Manchester, 23 September 1851

Dear Marx,

At last I think I’ve reached the point at which, after so many
deplorable interruptions, I can settle down to regular work again.
Article No. 3 for Americawill be finished by this evening and

a F. Engels, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany. Article III.

dispatched to you forthwith, and then I will at once get down to
the Proudhon.I have heard nothing more about Kinkel’s tour. The split among
the Italians is wonderful. It’s excellent that that astute visionary,
Mazzini, should at last find himself thwarted by material interests,
and in his own country to boot. One advantage of the Italian
revolution has been that there, too, it has swept the most isolated
classes into the movement, and that a new party, more radical
than the old Mazzinian emigration, is now being formed, and is
gradually displacing Mr Mazzini. Newspaper reports would also
seem to indicate that il Mazzinismo” is falling into disrepute even
among people who are neither constitutionally nor reactionarily
minded, and that what remains of the freedom of the press in
Piedmont is being used by them for attacks on Mazzini, the portée‘
of which the government fails to grasp. In other respects the
Italian revolution far outdoes the German in poverty of ideas and
wealth of hot air. It is fortunate that a country which, instead of
proletarians, has virtually nothing but lazzaroni,should at least
possess métayers. The other reasons given by the Italian dissidents
are delightful too, and, finally, it is really splendid that the only
émigrés to have remained united, at least in public, should now be
at each other’s throats.

The little man’sreport pleased me greatly. Pompous tittle-tattle,
a duel, a bit of money to be collected in Hamburg, Piedmontese
plans—poncr, popce and povce again ! There are two things one
can never understand about the little fellow, firstly what he’s up
to, and secondly what he lives on. I return the letter herewith,
send me the answer and I shall forward it to him post free. I have
noted his own address—much good Schuster’s would be, now
that his house has been searched.

It was only to be expected that the precious Schramm“ should
be one of the first to fall into the clutches of the Parisian police.
He must have been vociferating in cafés and been nabbed for it.
But since he has no connection with the Willich-Schapper
conspiracy, you'll no doubt have him back in London again by
now.’ The excerpts from the Willich document in the Kélnische
Zeitung’ are much nicer than in the French papers, the original
German text being given, and the great all-rounder’s vigorous
arguments emerge here quite unadulterated. E.g. where he says

a F. Engels, ‘Critical Review of Proudhon’s Book idée générale de la Révolution au XIX¢
siecle’. - >’ Mazzinism - import - ¢ Ernst Dronke - ¢ Conrad Schramm - f ‘Maf-
regein vor, wahrend und nach der Revolution’, Kélnische Zeitung, No. 225, 19
September 1851. :

that, in the next revolution, ‘the League’ and the ‘fourth estate’
(not, of course, to be confused with the bogus article from the
Marx-Engels factory, placed on the market under the label
‘proletariat’) ‘are to bring the historical developments of the
economic question to a conclusive conclusion’!! The poor transla-
tion by the French police has altogether spoilt this incomparable
document. The age-old idées fixes of this crazy martial clod, the
hoary fatuities about social revolution stemming from the village
commune, the cunningly calculated little schemes, which, as long
ago as last November, were to have stood the world on its head
through the agency of the Rhenish Landwehr, none of this really
comes through. But the most infuriating thing about it is that this
poor translation almost completely spoils one’s pleasure in observing
how the ideas we instilled have gradually, after 12 months of
independent cerebration within this misshapen skull, been finally
converted into pompous nonsense. In the translation the prove-
nance is everywhere discernible, but precisely the accretion of
underived craziness, the distortion, is not in evidence. And are we
to be deprived of the pleasure of at last being able to read in the
vernacular a piece of unalloyed Willich which has assuredly been
long chewed over by the noble man? One sees nothing but the
most appalling dearth of ideas and the attempt to conceal the
same beneath an immense heap of revolutionary admonition as
brought forth of a gloomy evening in the inglenook by Mr Willich
and Mr Barthélemy. Unsurpassed, too, the financial measures:
first you make paper money, nimporte combien; second you
confiscate, third you requisition. Then the social ones, which are
equally simple: 1) you organise, tellement quellement, 2) you guzzle,
guzzle a great deal, until you get to 3) when there’s nothing left to
guzzle, which is fortunate, for you then reach the point at which,
4) you start all over again, since the most radical tabula rasa‘
consists in leaving not a crumb on the table, by which time the
hour will have come for the word of the prophet Willich to be
fulfilled: ‘We must march into Germany as into a waste land that
we are to colonise and render fertile’. From the beginning the
fellow’s one idea has been to conquer the communist Canaan from
without, exterminating the original inhabitants, with the help of
‘5,000 men’, hand-picked from the ‘people of the Lord’. Moses
and Joshua rolled into one; alas, during their exile in Egypt the
Children of Israel had already dispersed in all directions.

One must hope the Australian gold business won’t interfere with

4 no matter how much - > as best you can - clean sweep

the trade crisis.At any rate it has momentarily created a new,
largely fictitious market, sending wool sky-high, since the flocks
are being neglected. Otherwise it’s a splendid thing. In six months’
time the circumnavigation of the world by steam will be fully
under way and our predictions concerning the supremacy of the
Pacific Ocean will be fulfilled even more quickly than we could
have anticipated.When this happens the British will be thrown
out and the united states of deported murderers, burglars, rapists
and pickpockets? will startle the world by demonstrating what
wonders can be performed by a state consisting of undisguised
rascals. They will beat California hollow. But whereas in California
rascals are still lynched, in Australia they'll lynch the honnétes gens,
and Carlyle will see his aristocracy of rogues established in all its
glory.

The numerous asseverations in the press to the effect that,
notwithstanding the recent bankruptcies and the depression pre-
vailing in Liverpool and elsewhere, the country’s trade has never
been healthier, are most suspect. What is certain is that East
India is overstocked and that for months past sales there have been
made at a loss. I am not clear about where the mass of stuff
manufactured in Manchester and district is going; a great deal, a
very great deal, of speculation must be involved, for as soon as
cotton had reached its lowest point in July, and the spinners began
to lay in a stock of raw material, all the spinners and weavers were
immediately given long-term contracts by the local commission
houses, which were very far from having orders for all the goods
they were ordering from manufacturers. In the case of the East
Indian houses, the old cash advance system is obviously in full swing
again; this has already come to light in a few cases, and in others there
will sooner or later be a fine old crash. As the manufacturers here are
working at full stretch, and productive power, particularly within a
5-20 mile radius of Manchester, has increased by at least 30 per cent
since 1847 (in Lancashire it was 30,000 in 1842, 40,000 in 1845; now
certainly 55,000-60,000 horsepower), this brisk activity has only to
continue until March or April and we shall have such over-
production as will warm the cockles of your heart.

The following information, prepared by the Liverpool Cotton
Brokers Corporation, may not have come to your notice in so
detailed a form. First I should explain that delivery to the ports of

a K. Marx and F, Engels, ‘Review. January-February 1850.-> Australia was
formerly a place of deportation for criminals - honest folk

each year’s cotton crop is completed by 1 September of the
following year, so that the cotton year runs from one | September
to the next. Hence it follows that what is here described e. g. as
the 1851 crop was grown in the summer of 1850, harvested in the
autumn of 1850 and conveyed to the ports between September ’50
and September ’51. The crop now ripening which, by the way, will
be poorer as the result of drought and storms, and will amount to
about 2'/, millions, would thus figure as that of 1852.

Cotton crop in the year: American domestic

consumption:

1846 ........ 2,110,537 bales not given

1847 00... 1,778,651 ” 427,967 bales

1848.0... 2,347,634 ” 531,772 a

1849 0... 2,728,596 "518,039

1850 ........ 2,096,706 ” 487,769

1851.0... 2,355,257 ” 404,108 ?

The Americans, therefore, have consumed between
‘fs and '/, of their entire crop themselves. I have not yet any
information concerning exports and imports of other types of
cotton besides those from the United States. Exports from the US
to Britain amounted to about 55-60 per cent of the crop, to
France, '/s. But both countries in their turn export fairly heavily,
Britain to France, Germany and Russia, France to Switzerland.

At the present moment the Russians are no longer taking so
much as a pound of twist from Britain, very few finished cotton
goods, a great deal of raw cotton—2,000-3,000 bales per week
and, despite the reduction in duty on yarn from 7d to 5d a
pound, new spinning mills are going up daily. Nicholas seems at
last to be growing apprehensive about this industry and wants to
reduce the duty even further. But since all his rich nobility and all
the bourgeoisie have an interest in this business, the affair might
become serious should he insist on it.

Your
F. E.
Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und
ng eae 1, Stuttgart, 1913 and in Published in English in full for the

full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 1, 1929 first ume