Letter to Conrad Schmidt, April 6, 1895

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 6 April 1895


First published in: Sozialistische Monatshefte No. 24, 1920
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 50


ENGELS TO CONRAD SCHMIDT

IN ZURICH

London, 6 April 1895
41 Regent's Park Road, N. W.

Dear Schmidt,

I am most indebted to you for your tenacity over the 'fiction'.[1] (There is in fact a difficulty here which I only mastered as a result of your insistence upon the 'fiction'. The solution may be found in II I, 1, pp. 154-157[2] though it has not been elaborated or emphasised with sufficient exactitude, a cir- cumstance that has persuaded me to enlarge briefly on the above point in the Neue Zeit with reference to Sombart's[3] and your objections. In any case there is a further point regarding which I should like to make an addition to Volume II I and bring it into line with the situation today by taking account of certain changes in economic conditions since 1865. 534

But if I am to develop that point concerning the effectiveness and validity of the law of value, it would make thing easier for me if you would permit me to make mention, not only of the 'hypothesis' of your Centralblatt article,[4] but also of the 'fiction' you discuss in your two letters and to quote one or two passages from them for the purpose of defining more precisely what you mean by the hypothesis of the article. So would you kindly reread the passage alluded to above and then tell me whether I may say that the aforesaid quotations were extracted from letters by Dr C. Schmidt to myself. Should you be convinced by Marx' passage that, where the production of commodities is concerned, the law of value is, after all, rather more than a necessary fiction, we should then see eye to eye, and in that case I should of course be glad to dispense with this.

Mrs Freyberger, formerly Louise Kautsky I, along with her little girl, sends you her best compliments in the same way as I would ask you to remember me very kindly to your wife.

Yours,

F. Engels

  1. ↑ See this volume, pp. 462 66
  2. ↑ See present edition, Vol. 37
  3. ↑ Sombart, 'Zur Kritik des Ukonomischen Systems von Karl Marx'. In: Archiv für soziale Gesetzgebung und Statistik, Bd.7, H. 4
  4. ↑ C. Schmidt, 'Der dritte Band des Kapital'. In: Sozialpolitisches Centralblatt, 25 Februar 1895