London, 19 December 1879 

Dear Old Man, 

I was supposed to be getting some money yesterday and it had 
long been understood that you would thereupon at once be sent a 
remittance. But it came too late for me to draw a money order 
that same day, and all through the afternoon I kept thinking: A 
letter’s bound to arrive from Philipp this evening! And sure 
enough, it did arrive. So you’ve deprived me of the pleasure of 
giving you an unexpected Christmas treat. Well then, I have 
drawn a money order for five pounds sterling, against which, 
according to the rate here, 126 frs should be paid to you over 
there—as will, no doubt, be done without delay. 

Over here we are all so-so; I can’t complain, Marx is fitter than 
last year, although he still isn’t really up to the mark. Mrs Marx 
has long been subject to bouts of indigestion and is seldom 
entirely well. The second volume?’ is making slow progress, nor is 
it likely to progress any faster until a summer better than the last 
one enables Marx to recover properly for once.” 

Yesterday I wrote and told Bebel” that we couldn’t contribute to 
the Sozialdemokrat. From Héchberg’s subsequent letters it emerges 
that he intends, as a matter of course, to continue advocating in 
the Sozialdemokrat the views expressed in the Jahrbuch>' And as 

a of Capital - > See previous letter. 

long as the Leipzigers remain on their present footing with him 
and his philistine colleagues, I cannot see how they can refuse to 
allow this. But it also means that we are excluded. Having 
combatted this same petty-bourgeois socialism ever since the 
Manifesto* (indeed, since Marx’s anti-Proudhon piece’), we cannot 
go hand in hand with it at a moment when it is using the 
Anti-Socialist Law *” as a pretext for raising its banner again. And 
it is better so. We would involve ourselves in an endless debate 
with these gentry, the Sozialdemokrat would become a _ battle- 
ground, and in the end we should after all be forced publicly to 
announce our resignation. Not that all this would be of use to 
anyone save the Prussians and the bourgeois, and so we would 
rather avoid it. But this should not be regarded as a model by 
other people—those who, unlike us, have not themselves been 
forced by these particular negotiations to pick up the gauntlet thrown 
down by Héchberg and Co. I see no reason at all why you, for 
example, should not contribute to the paper.** The articles from 
German working men are the only things in it that give one any 
pleasure, and things of yours could only enhance the paper; and 
since it does exist, a paper that’s as good as it’s possible to make it 
is, after all, preferable to one that is merely bad. I say this on the 
assumption that these people pay you properly, for it would be 
asking altogether too much of a man in your position that he 
should, into the bargain, work for nothing. In fact, we’re not 
particularly incensed against the Leipzigers over this business. We 
saw it coming for years. For Liebknecht cannot resist mediating 
and making friends left and right, nor is he exactly fussy about what 
elements have been imported so long as the party gives the 
appearance of being really strong and having plenty of members 
and, if possible, funds. And so he’ll go on until one day he burns his 
fingers. When that happens the better men will no doubt revert to 
the right course. 

The Freiheit is all sound and fury, quite devoid of content or 
meaning, and Most, who in other respects is not without talent, 
has here shown himself incapable of producing a single idea since 
he uprooted himself from the bedrock of the party. Hf I’ve got to 
have undiluted abuse, then give me the late Karl Heinzen any day; 
he succeeded in being even more ham-handed. 

The powers of attorney have all gone off to New York," since 
when nothing more has been heard. There’s no relying on 

a K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party. - & K. Marx, The Poverty 
of Philosophy. - © See this volume, pp. 392-93, 410, 422. 

Liebknecht’s expectations, of which he always has more than is 
good for him. 

For years Lessner has had nothing much to do with the Society 
here’; he seldom turns up, and then doesn’t do anything much 
except grumble and grouse about the course of things generally. 

In Russia matters are going splendidly! They’ll soon come to 
blows there. And when that happens, the bowels of the great men 
of the German Empire will instantly turn to water—a veritable 
flux! That will be the next turning point of world history. 

You shouldn’t allow the poor anarchists to irritate you so.°” 
They, too, are in a truly forlorn state. In the West they have 
nothing left to do save be anarchical amongst themselves and tear 
one another’s hair out, and in Russia all their murderous deeds 
achieve—as they have just discovered to their dismay— is pulling 
the Constitutionals’*” chestnuts out of the fire for them! 

Regards from Marx and 

Your 
F. E.