Letter from Marx to Sorge

[Hinrich Kuhls <kls@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Letter from Marx to Sorge, 15 December, 1881:

        The English have recently begun to occupy themselves more with Capital,
etc. Thus in the last October (or November, I am not quite sure)  number of
the Contemporary there is an article on socialism by John Rae. Very
inadequate, full of mistakes, but "fair" as one of my English friends told
me the day before yesterday. And why fair? Because John Rae does not
suppose that for the forty years I am spreading my pernicious theories, I
was being instigated by "bad" motives. "Seine Grossmuth muss ich loben."
The fairness of making yourself at least sufficiently acquainted with the
subject of your criticism seems a thing quite unknown to the penmen of
British philistinism.

           Before this, in the beginning of June, there was published by a
certain Hyndman (who had before intruded himself into my house) a little
book: England for All. It pretends to be written as an expose of the
programme of the "Democratic Federation" --a recently formed association of
different English and Scotch radical societies, half bourgeois, half
proletaires. The chapters on Labour and Capital are only literal extracts
from,  or circumlocutions of, the Capital, but the fellow does neither
quote the book, nor its author, but to shield himself from exposure remarks
at the end of his preface: "For the ideas and much of the matter contained
in Chapters II and III, I am indebted to the work of a great thinker and
original writer, etc., etc." Vis-a-vis myself, the fellow wrote stupid
letters of excuse, for instance, that "the English don't like to be taught
by foreigners," that "my name was so much detested, etc." With all that,
his little book--so far as it pilfers the Capital--makes good propaganda,
although the man is a "weak" vessel, and very far from having even the
patience--the first condition of learning anything--of studying a matter
thoroughly. All those amiable middle-class writers--if not
specialists--have an itching to make money or name or political capital
immediately out of any new thoughts they may have got at by any favourable
windfall. Many evenings this fellow has pilfered from me, in order--to take
me out and to learn in the easiest way.

           Lastly there was published on the first December last (I shall
send you a copy of it) in the monthly review, Modern Thought, an article:
"Leaders of Modern Thought"; No. XXIII--Karl Marx. By Ernest Belfort Bax.

           Now this is the first English publication of the kind which is
pervaded by a real enthusiasm for the new ideas themselves and boldly
stands up against Brit. Philistinism. That does not prevent that the
biographical notices the author gives of me are mostly wrong, etc. In the
exposition of my economic principles and in his translations (i.e.,
quotations of the Capital) much is wrong and confused, but with all that
the appearance of this article, announced in large letters by placards on
the walls of Westend London, has produced a great sensation. What was most
important for me, I received the said number of Modern Thought already on
the 30th of November, so that my dear wife had the last days of her life
still cheered up. You know the passionate interest she took in all such
affairs.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/letters/sorge/81_12_15.htm
Marx' and Engels' letters to Sorge:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/letters/sorge/index.htm