Letter to Karl Kautsky, June 19, 1894

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 19 June 1894


First published in: Aus der Frühzeit des Marxismus. Engels Briefwechsel mit Kautsky, Prag, 1935
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 50


ENGELS TO KARL KAUTSKY

IN STUTTGART

London, 19 June 1894
122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.

Dear Baron,

If you would like to have two chapters from Volume III[1] for the Neue Zeit:

1. Interest and Profit of Enterprise (Chap. XXIII) 2. Externalisation of the Relations of Capital in the Form of Interest- Bearing Capital (Chap. XXIV),

I shall gladly place them at your disposal. Their content lends itself very well to this type of publication, while at the same time they do not contain any of the major solutions which should only appear in context and, for that very reason, should be reserved for publication in toto. No. 2 contains amongst other things the story of Dr Price, Mr Pitt, and the compound interest hocus-pocus[2] . If you would like to have them, I shall delete such notes, etc., as are not required from the first proof-sheets and send them to you as soon as I have got the revises, in about eight or sixteen days' time.

I have also routed out the old article von den letzten Dingen[3] which I am at last licking into shape for you (I resume after having been interrupted for two and a half hours by Liebknecht and Julius,[4] who have just left), but am changing it and giving it a different title[5] ; since the time I began it I have been able to study many new things, some of them in the field of early Christianity.

But if I am to complete the aforesaid work, I must conclude this letter from which you will, I hope, see that my thoughts revert to the Neue Zeit whenever Old Father Time allows.[6]

Many regards from one household to another,

Yours,

F. Engels

  1. ↑ of Capital
  2. ↑ A reference to Richard Price's pamphlet, Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the National Debt (1771) and its supposed influence on Pitt's policy.
  3. ↑ of Last Things.
  4. ↑ Motteler
  5. ↑ On the History of Early Christianity.
  6. ↑ A play of words in the original: Neue Zeit (New Times) and alte Zeit—old time.