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Title: Marx to Wilhelm Liebknecht, [London,] 4 May 1866
Description: Marx tells Liebknecht of the straits of the Commonwealth, the postponement of the Geneva Congress and the London strikes won with the help of the International, and sends him the warning to the German tailors.
Author: Karl Marx
Date: 1866-05-04
URL: https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/cartas/originales/1866-05-04%20Marx%20to%20Wilhelm%20Liebknecht
---


*Letter from Karl Marx to Wilhelm Liebknecht in Leipzig, [London,] 4 May 1866. Written in English. Text after the manuscript, [MEGAdigital](https://megadigital.bbaw.de/briefe/detail.xql?id=M0000106) (MEGA² III/14, letter no. 102), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, CC BY-SA 4.0, without the editors' apparatus. [Traducción al español](https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/cartas/1866-05-04%20Marx%20a%20Wilhelm%20Liebknecht)*

4 Mai. 1866.

My dear friend,

As I am at this moment, after so long an interruption of work, very busily engaged in making up for lost time, you will excuse me for writing this time only a few lines.

I shall send you to-day the last number of the “Commonwealth”. The financial position of the paper is such that it struggles from week to week and is altogether disabled from paying one farthing for Foreign Correspondence. Its circulation is increasing, but you know that a penny paper wants at least 20 000 subscribers, and cannot even then make the two ends meet without a goodly number of advertisements. The “Commonwealth” is of too recent an origin to come up to those requisites.

The Congress at Geneva has been postponed for the 3d of September next. The society is rapidly sp[rea]ding, particularly in France. Italian societies ha[ve] also recently joined. The propaganda in London has taken a new start, principally due to the circumstance that the successful strikes of the London tailors and wireworkers were due to our intervention which prevented the import of workingmen from France, Switzerland, Belgium, which had been contemplated by the masters. This proof its immediate practical import has struck the practical English mind.

For the same purpose you find, on the last page of this letter an “avis” to the German tailors which I call upon you to have inserted in such German papers as you have access to. At the same time you will oblige me by sending me a copy, or two, of some papers in which the “avis” will have been inserted, telling me at the same time the names of all other papers that should have reprinted it. Kugelmann might also be useful for this purpose.

My best compliments to Mrs. Liebknecht. I feel exceedingly thankful for her friendly interest in my welfare.

Yours fraternally  
A. Williams.