in Manchester  
London, Saturday, 18 February 1865  

I 18 Feb. ’65  
Dear Fred,  

I enclose 2 letters from Liebknecht, 1 to you, 1 to me. Ditto an earlier one from Schweitzer.  

My view is this:  

Since Liebknecht has once given notice, il faut en finir. Had he postponed the matter, we could, since your pamphlet is in progress, also postpone.  

I consider Schweitzer incorrigible (probably in secret understanding with Bismarck).  

What confirms me in this is  

1) The passage underlined (by me) in his enclosed letter of the 15th;  
2) The time in which his Bismarck III appeared.  

In order to appreciate both, I herewith communicate to you in verbatim copy a passage from my letter to him of 13 February:  

“... since through the correspondence of M. Heß in No. 21, which arrives today, our declaration is partially out of date, the matter may rest there. Certainly our declaration contained still another point, praise of the anti-Bonapartist attitude of the Paris proletariat and a hint to the German workers to imitate this model. This was more important to us than the attack on H. However, we shall elsewhere express our opinion in detail on the relation of the workers to the Prussian government.  

In your letter of 4 Feb. it says that I myself warned Liebknecht not to kick over the traces, so that he wouldn’t be sent to the devil. Quite correct. But I wrote to him at the same time that one can say everything if one hits upon the right form. A form of polemic against the government that is ‘possible’ even for the Berlin meridian is surely very different from coquetry or even a sham compromise with the government! I wrote to you myself that the Soc. Democ. must avoid even such sham.  

I see from your paper that the ministry is expressing itself ambiguously and playing for time on the abolition of the combination laws. On the other hand, a Times telegram reports that it dropped a protective remark about a prospect of state support for co-operative societies. It would not surprise me at all if the Times, for once, telegraphed correctly!  

Combinations, with the trades unions that grow out of them, are not only of the utmost importance as a means of organising the working class for the struggle against the bourgeoisie – this importance is shown, among other things, by the fact that even the workers of the United States, despite suffrage and republic, cannot do without them – but in Prussia and Germany generally the right of combination is, besides, a breaking through of police rule and bureaucracy, tears up the servants’ ordinance and the manorial economy on the land, in short it is a measure for making the ‘subjects’ come of age, which the Progress Party, i.e. every bourgeois opposition party in Prussia, if not mad, could permit a hundred times sooner than the Prussian government, let alone the government of a Bismarck! On the other hand, royal Prussian government support for co-operative societies – and everyone who knows Prussian conditions knows in advance the necessarily dwarf dimensions – is as an economic measure null, while at the same time the tutelage system is extended, a part of the working class is bribed, and the movement is emasculated. Just as the bourgeois party in Prussia has disgraced itself and brought about its present misery mainly by seriously believing that with the ‘New Era’ the government had fallen into its lap by the grace of the Prince Regent, so the workers’ party will disgrace itself still more if it imagines that through the Bismarck era or through any other Prussian era the golden apples will fall into its mouth by the grace of the king. That disillusionment will come over Lassalle’s disastrous illusion of a socialist intervention by a Prussian government is beyond all doubt. The logic of things will speak. But the honour of the workers’ party demands that it reject such phantoms even before their hollowness has been burst by experience. The working class is revolutionary, or it is nothing.”  

Well! To this my letter of the 13th he answers by his letter of the 15th, in which he demands my subordination to his tactics in all “practical” questions, and answers with Bismarck III as a new specimen of this tactics!! And it now seems to me indeed that the cheeky manner in which, on the occasion of the declaration against Heß, he raised the cabinet question, was not owed to tenderness for Moses, but to the firm resolve not to give room under any circumstances in the Soc. Dem. to our hint to the German workers.  

Since, then, a break with the fellow must be made, better now at once. As for the German blockheads, they may shout as much as they like. The usable part among them must sooner or later rally around us. If the declaration below suits you, copy it out, sign it and send it to me. Change what seems unsuitable to you, since it was scribbled in haste, or make it entirely new, as you like.  

Yours,  
K. M.  

I shall send the Weydemeyer back to you tomorrow. What do you say to the ‘Freiligrath-Blind’ confederacy!  

For a few days I have had a carbuncle under my nether parts and a furuncle on the left loin. Also pleasant.