Letter to Achille Loria, May 20, 1883

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 20 May 1883


First published in Der Sozialdemokrat, Nr. 21, 17. Mai 1883
Printed according to the original, checked with the newspaper
Translated from the Italian
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO ACHILLE LORIA

IN MANTUA

London, 20 May 1883

122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.

Dear Sir,

I have received your pamphlet on Karl Marx. You are entitled to subject his doctrines to the most stringent criticism, indeed to misunderstand them; you are entitled to write a biography of Marx which is pure fiction. But what you are not entitled to do, and what I shall never permit anyone to do, is slander the character of my departed friend.

Already in a previous work[1] you took the liberty of accusing Marx of quoting in bad faith. When Marx read this he checked his and your quotations against the originals and he told me that his were all correct and that if there was any bad faith it was on your part. And seeing how you quote Marx, how you have the audacity to make Marx speak of profit when he speaks of Mehrwerth,[2] when he defends himself time and again against the error of identifying the two (something which Mr Moore and I have repeated to you verbally here in London) I know whom to believe and where the bad faith lies.

This however is a trifle compared to your 'deep and firm conviction... that conscious sophistry pervades them all' (Marx's doctrines); that Marx 'did not baulk at paralogisms, while knowing them to be such', that 'he was often a sophist who wished to arrive, at the expense of the truth, at a negation of present-day society' and that, as Lamartine says, il jouait avec les mensonges et les vérités comme les enfants avec les osselets.[3]

In Italy, a country of ancient civilisation, this might perhaps be taken as a compliment, or it might be considered great praise among armchair socialists,[4] seeing that these venerable professors could never produce their innumerable systems except 'at the expense of the truth'. We revolutionary communists see things differently. We regard such assertions as defamatory accusations and, knowing them to be lies, we turn them against their inventor who has defamed himself in thinking them up.

In my opinion, it should have been your duty to make known to the public this famous conscious sophistry which pervades all of Marx's doctrines. But I look for it in vain! Nagott! What a tiny mind one must have to imagine that a man like Marx could have 'always threatened his critics' with a second volume which he 'had not the slightest intention of writing', and that this second volume was nothing but 'an ingenious pretext dreamed up by Marx in place of scientific arguments'. This second volume exists and it will shortly be published. Perhaps you will then learn to understand the difference between Mehrwerth and profit.

A German translation of this letter will be published in the next issue of the Zurich Sozialdemokrat.

I have the honour of saluting you with all the sentiments you deserve.

F. E.

  1. ↑ A. Loria, La teoria del valore negli economisti italiani.
  2. ↑ surplus value
  3. ↑ 'he played with lies and truth like children with marbles'
  4. ↑ economy which emerged in the last third of the 19th century in response to the growth of the workers' movement and the spread within it of the ideas of scientific socialism. They preached bourgeois reformism at universities, passing it off as socialism. They alleged that the state, specifically the German Empire, was above all classes and could help achieve improvements in the condition of the working class by way of social reforms.