NOTEBOOK “ο” (“OMICRON”)

LIEBKNECHT AND MARX

(LETTER TO LIEBKNECHT, 1878 )

| W. Liebknecht , Concerning the Oriental Question, or Should Europe Become Cos- sack? A Word of Warning to the German People , Second edition , Leipzig, 1878, pp. 57 and 59 . | | | | N.B. to be found!! |

| Quoted in Sozialistische Monatshefte , 1916, p. 1095 (No. 21, October 19, 1916), in an article by Schippel. He says that appended to this pamphlet of Liebknecht’s are two letters of a “friend”, obviously | |
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| Marx . (The first edition of Liebknecht’s pamphlet does not contain these supplements. [3] ) He quotes Marx as follows: |

| | “ The English working class had been gradually becoming more and more deeply demoral- ised by the period of corrup- tion since 1848 and had at last got to the point when it was nothing more than the tail of the great Liberal Party, i.e., of its oppressors, the capi- talists. Its direction had passed complete- ly into the hands of the venal trade union leaders and professional agitators. These fellows shouted and howled behind the Gladstones, Brights, Mundellas, Mor- leys, and the gang of factory owners, etc., in majorem gloriam [1] of the tsar as the emancipator of nations, while they never raised a finger for their own brothers in South Wales, condemned by the mine - owners to die of star- vation. Wretches ! To crown the whole affair worthily, in the last divi- sions in the House of Commons (on February 7 and 8, when the majority of the high dignitaries of the ‘great Liber- al Party’—the Forsters, Lowes, Har- courts, Goschens, Hartingtons, and even the great John Bright himself—left their army in the lurch and bolted from the division in order not to compromise themselves too much by voting) the only workers’ representatives there and moreover, horribile dictu , [2] direct repre- sentatives of the miners, and themselves originally miners—Burt and the miserable MacDonnell—voted with the enthusiasti- cally pro-tsarist rump of the ‘great Liberal Party’! But the swift unfolding of the Rus- sian plans broke the spell and shattered the mechanical agitation (five-pound notes were the mainspring of the mecha- nism); at this moment Mottershead, Howell, John Hales, Shipton, Osborne and the whole gang would be in danger of their lives if they were to let their voices be heard in a public meeting of workers; even their corner and ticket meetings (with entry only by ticket) have been forcibly broken up and dis- persed by the mass of the people.” | | | | | |
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| | N.B. Marx’s letter (to Liebknecht?) of 1878 | |
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Notes:
[1] To the greater glory.— Ed .

[2] Horrible to relate.— Ed .

[3] Marx’s letter to Liebknecht was first published in 1878, in the second edition of Liebknecht’s book.