MARX TO LUDWIG KUGELMANN” 

London, 5 December 1868 

Dear Kugelmann, 

Have you got Dietzgen’s address? Quite a while ago he sent me 
a fragment of a manuscript on ‘intellectual capacity’, which, 
despite a certain confusion and too frequent repetitions, contained 
much that was excellent, and—as the independent product of a 
worker—even admirable. I did not reply immediately after 
reading it through, since I wanted to hear Engels’ opinion.* So I 
sent him the manuscript. A long time passed before I got it back. 
And now I cannot find Dietzgen’s letter with his new address. He 
wrote me, to wit, in his last letter from Petersburg, that he would 
return to the Rhine and settle there. Have you perhaps received 
his address from him? If so, be so kind as to send it to me by 
return. My conscience—one never becomes completely free of this 
sort of thing—is pricking me for leaving Dietzgen so long without 
a reply. You also promised to tell me something about his 
personality. 

I have received Biichner’s lectures on Darwinism. He is obviously a 
‘book-maker’ and probably for this reason is called ‘Biichner’.” His 
superficial babble about the history of materialism is obviously 
copied from Lange.‘ The way such a whipper-snapper disposes of, 
e.g., Artstotle—quite a different sort of natural philosopher from 
Buchner—is really astonishing. It is also very naive of him to say, 
referring to Cabanis, ‘you might almost be listening to Karl Vogt’.* 
As if Cabanis copied Vogt! 

Some time ago I promised to write you a few words about the 
French BRANCH.” These ragamuffins are, a half or 2/3 of them, 
maquereaux and such-like rabble, and all of them—after our 
people had withdrawn—heroes of the revolutionary phrase, who, 
FROM A SAFE DISTANCE, OF course, kill kings and emperors, in particular 
Louis Napoleon. In their eyes we are, naturally, reactionaries, and 

a See this volume, pp. 119-21 and 152-55.-5 A play on the German word 
Buchmacher (book-maker) and the name Biichner, derived from the word Buch 
(book). - ¢ F. A. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der 
Gegenwart, Vols. 1-2. - 4 L. Biichner, Sechs Vorlesungen tiber die Darwin’sche Theorie 
von der Verwandlung der Arten ...- © pimps 

they drew up, in all due form, an indictment against us, which 
was, in fact, submitted to the Brussels Congress—in the closed 
sessions. The fury of these Biacktecs was heightened by the fact 
that they had been taken over by Felix Pyat, a failed French 
fourth-class author of melodramas, who, in the revolution of °48, 
was only used as a Toastmaster—(the name given by the English to 
the men paid to announce the toasts at public banquets, or to 
supervise the order of the roasts)—a man who has a perfect 
Monomania “ro sHOUT IN A whisper’ and to play the dangerous 
conspirator. Pyat wanted to use this gang to convert the 
‘International Working Men’s Association’ into his following. In 
particular, the aim was to compromise us. Thus, at a public MEETING 
which the Frenc# srancy announced and trumpeted by poster as a 
meeting of the International Association, Louis Napoleon, alias 
Badinguet,* was in all due form sentenced to death, the execution 
naturally being left to the nameless Brutuses of Paris. Since the 
English press paid no attention to this farce, we also would have 
passed it over in silence. But one of the gang—a certain Vésinier, 
a circulator of chantage‘ literature—spread the whole muck in the 
Belgian paper La Cigale, which claims to be an organ of the 
‘International’, a sort of ‘comic’ paper, the like of which certainly 
cannot be found anywhere else in Europe. There is, you see, 
nothing comic about it except its seriousness. From the Cigale the 
stuff found its way into the Pays, Journal de l’Empire. It was 
naturally grist to the mill of Paul de Cassagnac. Thereupon 
we—i.e. the General Council— officially announced, in 6 lines in 
the Cigale, that F. Pyat had absolutely no connection with the 
‘International’, of which he was not even a member.’ Hinc illae 
irae!* This frog-and-mouse war ended when the French Branch 
rancorously withdrew from us, and it now goes about its business 
on its own, under Pyat’s auspices. They have established here, in 
London, as a succursale, a so-called German Agitational Association, 
consisting of a dozen and a half, headed by an old refugee from the 
Palatinate, the half-crazy watchmaker Weber” Now you know 
all there is to know about this solemn, highfalutin and important 
event. Just one thing more. We had the satisfaction that Blanqui, 

a The name of a stone-mason in whose clothes Napoleon III escaped from prison in 
1846. - > See this volume, p. 62. - ¢ blackmail -4 K. Marx, ‘Resolution of the 
General Council on Félix Pyat's Provocative Behaviour’ - © Hence this rage! 
(paraphrase of the expression Hinc illae lacrimae—Hence these tears—from 
Terence’s Andria, J, 1, 99). - § An allusion to the Batrachomyomachia (The Battle of 
the Frogs and Mice), an ancient Greek mock-heroic poem (attributed to Pigret) which 
parodies Homer’s Iliad. - 8 annex - » See this volume, pp. 151, 155. 

through one of his friends, writing ditto in the Cigale, made Pyat 
absolutely ridiculous, leaving him only the alternative of being either 
@ MONOMANIAC or a police agent.* 

Yesterday evening I received a letter from Schweitzer™° 
announcing that he was off to the cachot” again, and that the 
outbreak of civil war—that is war between him and W. Lieb- 
knecht—is unavoidable. I must say that Schweitzer is right on one 
point, that is, Liebknecht’s incompetence. His sheet‘ is really 
wretched. How can a man whom I crammed orally for 15 years 
(he was always too lazy to read) have such things published as, for 
instance, Society and State, in which ‘the social’ (and that’s a fine 
category too!) is treated as the secondary, and ‘the political’ as the 
essential?? This would be incomprehensible were it not that 
Liebknecht is a South German, and seems always to have confused 
me with his old superior, the ‘noble’ Gustav Struve. 

Lafargue and wife have been in Paris for 2 months. There, 
however, they don’t want to recognise the medical qualifications he 
achieved in London, and demand that he take 5 new ‘Paris’ 
exams! 

As the result of a serriement, my ‘economic’ (not politico- 
economic) circumstances will take a satisfactory form from next 
year.© 

With best greetings to your dear wife and Franzchen. 

Yours 
Karl Marx 

Is your wife also active in the German ladies’ great emancipa- 
tion campaign? I think that German women should begin by 
driving their husbands to self-emancipation.