London, |] January 1884 

Dear Bernstein, 

First a Happy New Year to you, Kautsky and the whole newspa- 
per office.* . 

Then a request to send me last week’s Sozialdemokrat. It should 
have arrived on Saturday, 29 December, but hasn’t reached me yet. 

A fortnight ago I was at last able to get up again, have improved 
steadily and hope to be fit for work in a week’s time. And a damned 
good thing too! 

I trust you were not too much infuriated by the number of amend- 
ments I made to your ms.!! As I once said to Kautsky, while we can- 
not imitate Marx’s style, our own ought to be such as not to be wholly 
out of keeping with Marx’s. Provided you don’t lose sight of this alto- 
gether, we may well produce a work that is presentable. 

The note on American slavery” shall be done, and various others 
besides. I shall also be able to include a fair amount in the preface.‘ 
How true the passage on slavery was is still evident today: capitalist 
production in the cotton states is not prospering — through not hav- 
ing any coolzes, Chinese or Indian, i.e. slaves disguised as free labour; 
whereas in Cuba, Mauritius, Réunion, etc., it flourishes in so far as, 
and only in so far as, it has coolies at its disposal. 

As regards your earlier inquiry about the passage from The Civil 
War in France in the preface to the Manifesto,13? you will, no doubt, 

* Der Sozialdemokrat- See present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 167-68.-° F. Engels, 
‘Marx and Rodbertus’.