London, 26 July 1873 

Dear Sorge, 

I telegraphed yesterday, cost £1.16: 

Engels to Sorge, Box 101, Hoboken, New York. 

Serraillier ves.’ 

Therefore, send Serraillier instructions and the material at once 
so that he has enough time to prepare himself and doesn’t have to 
appear without having read the papers. Ditto the money. 

Neither Marx nor I could have taken on the task without setting 
off the old hue and cry again: they are up to their old tricks, it is 
Marx who is behind it all, as usual, and he is just using the 
New-Yorkers as a front! It was only with difficulty that I could 
persuade Serraillier to take it on; he has found a position at last 
that can feed him decently and first had to cover himself there; 
hence the 3 days’ delay. 

Have sent an invitation to the Congress to Bignami, who is at 
liberty once more.’ Have also informed Serraillier, but as I have 
already mentioned,* he no longer has any correspondents in 
France. 

Am sending off to you by today’s post 2 parcels a 16 copies of 
Congress resolutions.” You could have had them long since had 

@ See this volume, p. 507.-> K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Resolutions of the 
General Congress Held at The Hague from the 2nd to the 7th September, 1872’. 

you asked. But since you had no French sections, I thought that 
those I had sent for the use of the General Council would 
suffice.—8 or 10 have been sent off to Buenos Aires.’ 

Have still not received any money. 

The issue of The International Herald with the English transla- 
tion of the Congress resolutions is no longer to be obtained. 
Moreover, Riley has seceded and gone over to the republican 
camp, and the reports of the Federal. Counc, are appearing once 
again in The Eastern Post, to the great annoyance of Jung and 
Hales, whose organ this was up to the time of the Manchester 
Congress”"'; the Congress, however, finished them off. For this 
reason I have not ordered The International Herald for Meyer.* 

The statement about the French mandates has gone off to Italy, 
Portugal and Spain.” 

Marx and I would welcome mandates from there. We shall 
presumably have to go, for various reasons, although we would, of 
course, prefer to stay here. 

Marx will send on the instalments of Capital,” if he has not 
done so already. Four instalments of the French translation are 
out already ,**° the publisher? is afraid, and not without reason, 
that under the present clerical regime it may be confiscated, hence 
the slow appearance. 

Admission for Trade unions varied. Some paid 1d per member, 
others a lump sum; yet others only enrolled the Cenrrat Counci. 
directly and they too paid a lump sum. In conformity with the 
relevant article in the Rules, affiliation was approved by simple 
resolution and a certificate was issued to them.—For Ish. they 
could receive a printed illustrated version of it to hang on the wall. 

The Demokratische Taschenbuch and the Geheimnisse von Europa 
might be obtainable if further details about the time and place of 
publication were available; the book-lexica do not stretch to such 
things and it is hardly worthwhile searching through 20 half-year 
issues of Hinrich’s Bibliography‘ in order to discover finally that 
they are not there (which is all too likely to be the case with books 
of this sort). 

I still have the Geneva money in my pocket, thanks to the 
impossible instructions you have lumbered me with. How am I to 
discover an address to send money to for the widows and orphans 
of the Commune? This part of the money really must be retained 
here for your further instructions, since we simply cannot carry 

a Hermann Meyer - © Maurice Lachatre - ¢ Halbjahrskatalog der im deutschen Buch- 
handel erschienenen Bücher, Zeitschriften und Landkarten. . 

out your orders. I would suggest transferring it to Serraillier with 
a request to devote it to the purpose specified, if at all possible, but 
otherwise using it for any refugees of the Commune in general. 
Or else transferring it to the International, which can certainly put 
it to good use.—The refugees here who have still not been fixed 
up are a pretty worthless lot. I shall send £10 to Geneva and hold 
the rest here, pending further instructions from you.” 

Oberwinder.2 We are entirely of your opinion as far as we can 
judge from the published documents.’’ Oberwinder has always 
been a TRIMMER who may have made too much of the backwardness 
of Austrian conditions in order to have an excuse to act as 
mediator. Andreas Scheu, on the other hand, is a muddle-headed 
fellow at best, who wants to stand out as a man who ‘goes as far as 
possible’ and whose ambition quite certainly outstrips his abilities. 
We have long suspected him of being in contact with the 
Bakuninists, and now, in his programme ( Volksstaat No. 59), he 
has used the phrase taken directly from Bakunin that all other 
parties constitute a single reactionary mass vis-a-vis the proletariat.’" 
We shall reserve our judgment until we learn more. Very suspect 
too is the fact that Heinrich Scheu, who was present at The 
Hague, has been here for 4 weeks and only looked up Marx after 
Mrs Marx had met him in the street. Up to now we have taken 
care not to discuss the matter with him, otherwise he behaves quite 
decently and heaps abuse on Bakunin and the Blanquists, but it is 
peculiar all the same. 

Wiirtz was described to me by Pihl as a vain, importunate fellow 
who imagines he is indispensable and whose indiscretion in 
pushing himself forward has done them considerable harm. THe 
LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT Is that, thanks to the Lassalleans in Flensburg 
and others in North Schleswig, the Danes lean more towards the 
General Association of German Workers’ and have got them- 
selves into a mess as a result. Hence their silence. The devil take 
the socialists of all these peasant countries, they.are always fooled 
by fine phrases. 

Look at our Bakuninists in Spain, for example. On Bakunin’s 
orders they abolished the state in Alcoy (the so-called atrocities 
were, of course, reactionary inventions), and set up a Comité de 
salut public? (which includes Severino Albarracin, a member of the 
Bakuninist Federal Council of Valencia and of the Correspon- 
dence Commission that has now been established in Cérdoba”). 
So what happens? At the suggestion of some deputies anxious to 

a See this volume, p. 491. - © Committee of Public Salvation 

mediate, peace is concluded; on the one hand, an amnesty, on the 
other, all resistance is abandoned and the troops move in amidst 
the jubilation of the bourgeois! ’’’ In Barcelona they are neither 
strong nor courageous enough to attempt anything of the sort, but 
wherever they are, they strengthen ‘anarchy’, general confusion, 
and—they smooth the way for the Carlists.”” 

The report on the Alliance* is in print-—I read the first proofs 
yesterday. It is supposed to be ready in a week but I very much 
doubt that it will. It will be some 160 pages long, I shall advance 
circa £40 for the printing costs. Edition of 1,000—price: 2 
francs=1/9d sterling. I shall send you the first copies to come off 
the press. But since the thing simply has to be sold so as to recover 
our costs, please let me know right away how many copies can be 
ordered for you over there; we shall then have a few more sent. 
Could you also look around for a reliable bookseller who would 
distribute it over there. Because of the additional expenses you 
will probably have to fix the price at about 60-75 cents in your 
CURRENCY —c’est votre affaire’—at any rate, we here have to receive 
1/9d per copy, with the exception of those sold through the 
bookseller since his discount will have to be subtracted, otherwise 
we shall not recover our costs. The book will hit the autonomists 
like a bombshell, and if anyone at all can be broken, it will finish 
off Bakunin. Lafargue and IJ wrote it together; only the conclusion 
is by Marx and myself. We shall send it to the entire press. You 
yourself will be surprised at the infamies revealed in it; even the 
people from the Commission‘ were quite astonished. 

The Feprrat Councit here proceeds on its somnolent way. Apart 
from the printed reports I see and hear little of them. At all 
events, Jung, Hales, Mottershead and Co. are finished as far as 
their pseudo-International is concerned. 

Get some Copenhagen addresses for me through Wiirtz right 
away, so that I can send there a few copies of the Alliance report. 
Have not heard another word from Pihl, so that I do not know if 
his address is still valid. 

Apart from that things are jogging along here. My wife is in 
Ramsgate and Mrs Marx was due to go there today too. Jenny 
Longuet will probably enlarge the family in a week or two (do not 

a K. Marx and F. Engels, The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International 
Working Men’s Association. - » that’s your business - © The Commission appointed to 
prepare for publication the minutes and resolutions of the Hague Congress. Apart 
from Marx and Engels, it included Eugéne Dupont, Léo Frankel, Auguste Serraillier 
and Benjamin Le Moussu. - 9 Lydia Burns 

write to Marx or Mrs Marx about it until you receive official 
notice, THEY ARE VERY PARTICULAR ABOUT FAMILY MATTERS). Lafargue and Le 
Moussu have started up an encravine business, based on a patent.’ 
Dupont too is attempting to exploit his patent in Brass INSTRUMENTS, 
but keeps coming up against obstacles, mostly of his own making, 
since he knows as much about business as my dog. All this 
between ourselves. You have no idea how sensitive these people 
are about private communications, moreover their sensitivity is in 
direct proportion to their own tendency to gossip. 

Finally, it would still be best if one of you were to come. How 
can we possibly represent the General Council here as effectively 
as this would be done by one of its members? 

Your 
F. Engels