Letter to Karl Marx, November 10, 1868

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 10 November 1868


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 4, Berlin, 1931
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 43


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 10 November 1868

Dear Moor,

Many thanks for settling things with Borkheim. From the enclosed letter, which he wrote me, you can see what a 'nincompoop' the man is.[1]

Sarah's[2] sickness is taking a very favourable course; it is a simple typhoid fever, vulgo gastric fever; Gumpert expects no more relapses and, by the end of this week, she should be cured. Against the contagion, which Gumpert also does not regard as dangerous, disinfection is a help.

Lizzie was in Lincolnshire, visiting a patriarchal variety of AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS who do well — they have gardens and potato land, the right of gleaning, which brings in a lot and, in addition, PASSABLE WAGES. Parallel to this, however, the GANG SYSTEM is on the increase; she described it literally as you depicted it in your book.[3] These patriarchal FARM LABOURERS with land are naturally a declining remnant, and are already sending their children into the GANG, while they, for their part, provide the nurseries for the babies of the women working on neighbouring GANGS.

In Jacob Grimm's Spanish romances there is one in which Conde Claros de Montalban, son of Reinolt (Rinaldo) of the Haimon family, has a love affair with the Infanta, Charlemagne's daughter; the count takes her into a thicket in the garden, where they lie down[4] :

de la cintura en arriba (upwards) muchos abrazos se dan, de la cintura en abajo como hombre y mujer se han.[5]

Old Jacob selected a lot of naïve passages like that. With many greetings.

F. E.

  1. ↑ A reference to Borkheim's letter to Engels of 9 November 1868.
  2. ↑ Sarah Parker
  3. ↑ The 'gang system' mentioned here has been described by Marx on pages 684-87 of the first German edition of Volume One of Capital (1867). In the second (1872) and subsequent German editions, this information was to be found in Part VII, Chapter XXIII, 'The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation'. Corresponding to it in the English edition of 1887 prepared by Engels was Ch. XXV Section 5e ('The British Agricultural Proletariat') of Part VII ('The Accumulation of Capital').
  4. ↑ 'Romance del conde Claros, hijo de Reynaldos de Montalvan', Silva de romances viejos. Publicada por Jacobo Grimm, Vienna, 1831.
  5. ↑ from the girdle upwards they gave many kisses, from the girdle downwards they behave themselves as husband and wife.