approved and subsequently put into practice by Engels. However, Engels started writing his work, which was later published under the heading, The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution (see present edition, Vol. 10), not earlier than mid-August 1849 after he had moved to Lausanne (see this volume, p. 215) and did not finish it until February 1850, after his arrival in London from Switzerland.
274 The negotiations mentioned here ended in December 1849 in the foundation of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Politisch-ökonomische Revue. The periodical was planned as a continuation of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung published by Marx and Engels during the 1848-49 revolution. Altogether six issues appeared from March to November 1850, one of them a double one (5-6). The journal was edited in London and published in Hamburg. Most of the articles and literary and international reviews were written by Marx and Engels, who got their followers Wilhelm Wolff, Joseph Weydemeyer and Johann Georg Eccarius to contribute to the Revue. The works published in the journal assessed the results of the 1848-49 revolution and developed further the theory and tactics of the revolutionary proletarian party. The publication of the Revue was discontinued due to police persecution in Germany and lack of funds.
275 The date of writing of this letter was established on the basis of Marx’s mentioning in it the receipt of Engels’ letter to Jenny Marx of 25 July 1849.
In English this letter was first published abridged in: K. Marx and F. Engels, Letters to Americans. 1848-1895, International Publishers, New York, 1953.
276 The reference is to a contract signed between Leske and Marx on 1 February 1845 for the publication of Marx’s work Kritik der Politik und National-ökonomie (see Note 59).
277 An allusion to the setback of the Montagne on 13 June 1849 (see Note 260).
In the battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815) Napoleon’s army was defeated by the Anglo-Dutch and Prussian forces commanded by Wellington and Blücher.
278 There is no information about this article except a mention in Marx’s next letter to Weydemeyer.
279 This seems to refer to Rühl’s offer to participate in publishing a series of pamphlets (see this volume, p. 208) planned by Marx. The offer was conveyed through Weydemeyer on the basis of whose letter to Marx of 28 August 1849 the approximate date of this letter was established.
280 It is not known whether Marx wrote to Naut or not.
281 This letter written in the first half of August 1849 has not been found.
282 Marx’s protest to the French Ministry of the Interior against the decision to expel him from Paris has not been found. When he wrote this letter Marx did not know that his protest had been rejected. But he soon received a notification by the commissioner of police, dated 16 August 1849, stating that Minister of the Interior Dufaure had upheld the decision on Marx’s expulsion (see present edition, Vol. 9, p. 527).
283 The reference is to the home situation in France in the summer of 1849 which was characterised by intensified repressions against democrats and socialists and by discord and friction within the ruling circles themselves — between the various factions in the Assembly majority (see Note 267), between these factions and the Government, and between the Assembly and Louis Bonaparte’s entourage.
The addition of 45 centimes to every franc of all direct taxes was introduced by the Provisional Government on 16 March 1848. It aroused particular discontent among the peasants, who formed the bulk of tax-payers.
In mid-August 1849 tinder pressure from the monarchist deputies, a two months’ adjournment of the French Legislative Assembly was decreed. The Assembly met again in October 1849.
284 At the meeting on 13 August 1849 in the London Drury Lane Theatre of the National Association for Parliamentary and Financial Reform (founded by the bourgeois radicals in 1849 with the aim of achieving a democratic electoral system and changes in the tax system) O'Connor advocated a union of the middle and working classes. His speech was supported by the Free Trader Thomas Thompson.
285 On 23 August 1849 Marx and his wife were ordered by the police to leave Paris within 24 hours. Jenny Marx got permission to stay in Paris till 15 September with her children, but Marx was obliged to make leave in haste. According to the Boulogne stamp in the passport issued to him by the French police on 24 August, he was in this port on his way to London on 26 August (see present edition, Vol. 9, pp. 529-30). Presumably he arrived on the same day in London, where he was based for the rest of his life.
Meanwhile Engels had left Vevey for Lausanne.
286 The Elberfeld uprising of workers and petty bourgeoisie in defence of the Imperial Constitution, which flared up on 8 May 1849, served as a signal for armed struggle in a number of towns in the Rhine Province (Düsseldorf, Iserlohn, Solingen and others). Engels arrived in Elberfeld on 11 May and took an active part in the uprising, in particular directing the erection of street barricades. However, his efforts to secure the disarmament of the bourgeois civic militia, the imposition of a war tax on the bourgeoisie, the formation of the nucleus of a Rhenish revolutionary army out of armed workers’ detachments and to unite localised uprisings, met with opposition from the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaders of the movement. Under pressure from bourgeois circles Engels was expelled front the town on 15 May. The uprising in Elberfeld, as in other towns of the Rhine Province, was a failure.
On Engels’ participation in the revolutionary struggle in Baden and the Palatinate see notes 264 and 265.
287 In English this letter was first published abridged and datelined ‘25 August 1849’ in: K. Marx and F. Engels, Letters to Americans. 1848-1895, International Publishers, New York, 1953.
The date of writing has been corrected after a more exact deciphering of the original.
288 At the end of May 1849, returning from insurgent Baden and the Palatinate (see Note 258), Marx and Engels were arrested on the way to Bingen by Hesse soldiers, who suspected them of being insurgents, and were deported to Darmstadt and thence to Frankfurt am Main. There they were released and resumed their journey to Bingen.
Early in June 1849 Engels was arrested in Kirchheimbolanden by the Palatinate Provisional Government on a charge of anti-government propaganda. The day after his arrest he was released on the insistence of d'Ester, a member of the Provisional Government.
289 Jenny Marx and her three children arrived in London about 17 September 1849.
290 Accepting Marx’s suggestion to move to London Engels had to go via Piedmont, as he risked being arrested in France and more so in Germany. On 5 October 1849 he arrived in Genoa, and on the following day left for England on a British schooner via Gibraltar and the Bay of Biscay. The voyage lasted nearly five weeks. About 12 November, Engels arrived in London as was reported in the item: ‘London, 14. Nov.’ by the Westdeutsche Zeitung, No. 154, 20 November 1849.
The English original of the present letter was first printed in the Harney Papers Assen, 1969.
291 This letter has not been found.
292 Societies referred to are the German Workers’ Educational Society (London) (see Note 52) and the Democratic Association formed by a group of petty-bourgeois democrats headed by Kallenberg in London early in November 1849, and joined later by some former members of the Educational Society, Ludwig Bauer among them. Engels also wrote to Jakob Schabelitz on the collision between the two organisations (see this volume, p. 222).
The German Political Refugee Committee was set up on Marx’s initiative under the auspices of the German Workers’ Educational Society in London on 18 September 1849. Besides Marx and other members of the Communist League it included some petty-bourgeois democrats. At the meeting of the Educational Society on 18 November the Committee was transformed into the Social-Democratic Refugee Committee, the aim being to dissociate the proletarian section of the London refugees from the petty-bourgeois elements. The new Committee included only members of the Communist League. Marx was elected its chairman. Engels, who after his arrival in London was included in the Central Authority of the Communist League restored by Marx, also became a member of the Social-Democratic Refugee Committee.
Besides rendering material aid to the proletarian refugees, the Committee played an important role in reorganising the Communist League and re-establishing ties between its members. In September 1850, Marx, Engels and their adherents withdrew from the Committee because the followers of the Willich-Schapper sectarian group were in the majority in the Educational Society to which the Refugee Committee was accountable.
Early in November 1849, the petty-bourgeois democrats of the Democratic Association formed their own Refugee Committee headed by Ludwig Bauer, Friedrich Bobzin and Gustav Struve.
293 In English this letter was first published abridged in: K. Marx and F. Engels, Letters to Americans. 1848-1895, International Publishers, New York, 1953.
294 On Marx’s plans to write and publish a work on political economy see notes 5 and 59.
295 Marx’s intention to enlist Joseph Weydemeyer as a regular contributor to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue was never realised. About mid-January Weydemeyer wrote his first article ‘From South Germany’ but it was not published in the first issue of the Revue owing to lack of space, and later lost its topical interest.
296 In a series of articles published in the Voix du Peuple from 10 November 1849 to 18 January 1850 Proudhon polemicised bitterly with Louis Blanc, particularly against the latter’s idea of using the existing State for solving the social problem, and censured his activity as a member of the Provisional Government of the French Republic (see Note 213) calling him a pseudo-socialist and pseudo-democrat.
Proudhon criticised from anarcho-reformist positions Louis Blanc’s ‘state socialism’ and other French socialists’ ideas close to Blanc’s.
297 After their defeat in 1848 (dispersal of their demonstration of 10 April, etc.) the Chartists resumed agitation in the autumn of 1849: mass meetings in factory districts were held in support of the imprisoned Chartists and an amnesty of political prisoners was demanded. At the beginning of December 1849 a new wave of meetings swept over London and the towns of Northern England on the occasion of the nomination of delegates to the Chartist Convention which was to reorganise the movement.
298 Karl Heinzen’s statements in his pamphlet, Lehren der Revolution, that during the future revolution millions of reactionaries would be beaten up, were used by some conservative European press organs for launching a campaign against political refugees. As The Times of 23 November 1849 tried to lay the responsibility for these ‘hellish doctrines’ on all German socialists and described Heinzen as one of their leading figures, Marx and Engels deemed it necessary to dissociate themselves from his utterances. With this aim in view Engels published a note ‘The German Social Democrats and The Times’ in the Chartist Northern Star, 1 December 1849 (see present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 3-4).
299 The first issue of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue published on 8 March 1850 carried the first part of Marx’s The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850 (see present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 45-70), two chapters of Engels’ The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution (see present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 147-85) and Karl Blind’s article ‘Osterreichische und preussische Parteien in Baden’.
The general introduction mentioned in this letter was not published. The review of events written by Marx and Engels appeared only in the second issue of the journal (see present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 257-70). Wilhelm Wolff’s article was only published in the fourth issue under the heading ‘Nachträgliches “aus dem Reich ... ; it discussed the final stage in the work of the Frankfurt National Assembly (see Note 231) after the majority of the liberal deputies had withdrawn and it had been transferred to Stuttgart (end of May 1849).
The lectures on political economy which Marx delivered in the London German Workers’ Education ‘ al Society (see Note 52) at the end of 1849 and in 1850 were not published in the Revue.
300 The club referred to by Engels is the emigrant Democratic Association (see Note 292).
In 1848-49 the republican democrats in Germany called the moderate bourgeois constitutionalists ‘wailers’ (Heuler). In this particular instance the reference is to petty-bourgeois democrats who left the London German Workers’ Educational Society and took part in setting up the Democratic Association.
301 In a letter of 30 December 1849 addressed to Marx and Engels and other refugees, Louis Bamberger (editor of the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung), Eduard von Müller-Tellering and Rudolf Schramm invited them to attend a German refugees’ meeting which was to be held on 3 January 1850 with the alleged aim of uniting the German refugees. Actually the organisers wanted to bring the proletarian elements under petty-bourgeois influence.
302 Marx’s letter to Jung has not been found.
Besides raising funds for the publication of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue and the projected resumption of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Conrad Schramm’s trip to the USA was aimed at raising funds for other activities of the Communist League, which was being reorganised by Marx and Engels. The trip did not take place for lack of funds.
For his participation in the revolutionary movement Conrad Schramm (presumably a Communist League member since the beginning of 1849) was sentenced in Cologne on 15 June 1849 to two years’ imprisonment in the fortress of Jülich. On 8 September 1849 he escaped from prison and emigrated to London where he was elected to the Central Authority of the Communist League.
303 In his note of 5 February 1850 Eduard von Müller-Tellering asked for a ticket to the ball organised by the London German Workers’ Educational Society. Engels’ refusal was used by Tellering as a pretext for intrigues against Marx and Engels. See also this volume, pp. 229-30.
304 The printing of the first issue of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue by Köhler’s printshop in Hamburg turned to be of poor quality. Because of this and of the disagreements between Köhler and the publisher Schuberth, from the second issue the Revue was printed at H. G. Voigt’s in Wandsbeck near Hamburg.
305 While the Revue was being printed, disagreements arose between the proof-reader Theodor Hagen and the publisher Schuberth, who wanted to accommodate the Revue to the censorship standards existing in Germany at the time. Hagen proposed to assume responsibility to the censors for the content, and Marx and Engels insisted that Hagen’s name should appear as ‘responsible editor’ on the title page. However Schuberth succeeded in having Hagen’s proposal rejected.
306 On 3 March 1850 the court of honour, presided by Willich, expelled Tellering from the London German Workers’ Educational Society. Tellering wrote a new letter of protest, slandering Engels. This letter of Marx was in reply to Müller-Tellering’s intrigues and slander (see also Note 303).
307 Marx presumably has in mind Müller-Tellering’s unprincipled behaviour in connection with a translation of the memoirs of György Klapka, a participant in the 1848-49 Hungarian revolution. When Klapka had declined Tellering’s offer to translate the memoirs, early in January 1850 Tellering tried in vain to have material compromising the Hungarian general published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue of which Marx was an editor. At the same time Tellering proposed his services to Klapka in the struggle against Karl Heinzen, but having been exposed in this intrigue, he helped Heinzen to spread insinuations against Marx and Engels.
308 The Refugee Committee in Frankfurt am Main was founded by the Frankfurt Workers’ Association at the end of 1849. At its meeting on 28 September 1849, presided by Joseph Weydemeyer, the Association decided to make weekly allocations to refugees.
309 In April 1850 the petty-bourgeois democrats Gustav Struve, Rudolf Schramm and others tried to gain influence among the German political refugees in London to counterbalance the Social-Democratic Refugee Committee. They spread false rumours, which got into the German press, alleging a biased approach on the part of the Committee in distributing material aid among the refugees. The London Refugee Committee’s statement mentioned at the beginning of this letter refuted the rumours.
310 This letter was published in English for the first time in: K. Marx and F. Engels, Letters to Americans. 1848-1895, International Publishers, New York, 1953.
311 Engels’ letter to Dronke has not been found.
312 The letter of Marx and Engels to Naut has not been found.
313 The society referred to is that of the French Blanquist refugees in London (Société des proscrits démocrates socialistes) with whom Marx and Engels, and also representatives of the revolutionary wing of the Chartists, concluded an agreement in mid-April 1850 (see present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 614-15) to set up a Universal Society of Revolutionary Communists (Société universelle des communistes révolutionnaires). However, the Blanquists soon violated the agreement by contacting the emigrant ‘Society in Greek Street’ — the petty-bourgeois Democratic Association (on this see Note 292). Subsequently, the leaders of the Blanquist refugees took an openly hostile stand towards Marx and Engels and their supporters by making a bloc with a sectarian faction within the Communist League. In these circumstances Marx and Engels considered it appropriate to cancel their agreement with the Blanquists early in October 1850 (see present edition, Vol. 10, p. 484).
314 This is an allusion to the campaign against German political refugees launched by the Prussian conservative newspapers and taken up by the English press. This campaign grew in intensity especially after an attempt on the life of King Frederick William IV of Prussia in Berlin on 22 May 1850 by the retired non-commissioned officer Max Sefeloge (he died in a lunatic asylum). The reactionary press, the Neue Preussische Zeitung in particular, spread the lie that the attempt had been prepared by Marx and other leaders in London of an extensive conspiracy. The Prussian authorities urged the British Government to deport the political refugees. Marx and Engels unmasked the organisers of this slander campaign in their letter to the Prussian Ambassador in London Bunsen and in other statements in the press (see present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 370, 378 and 386).
315 Two excerpts of this letter are extant: one is quoted by Roland Daniels in his letter to Marx of 28 June 1850, the other in the letter of 10 July 1850 from the Cologne leading district of the Communist League to the London Central Authority of the League.
The letter reflects the disagreement which arose in the summer of 1850 between the London Central Authority and the leaders of the Cologne organisations of the Communist League (Heinrich Bürgers, Roland Daniels, Peter Röser and others). The Cologne people’s claim to become the Communist League’s leading centre for the whole of Germany was contrary to the League’s Rules, which were inspired by democratic centralism and provided for equality of the district organisations in individual provinces and countries and their equal responsibility to the Central Authority.
316 This letter was first published in English with abridgments in: K. Marx and F. Engels, Letters to Americans. 1848-1895, New York, 1953.
However, a slip of the pen on the part of the author, substituting July for June, was not taken into account and in the present edition it has been corrected on the basis of Weydemeyer’s reply to Marx of 3 July 1850.
317 Marx’s intention to reply to Lüning’s criticism remained unfulfilled. However, in a statement to the editor of the Neue Deutsche Zeitung (published on 4 July 1850) Marx and Engels protested against Lüning’s attempts to distort their views on the dictatorship of the proletariat and the role of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung as the mouthpiece of the working class.
318 The foreign policy of the Russell cabinet was debated in the House of Commons on 24-27 June 1850. Despite strong Tory opposition the Whig Government was given a vote of confidence by majority of 46.
319 This refers to the proposed convocation of a congress of the Communist League (see also present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 375-76) which did not take place, however, owing to the split in the League in September 1850 caused by the disruptive activity of the Willich-Schapper separatist group.
320 Marx may have had in mind the situation in the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein in the summer of 1850, when Communist League members conducted intense propaganda among the military units there. During the 1848 revolution the population of the duchy staged a national liberation uprising against Danish rule, demanding union with Germany. Prussian circles launched a phoney war against Denmark, but a truce was signed on 26 August 1848. The Prusso-Danish war was resumed at the end of March 1819 and it ended with a new betrayal by Prussia signing a peace treaty with the Danish monarchy on 2 July 1850. As a result the insurgents were compelled to continue the war on their own and on 24-25 July 1850 the Schleswig-Holstein army was defeated by Danish troops, and ceased resistance.
321 In the summer of 1849, after the closing down of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Jenny Marx on her way to Trier with her children stopped for a few days, in Frankfurt am Main where, badly needing money to continue her journey, pawned, with the help of Joseph ad Louise Weydemeyer, the silver plate she had inherited from her family’s Scottish relations.
322 Weydemeyer did not carry out his plan to write a popular outline of political economy until after his Arrival in the USA :In October 1851. This work published in New York in April-August 1853 in the German newspaper Die Reform under the title ‘National-ökonomische Skizzen’.