Letter to Friedrich Engels, November 14, 1868 (1)

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 14 November 1868


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


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

London, 14 November 1868

DEAR FRED,

BEST THANKS FOR £5. For the past few days I have had once again the beginning of carbunculosem. Since this muck always starts at this time, I immediately began again with the arsenic. This should cut off further EVOLUTION. I am sending you subsequently (RATHER simultaneously) amusing cuttings from the Paris press, supplied by Lafargue. You must send them back, since Jennychen collects the stuff.

Enclosed also a jolly cutting from Figaro on the people's economic conferences UNDER the LEADERSHIP of Rabbi A. Einhorn, GENERALLY KNOWN BY THE NAME OF /. E. Horn. This idiot (who is, incidentally, skilled in the practice of agiotage) published SOME TIME SINCE a book on the banks,[1] of which even the Economist said it was obviously written only for children (although the Times reviewed it ceremoniously).

Apropos the Economist, you would be surprised to hear that, following the example of Thornton in the Fortnightly Review,[2] the Economist declared[3] verbatim: 'No "LAW" OF DEMAND AND SUPPLY, IN ANY SENSE WHICH HAS YET BEEN ASSIGNED TO THESE WORDS, EXISTS; NEITHER IN FACT, NOR IN TENDENCY, DO MARKET PRICES CONFORM TO THE RULE COMMONLY SUPPOSED TO GOVERN THEM.'

The great Büchner has sent me his 'Sechs Vorlesungen etc. über die Darwin'sche Theorie, etc.' The book was not yet out when I was visiting Kugelmann. And he (Büchner) has now already sent me the second edition! The way such books are made is NICE. Büchner, for instance (as everybody who has read Lange's balderdash[4] knows anyway), states that his CHAPTER on materialist philosophy has been copied mainly from this very Lange. And this same Büchner looks down pityingly on Aristotle, whom he obviously only knows by hearsay! What really amused me, however, was the following passage with regard to the works of Cabanis[5] (1798):

'You might almost be listening to Karl Vogt when you read (in Cabanis) expressions like these: "The brain is intended for thinking, as the stomach is meant for digestion or the liver for secreting the bile from the blood", etc.'[6]

Büchner obviously believes that Cabanis has copied from K. Vogt. Even to imagine the opposite exceeds the critical faculties of the worthy Büchner. He appears to have first learned of Cabanis from Lange! Ce sont des savants sérieux![7]

Paris is haunted. The Baudin affair is really reminiscent of the banquet movement under Louis Philippe.[8] Only today there is no National Guard, and Bugeaud (as far as brutality comes into play) is READY from the first day, while in February he was the last to be called upon and at a moment when there existed no ministry, that is to say, under the conditions at that time, no government. Moreover, barricade-building is useless. Leaving aside the Weber[9] -Pyat bulls of excommunication, I cannot see how a revolution in Paris could be SUCCESSFUL, apart from treason and defection or division in the army.

I have put a new bee into the bonnets of the Urquhartites (since Collet invited me and my family to visit him last Sunday week[10] : I had not seen him personally for years), a bee that is now being very seriously debated between Collet and Urquhart, namely that Peel's Bank Act of 1844 makes it possible for the Russian Government, under CERTAIN CONJUNCTURES OF THE MONEY-MARKET, to force the Bank of England into bankruptcy. Despite my diplomacy with Collet, I could not keep silent as he driveled on about Ireland, and told him MOST DECIDEDLY, to his face, my VIEWS ON THIS QUESTION.

Tussy is attending private gymnastic classes. HER COMPLIMENTS TO MRS BURNS. Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ I. E. Horn, La Liberté des banques, Paris, [1866]. A German edition was published in 1867 in Stuttgart and Leipzig.
  2. ↑ W. Th. Thornton, 'A New Theory of Supply and Demand', The Fortnightly Review, No. XXXIV, 1 October 1866.
  3. ↑ J. E. C, 'The "Law" of Demand and Supply', The Economist, No. 1210, 3 November 1866, p. 1280.
  4. ↑ F. A. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, Bde. I-II, Iserlohn, 1866.
  5. ↑ P.-J.[-G.] Cabanis, Considérations générales sur l'étude de l'homme...
  6. ↑ L. Büchner, Sechs Vorlesungen über die Darwinsche Theorie..., 2. Aufl., Leipzig, 1868, S. 374-75.
  7. ↑ Such are profound scholars! (an allusion to a personage in Paul de Kock's novel L'amant de la lune.)
  8. ↑ A reference to the subscription launched by the democratic and republican Paris press to raise money for a monument to Victor Baudin, deputy of the Legislative Assembly, who died on the barricades during the Bonapartist coup of 2 December 1851. Against the background of mounting anti-Bonapartist sentiments, the subscription assumed the nature of a mass political campaign. Its organisers had legal proceedings instituted against them on the charge of inciting hatred against the government. The trial took place on 13-14 November 1868. The accounts were published in pamphlet form under the heading 'Affaire de la souscription Baudin (The affair of Baudin's subscription) in Paris, in 1868. The monument was unveiled only in 1872. The banquet movement—a campaign for an electoral reform in France in 1847, on the eve of the revolution. Bourgeois-democratic elements took an active part in it alongside the bourgeois liberals. Engels gave his opinion of this movement in a number of articles (see present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 364-66, 375-82, 385-87, 393-401, 409-11, 438-44).
  9. ↑ J. V. Weber
  10. ↑ 8 November