Letter to Nikolai Danielson, February 3, 1886

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 8 February 1886


First published, in Russian, in Minuvshiye gody, No. 2, St Petersburg, 1908
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO NIKOLAI DANIELSON

IN ST PETERSBURG

London, 8 February 1886

My dear Sir,

I have received your kind letters 18/30 November, 19/31 December, 26 [December]/7 January and 8/20 January; also the four copies of the translation[1] one of which has gone to the British Museum, another to the Colonel[2] and a third to a lady well known[3] who has also translated several works of the Author[4] into your language. If you would be good enough to send another copy to Mr Otto Meissner, Hamburg, our German publisher, you would very much oblige me.

I have read your excellent preface[5] * with much pleasure, and that I have done so attentively, I should like to prove to you by stating that on page X, line 17, the printer seems to have left out a word; should it not read as follows: ITO H nepeMtHHaa nacrb nanumaMHOu CTOHMOCTH, a etc.? The omission is not of much consequence for any one who is used to the author's terminology, but would perhaps be puzzling to one who is not.

I thank you very much for your observations on the economical condition of your country. Anything of this class is always of the highest interest to me. The last 30 years have shown, all over the world, in how little time the immense productive powers of modern industry can be implanted and take a firm root even in countries hitherto purely agricultural. And the phenomena accompanying this process repeat themselves everywhere. What you tell me about payments in coupons not yet due occurred all over Germany ten or fifteen years ago and may occasionally occur still; but especially before the introduction of the new coinage the complaints about the circulation of such coupons, not yet due, and originally given in payment of wages were universal. The rapid development of German manufactures has now passed beyond that stage, and if it still occurs it will be an exception; but fifteen years ago it was the rule, especially in Saxony and Thuringia. But that your economists should consider this as a proof of a deficiency of circulating medium, and that in the face of a paper currency depreciated by over-issue at least 36%, that is on a level with the views of the American greenbackers 536 who demanded, too, an increased issue of paper money because that paper money was no longer depreciated and therefore evidently under-issued!

I am glad to learn that our friend[6] is recommended a change of climate— I suppose it will be about the same where the doctors sent him to before and which seemed to agree well enough with his state of health. At all events this is proof to me that all danger of a sudden crisis in his malady is now over.[7]

I have now at last the whole manuscript of the English translation of Volume I[8] in my hands and shall go into the revision of it next week, and when I may have an idea how soon I can finish, conclude at once with a publisher. 56 There are two translators, the one a barrister and old friend of ours[9] (you and he are the two men living who know the book most thoroughly) but his professional occupations do not allow him to do it all in time, so Dr Aveling, the husband of the author's youngest daughter,[10] offered his services; but both the economic theories and the language of the author are rather new to him and I know the portion done by him will give me more work. As soon as that is in a fair way of getting ready for the press, I shall start again with Volume III[11] and do it to the end, not allowing any other work to interrupt it.

Here the industrial crisis gets worse instead of better, and people begin to find out more and more that England's industrial monopoly is at an end. And with America, France, Germany for competitors in the world's market, and high duties excluding foreign goods from the markets of other rising industrial countries, it becomes a simple matter of calculation. If one great monopolist industrial country produced a crisis every ten years, what will four such countries produce? Approximatively a crisis in 10/4 years, that is to say practically a crisis without end. Uns kann recht sein.

Very faithfully yours,

P.W. Rosher[12]

  1. ↑ of Capital
  2. ↑ Pyotr Lavrov
  3. ↑ Vera Zasulich
  4. ↑ Karl Marx
  5. ↑ Engels is referring to Loria's quotation in his article 'Karl Marx' of the expression Alphonse de Lamartine used with regard to Proudhon in his work Histoire de la revolution de 1848, Brussels, 1849, Vol. 1, Book VII, Ch. 5.
  6. ↑ Hermann Lopatin
  7. ↑ Hermann Lopatin was arrested in St Petersburg on 6 October 1884 and was under investigation up to May 1887; on 4 June 1887 he was sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment in Schlisselburg fortress. Lopatin was released on 28 October 1905.
  8. ↑ of Capital
  9. ↑ Samuel Moore
  10. ↑ Eleanor Marx Aveling
  11. ↑ of Capital
  12. ↑ Engels' pseudonym in his correspondence with Nikolai Danielson; Engels used the name of the husband of his wife's niece — Percy White Rosher.