Letter to Laura Lafargue, December 22, 1868

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 22 December 1868


First published abridged in Sotheby Parke Bernet und Co., 19 April 1977 and in full, in Russian, in Kommunist, No. 17, Moscow, 1980
Reproduced from the original in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 43


MARX TO LAURA LAFARGUE[1]

IN PARIS

London, 22 December 1868

My dear child,

I wanted to send you together with Rückert[2] a truly delicious book—Blüthen Morgenländischer Mystik by Tholuck.[3] Mais la plus belle fille de France ne peut donner que ce qu'elle a.[4] The book was not to be had in all London. I have ordered it from Germany. You will get it in about 3 weeks.

Tell Lafargue that he must excuse my silence. I was really overworked during the last months, as I wanted to have done with certain studies before the beginning of the New Year. However,

aufgeschoben ist nicht aufgehoben.[5] Meanwhile tell him that Dr Hunter, excellent as his report[6] is, knows as little as most Englishmen do of the past (social) history of his own country. The degradation of the rural labourers has nothing whatever to do with the Corn Laws of 1815.[7] If he wants to know the real causes which have brought them down to the zero of their present position, you must translate him Ch. VI, Section II (Ursprüngliche Accumulation[8] ) of my book.[9]

Happy New Year.

Your most devoted 'Old One'

K. Marx

  1. ↑ An excerpt from this letter was published in the Sotheby Parke Bernet and C° catalogue on 19 April 1977.
  2. ↑ Marx apparently sent his daughter Laura a volume of poetry by Rückert, a German Romantic poet, whose work was influenced by Goethe's Oriental poetry.
  3. ↑ F. A. Tholuck, Blüthensammlung aus der morgenländischen Mystik
  4. ↑ But the most beautiful girl of France can only give what she has.
  5. ↑ postponed does not mean abandoned
  6. ↑ Public Health, Seventh Report. With Appendix. 1864. London, 1865. Public Health. Eighth Report. With Appendix. 1865. London, 1866. Marx repeatedly quotes these reports in Volume I of Capital (see present edition, Vol. 35).
  7. ↑ The Corn Laws (first introduced in the fifteenth century) imposed high import duties on agricultural produce in the interests of landowners in order to maintain high prices for these products on the home market. In 1838 the Manchester factory owners Cobden and Bright founded the Anti-Corn Law League, which demanded the lifting of the corn tariffs and urged unlimited freedom of trade with the aim of weakening the economic and political power of the landed aristocracy and reducing workers' wages. The struggle between industrial bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy over the Corn Laws ended in 1846 with their repeal.
  8. ↑ Primitive Accumulation
  9. ↑ Marx refers to the second section of Chapter VI in the first German edition (1867) of Volume One of Capital entitled 'Die s.g. ursprüngliche Accumulation'. In the second (1872) and subsequent German editions the structure of the volume underwent changes. The above-mentioned Chapter VI came to form Part VII, while the second section of it became Chapter XXIV. Corresponding to this section in the English edition of 1887 prepared by Engels are chapters XXVI-XXXII, Part VIII ('The So-Called Primitive Accumulation', see present edition, Vol. 35).