{London,] 7 December 1852 

. Enclosed you will find: 1. A manuscript of mine: Revelations 
Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne. This manuscript went 
off to Switzerland yesterday to be printed there and thence 
pitched into Germany as étrennes* for the Prussian gentlemen. You 
should have it printed locally*’’ if you believe that sales in 
America will enable you to recoup at least the production costs, if 
more, tant mieux.” In which case, advance notices should appear in 
the Press to whet people’s curiosity. If the pamphlet does come 
out in America, it should be published anonymously, as in 
Switzerland. To appreciate to the full the humour of the thing, 
you must know that its author, for want of anything decent to 
wear on his backside and feet, is as good as interned and, 
moreover, is and continues to be threatened with truly ghastly 
misére engulfing his family at any moment. The trial dragged 
me even deeper into the mire, since for 5 weeks, instead of 
working for my livelihood, I had to work for the party against the 
government's machinations. On top of that, it has completely 
alienated the German booksellers with whom I had hoped to 
conclude a contract for my Economy.” Finally, Bermbach’s arrest 
has deprived me of the prospect of making anything out of the 
Brumaires sent through you—300 had been ordered through him 
as long ago as May. So it’s a pretty kettle of fish.4 

Here in London I have made it generally known that the 
pamphlet is to be printed in North America, if only so that we can 
make an incursion from Switzerland behind the Prussians’ backs. 
They suspect that something is afoot and by now will have 
ordered the douaniers and police in Hamburg, Bremen and 
Lübeck to be on the qui-vive. 

2. Herewith also an appeal for money for the Cologne prisoners 

a New Year's gifts - > so much the better - © poverty - ¢ The original has ‘Holland 
in Not’ (Holland in distress)—an expression used by the Dutch during the struggle 
for independence (1572-1609), to call out their fellow-countrymen to pierce the 
dykes and drive away the Spanish invaders. - © customs men 

and their families.* See that it appears in various papers. It might 
also be a good idea for you to form committees over there. Here it 
is a matter of a party demonstration. You will observe that Ernest 
Jones actually appears as a party member. In an introductory 
note, signed by you both, you might specially emphasise that this is 
not a case of begging for the revolution Kinkel-fashion, etc., but 
rather of a definite party aim whose fulfilment is demanded by the 
honour of the workers’ party. 

A longish statement (signed by me, Lupus, Freiligrath and 
Engels) about the government’s infamies at the Cologne trial has 
appeared in various London papers.” What especially riles the 
Prussian Embassy is the fact that the most distinguished and 
respectable London weeklies, the Spectator and the Examiner, have 
accepted this unvarnished denunciation of the Prussian govern- 
ment. 

The Morning Advertiser did not print your letter‘; can it have 
smelt a rat? 

The item from the Abendzeitung received from you today, 
according to which I, etc., the police, etc., is a scurrility on the part 
of Mr M. Gross, who has been put up to it by some Willichian or 
other in New York. You will see from my manuscript what kind of 
role this ‘honourable’ Willich plays in the Cologne trial. I have 
kept a good deal back, partly so as not to impair the literary 
scheme of the whole, and partly for use as fresh ammunition 
should the fellow—which I hardly dare hope—have the courage 
to reply. 

I am tickled by Fickler’s letters. Blind, who is now living here 
with his wife, tells me that, during the industrial exhibition,°” 
Fickler, good, honest Fickler, rented a large house and furnished 
it sumptuously for the purpose of reletting. The speculation 
misfired. Not only did Fickler make off to America to escape his 
creditors. He also made off without breathing a word of his plans 
to his marriageable daughter who lived with him, and without 
leaving her a single centime. She, of course, was thrown out of the 
house. What became of her after that, no one knows. Good, 
honest Fickler! 

As regards Proudhon, you are both right.”’" Massol’s delusions 
were due to the fact that Proudhon, with his usual industrial 

317 

2 K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Appeal for Support of the Men Sentenced in 
Cologne’. - > K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘A Final Declaration on the Late Cologne 
Trials’. - © See this volume, p. 207. 

quackery, adopted as his ‘latest discoveries’ some of my ideas, e.g., 
that there is no such thing as absolute knowledge, that everything is 
explicable in terms of material conditions, etc., etc. In his book on 
Louis Bonaparte* he openly admits what I had to deduce for 
myself first from his Philosophie de la Misere, namely, that his ideal 
is the petit bourgeois.” France, he says, consists of 3 classes: 
1. Bourgeoisie; 2. Middle class (petit bourgeois); 3. Proletariat. Now 
the purpose of history, and of revolution in particular, is to 
dissolve classes 1 and 3, the extremes, in class 2, the happy mean, 
this being effected by Proudhonian credit transactions, the final 
result of which is the abolition of interest in its various forms. 

General Vetter will be looking up Weydemeyer in New York and 
yourself in Washington. 

Ad vocem‘ Kossuth. When I learnt through what you sent about 
the initial scandal in the German-American Press over my ‘private 
CORRESPONDENCE’ in the Tribune, I sent a statement* to the Tribune, 
signed ‘your PRIVATE CORRESPONDENT’ Of which herewith a summary’: 

But to continue. On receiving from you the cutting in which one 
of Kossuth’s secretaries describes me as an infamous calumniator, 
etc., and at the same time works for Pierre, etc., I informed Mr 
Kossuth of the contents of my first statement to the Tribune and 
asked the gentleman for a definitive explanation. Whereupon 
Kossuth replied 1. on his word of honour, that he has no secretary; 
that possibly Benningsen in sAmerica, his one-time clerk of 
chancery, had arrogated this office to himself; and 2. that the first 
he had heard of the alleged statement had been through me (I 
having sent him the corpus delicti, the slip of paper contained in 
your letter); 3. that he was grateful for my ‘warninc’ and would 
again invite me to meet him somewhere on neutral ground. 

Next Friday I shall convey points 1 and 2 to the Tribune again." 
Keep me au fait with this affair. . 

Ad vocem Kinkel. Well, Kinkel has been roving around lecturing 
on modern poetry, etc., in Bradford and Manchester where, like 
the clerical, aesthetic, liberal parasite he is, he paid court to the 
German Jews. People who attended his lectures have informed me 

a Pp. J. Proudhon, La révolution sociale démontrée par le coup d’état du 2 
décembre. - >» K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (see present edition, Vol. 6, 
p. 190). - © re- 4 K. Marx, ‘Movements of Mazzini and Kossuth.—League with 
Louis Napoleon.—Palmerston’. On _ details see this volume, pp. 268- 
69. - © K. Marx, ‘Kossuth, Mazzini, and Louis Napoleon’. - f Note by Cluss in the 
original: (there follows the piece you know). - 8 Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte.- 
h K. Marx, ‘A Reply to Kossuth’s “Secretary”’. 

on his aesthetic derring-do as follows: he announces that he will be 
giving a lecture on Goethe’s Faust in Bradford, admittance 3/- per 
head. Hall packed. Great expectations. And what does Gottfried 
do? Reads them Faust from cover to cover, and calls this a lecture 
on ‘Faust’! Needless to say, Gottfried was wily enough to save up 
this piece of cheating for the very last lecture. In Manchester 
Gottfried declared: 

‘Goethe is no poet, he rhymes “erbétig’ with “ Venedig”; but Immermann is the 
greatest of all German poets.’ 

And again: 
‘I would venture to say that, of the more recent German poets, 3 in particular 

have enjoyed the favour of the public—Herwegh, Freiligrath and—if I would 
venture to say— Gottfried Kinkel. 

But easy-going Gottfried also Jectured on politics, e.g. on the 
parties in North America. Here is what he said in Manchester and 
Bradford: 

“True, I announced that I was going to speak about the American parties, e.g. 
Democrats, Whigs, Free Soilers, 3!8 etc. But in fact there are no more parties left in 
America, than there are in Europe. There remains only the one great party of the 
liberals, as would also become apparent in Germany, if only the defeated party were 
allowed to resume its former position.’ 

Finally Gottfried spoke about the Mormons*'* 

other things, he declared: 

of whom, among 

‘He who wishes to be rid of all earthly cares should betake himself to the 
Mormons’, etc. 

His pronouncements even led people in Bradford to believe that 
he was a Mormon agent. Be that as it may, Gottfried Kinkel left the 
two manufacturing towns profoundly convinced that he must never 
show his face there again. 

At the Assizes in Cologne Becker* has discredited both himself 
and the party. It had been mutually agreed from the outset that 
he would come forward as a non-League? member, so as not to 
lose the good-will of the democratic petty bourgeoisie. But being 
very weak in theory and pretty strong in the matter of petty 
ambition, he was all of a sudden overcome by vertigo. He wanted 
to play the great man of democracy at the communists’ expense. 
Not only did he want to get off scot-free, but also carry off in 

@ Hermann Becker - & The Communist League 

person what laurels were to be won at the trial. He is not only as 
shameless as ever, he is growing despicable. 

In conclusion, a few words on France. Bonaparte, who has 
always lived on tick, believes that there is no better way of 
bringing about the golden age in France than by making loan 
institutions universal, and as accessible as possible to all classes.*" 
His transactions have a twofold advantage: They pave the way for 
an atrocious financial crisis, and demonstrate what results from 
Proudhon’s credit manoeuvres when they are put into practice and 
not confined to theoretical day-dreams, namely a stock-jobbing 
swindle unparalleled since the days of John Law. 

The Orleanists—I know one of their agents* very well—are 
tremendously active. Thiers is here at the moment. They have 
many allies in the army and in Bonaparte’s immediate entourage. 
They intend to murder him (in January) in his bed. Nous verrons.” 
At all events, I shall be notified a fortnight before the attempt, and 
shall in turn notify the revolutionary proletarian party in Paris 
through the secret society of ‘fréres et amis“*”° to which I belong. If 
the Orleanists pull the chestnuts out of the fire, they must in no 
case be allowed to eat them. 

Should Heinzen, etc., brag about Becker’s performance in 
Cologne, thereby compromising us all, you must publish a 
statement signed with your name, to the effect that Becker was a 
member of the communist society’ and that shortly before his 
arrest, he invited me to write a paper against the democrats, but 
asked me not to reply to the attacks of Heinzen and Ruge, those 
wretched allies of Müller-Tellering. Of course, you should only 
make use of this weapon if absolutely necessary. In which case you 
declare outright that Becker took the stage as arranged, but 
grossly over-acted, did not play his part skilfully enough—which is 
all that he can be reproached with. 

K. M.