Letter to Friedrich Engels, March 5, 1877

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 5 March 1877


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913
Printed according to the original
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


MARX TO ENGELS[1]

IN BRIGHTON

[London,] 5 March 1877

DEAR FRED,

Dühringiana enclosed.[2] I found it impossible to read the fellow without belabouring him constantly and at some length.

Now, having thus familiarised myself with him (and the section from Ricardo onwards, which I've not yet read, must contain many exquisite pearls), a task that required patience and a club ready to hand, I shall in future be capable of enjoying him in tranquillity. Once one sees how the laddie's mind works, so that one really gets the hang of his method, he proves to be a fairly entertaining SCRIBBLER. Meanwhile, what with my catarrh and consequent irritability, he has done me yeoman service by providing a secondary 'occupation'.

Your

Moor

Apropos. That most virulent article on Gladstone-Novikova, the sight of which had caused the Whitehall Review to quake in its boots, appeared yesterday in Vanity Fair, with improvements by Barry.[3] As we could see, when Collet's son and daughter[4] came to visit us yesterday, it has met with Papa Collet's[5] disapproval, Gladstone being, after all, an honest though crazy man, and a polemic of this sort 'indecent'.

  1. ↑ An extract from this letter was published in English for the first time in: K. Marx and F. Engels, Letters on 'Capital', New Park Publications Ltd., London, 1983.
  2. ↑ Enclosed in Marx's letter to Engels of 5 March 1877 were Marx's 'Randnoten zu Dührings Kritische Geschichte der Nationalökonomie. The manuscript, which contains a critical analysis of the first three sections of the second edition of Dühring's book, was used by Engels as the basis for Chapter X, 'From Kritische Geschichte, of Part II of his Anti-Dühring (see present edition, Vol. 25, pp. 211-43).
  3. ↑ In February and March 1877, Marx provided the English journalist Maltman Barry with advice and materials. Barry was working on essays dealing with Gladstone's foreign policy that were published by several conservative papers. The Vanity Fair of 3 March 1877, for example, carried Barry's article 'Mr. Gladstone', and of 10 March its sequel, 'The Great Agitator Unmasked'.
  4. ↑ Clara Collet
  5. ↑ Collet Dobson Collet's