Letter to Friedrich Engels, July 11, 1868

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 11 July 1868


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 4, Berlin, 1931
Printed according to the original
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 43


MARX TO ENGELS[1]

IN MANCHESTER

London, 11 July 1868

DEAR FRED,

The £10 received with BEST THANKS. I immediately paid £3 5s. for taxes, £3 to the CHEESEMONGER (whom, by the way, I have been paying cash for weeks, since he, just like the TEA-GROCER, no longer puts it on the slate), £1 10s. to the chemist. I owe the baker about £17 and the man, who was always very friendly with us, is in great difficulties. It is awful for me that I have to press you like this. If I only knew how to find any direct way out!

The children[2] are doing fairly well, though Jennychen is still very weak. The ruling TEMPER here in the house is not exactly made for convalescents. My wife is not in the best of shape either, and therefore unnecessarily IRRITABLE.

Enclosed:

1. Kugelmann: I answered him right away[3] saying he should be sure not to loose the intended letter upon Faucher, the Mannequin Pisse.[4]

2. The review by the worthy Faucher[5] ; another in the Literarisches Zentralblatt?[6] Both to be returned to me.

3. Letter from Dietzgen, who has also written an article on my book for me.[7]

You cannot fully appreciate the farce Mannequin Pisse Faucher is putting on in making me a pupil of Bastiat. Bastiat states in his Harmonies[8] :

'If anybody were to explain to him, on the basis of the determination of value by labour time, why air has no value and a diamond a high value, he would throw his book into the fire.'

Since I have now accomplished this terrible trick, Faucher must prove that I, in fact, accept Bastiat, who declares that there exists 'no measure' of value.

The manner in which Mr Bastiat derives the value of the diamond is given in the following truly commercial-traveller-type conversation:

'Monsieur, cédez-moi votre diamant.— Monsieur, je veux bien; cédez-moi en échange votre travail de toute une année.'[9]

Instead of the business friend answering: 'Mon cher, si j'étais condamné à travailler, vous comprenez bien que j'aurai autre chose à acheter que des diamants'^[10] he says:

'Mais, monsieur, vous n'avez pas sacrifié à votre acquisition une minute.—Eh bien, monsieur, tâchez de rencontrer une minute semblable.— Mais, en bonne justice, nous devrions échanger à travail égal.—Non, en bonne justice, vous appréciez vos services et moi les miens. Je ne vous force pas; pourquoi me forceriez-vous? Donnez-moi un an tout entier, ou cherchez vous même un diamant.— Mais cela m'en entraînerait à dix ans de pénibles recherches, sans compter une déception probable au bout. Je trouve plus sage, plus profitable d'employer ces dix ans d'une autre manière.—C'est justement pour cela que je crois vous rendre encore service en ne vous demandant qu'un an. Je vous en épargne neuf, et voilà pourquoi j'attache beaucoup de valeur à ce service.[11]

Is it not a wine salesman to the very life? Incidentally—and the German Bastiatites do not know this— that unhappy assertion that the value of commodities is determined, not by the labour they cost, but by the labour which they spare the buyer (the babbling about the connection between exchange and the division of labour is childish talk) is just as little Bastiat's discovery as any of the other of his wine-salesman categories.

The old jackass Schmalz, the Prussian demagogue-catcher,[12] says (German edition 1818, French 1826):

'Le travail d'autrui en général ne produit jamais pour nous qu'une économie de temps, et cette économie de temps est tout ce qui constitue sa valeur et son prix. Le menuisier, par exemple, qui me fait une table, et le domestique qui porte mes lettres à la poste, qui bat mes habits, ou qui cherche pour moi les choses qui me sont nécessaires, me rendent l'un et l'autre un service absolument de même nature: l'un et l'autre m'épargne et le temps que je serais obligé d'employer moi-même à mes [ces] occupations, et celui qu'il m'aurait fallu consacrer à m'acquérir l'aptitude et les talents qu'elles exigent.'[13]

Old Schmalz was an epigone of the physiocrats.[14] He says this in a polemic directed against A. Smith's travail productif and improductif,[15] and proceeds from their thesis that only agriculture produces real value. He found that in Garnier}[16] Similar stuff, on the other hand, in Ganilh,[17] epigone of the mercantilists. Ditto in polemics against the same differentiation made by A. Smith. Thus, polemics by epigones representing two standpoints, with neither having the slightest conception of value,—and Bastiat copies them! And this is the latest discovery in Germany! A pity that no paper exists in which one can expose this plagiarism by Bastiat.[18]

Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ This letter was first published in English in an abridged form in: The Letters of Karl Marx. Selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1979.
  2. ↑ Jenny and Eleanor Marx
  3. ↑ See this volume, pp. 67-70.
  4. ↑ A reference to Kugelmann's intention to write to Faucher about the review of Capital (see Note 83). Marx ironically likens Faucher to Mannequin Piss (manneken-Pis), the well-known statue of a boy on the 17th-century fountain in Brussels executed by the Flemmish sculptor F. Duquesnoy.
  5. ↑ A reference to the review of Volume One of Capital in the magazine Vierteljahrschrift für Volkswirthschaft und Kulturgeschichte, of which Faucher was an editor (Bd. XX, Berlin, 1868, S. 206-19). It appeared under the heading 'Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie von Karl Marx. Erster Band. Buch I. Der Produktionsprozess des Kapitals. Hamburg, Otto Meissner, 1867'.
  6. ↑ Literarisches Centralblatt für Deutschland, No. 28, 4 July 1868, pp. 754-56: 'Marx, Karl. Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie (in 3 Bdn.). Erster Bd. Buch I. Der Produktionsprozess des Kapitals. Hamburg, 1867. O. Meissner' (signed 'h').
  7. ↑ Joseph Dietzgen's article ' "Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie" von Karl Marx. Hamburg, 1867' was sent by Marx to Liebknecht and published in the Demokratisches Wochenblatt in No. 31 (supplement) and nos. 34, 35 and 36 of 1, 22 and 29 August and 5 September 1868.
  8. ↑ Marx quotes from F. Bastiat's Harmonies économiques, Paris, 1850, pp. 181-82.
  9. ↑ 'Monsieur, give me your diamond.—Gladly, monsieur; give me in exchange your work for a whole year.'
  10. ↑ 'My dear Sir, if I were condemned to work, you will understand that I would have something other to buy than diamonds.'
  11. ↑ 'But monsieur, you did not sacrifice a minute for your acquisition.—All right, monsieur, try to find a similar minute.—But, in fairness, we should exchange equal labour.—No, in fairness, you should put a value on your services, and I on mine. I am not forcing you; why would you force me? Give me a whole year or look for a diamond yourself.—But that would involve me in ten years exhausting search, quite apart from the probable disappointment at the end. I find it wiser and more profitable to employ these ten years in a different manner.—That is exactly why I believe I am indeed doing you a service when I only demand one year from you. I save you nine, and that is why I attach a high value to this service.'
  12. ↑ Demagogues in Germany were participants in the opposition movement of intellectuals. The name became current after the Karlsbad Conference of Ministers of the German States in August 1819, which adopted a special decision against the intrigues of the 'demagogues'.
  13. ↑ 'In general, the work of others only produces a saving of time for us, and this saving of time is the only thing which constitutes its value and its price. For example, the carpenter who makes me a table, and the servant who takes my letters to the post, cleans my clothes, and procures for me the things I need—the one and the other render me services of absolutely the same nature. The one and the other save me both the time that I myself would be obliged to use for my [these] occupations, and the time that I would have had to devote to acquiring the skills they require' ([Th.] Schmalz, Économie politique, ouvrage traduit de l'allemand..., Vol. I, Paris, 1826, p. 304).
  14. ↑ Marx gave a more detailed analysis of Schmalz's views in his economic manuscripts of 1861-63 'A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy' (see present edition, Vol. 31).
  15. ↑ productive and unproductive labour
  16. ↑ [G. Garnier,] Abrégé élémentaire des principes de l'économie politique.
  17. ↑ Ch. Ganilh, Des systèmes d'économie politique, de la valeur comparative de leurs doctrines, et de celle qui parait la plus favorable aux progrès de la richesse.
  18. ↑ See the article by Karl Marx, 'My Plagiarism of F. Bastiat' (present edition, Vol. 20, p. 260). The article, probably written that very day, was not published in Marx's lifetime.