Letter to Friedrich Engels, December 12, 1868

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 12 December 1868


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 43


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

London, 12 December 1868[1]

DEAR FRED,

You will have seen that the ESTIMATE about COTTON relies on a comparison between exports and imports for 1862, 1863, and 1864. The conclusion regarding the stocks of RAW COTTON + COTTON MANUFACTURES (I believe I forgot the latter addition in the letter to you[2] ) available in the UNITED KINGDOM ON 1 JANUARY 1862 thus depends entirely on the correctness of the premisses. The data are based on the report by Messrs ELLISON AND HAYWOOD. The bare figures are as follows:

Statistics of Cotton in the United Kingdom 1862, 1863, 1864[3]

1862 1863 1864 For 3 years
Import
thousand of lbs
Cotton Imported 533,176 691,847 896,770
Ditto Exported 216,963 260,934 247,194
Available to Consumption 316,213 430,913 649,576
Waste in Spinning 53,756 64,637 90,940
Equal to Production in Yarn 262,457 366,276 558,636 Total
1,187,369
Export
[thousand of lbs]
Yarn 88,554 70,678 71,951[4]
Piece goods etc. 324,128 321,561 332,048
Total 412,682 392,239 403,999 1,208,320[5]

The arsenic works excellently. You know that, ABOUT 6 weeks ago, I felt something carbuncular and then re-started imbibing arsenic, and I am still at it. In fact, nothing has appeared except constant small preliminaries, which just as constantly disappear again. For years the business always began in October, and by January was in full bloom. Now it looks as though I shall escape it this year, and that only enough traces of the sickness reappeared and are reappearing as were necessary to induce me to take arsenic.

In his latest speech in Edinburgh, in which Huxley again took a more materialist stand than in recent years, he opened up another loophole for himself.[6] As long as we really observe and think, we can never escape materialism. But all this is reduced to the relationship between cause and effect, and 'your great compatriot Hume' has already proved that these categories have nothing in common with the things in themselves. Ergo, it is up to you to believe what you will. Q.E.D. Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ In the original mistakenly: 1866.
  2. ↑ See this volume, p. 179.
  3. ↑ The table, which Marx gives in English, is from the article 'A Phase of the Cotton Trade during the Civil War', published in The Economist, No. 1181, 14 April 1866, p. 447 (signed: J. E.).
  4. ↑ Marx mistakenly wrote: 171,951.
  5. ↑ In Marx's letter and in The Economist mistakenly: 1,208,920.
  6. ↑ A reference to the lecture 'On the Physical Basis of Life' delivered by Th. H. Huxley in Edinburgh on 8 November 1868. Later, on 1 February 1869, it was published in The Fortnightly Review, No. XXVI.