The International Workingmen's Association

The “President of Mankind”


On my return from Holland to London No. 39 of the
Social-Demokrat presents me with an asafoetida cake baked by the
hand of Herr Bernhard Becker, mainly consisting of Vogtian crumbs of slander.
The legally documented refutation of Vogt's lying fairy-tales may be found
in my work Herr Vogt, London, 1860. But this time, quite contrary
to his custom, Herr Bernhard Becker, the "President of Mankind", does not
merely content himself with plagiarism. For the first time in his life
he attempts to come up with something of his own as well.

"In fact," says the "President of Mankind", "through Dronke Marx pawned
for 1,000 Tlr. a manuscript which was redeemed by the Prussian police inspector,
Stieber, who was in London spying among the refugees."

And three times during the course of his personal presidential address,
our Bernhard Becker returns to this "fact" with ever increasing merriment.

On page 124 of my Herr Vogt I state in a footnote:

"I myself had made the acquaintance of Bangya in London in 1850, together
with his friend at the time, the present General Turr. His underhand dealings
with parties of every complexion, Orleanists, Bonapartists, etc., and his
association with policemen of every 'nationality' made me suspect him,
but he dispelled my suspicions quite simply by showing me a document in
Kossuth's own hand in which he (who had formerly been provisional
chief commissioner of the police in Komorn under Klapka) was appointed
chief commissioner of the police in partibus. As a secret chief
of police in the service of the revolution he naturally had to keep in
'touch' with police in the service of the governments. In the course of
the summer of 1852 I discovered that he had appropriated a manuscript I
had asked him to convey to a bookseller in Berlin and steered it into the
hands of a German government. After I had written to a Hungarian" (Szemere)
"in Paris describing this incident and a number of other striking peculiarities
of the man's, and after the Bangya mystery had been completely cleared
up thanks to the intervention of a third person well-informed in the matter,
I sent an open denunciation, signed by myself, to the New Yorker Criminal-Zeitung
early in 1853."

The "President of Mankind" has obviously not read the detailed denunciation
of Bangya (at that time still resident in London) published by me 13 years
ago in the New Yorker Criminal-Zeitung. Otherwise he would probably
have made his fiction fit the facts somewhat better. So he surrenders himself
entirely to the play of his fair fantasy, and what was closer to it than
the pleasant association of ideas between London and pawning? But I vouch
for the fact that Bernhard Becker has never pawned his manuscripts.

The "President of Mankind" deigns to add:

"that on the foundation of the Vienna Botschafter, the semi-official
organ of the Austrian government, Marx sought to win me" (just the same
Bernhard Becker) "over as a correspondent for the same by concealing the
semi-official character of the nascent journal, which, he said, had been
sent to him, emphasising on the contrary that I should deliver out and
out red articles."

Herr Bernhard Becker, who at that time was not yet "President of Mankind",
was also possessed by the unfailing habit of scribbling "quite colourless
articles" in the London Hermann, surprised me one fine evening (I
had previously chanced to see him once or twice only) with a visit in person
to my house, shortly before quietly sneaking away -- for good reasons --
from London. He pitiably bemoaned his ill-fortune to me and asked if I
could obtain correspondences for him to help him out of his bitter distress.
I replied that a few days before Herr Kolatschek had announced the foundation
of a new, allegedly "very liberal" Vienna newspaper to Herr S. Borkheim,
a political refugee and merchant in the City, sending him some sample issues
and requesting him to recruit a London correspondent. At the earnest entreaty
of Bernhard Becker I promised to take up the matter on his behalf with
Herr Borkheim, who is always willing to oblige refugees. Bernhard Becker
also wrote, as far as I remember, one or more sample articles for Vienna.
And his unsuccessful attempt to become the correspondent of the Botschafter
proves my alliance with the Austrian government! Herr Bernhard Becker obviously
believes that because Countess Hatzfeldt has given him a post, the Lard
God has also given him the intelligence necessary for it!

"Liebknecht," continues Bernhard Becker, "is now systematically
working on Countess Hatzfeldt, to whom Marx, too, sends telegrams and letters
in order to turn her against the Association."

Herr Bernhard Becker imagines that I take the importance he acquired
by bequest quite as "systematically" seriously as he does himself! My letters
to Countess Hatzfeldt after the death of Lassalle consisted of a message
of condolence, of answers to various questions put to me on account of
the planned Lassalle brochure and of discussions on a refutation against
a libeller of Lassalle that I had been requested to, and subsequently did,
undertake. So as to avoid misunderstandings, however, I thought it very
much to the point to remind the Countess in a letter of December 22, 1864
that I did not agree with Lassalle's politics. That concluded our correspondence,
in which not a syllable was uttered about the Association. The Countess
had requested me among other things to let her know by return whether the
release of certain portraits for the planned brochure seemed appropriate
to me. I replied by telegraph: No! This single telegram is put into the
plural by Herr Bernhard Becker, who is no less eminent a grammarian than
he is poet and thinker.

He relates that I also took part in a campaign directed against
him at a later date. The sole step on my part in this all-important affair
was this: I had heard from Berlin that Bernhard Becker was being persecuted
from a certain quarter because he was not willing to allow the Social-Demokrat
and the Association to be misused in order to agitate for the incorporation
of Schleswig-Holstein into Prussia. At the same time I had been asked to
bring this "intrigue" to the notice of Herr Klings in Solingen, over whom
a certain degree of influence was attributed to me on account of some earlier
contacts, and Herr Philipp Becker in Geneva, in order to give them due
warning. I did both things, the former through a Barmen friend, the latter
through my friend Schily in Paris, who was labouring, as I was, under the
delusion that something human had happened to the "President of Mankind"
and that he had actually behaved decently for once. He now naturally distorts
the facts of the matter into the exact opposite -- being a dialectician.

The "President of Mankind" is, however, not only an eminent writer,
thinker, grammarian and dialectician. He is a pathologist of the first
water, to boot. My eighteen-month-old carbuncle complaint, which happened
to last six months after Lassalle's death, this blood-red disease he explains
as due to "pale envy at Lassalle's greatness".

"But," he emphatically adds, "he did not dare to oppose Lassalle in
public because he knew full well that Lassalle would have struck him stone
dead, like he did Bastiat-Schulze, with his giant's club."

Now precisely in this his last work on "Bastiat-Schulze" Lassalle praises
my Critique of Political Economy, Berlin, 1859, to the skies, calling
it "epoch-making", a "masterpiece", and placing it in line with the works
of A. Smith and Ricardo. From this, Herr Bernhard Becker, with that capacity
for thought, peculiar to himself, concludes that Lassalle might strike
me dead, as he did Bastiat-Schulze. Incidentally Lassalle had quite different
ideas of what I "dare". When I wrote to him on an occasion which this is
not the place to discuss, saying that Engels and I would, for reasons which
I enumerated, be forced to make a public attack on him, he replied at length
in a letter Iying here before me at this moment, first setting out his
objections and then concluding in the terms:

"Consider all this before you speak out loud and publicly. Dissension
and breach between us would be a deplorable event for our particular party,
which is not a big one as it is!"

Herr Bernhard Becker sees a complete contradiction in the fact that I wished
to have nothing to do with an obscure international association in which
he, Bernhard Becker, is supposed to have figured, while on the contrary
participating with great keenness in the International Association formed
last September by the leaders of the London trade unions.

Herr Bernhard Becker's gift for discrimination obviously provides
support for his power of reasoning. His association, he boasts, comprised
all of "400 men" in its heyday, while our Association shows so little modesty
that it already numbers 10,000 members in England alone. It is, in fact,
impermissible that anything of this sort should take place behind the back
as it were of the "President of Mankind".

All in all, and with particular respect to Herr Bernhard Becker's
abundance of abilities only briefly suggested by me, one finds that he
is hardly justified in his complaints that people have sought to impose
too much at once on a man like him; that people have not only forced on
him the job of exercising autocratic power as his main field, but also
the lesser office of "buying eggs and butter for the house", "on the side".

It would seem, however, that a better domestic order could be
achieved by re-arranging his dual functions. May his main task in future
be the "buying of eggs and butter for the house", and, conversely, let
him preside over mankind solely "on the side".

London, April 8, 1865

Notes

BACKGROUND: Marx wrote this article in reply to Bernhard Becker,
President of the Lassallean General Association of German Workers, who
spoke at a meeting of the Association's Hamburg branch on March 22 1865.
His speech, published in Der Social-Demokrat, No. 39, on March 26,
slandered the International Working Men's Association and also Marx, Engels
and Liebknecht. On March 27 1865, Becker was stigmatized by Liebknecht
at the meeting of the Association's Berlin branch. THe rank-and-file members
of this organization, greatly discontented with Becker, resolved to expel
him and recommend other organizations to follow suit. Similar meetings
were held in many other branches. In June 1865, Becker was compelled provisionally
to delegate his presidential powers to his deputy Fritzsche and he completely
renounced them the following November. Marx wrote this article on his return
from Holland, where he had a rest at his uncle's, Lion Philips, at Zalt-Bommel
from March 19 to April 8 1865. (From the Collected Works.)