Letter to Maurice Lachâtre, October 12, 1872

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 12 October 1872


First published, in Russian, in Pravda, 5 May 1970
Translated from the French
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


MARX TO MAURICE LACHÂTRE

IN SAN SEBASTIAN

London, 12 October 1872

Dear Citizen,

You will, I am sure, excuse my long silence, which has been caused by an excessive amount of work. I have at last rid myself of the burdensome administrative business which devolved upon me as a member of the General Council of the International and which, as the days went by, was becoming more and more incompatible with my theoretical studies. At present I still have various tasks entrusted to me by the Hague Congress,[1] but after that I shall be able to dispose of my time more freely.

The first series of Capital[2] has been well done on the whole—I refer to those things incumbent upon the editor. However I was much shocked at the errata which it contains and which were not in the last proofs corrected by me. As an example I am sending you a bit from instalment II p. 16 which reads:

Ensuite nous avons vu que dès qu'il s'exprime dans la valeur, tous les caractères qui distinguaient le travail productif de valeurs d'usage disparaissent.[3]

In instalment II as published (p. 16) they have this totally meaningless sentence:

Ensuite nous avons vu que dès que le travail productif s'exprime dans la valeur, tous les caractères qui le distinguaient des valeurs d'usage disparaissent.[4]

There are other errors of this kind and I have sent a list of them to Mr Vernouillet, at the same time informing him that I shall pass nothing for press until I have in front of me the whole series of five instalments to be published.

Mr Vernouillet has been good enough to send me Mr Maurice Block's pamphlet (extracted from the Journal des Économistes).[5]

Here we have a man of brains who doesn't even know what an average is, although he purports to have devoted his whole life to statistics! I wouldn't deny that there may have been a certain amount of ill-will on his part, but on the whole there is more stupidity in him than malice.

The changes it was necessary to make in Mr Roy's translation have taken a great deal of time, but it gets better from the third section onwards.

In Russia my book[6] has proved an extraordinary success. As soon as I have a little more time, I shall send you some extracts from the Russian reviews.[7] The Russian translation (in a fat volume) was published at the end of April ('72) and I have already been advised by Petersburg that a second edition will be appearing in 1873.860

At The Hague I found Laura very unwell and her health deteriorated still further after my departure. A letter received yesterday brings better news and next month I shall have the pleasure of seeing her here with her husband.[8]

Last Friday the wedding took place between Jenny, my eldest daughter, and Longuet (who sends you his regards).[9]

How goes it with public affairs in Spain? In my opinion you and many of the other proscribed Frenchmen[10] (save, perhaps, for those most compromised) will soon be able to return home.

I remain, dear Citizen,

Yours very sincerely,

Karl Marx

  1. ↑ On 19 July 1872 at the meeting of the General Council Executive Committee (Sub-Committee; see Note 435), Engels was instructed to prepare the financial report for the Hague Congress covering the period since the London Conference in September 1871. The report was read out by Engels at the Hague Congress sitting of 7 September 1872, and unanimously approved. Marx and Engels arrived at The Hague to take part in the Congress on 1 September 1872. On 8 September they travelled to Amsterdam, where they took part in the meeting marking the closure of the Congress. Engels returned to London on 12 September, and Marx around 17 September 1872. The Fifth Congress of the International Working Men's Association was held on 2-7 September 1872 in The Hague and attended by 65 delegates from 15 national organisations. Its decision to include in the General Rules (as Article 7a) the major tenet on the conquest of political power by the proletariat, and its resolutions relating to Administrative Regulations signified a victory for Marxism. The Congress took stock of the struggle Marx, Engels and their followers had waged for years against petty-bourgeois sectarianism in the workers' movement, in whatever guise it appeared, most notably against Bakuninism; Mikhail Bakunin and James Guillaume, the anarchist leaders, were expelled from the International. The resolutions of the Hague Congress laid the groundwork for the future formation of independent political parties of the working class on a national level.
  2. ↑ This is a reply to Eccarius' letter of 2 May 1872, which he had written following the General Council's discussion of his behaviour in dealing with the split in the Central Committee of the International Working Men's Association for North America. After the General Council meetings of 5 and 12 March 1872 had approved the relevant resolutions proposed by Marx, John Hales (Council Secretary) and Eccarius (Corresponding Secretary for the USA) took up a conciliatory position towards the American bourgeois reformist elements. Eccarius opposed the expulsion of Section No. 12 and spoke out against Article 2 of Resolution III (see Note 471), accusing Friedrich Adolph Sorge and Section No. 1 (see Note 354), which he headed, of divisive activities. He refused to send the above-mentioned resolutions to the USA, stating in a number of letters (e.g. to petty-bourgeois activist John Elliott) that he strongly disapproved of them. On 23 April 1872 the General Council meeting instructed Marx to prepare a detailed report on Eccarius' stand. Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in: Karl Marx, On the First International Arranged and edited, with an introduction and new translations by Saul K. Padover. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1973.
  3. ↑ 'Later on, we have seen that as soon as it finds expression in value, all the characteristics that distinguished labour as a creator of use values disappear'; cf. the corresponding passage in Section 2, Chapter I of the authorised English edition of Capital (present edition, Vol. 35).
  4. ↑ 'Later on, we have seen that so far as productive labour finds expression in value, all the characteristics that distinguished it from use values disappear.'
  5. ↑ The pamphlet Les théoriciens du socialisme en Allemagne. Extrait du Journal des Economistes, Paris, 1872, was a review by Maurice Block of Volume I of Capital. A copy with Marx's marginal notes is extant. Marx gave his opinion of the pamphlet in his letter to Nikolai Danielson of 18 January 1873 (see this volume, p. 470).
  6. ↑ Volume I of Capital
  7. ↑ Reviews of the Russian edition of Volume I of Capital were featured by Peterburgskiye Vedomosti, No. 97, 8 (20) April 1872; Novoye Vremya, No. 106, 23 April (5 May) 1872; Birzheviye Vedomosti No. 147, 30 May 1872. Syn Otecheslva, Nos. 97 and 98, 28 and 29 April 1872, carried the article 'The Teachings of Modern Socialism and Communism'; Otechestvenniye Zapiski, No. 4, April 1872, printed the article 'Concerning the Russian Edition of Karl Marx's BookJ written by N. K. Mikhailovsky and published anonymously. Reviews of Capital also appeared in other Russian periodicals.
  8. ↑ Paul Lafargue
  9. ↑ An inaccuracy in the original; the wedding took place on 9 October, Wednesday.
  10. ↑ Communard refugees