Letter to Karl Kautsky, August 1, 1887

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 1 August 1887


First published in Aus der Frühzeit des Marxismus. Engels Briefwechsel mit Kautsky, Prag, 1935, and in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO KARL KAUTSKY

IN VENTNOR

Eastbourne, 1 August 1887

Dear Kautsky,

I return Mandl herewith; signature overleaf.[1] I'm glad you like Ventnor. It is lovely here too, except for the Bank Holiday[2] today, besides which Bax has set up his headquarters here for a week and cate- chises me for an hour and a half every morning with the conscien- tiousness of an American interviewer. Schorlemmer was here until last Saturday when he went off to Germany. F. Beust leaves on Thursday.

So far as I remember, when dealing with the iron law of wages neither Mandl nor L. Frankel correctly emphasised its elastic rather than iron character.[3] And, while Lassalle may sometimes formulate the law more or less correctly,[4] he is wont to apply it in practice in such a way as to declare the minimum wage to be the normal wage.

It's very difficult to write here, with four people sitting at one's back, chatting and drinking beer. So good cheer and goodbye.

Warmest regards from us all,

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ In a letter of 30 July 1887 Kautsky asked Engels to send his signature, acsimile of which he wanted to give under Engels' portrait in the annual Osterreichiscber Arbeiter-Kalender for 1888, where Kautsky's article, 'Friedrich Engels' was to appear. The article was published, with some addenda and amendments, after Engels' death, in 1895, in Vorwarts (Berlin), under the title 'Friedrich Engels, sein Leben, sein Wirken, seine Schriften'.
  2. ↑ Bank Holidays - in 1871 additional holidays were legally introduced for all English banks: Easter and Whit Monday, the first Monday of August and 26 December.
  3. ↑ The Austrian Social Democrat Heinrich Mandi questioned the 'iron law of wages' in his article '1st das eherne Lohngesetz richtig?' {Gleichheit, No 21, 14 May 1887). Leo Frankel answered him in an article headlined 'Zur Kritik des "ehernen" Lohngesetzes' {Gleichheit, Nos 28-30; 2, 9 and 16 July 1887).
  4. ↑ The 'iron law of wages' was formulated by Ferdinand Lassalle, in the pamphlet Offnes Antwortschreiben an das Central-Comite zur Berufung eines Allgemeinen Deutschen Arbeitercongresses zu Leipzig, Zurich, 1863, ppl5-16.