Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer (5th of March, 1852)

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the following edition: Marx to Joseph Weydemeyer in New York, in the Collected Works of Marx and Engels, First English Edition, Vol. 39, Lawrence & Wishart, London.

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

This is a letter from Comrade Karl Marx in London, England, United Kingdom to Comrade Joseph Weydemeyer in Soho, New York, United States dated the 5th of March, 1852. It was first published in part in Die Neue Zeit, Vol. 2, No. 31, Stuttgart, 1906-07, and in full in Jungsozialistische Blätter, 1930.

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#LETTER TO JOSEPH WEYDEMEYER

#Karl Marx

#5th of March, 1852

#★

#London

#5th of March, 1852

#28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Weywy:

I am afraid there has been a bit of a muddle, because, having misunderstood your last letter, I addressed the last two packages to Office of the Revolution, 7 Chambers' Street, Box 1817. What caused the confusion was that damned «Box 1817», since you had written telling me to append this to the «old address» without drawing any distinction between the first address and the second. But I hope the matter will have resolved itself before this letter arrives, the more so since last Friday's letter¹ contained the very detailed fifth instalment of my article. This week, I was prevented from finishing the sixth, which is also the last one.² If your paper is appearing again, this delay will not prove an obstacle, since you have an ample supply of material.

Your article against Heinzen, unfortunately sent to me too late by Engels, is very good, at once coarse and fine, and this is the right combination for any polemic worthy of the name. I have shown this article to Ernest Jones, and enclosed you will find a letter from him addressed to you, intended for publication.³ Since Jones writes very illegibly and with abbreviations, and since I assume that you are not yet an out-and-out English speaker, I am sending you, along with the original, a copy made by my wife, together with the German translation; you should print them both, the original and the translation, side by side. Below Jones's letter, you might add the following comment: As to George Julian Harney, likewise one of Mr. Heinzen's authorities, he published our Communist Manifesto in English in his Red Republican with a marginal note describing it as «the most revolutionary document ever given to the world», and, in his Democratic Review, he translated the words of «wisdom brushed aside» by Heinzen, namely, my articles on the French revolution from the Revue der «Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung» [Review of the «New Rhenish Newspaper»],⁴ and, in a paper on Louis Blanc, he refers his readers to these articles as being the «true critical examination» of the French affair. By the way, in England, there is no need to have recourse only to «extremists». If, in England, a Member of Parliament becomes a minister, they must have themself reelected. Thus, Disraeli, the new Chancellor, Lord of the Exchequer, writes to his constituents on the 1st of March:

We shall endeavour to terminate that strife of classes which, of late years, has exercised so pernicious an influence over the welfare of this Kingdom.⁵

Whereupon The Times of the 2nd of March comments:

If anything would ever divide classes in this country beyond reconciliation, and leave no chance of a just and honourable peace, it would be a tax on foreign grain.

And, lest some ignorant «person of character» like Heinzen should suppose that the aristocrats are for and the bourgeois against the Corn Laws,⁶ because the former want «monopoly» and the latter «freedom» — your worthy citizen sees opposites only in this ideological form — we shall content ourselves with saying that, in England, in the 18th century, the aristocrats were for «freedom» (of trade) and the bourgeois for «monopoly» — precisely the same attitude as is adopted by the two classes in present-day «Prussia» toward the «Corn Laws».⁷ There is no more rabid free-trader than the Neue Preussische Zeitung [New Prussian Newspaper].

Finally, if I were you, I should tell the democratic gents en général [in general] that they would do better to acquaint themselves with bourgeois literature before they venture to yap at its opponents. For instance, they should study the historical works of Thierry, Guizot, John Wade, and so on, in order to enlighten themselves as to the past «history of the classes». They should acquaint themselves with the fundamentals of political economy before attempting to criticize the critique of political economy. For example, one need only open Ricardo's magnum opus to find, on the first page, the words with which he begins his preface:

The produce of the Earth — all that is derived from its surface by the united application of labour, machinery, and capital, is divided among three classes of the community; namely, the proprietor of the land, the owner of the stock or capital necessary for its cultivation, and the labourers by whose industry it is cultivated.⁸

Now, in the United States, bourgeois society is still far too immature for the class struggle to be made perceptible and comprehensible; striking proof of this is provided by H.C. Carey (of Philadelphia), the only North American economist of any note. He attacks Ricardo, the most classical representative of the bourgeoisie and the most stoical opponent of the proletariat, as a person whose works are an arsenal for Anarchists and Socialists, for all enemies of the bourgeois order. He accuses, not only him, but also Malthus, Mill, Say, Torrens, Wakefield, MacCulloch, Senior, Whately, R. Jones, and so on — those who lead the economic dance in Europe — of tearing society apart, and of paving the way for civil war by showing that the economic bases of the various classes are such that they will inevitably give rise to a necessary and ever-growing antagonism between the latter. He tries to refute them, not, it is true, like the fatuous Heinzen, by relating the existence of classes to the existence of political privileges and monopolies, but by seeking to demonstrate that economic conditions — rent (landed property), profit (capital), and wages (wage-labour) — rather than being conditions of struggle and antagonism, are conditions of association and harmony. All he proves, of course, is that the «undeveloped» relations in the United States are, to him, «normal relations».

Now, as for myself, I do not claim to have discovered either the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle between the classes, as had bourgeois economists their economic anatomy. My own contribution was:

• First, to show that the existence of classes is merely bound up with certain historical phases in the development of production.
• Second, that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
• Third, that this dictatorship itself constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

Ignorant louts, such as Heinzen, who deny not only the struggle, but the very existence of classes, only demonstrate that, for all their bloodthirsty, mock-humanist yelping, they regard the social conditions in which the bourgeoisie is dominant as the final product, the non plus ultra [uttermost point] of history, and that they themselves are simply the servants of the bourgeoisie, a servitude which is the more revolting, the less capable the louts are of grasping the very greatness and transient necessity of the bourgeois regime itself.

Select from the above notes whatever you think fit. By the way, Heinzen has adopted our «centralization» in place of his «federal republic», and so on.⁹ When the views on classes we are now disseminating have become familiar objects of «sound common sense», then the scoundrel will proclaim them aloud as the latest product of his «own wisdom» and yap his opposition to our onward progress. Thus, in the light of his «own wisdom», he yapped at Hegelian philosophy so long as it was progressive. Now, he feeds on its stale scraps, spat out undigested by Ruge.

With this also the end of the Hungarian article.¹⁰ It is all the more essential that you should try to make some use of this — assuming your paper exists — because Szemere, the erstwhile Prime Minister of Hungary, now in Paris, has promised me to write a long article for you, signed with his own name.

If your paper has come into being, send more copies, so that it can be distributed more widely.

Your:

#K. Marx

Kind regards to you and your wife from all your friends here, especially my wife.

Apropos. I am sending you the Notes to the People and a few copy of my Assizes speech (this last for Cluss, to whom I promised it) by the hand of the ex-Montagnard Hochstuhl (an Alsatian). There's nothing to the fellow.

With here the Rules.¹¹ I would advise you to arrange them in more logical order. London is designated as the district responsible for the United States. Until now, we have been able to exercise our authority only in partibus.

If you have not already done so, do not accept «Hirsch's» statement.¹² He's an unsavoury individual, although in the right where Schapper and Willich are concerned.