MARX TO ADOLF CLUSS“*! 

London, 18 October 1853 
28 Dean Street, Soho r 

Dear Cluss, 

You really did [...] too much in going to the trouble of copying 
out the Chinese thing.* Ar THose expenses I would certainly not have 
had the impertinence to ask you for the article.” Dana copied my 
stuff almost word for word, watering down this and that and, with 
rare tact, deleting anything of an audacious nature. Never mind. It is 
A BUSINESS OF HIS, NOT OF MINE. In one of my Indian articles” he also 
amended the bit where I speak of cholera as ‘THE Inp1AN’s REVENGE UPON 
THE Western Worn’ to ‘India’s ravages’ which is nonsense. En passant‘ 
Freiligrath solicited that ‘revenge’ for a poem about cholera upon 
which he is still at work. 

Again, in another of my articles on India,’ dealing with the 
princes there, he transmogrified ‘tHe SKELETON OF ETIQUETTE’ into ‘THE 
SECLUSION (PITIFUL!) OF ETIQUETTE’. Never mind! Provided he pays. 

My wife has also compromised me by putting Rinaldo for 
Ruggiero and Alcide for Alcine* in the first article on Palmerston. 
These are ‘les petites miséres’ of an écrivain whose own 
handwriting is illegible.“ But it’s a bitter pill for a man who 
knows his Ariosto from A to Z in the original. Divino’ Ariosto! 

It’s a big jump from Ariosto to Klein, or rather a long fall, and 
a casus obliquus’ at that. Papa Klein wrote to me—not a word, of 
course, about his upsets and rows—asking for recommendations 
to you and Weydemeyer. In my reply (Pieper has not written him 
a single line quant d vous!) I did not, of course, in any way suggest 

aK. Marx, ‘Revolution in China and in Europe’. - * K. Marx, ‘The War 
Question.— Doings of Parliament.—India’ (see present edition, Vol. 12, p. 216). - 
© By the way - 4 K. Marx, “The Russo-Turkish Difficulty—Ducking and Dodging 
of the British Cabinet.—Nesselrode’s Last Note——The East India Question’ (see 
present edition, Vol. 12, p. 200). - © Rinaldo Rinaldino—title character in the 
novel by August Vulpius; Ruggiero and Alcina—characters in L’Orlando furioso by 
Ariosto. - f little miseries - § writer - ) sublime -: oblique fall. A pun, the Ger- 
man word Fall meaning either ‘fall’ or ‘case’. - } concerning you 

that Weydemeyer was unfriendly to me.? How could anyone 
suppose me capable of such stupidity and baseness? Mr Klein 
would have had to conclude from my harmless remark about 
Cluss’ being ‘our party’s most talented and energetic representative 
in America’,” that I was denying all talent and energy to 
Weydemeyer. However, such sophisticated word-juggling is 
beyond the reach of Klein’s intellect. Hence all his remark 
amounts to is a piece of nonsense invented in order to give vent to 
his annoyance. Notwithstanding ALL THIS, YOU ARE RIGHT, SIR, IN HAVING 
WRITTEN TO Mr Snuc.‘ 

Klein really does wield some influence over the Solingen 
workers, and they are the best in the Rhine province. I, pour ma 
part,’ have never, either drunk or sober, expressed the view that 
the workers are fit only for cannonfodder, although the louts, 
among whom little Klein is evidently coming to rank himself, 
are,to my mind, barely fit even for that. It would be as well to 
treat little Klein with your accustomed piscretion aS a tool that 
may perhaps (?), In TIME oF action, be of use to us. 

Have forwarded the letter to Pieper. There’s nothing doing with 
the Gradaus for it doesn’t pay, and Pieper is too badly off to write 
gratis. 

As regards the Reform, I shall see what I can get the others to 
do. The only one from whom any real support can be expected is 
Engels. Red Wolff‘ is married and a retailer of Household worps for 
Prutz, Gutzkow and Cotta, not worth a Farthing to us just now. 
Lupus no longer writes; he’s so obstinate that he cannot be made 
to forget the unfortunate business of Weydemeyer’s Revolution.’ 
Dronke, presently a clerk in Bradford, idle as a grisette. Weerth, 
travelling about South and North America on business for nearly a 
year now. Engels really has too much work, but being a veritable 
walking encyclopaedia, he’s capable, drunk or sober, of working at 
any hour of the day or night, is a fast writer and devilish quick in 
the uptake, so he at least can be expected to do something in this 
respect. 

I was greatly tickled by Heinzen’s heroic deed. Should you 
people give the fellow another dressing down, concentrate on his 
crass ignorance, and the pains the wretched man is at to 

4 See this volume, p. 365. - ©» Cf. Marx to Joseph Weydemeyer, 19 December 1851, 
present edition, Vol. 38, p. 519. - © Klein, ironically called Snug after a character 
in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. - 4 for my part - © A play on the words 
klein (little) and Klein (personal name). - £ Ferdinand Wolff 

appropriate his opponents’ catch-words when they’re already stale 
and fit for nothing. Delectable, the chap’s aspirations to dignity, 
and then his scraps! Serves him right! 

Rent. In the Misere* I cite an example of how in England, 
land which, at a certain stage of science, was regarded as barren, 
is, at a more advanced stage, considered fertile. I can adduce as a 
general fact that, throughout the middle ages, esp. in Germany, 
heavy clay soil was cultivated by preference as being naturally more 
fertile. In the past 4-5 decades, however, owing to the introduction 
of potatoes, sheep-farming and the resulting manuring, etc., light 
sandy soil has taken pride of place, esp. since it involves no Expenses 
OF DRAINAGE, etc., and on the other hand its deficiencies can easily be 
made good by means of chemical fertilisers. From this, then, it 
may be seen how relative ‘fertility’ is, even ‘natural’ fertility, and at 
the same time how ill-informed Mr Carey is, even from the point 
of view of history, when he expresses the opinion that the most 
barren land is always the first to be brought under cultivation.” 
What leads him to that conclusion? The fact that tropical swamps 
are damned fertile but reclaimable only by civilisation. A tropical 
swamp, however, is productive not so much of herbs as of weeds. 
Civilisation clearly originates in those regions where wheat grows 
wild, as was the case in part of Asia Minor, etc. Such land is 
rightly described as naturally fertile by historians—and not land 
yielding poisonous vegetation and requiring more strenuous 
cultivation if it is to become fertile for human beings. Fertility is 
not, after all, absolute but merely a relation of the land to human 
requirements. 

Ricardo’s law only holds good within bourgeois society. Hence it 
is where the relationship of the bourgeois to the land is purely 
that of a bourgeois, and every peasant,—or feudal—or patriarchal, 
relationship is cast aside that the law applies in its purest form, 
hence above all in the mining of precious metals, and in colonies 
where commercial crops, e.g. sugar, coffee, etc., are grown. More 
about this another time. In both instances the exploitation of the 
land is regarded and pursued by the bourgeois de prime abord‘ as a 
purely commercial concern. 

Though I’m not afraid of those curs of Russians in so far as 

@ K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy. Answer to the ‘Philosophy of Poverty’ by 
M. Proudhon. - » H. Ch. Carey, The Past, the Present, and the Future, Philadelphia, 
1848, pp. 48-49. - © first and foremost 

Europe is concerned—they are going to put us Germans in queer 
street. Between the Kalmuks and the crapauds* we are in a cleft 
stick. 

Herewith copy of The People’s Paper. 

Vale faveque, 

Your 
K. M.