[Everything should be doubted]
POSTSCRIPT 3:
Regicide
During his visit to Germany in 1867, while waiting for the proof-sheets of Capital, Karl Marx attended a party given by the chess master Gustav R. L. Neumann. A record survives of one game he played that night, against a man called Meyer.
Endnotes
In the endnotes that follow, I have used the following abbreviations:
MECW:
Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works (forty-seven volumes issued since 1975 by Progress Publishers, Moscow, prepared in collaboration with International Publishers Co. Inc., New York, and Lawrence & Wishart, London).
RME:
Reminiscences of Marx and Engels (Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, no date).
KMIR:
Karl Marx: Interviews and Recollections, ed. David McLellan (Macmillan, London, 1981).
Details of other textual sources are given in the notes themselves.
Page numbers are given below to locate references in the text, rather than note numbers.
1 The Outsider
page
7. ‘Blessed is he … ’ Letter from KM to FE, 21 June 1854.
8. ‘He was a unique, an unrivalled storyteller … ’ From ‘Karl Marx’ by Eleanor Marx, RME, p. 251.
8. ‘She could not countenance her brother … ’ From ‘Meetings with Marx’ by Maxim Kovalevsky in RME, p. 299.
9. ‘We cannot always attain … ’ MECW, Vol. 1, p. 4.
9. ‘The sons had been rabbis for centuries … ’ Eleanor Marx to Wilhelm Liebknecht in Mohr und General: Erinnerungen an Marx und Engels (Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1965).
9. ‘Within its walls it is burdened … ’ Goethe’s French Campaign, quoted in Karl Marx: Man and Fighter by Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen-Helfen (Methuen, London, 1936; revised edition published by Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1973).
11. ‘To the Prussian state, the members of its established religion … ’ From ‘The Baptism of Karl Marx’ by Eugene Kamenka, The Hibbert Journal, Vol. LVI (1958), pp. 340–51.
12. ‘Allow me to note … ’ Letter from Henriette Marx to KM, 29 November 1835.
12. ‘I am being dunned … ’ Letter from KM to FE, 8 January 1863.
14. ‘I found the position of good Herr Wyttenbach … ’ Letter from Heinrich Marx to KM, 18 November 1835.
14. ‘Herr Loers has taken it ill … ’ Letter from Heinrich Marx to KM, 18 November 1835.
14. ‘Social reforms are never carried out … ’ From ‘Speech of Dr Marx on Protection, Free Trade, and the Working Classes’, Northern Star, 9 October 1847.
14. ‘Nine lecture courses seem to me rather a lot … ’ Letter from Heinrich Marx to KM, 18–25 November 1835.
15. ‘Youthful sins in any enjoyment … ’ Letter from Heinrich Marx to KM, early 1836.
15. ‘You must avoid everything that could make things worse … ’ Letter from Henriette Marx to KM, early 1836.
15. ‘He has incurred a punishment … ’ Certificate of Release from Bonn University, 22 August 1836, MECW, Vol. I, pp. 657–8.
16. ‘Is duelling then so closely interwoven with philosophy?’ Letter from Heinrich Marx to KM, about May/June 1836.
17. ‘Every day and on every side I am asked … ’ Letter from KM to Jenny Marx, 15 December 1863.
19. ‘His respect for Shakespeare was boundless … ’ From ‘Reminiscences of Marx’ by Paul Lafargue, RME, p. 74.
19. ‘The children are constantly reading Shakespeare … ’ Letter from KM to FE, 10 April 1856.
20. ‘in a perpetual flurry of allusions … ’ From Karl Marx and World Literature by S. S. Prawer (Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 209.
20. ‘There you are before me, large as life … ’ Letter from KM to Jenny Marx, 21 June 1856.
21. ‘The mystificatory side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago … ’ Afterword to second German edition of Capital, MECW, Vol. 35, p. 9.
22. ‘Words I teach all mixed up … ’ From ‘On Hegel’ by Karl Marx, MECW, Vol. 1, p. 576.
23. ‘the new immoralists who twist their words … ’ Letter from Heinrich Marx to KM, 9 December 1837.
24. ‘diffuse and inchoate expressions of feeling … ’ Letter from KM to Heinrich Marx, 10–11 November 1837.
26. ‘Hegel remarks somewhere … ’ From the original 1852 text of The Eighteenth Brumaire, MECW, Vol. 11, p. 103.
28. ‘God’s grief!!!’ Letter from Heinrich Marx to KM, 9 December 1837.
29. ‘It should redound to the honour of Prussia … ’ Letter from Heinrich Marx to KM, 2 March 1837.
2 The Little Wild Boar
31. ‘If Marx, Bruno Bauer and Feuerbach come together … ’ Letter from Georg Jung to Arnold Ruge, Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, I i (2), p. 261
32. ‘As long as a single drop of blood pulses … ’ From The Early Texts by Karl Marx (Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 13.
33. ‘My little heart is so full … ’ Letter from Jenny von Westphalen to KM, 10 August 1841.
34. ‘In a few days I have to go to Cologne … ’ Letter from KM to Arnold Ruge, 20 March 1842.
34. ‘I have abandoned my plan to settle in Cologne … ’ Letter from KM to Arnold Ruge, 27 April 1842.
34. ‘How glad I am that you are happy … ’ Letter from Jenny von Westphalen to KM, 10 August 1841.
35. ‘Since every true philosophy is the intellectual quintessence of its time … ’ Article in Rheinische Zeitung, 14 July 1842, translated in MECW, Vol. 1, p. 195.
36. ‘who think freedom is honoured by being placed in the starry firmament … ’ Article in Rheinische Zeitung, 19 May 1842, translated in MECW, Vol. 1, p. 172.
36. ‘He is a phenomenon … ’ From Briefwechsel by Moses Hess, ed. E. Silberner (The Hague, 1959), translated in KMIR, pp. 2–3.
37. ‘Who runs up next with wild impetuosity?’ From ‘The Insolently Threatened Yet Miraculously Rescued Bible’, published as an anonymous pamphlet in December 1842, translated in MECW, Vol. 2, p. 336.
37. ‘It is easy to overlook the obvious … ’ A lone exception is the great American scholar Hal Draper, who included an amusing endnote on ‘Marx and Pilosity’ in Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Volume II: The Politics of Social Classes (Monthly Review Press, New York and London, 1978).
38. ‘London provided the much venerated man with a new, complex arena … ’ From Great Men of the Exile by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, translated in The Cologne Communist Trial (Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1971), p. 166.
39. ‘Last Sunday we had a moustache evening … ’ Letter from FE to Marie Engels, 29 October 1840.
40. ‘I subjected this idea to police-examination … ’ Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, I i (2), p. 257, translated in Karl Marx by Werner Blumenberg (New Left Books, London, 1972).
40. ‘and then suddenly going to another table … ’ From Erlebtes by Karl Heinzen (Boston, Mass, 1874), translated in KMIR, pp. 5–6.
41. ‘the most stupid person of the century … ’ See Against the Current: The Life of Karl Heinzen 1809–80 by Carl Wittke (University of Chicago Press, 1945).
42. ‘The style is the dagger used for a well-aimed thrust … ’ From Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs by Wilhelm Liebknecht, translated by E. Untermann (London, 1901).
44. ‘The Rheinische Zeitung, which does not even admit … ’ Rheinische Zeitung, 16 October 1842, translated in MECW, Vol. 1, p. 220.
44. ‘I regard it as inappropriate … ’ Letter from KM to Arnold Ruge, 30 November 1842.
44. ‘As editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, I experienced … ’ From A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), translated in The Portable Karl Marx (Penguin Books, New York, 1983), p. 158.
45. ‘By analogy with this, the legislator would have to draw the conclusion … ’ Rheinische Zeitung, 25 October 1842, translated in MECW, Vol. 1, p. 225.
45. ‘Do not imagine that we on the Rhine live in a political Eldorado … ’
Letter from KM to Arnold Ruge, 9 July 1842.
46. ‘One evening the censor had been invited … ’ From ‘Karl Marx als Mensch’ by Wilhelm Blos, Die Glocke v (1919), translated in KMIR, pp. 3–4.
47. ‘Our newspaper has to be presented to the police to be sniffed at … ’ Letter from KM to Arnold Ruge, 25 January 1843.
48. ‘I had begun to be stifled in that atmosphere … ’ Letter from KM to Arnold Ruge, 25 January 1843.
48. ‘For my sake, my fiancée has fought the most violent battles … ’ Letter from KM to Arnold Ruge, 13 March 1843.
49. ‘Ah, dear, dear sweetheart, now you get yourself involved in politics … ’ Letter from Jenny von Westphalen to KM, 10 August 1841.
50. ‘I entered Jenny’s room one evening … ’ From Red Jenny: A Life with Karl Marx by H. F. Peters (Allen & Unwin, London, 1986).
51. ‘So, sweetheart, since your last letter I have tortured myself … ’ Letter from Jenny von Westphalen to KM, c. 1839–40.
54. ‘The entire German police is at his disposal … ’ Letter from KM to Ludwig Feuerbach, 3 October 1843.
55. ‘I am glad to have an opportunity of assuring you … ’ Letter from KM to Ludwig Feuerbach, 11 August 1844.
55. ‘It is now quite plain to me … ’ Letter from KM to FE, 30 July 1862.
56. ‘What is the secular basis of Judaism?’ Karl Marx: Early Writings, translated by Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton (Pelican Books, London, 1975), pp. 212–41.
58. ‘Religious suffering is at one and the same time … ’ Karl Marx: Early Writings, translated by Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton (Pelican Books, London, 1975), pp. 243–57.
3 The Grass-eating King
62. ‘The bourgeois King’s loss of prestige among the people … ’ From Zwei Jahre in Paris by Arnold Ruge (Leipzig, 1846).
62. ‘Frau Herwegh summed up the situation at first glance … ’ From 1848: Briefe von und an Herwegh, edited by Marcel Herwegh (Munich, 1898), translated in KMIR, pp. 6–7.
62. ‘finishes nothing, breaks off everything … ’ From Arnold Ruges Briefwechsel und Tagebuchblätter aus den Jahren 1825–80, edited by P. Nerrlich (Berlin, 1886), translated in KMIR, pp. 8–9.
63. ‘His wife gave him for his birthday a riding switch … ’ Letter from Arnold Ruge to Julius Fröbel, 4 June 1844.
63. ‘The poor little doll was quite miserable … ’ Letter from Jenny Marx to KM, 21 June 1844.
64. ‘Marx was then much more advanced than I was … ’ From Mikhail Bakunin and Karl Marx by K. Kenafick (Melbourne, 1948), p. 25.
65. ‘He loved the poet as much as his works … ’ From KMIR, p. 10.
66. ‘had not other personal differences … ’ From Karl Marx: Man and Fighter by Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen-Helfen (Methuen, London, 1936).
66. ‘I was incensed by Herwegh’s way of living … ’ From Arnold Ruges Briefwechsel und Tagebuchblätter aus den Jahren 1825–80, edited by P. Nerrlich (Berlin, 1886), translated in Karl Marx: Man and Fighter.
66. ‘Although the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak … ’ Letter from Jenny Marx to KM, 11–18 August 1844.
67. ‘Some would sit on the bed or on the trunks … ’ From Fünfunsiebzig Jahre in der alten und neuen Welt by Heinrich Börnstein (Leipzig, 1881).
68. ‘it represents man’s protest … ’ From ‘Critical Marginal Notes on the Article “The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian.”’ Vorwärts!, 7 and 10 August 1844. Translated in MECW, Vol. 3, pp. 189–206.
72. ‘a second Frankenstein on my back … ’ Letter from KM to FE, 4 December 1863.
72. ‘From the front, the man who regales his inner man … ’ Letter from KM to FE, 27 December 1863.
72. ‘Of the many wonderful tales … ’ From ‘Karl Marx: A Few Stray Notes’ by Eleanor Marx, RME, pp. 251–2.
74. ‘Although in political and economic discussion he was not wont to mince his words … ’ From Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs by Wilhelm Liebknecht, translated by E. Untermann (London, 1901).
76. ‘When I visited Marx in Paris in the summer of 1844 … ’ From ‘On the History of the Communist League’, by FE, 1885, translated in The Cologne Communist Trial (Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1971).
76. ‘so pronounced that even in old age … ’ From Friedrich Engels: A Biography by Gustav Mayer, translated by Gilbert and Helen Highet, edited by R. H. S. Crossman (Chapman & Hall, London, 1936).
77. ‘He’s a terribly nice fellow … ’ Letter from FE to Friedrich and Wilhelm Graeber, 1 September 1838.
78. ‘Go home again, exotic guests!’ MECW, Vol. 2, p. 4.
78. ‘It has become clear to me … ’ Letter from FE to Friedrich and Wilhelm Graeber, 17–18 September 1838.
78. ‘It is extraordinarily good … ’ Letter from FE to Friedrich and Wilhelm Graeber, 1 September 1838.
79. ‘What shall I, poor devil, do now?’ Letter from FE to Friedrich Graeber, 8 April 1839.
80. ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ Letter from FE to Friedrich Graeber, 24 April 1839.
81. ‘Masses of refuse, offal and sickening filth … ’ The Condition of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels (London, 1892).
83. ‘I simply cannot understand how anyone can be envious of genius … ’ Letter from FE to Eduard Bernstein, 25 October 1881.
85. ‘See to it that the material you’ve collected is soon launched … ’ Letter from FE to KM, beginning of October 1844.
85. ‘I find all this theoretical twaddle daily more tedious … ’ Letter from FE to KM, 19 November 1844.
85. ‘The Critical Criticism has still not arrived!’ Letter from FE to KM, 22 February–7 March 1845.
86. ‘If I get a letter, it’s sniffed all over … ’ Letter from FE to KM, 17 March 1845.
86. ‘pleasantly surprised to find that we have no need to feel ashamed … ’ Letter from KM to FE, 24 April 1867.
4: The Mouse in the Attic
89. ‘If amazement at this peculiar movement makes one think again … ’ Vorwärts!, 17 August 1844, translated in MECW, Vol. 3, pp. 207–210.
91. ‘I fear that in the end you’ll be molested … ’ Letter from FE to KM, 22 February–7 March 1845.
91. ‘Her jam tarts are a sweet and abiding memory … ’ From ‘My Recollections of Karl Marx’ by Marian Comyn, in Nineteenth Century and After, Vol. XCI (1922), pp. 161ff.
92. ‘The little house should do … ’ Letter from Jenny Marx to KM, after 24 August 1845.
92. ‘It seemed to me very important … ’ Letter from KM to Karl Leske, 1 August 1846.
93. ‘The chief defect of all previous materialism … ’ From ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ by Karl Marx, MECW, Vol. 5, pp. 3–5.
94. ‘Once upon a time a valiant fellow … ’ The German Ideology by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, MECW, Vol. 5, pp. 19–531.
101. ‘Where among the bourgeoisie … ’ From ‘Critical Marginal Notes on the Article by a Prussian’ by Karl Marx, Vorwärts!, 10 August 1844.
101. ‘If I tell you what kind of life we have been leading here … ’ Letter from Joseph Weydemeyer to Louise Lüning, 2 February 1846, published in the Münchner Post, 30 April 1926.
102. ‘He was now the great man … ’ From ‘On the History of the Communist League’ by Friedrich Engels, MECW, Vol. 26, p. 320.
102. ‘the fellow’s utter lack of respect while he conversed with me … ’ Quoted in To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson (Macmillan, London, 1972 edition), pp. 193–4.
103. ‘Marx was the type of man … ’ From ‘A Wonderful Ten Years’ by Pavel Annenkov, in RME, pp. 269–72.
105. ‘presents communism as the love-imbued opposite of selfishness … ’ From ‘Circular Against Kriege’ by Marx and Engels, 11 May 1846; translated in MECW, Vol. 6, pp. 35–51.
106. ‘So far as France is concerned … ’ Letter from KM to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, 5 May 1846.
107. ‘Let us, if you wish, collaborate in trying to discover the laws of society … ’ Confessions d’un révolutionnai
re by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (Paris, 1849).
107. ‘Monsieur Proudhon has the misfortune of being peculiarly misunderstood … ’ Misère de La Philosophie by Karl Marx (published by A. Frank, Paris, and C. G. Vogler, Brussels, 1847).
109. ‘Our affair will prosper greatly here … ’ Letter from FE to Communist Correspondence Committee, 19 August 1846.
110. ‘It is disgraceful that one should have to pit oneself … ’ Letter from FE to KM, 18 September 1846.
110. ‘By dint of a little patience and some terrorism … ’ Letter from FE to KM, about 18 October 1846.
111. ‘The stench is like five thousand unaired featherbeds … ’ Letter from FE to KM, 9 March 1847.
111. ‘If at all possible, do come here some time in April … ’ Letter from FE to KM, 9 March 1847.
112. ‘give his word of honour to work loyally … ’ From ‘Rules of the Communist League’, adopted at the First Congress, June 1847.
112. ‘However minor it may be … ’ Letter from KM to Herwegh, 26 October 1847.
112. ‘We have tried on the one hand to refrain from all system-making … ’ From ‘A Circular of the First Congress of the Communist League to the League Members, 9 June 1847’, translated in MECW, Vol. 6, p. 589.
5 The Frightful Hobgoblin
115. ‘Question 1: Are you a Communist?’ From ‘Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith’ by Friedrich Engels, MECW, Vol. 6, pp. 96–103.
116. ‘Completely unopposed, I got them to entrust me … ’ Letter from FE to KM, 25–26 October 1847.
117. ‘What is communism?’ From ‘Principles of Communism’, by Friedrich Engels, MECW, Vol. 6, pp. 341–57.
117. ‘Marx was a born leader of the people … ’ From ‘Before 1848 and After’ by Friedrich Lessner, in RME, pp. 149–66.
118. ‘aims at the emancipation of humanity … ’ From Gründungsdokumente des Bundes der Kommunisten (Juni bis September 1847), edited by Bert Andreas (Hamburg, 1969).
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