Karl Marx to Carl Siebel
in Barmen
London, Thursday, 22 December 1864

22 Dec. 1864.

1, Modena Villas, Maitland
Park, Haverstock Hill,
London.

Dear Siebel!

A Happy New Year!

You will perhaps have seen that Engels and I have agreed to collaborate on the Berlin Social-Demokrat. However, either – between ourselves be it said – the paper must renounce the Lassalle apotheosis or we shall renounce it. But the poor devils are in a difficult position.

You will have received the Addresses sent to you and will probably have guessed me to be their author. As regards the movement here, it is important to us that affiliations with the local Central Committee come from German workers’ societies. (From Italy and France this has already happened in many cases.) Now Liebknecht writes to me that the Berlin Book Printers’ Society will affiliate, whereas the affiliation of the “General Association of German Workers” is highly doubtful on account of the intrigues of Herr Bernhard Becker, whose importance Lassalle “invented”.

(Between ourselves, this is perhaps the only invention Lassalle ever made.)

I have today written a sort of threatening letter to old Hatzfeldt, sub rosa of course.

It would now be very desirable if you could go for a moment to Solingen and explain to Messerschmidt Klings in my name how extremely important it is that the German Workers’ Association should decide at its Congress at Düsseldorf on 27 December this year to join the International Association. You can hint, on the quiet, that for such nonentities as B. Becker, etc., it is of course not about the cause but about the “infiniment petit”, i.e. their own persons. However, such a hint must be made diplomatically, without involving me.

You understand that the accession of the General Association of German Workers is needed, only for the beginning, in relation to our opponents here. Later, the whole institution of this association, as resting on a false basis, must be smashed.

If you don’t at last write me a few lines, I shall assume that you have become utterly unfaithful to me and shall pronounce the anathema over you.

D
KMI