London, 24 November 1871 

My dear Friend, 

I would have written to you long since had my time been my 
own. For the past four weeks I have been confined to the house, 
having had abscesses, operations, etc., secundum legem artis” 
Nevertheless, what with the business of the International on the 
one hand and the refugees on the other, I have not even got 
round to rewriting the first chapter of Capital for the Russian 

a K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Resolutions of the Conference of Delegates of the 
International Working Men’s Association Assembled at London from 17th to 23rd 
September 1871’. X: General Resolution as to the Countries where the Regular 
Organisation of the International is Interfered with by the Governments. - > in 
accordance with the rules of the art 

translation.”"* Since our friends in St Petersburg were becoming 
ever more pressing, I was forced to leave the chapter as it stands 
and make no more than a few minor alterations.* As I told you in 
London, I have often asked myself if the time has not come to 
resign from the General Council. The more the society develops, 
the more my time is taken up and I must, after all, finally have 
done with Das Kapital. Moreover, my resignation would rid the 
International of the threat of Pan-Germanism, a threat, or so say 
Messrs Rouillier, Malon, Bakunin, Robin & Co., represented by 
myself.” 

I have spoken to my doctor about your case. He tells me: 

1. If you are to set up in London as an English doctor, it would 
not be sufficient to pass the examinations over here. You would be 
obliged to do at least two years of study in a London hospital (or 
at university). They would take into account Belgian courses in 
some branches of the science but not all. 

2. On the other hand, you can set up here as a doctor with your 
Belgian qualifications without passing further examinations and 
without attending any English courses. There are French and 
German doctors here who practise in this way. True, there are 
certain fields, not many of them (forensic medicine, for example), 
in which you would be precluded from working, but that is a 
minor matter. 

3. Lastly you could—as many foreigners have done before 
you—combine the two methods, namely start practising straight 
away and at the same time take the necessary steps to transform 
yourself later into an English doctor and ultimately become *the 
physician of Her Most Gracious Majesty.* 

So you can see, my dear friend, that there are many roads that 
lead to Rome. *Drop me a few lines about this subject.* 

The conduct of the Belgian Federal Council vis-a-vis the 
General Council strikes me as suspect. Mr Hins and his wife—I 
am speaking frankly—are Bakuninists and Mr Steens has doubt- 
less discovered that his eloquence is insufficiently admired. In 
Geneva it is even being said, as Utin wrote and told me (he doesn’t 
believe it, needless to say), that you have sided with the Alliancists 
who are in league with André Léo, Malon, Razoua, etc. 

This essentially insignificant business could have unpleasant 
consequences. England, the United States, Germany, Denmark, 
Holland, Austria, most of the French groups, the northern 

a See this volume, pp. 239-40. - > Ibid., p. 256. 

Italians, Sicily and Rome, the vast majority of the Romance Swiss, 
all the German Swiss and the Russians in Russia (as distinct from 
certain Russians abroad linked with Bakunin) are marching in step 
with the General Council. 

On the other hand, there will be the Jura Federation in 
Switzerland (in other words the men of the Alliance who hide 
behind this name), Naples, possibly Spain, part of Belgium and 
certain groups of French refugees (who, by the by, to judge by the 
correspondence we have had from France, would not appear to 
exert any serious influence there), and these will form the 
opposing camp. Such a split, in itself no great danger, would be 
highly inopportune at a time when we must march shoulder to 
shoulder against the common foe. Our adversaries harbour no 
illusions whatever about their weakness, but they count on 
acquiring much moral support from the accession of the Belgian 
Federal Council. 

Every day people keep asking me for the Anti-Proudhon.’ I could 
carry out some degree of propaganda amongst the best minds in 
the French emigration were I to have the few copies of my piece 
against Proudhon you were kind enough to promise me. 

Fraternal greetings, 

Karl Marx 

Your friend Léonard the painter is not having much luck over 
here, I am sorry to say. My family went to see his pictures 
yesterday. I have not seen any of them so far because * the fog is 
atrocious so that I have not yet been permitted to leave my 
room *.