MARX TO MATILDA BETHAM-EDWARDS 

{London,] 14 July 1875 
41 Maitland Park Crescent, N. W. 
Sir,* 
In your article “The International Working Men’s Association’ ‘ 
there occur matter-of-facts errors to some of which I shall call 

a Adolphe Quést - & There follows an undecipherable postscript. - © When Marx 
wrote this letter, he probably did not know that the author of the article, “The 
International Working Men’s Association’, was a woman. -4 The article was 
published anonymously in Fraser’s Magazine, Nos. LXVIJ-LXIX, July to September 
1875. 

your attention. But before doing so, allow me to express my 
astonishment at your statement: 

‘We believe that an abbreviated translation of this work’ (Das Kapital) ‘is to be 
brought out shortly.’ 

{1 have reserved the right of translation and there exists a 
copyright treaty between Germany and England. I shall, 
therefore, certainly stop the circulation of any such epitome, not 
beforehand authorised by me. Abbreviation affords the traduttore* 
peculiar facilities to turn traditore> Even the revision of the 
not-abbreviated French translation, published in livratsons‘ at Paris, 
has given me more trouble than the re-writing the whole book in 
French would have done.”” 

Supposing that you know the translator, and being anxious to 
avoid the nuisance of law-proceedings, I have taken the liberty to 
write to you upon this subject. 

With regard to the matter-of-fact errors occurring in your 
article, I shall limit myself to a few items. 

You say: 

‘Das Kapital came out soon after Proudhon’s essays on the Fallacies of Political 
Economy, and in a little chapter called the Miseries of Philosophy Marx answered 
Proudhon’s chapter on the Philosophy of Misery’, etc. 

It was Proudhon’s voluminous work: Systéme des Contradictions 
Economiques ou Philosophie de la Misére, to which I replied by the 
brochure, written in French, Misére de la Philosophie The latter 
was published in 1847, but Das Kapital only twenty years later, in 
1867. I suppose that you have been led into error by Fribourg’s 
most untrustworthy publication on the ‘International’. 

Not being aware that, when giving in full the preamble of the 
Rules, and parts of the Inaugural Address of the International, 
you were actually quoting writings from my pen,’ you reprint 
from an address, nameless and dateless, a proposition which, you 
say, ‘must have come from the pen of Dr Marx himself’. 
Unfortunately, they did not. I never saw that address before I 
read it in the columns of Fraser It has evidently been indited by 
one of my adherents, but, at the same time, contains some loose 
phraseology I was not delighted to have fathered upon me. 

4 translator - > traitor - © instalments - 4 See present edition, Vol. 6. - ¢ E. E. Fri- 
bourg, L’Association Internationale des Travailleurs. -  K. Marx, ‘Inaugural Address of 
the Working Men’s International Association’ and ‘Provisional Rules of the 
Association’. - 8 Fraser’s Magazine 

Mazzini and Blanqui had never any ‘correspondence’ whatever 
with the General Council of the International. When the Interna- 
tional was founded, some Italian workmen, partisans of Mazzini, 
and one Major Wolff (whom papers, detected at the time of the 
Paris Commune, have proved to have been a police spy, in the 
regular pay of the Bonapartist prefet de police), his agent, became 
members of the General Council. Wolff proposed an Inaugural 
Address and Rules which, it was known, had been written by 
Mazzini. Both documents being rejected, and those drawn up by 
me being accepted, Mazzini, soon after, induced his partisans to 
secede from the General Council, and remained, from that time to 
his death, the most irreconcilable enemy of the International. 

Orsini (the brother of the Italian patriot) was never present at 
the sittings of the General Council and never gave it any account, 
interesting or otherwise, of any subject whatever. He had some 
private correspondence with me, relating to his doings in the 
U. States. 

Potter was never a member of the ‘International’, Hales was not 
present at the Basle Congress,'” etc. 

I have the honour, Sir, 
To be yours most respectfully, 
Karl Marx