| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 27 April 1888 |
ENGELS TO GABRIEL DEVILLE
IN PARIS
London, 27 April 1888 122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.
Dear Citizen Deville,
Thank you for your book on Balzac,[1] which I will read with pleasure. After Cervantes Balzac is, or so I think, the greatest novelist of all time, as well as the most faithful recorder of French society between 1815 and 1848. I am fond of Balzac in whatever form.
Your interpretation of Marx's formula is faultless. In manuscript it read: M — C {L/MP} and it was only for his own convenience and delectation that the printer put the symbol <, which has given rise to endless misunderstandings.
Hence the complete formula on p. 18[2]
M—C{L/MP} P... C ' - M '
or
M — C {L/MP} P... (C + c) - (M + m)
means:
M, money, converted into C (commodity), which commodity is made up of L (labour power) and of MP (means of production); the said commodity C is subjected to a process of production P, this last resulting in a new commodity C (of different quality, but this does not concern us here where we have to do only with values), of greater value than and hence equal to C plus an increment c (C + c); this C is once more exchanged for money, that is to say for an amount M ' greater than M, or equal to M plus an increment m (M + m).
The symbol — serves to mark the conclusion of an exchange; the.... indicates that the value in question undergoes a change of form which is not an exchange—in this case the process of production.
Should you wish to have anything else explained, I shall always be at your service. This second volume will, I am afraid, prove something of a headache for you, while failing to reward you with brilliant new solutions. It is concerned with transactions between bourgeois and the results are very nice theoretically but do not have any practical application. That is why I am in no hurry to see it translated into French or English; it needs to be complemented by Volume III.
I am Sir, etc.,
Your
F. Engels