--- Title: Marx to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, London, 29 November 1871 Description: Marx to Sorge on the money for the Commune refugees, on the Irish secretary MacDonnell and on the influence of the International on the Irish in England. Author: Karl Marx Date: 1871-11-29 URL: https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/cartas/originales/1871-11-29%20Marx%20to%20Friedrich%20Adolph%20Sorge --- *Letter from Karl Marx to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken, London, 29 November 1871. Written in English. Text from: F. A. Sorge (ed.),* Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Joh. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx u. A. an F. A. Sorge und Andere *(Stuttgart, 1906), pp. 43-45. [Spanish translation](https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/cartas/1871-11-29%20Marx%20a%20Friedrich%20Adolph%20Sorge)* London, November 29th 1871. My dear Sorge. I hope you have at last received at New York the resolutions of the Conference and the different letters I send you. I send together with this letter the 3 last “Eastern Post” reports on the sittings of the General Council. They contain, of course, only what is meant for public use. In regard to financial matters I have only to remark: 1. The New York Committee has nothing to pay but 2d. per piece for the pamphlets on the “Civil War” it has received. It will pay 1 d. per piece for the “Statutes and Regulations” à fur et mesure that they are sold. But you ought to write us how many French and German editions of the Statutes etc. you are in want of. Besides what you want immediately, you will perhaps find useful to have a certain stock in reserve. 2. With regard to the money send us for the Refugees, the General Council wants an express written declaration that the General Council alone is responsible for their distribution amongst the French Refugees and that the so called “Society of French Refugees at London” has no right of control over the Council. This is necessary, because, although the mass of the above named society are honest people, the committee at their head are *ruffians*, so that a great part — and the most meritorious part of the Refugees — does not want to have anything to do with the “Society”, but to be relieved directly by the Council. We, therefore, give a weekly sum for distribution to the Society and distribute another sum directly. It is the above said ruffians who have spread the most atrocious calumnies against the General Council without whose aid (and many of its members have not only given their time, but paid out of their own purse) the French Refugees would have “crevé de faim”. I come now to the question of Mc Donnell. Before admitting him, the Council instituted a most searching inquiry as to his integrity, he, like *all* other Irish politicians, being much calumniated by his own countrymen. The Council — after most incontrovertible evidence on his private character — chose him because *the mass of Irish workmen in England* have more confidence in him than in *any other person*. He is a man quite superior to religious prejudices and as to his general views, it is absurd to say that he has any “bourgeois” predilections. He is a proletarian, by his circumstances of life and by his ideas. If any accusation is to be brought forward against him, let it be done in exact terms, and not by vague insinuation. My opinion is that the Irishmen, removed for long time by imprisonment, are not competent judges. The best proof is — their relations with the “*Irishman*” whose editor, Pigott, is a mere speculator, and whose manager Murphy, is a ruffian. That paper — despite the exertions of the General Council for the Irish cause — has always intrigued against us. Mc Donnell was constantly attacked in that paper by an Irishman (O'Donnell) connected with Campbell (an officer of the *London Police*) and a habitual drunkard, who for a glass of gin will tell the first constable all the secrets he may have to dispose of. After the nomination of Mc Donnell, Murphy attacked and calumniated the *International* (not only Mc Donnell) in the “*Irishman*”; and, *at the same time*, secretly, asked us to nominate him secretary for Ireland. As to O'Donovan Rossa, I wonder that you quote him still as an authority after what you have written me about him. If any man was obliged, personally, to the *International* and the French Communards, it was he, and you have seen, what thanks we have received at his hands. Let the Irish members of the New York Committee not forget that to be useful to them, we want above all *influence on the Irish in England*, and that for that purpose there exists, as far as we have been able to ascertain, no better man than Mc Donnell. Yours fraternally Karl Marx. Train has never received credentials on the part of the General Council.