Letter to Franz Duncker, June 2, 1859

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 2 June 1859


First published in International Review of Social History, Vol. X, Part 1, 1965
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


MARX TO FRANZ DUNCKER

IN BERLIN

London, 2 June 1859

Dear Sir,

I am indeed very sorry if I wrote you an offensive letter.[1] Please allow me, therefore, to say a few words in extenuation. To begin with I have in fact been away from Germany for too long and have grown too accustomed to conditions in London to form a correct estimate of the way business is conducted in Germany. Secondly, as I informed Lassalle some two months ago,[2] I am engaged in negotiations with a London publisher with regard to an English rendering of the first instalment.[3] The constantly misleading information which I, constantly labouring as I was

u n d e r a false assumption, have been forced to give this man regarding the appearance of the book, has more than sufficed to show me u p as a REGULAR HUMBUG in the eyes of the aforesaid John Bull. T h e repeated and impatient inquiries of my friends and in the end, the r u m o u r that the thing will not be coming out at all—a r u m o u r carefully disseminated, out of what motives I cannot say, by a Berlin clique here—finally proved too much for my patience.

Lastly, I trust that, in consideration of these reasons, you will regard my letter merely as the hasty expression of an irritability aroused by all manner of circumstances and absolve me of any intention of wishing to give offence.

Yours very faithfully,

Dr K. Marx

  1. ↑ Marx's letter to Duncker of 23 May 1859
  2. ↑ Marx to Lassalle, 28 March 1859
  3. ↑ K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.