London

Abstract

Nothing, it has been said, endures like the temporary. When Marx came to England certainly he had no idea that he would make it his permanent home. For years he shared the view of most of his fellowrefugees that a new round of revolutions would soon break out on the Continent. Like the early Christians awaiting the Second Coming, they regarded their present life as of little importance compared to the great event that was to come. This partly accounts for the ad hoc nature of much of Marx’s life during what was in fact to be a long and sleepless night of exile.

One comes to see increasingly that the emigration must turn everyone into a fool, an ass, and a common knave unless he contrives to get completely away from it.

Engels to Marx, MEW XXVII 186.