"Neither of us [Engels] cares a straw for popularity. A proof of this is, for example, that, because of aversion to any personality cult, I have never permitted the numerous expressions of appreciation from various countries with which I was pestered during the existence fo the International to reach the realm fo publicity, and have never answered them, except occasionally by a rebuke. When Engels and I first joined the secret Communist Society we made it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be removed from the statutes. (Later on Lassalle exerted his influence in the opposite direction.)"

[Square brackets are mine]

The passage above is a passage from a letter Karl Marx wrote to W. Blos on November 10th, 1877. I would like to examine Marx's position from all angles. Does anyone have opening affirmation, critique, general comment, insight, observation, or argument they would like to share?

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I think Nikita Kruschev was correct in citing this passage as proof against Stalin being of the same spirit as Karl Marx. Karl Marx's whole analysis assumed and argued that full 'liberation' is good in-itself. Marx was a man in search of Freedom, a child of the free-thought of Locke, Hume, and Voltaire (and of course Hegel), not a man concerned with narrow political grip, assassinations, executions, and revolution through 'mind control'.