Letter to Nikolai Danielson, January 9, 1895

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 9 January 1895


First published in Russian, reproduced from the original, in Minuvshiye gody, No. 2, 1908
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 50


ENGELS TO NIKOLAI DANIELSON 472

IN ST. PETERSBURG

London, 9 January 1895
41 Regent's Park Road, N. W.

My dear Sir,

I have duly received yours of the 1st December. What Mr. von Struve means by saying that Marx, completes but not disproves Malthus' theory of population I do not understand.[1] I think the note on Malthus in Vol. I, Note 75, to Chapter XXII I, I[2] ought to have been explicit enough for anybody. Moreover, I do not see, how anybody can speak of completing Malthus' theory today, when that theory rests upon the assumption, that population presses on the means of subsistence, while corn in London is at 20/- the quarter, or less than half the average price from 1848 to 1870, and when it is universally acknowledged that the means of subsistence now press upon the population which is not large enough to consume them! As to Russia, if the peasant is compelled to sell the corn which he ought to eat, surely it is not pressure of [excess] population which compels him to do so, but pressure from the tax-gatherer, the landlord, the kulak* etc. etc. As far as I know, the low price of Argentinian wheat has more to do with agrarian distress all ever Europe, Russia included, than anything else.

We have just learned that a savant of your city has been informed that he can have Vol. II P passed free to him on applying specially for it at the office of the Censorship. I think it as well to communicate this fact to you because it may lead you to give me instructions how to forward to you the remaining sheets which I hold at your disposal,

Yours very truly

L. K.d

Please note change of house number.

  1. ↑ P. von Struve, Critical Notes on the Development of Capitalism in Russia, St. Petersburg, [in Russian], 1894(footnote 1 to p. 183).
  2. ↑ See present edition, Vol. 35, Chapter XXV, Section 1, pp. 611 13 c of Capital d Engels' pen name consisting of Louise Kautsky's initials — * word in Russian