In the Italian Committee too a split  has occurred. A considerable minority has withdrawn from it. Mazzini sorrowfully describes this event in the Voix du Peuple.  The main reasons are said to be: In the first place God. They don t want God. Next, and this is more serious, they accuse Master Mazzini of working in the interests of Austria by preaching insurrection, that is, by precipitating it. Lastly they insist on a direct appeal to the material interests of the Italian peasants, this cannot be done without on the other hand attacking the material interests of the bourgeoisie and liberal nobility, who form the great Mazzinist phalanx. This last point is certainly important. If Mazzini or anyone else who heads the Italian agitation does not this time openly and immediately transform the peasants from m tayers  into free landowners (the position of the Italian peasants is appalling; I have now swotted up the whole filthy story) the Austrian government will, in case of a revolution, take refuge in Galician methods.  It has already threatened in Lloyd  a complete change in the forms of ownership and destruction of the turbulent nobility . If Mazzini s eyes have still not been opened he is an ox. True, the interests of the agitation are here involved. Where is he to get his ten million francs from if he antagonises the bourgeoisie? How is it possible to retain the services of the nobility, when should the nobility be informed that it is first of all a question of its expropriation? These are difficulties for such a demagogue of the old school...
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1851