Letter to Nikolai Danielson, November 28, 1878

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 28 November 1878


First published abridged, in Russian, in Minuvshiye gody, No. 1, St Petersburg, 1908 and in full, in German, in Die Briefe von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels an Danielson, Leipzig, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44

To Nikolai Danielson in St Petersburg[1]

London, 28 November 1878

* My dear Sir,

I have received the three books with best thanks.[2] I was prepared, by some Russian friends, to expect, on the part of Mr Tshitscherin, a very feeble production, but my expectations have been surpassed. He is evidently unacquainted with the very elements of Political Economy and fancies that, by being edited under his name, the trivialities of the Bastiat school become transformed into original and self-evident truths.

Last week I was prevented from looking at the Capital. I have now done so, and find that—save the changes which the translator must make by comparing the second German edition with the French one—only a very few alterations are necessary, the which you will find later on in this letter.

The two first sections* ('Commodities and Money' and 'The Transformation of Money into Capital') *are to be translated exclusively from the German text. There, p. 86,* line 5 from bottom READ: 'And, as a matter of fact, the value of each single yard is but the materialised form of a part of the social labour expended on the whole number of yards.'[3]

In Chapter XVI of the French edition (not contained in Chapter XIV of the German edition) the added passage on J. St. Mill, p. 222, column II, line 12 from bottom, should read: 'I always assume, he says, the actual state of affairs which predominates wherever workers and capitalists are distinct classes, etc.!'[4]

*The following two sentences, viz.:* 'It is a strange optical illusion to see everywhere a state of affairs which as yet exists as an exception in this world of ours! But to continue'—are to be struck out, and the following sentence is to be read thus:*

'Mr Mill would like to think there is no absolute necessity that such should be the case—even in an economic system where workers and capitalists are distinct classes.'[5]

The crisis and ensuing work stoppages, the closure of factories and bankruptcies *proceed boisterously in the industrial counties, but here at London, in order not to frighten the general public, the newspapers do their best to hush these unpleasant but stubborn 'incidents'. One reading only the London money articles gets indeed but very scanty information.

Yours most sincerely,

A. Williams*[6]

  1. ↑ The address on the envelope is in Eleanor Marx's hand: 'N. Danielson, Esq., Société du Crédit Mutuel, Pont de Kazan, Maison Lessnikoff, St Petersburg, Russia.'
  2. ↑ Сборникъ государственныхъ знаній, vols V and VI, 1878, containing B. N. Chicherin's articles 'Нѣмецкіе соціалисты: I. Лассаль' and 'Нѣмецкіе соціалисты: II. Карлъ Марксъ', and A. Chuprov's book Желѣзнодорожное хозяйство, Vol. II. -
  3. ↑ A reference to the following passage in the second German edition of Volume One of Capital: 'And, as a matter of fact, the value also of each single yard is but the materialised form of the same definite and socially fixed quantity of homogeneous human labour' (see also K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Part I, Chapter III, Section 2, present edition, Vol. 35).
  4. ↑ Here and below Marx quotes from the French edition of Capital in French.
  5. ↑ Cf. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Part V, Ch. XVI (present edition, Vol. 35).
  6. ↑ Marx's pseudonym