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Marx-Engels Correspondence 1870
Marx to Engels
In ManchesterAbstract
Written: May 18, 1870;
Source: Marx and Engels Correspondence;
Publisher: International Publishers (1968);
First Published: Gestamtausgabe;
Translated: Donna Torr;
Transcribed: Sally Ryan in 1999;
HTML Markup: Sally Ryan.
[London,] 18 May 1870
Our members in France are giving the French government ocular proof of the difference between a secret political society and a genuine workers' organisation. No sooner had the government jailed all the members of the Paris, Lyons, Rouen, Marseilles, etc., committees (some of them fled to Belgium and Switzerland) than twice the number of committees announced themselves as their successors with the most daring and provocative declarations in the newspapers (and as an additional precaution added their private addresses as well). At last the French government has done what we have so long wanted it to do and transformed the political question, Empire or Republic, into a question of life or death for the working-class.