Marx-Engels Correspondence 1856
Source: MECW Volume 40, p. 80;
First Published: First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und, K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929
Translated By: Peter and Betty Ross
Dear Engels,
The article on Bazancourt[60] is splendid. Enclosed the last bit of the Mieroslawski. [Excerpts from L. Mieroslawski's book De ta nationalité polonaise dans l'équilibre européen] If I have seemed lazy about writing it is largely because my wife has been ill these past few months.
As you will yourself observe in the Mieroslawski, 1. the very man who holds un royaume diplomatique [diplomatic kingdom] in Poland to be impossible, wanted to bring about une révolution diplomatique there, i.e. under the auspices of Louis Bonaparte and Palmerston; 2. the fate of the ‘democratic’ gmina of the Lechites [See this volume, p. 75.] in Poland is an inevitable one; the actual dominium [landed property] is usurped by the Crown, aristocracy, etc.; the patriarchal relations between dominium and peasant communities lead to serfdom; optional land-division creates a kind of peasant middle estate, the ordre équestre,[101] to which the peasant can rise only so long as wars of conquest and colonisation are still in progress, though both these necessarily tend to accelerate his downfall. As soon as the borderline is reached, this ordre équestre, incapable of sustaining the role of a true middle estate, turns into the lumpenproletariat of the aristocracy. A similar fate overtakes dominium and peasant among the Romanic population of Moldavia, Wallachia, etc. This type of development is interesting in that it shows how serfdom comes into being as a result of purely economic factors, without the intermediate link of conquest or racial dualism.
Your Manchester Guardian has the singular distinction of being regarded as the immediate cause of Bonaparte’s statement against the English press. Please send me X [Presumably the sign of the correspondent who wrote the anti-Bonapartist articles in The Manchester Guardian.] from time to time. Having discovered that Bonaparte’s 1847 is approaching, Palmerston is bending every effort to jockey him into precisely the same position as he jockeyed Louis Philippe during the Sonderbund War [102] — into an alliance with Russia against England. Whereas on the one hand he takes him in tow against Austria in the filthy Neapolitan affair, in Turkey he sides against him with Austria.[103] Once again the French newspapers are full of misgivings about the machinations of perfidious Albion. The commercial crisis would certainly seem to have reached its consummation in the Russian railways. The bankruptcy of the contractors to the ‘palace of international industry’ [104] affords a glimpse into the participation of English capitalists in continental enterprises. In Germany the setting-up of industrial and banking undertakings goes on briskly. The Berlin Nationai-Zeitung contains whole columns devoted solely to enumerating the names of these concerns.
I learnt from Putnam’s man, Olmsted, and an American travelling companion who was with him that Gurowski (the Pole) had acquired much influence with Dana. At the same time these gentlemen told me that the said worthy fellow received regular cash grants direct from the Russian ambassade [embassy] in Washington. This Gurowski advocated Pan-Slavism in opposition to ourselves, which was the only reason why your article [11] was rejected. When returning my manuscript on the Danubian Principalities, [3] Mr Dana forgot to blot out a comment written in French by this self-same Gurowski, who remarks on my statistical data relating to the Romanian population:
‘Tous ces chiffres sont exagérés pour faire mousser l'idée de nationalité Roumaine. Ils sont démentis par les faits, l'histoire et la logique.’
[‘All these figures are exaggerated for the purpose of inflating the idea of Romanian nationality. They are contradicted by the facts, by history and by logic.’]
So we can boast of having, or rather of having had, our articles inspected and censored directly by the Russian embassy. In the end Dana appears also to have seen through Gurowski.
Today a letter from Collet to whom I had sent some new stuff. [61] The fellow agrees to everything, except that he doesn’t say anything about monetary terms although I expressly asked him about this point in my last letter. So I shall have to put on the screw all over again, since this is the only point of interest to me in my intercourse with those Calibans. [Caliban is a character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.]
Write to me soon concerning yourself and those about you. With kindest regards from my wife and children.
Children very well.
Your
K. M.