Letter to Hermann Schumacher, September 21, 1875

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 21 September 1875


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVI, Moscow 1935
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45

MARX TO HERMANN SCHUMACHER

IN ZARCHLIN

London, 21 September 1875
41 Maitland Park Crescent, N. W.

Esteemed Sir,

Your letter of 27 June reached me in good time, but the book[1] did not arrive until much later, after I had already left London to take the cure at Karlsbad.[2] Hence the delay in replying. I didn't get back until yesterday.

While tendering my best thanks for your letter and the first part of Thünen, I shall be presumptuous enough to ask for the biography of Thünen you also offered me.[3] If you do not possess the second edition of Capital I shall send it to you with the greatest pleasure.

I have always regarded Thünen as something of an exception among German economists, since it is exceedingly rare for an objective, independent inquirer to be found in their midst.

I would endorse your preface in its entirety if our attitudes in regard to 'wages' did not differ materially. Thünen and you yourself regard wages as the immediate expression of a genuine economic relation; I regard them as a spurious form concealing a content materially different from the expression of that form.

I am, Sir,

Yours faithfully,

Karl Marx

  1. ↑ J. H. Thünen, Der isolirte Staat in Beziehung auf Landwirthschaft und Nationalökonomie, 3rd ed., Part I, Berlin, 1875 (with Preface by the publisher H. Schumacher).
  2. ↑ Between 15 August and 11 September 1875, Marx was in Karlsbad for a second time taking treatment. On his way there, he stopped over in Frankfurt am Main (see Note 109). On his way back to London, he spent several days in Prague visiting Max Oppenheim.
  3. ↑ [H. Schumacher,] Johann Heinrich von Thünen. Ein Forscherleben.