London 11 July 1868. Dear Fred, The £10 received with best thanks. I immediately paid £3 5 in taxes, £3 to the cheesemonger (whom I have, incidentally, been paying in cash for weeks, as he, like the tea-grocer, no longer supplies anything on tick), £1 10 to the chemist. I owe the baker some £17, and the man, who was always very friendly with us, is hard pressed. It is loathsome to me that I am pressing you so hard. If only I could find some immediate way out! The children are getting on tolerably well, although little Jenny is still very weak. The temper reigning in the house here is not exactly made for convalescents. My wife, for her part, is not on her feet either and therefore uselessly irritable. Enclosed: 1) Kugelmann: I answered him immediately, on no account to let loose the intended letter to the mannequin Pisse Faucher. 2) The critique of the worthy Faucher; another in the Literarische Centralblatt. Both to be returned to me. 3) Letter from Dietzgen, who has also written an article about my book for me. You cannot fully appreciate the drollery of the farce of the mannequin Pisse Faucher making me out to be a pupil of Bastiat. For Bastiat says in his Harmonies: “If anyone could explain to him, on the basis of the determination of value by labour-time, why air has no value and the diamond a high one, he would throw his book into the fire.” Since I have now performed this appalling trick, Faucher has to show that I actually accept B., who declares that there is “no measure” of value. The way Mr. Bastiat deduces the value of the diamond is the following authentic Commis Voyageur conversation: «Monsieur, cédez-moi votre diamant. – Monsieur, je veux bien; cédez-moi en échange votre travail de toute une année.» Instead of the business friend answering: «Mon cher, si j’étais condamné à travailler, vous comprenez bien que j’aurai autre chose á acheter que des diamants», he says: «Mais, Monsieur, vous n’avez pas sacrifié à votre acquisition une minute. – Eh bien, monsieur, tâchez de rencontrer une minute semblable.– Mais, en bonne justice, nous devrions échanger à travail égal . – Non, en bonne justice, vous appréciez vos services et moi les miens. Je ne vous force pas; pourquoi me forceriez-vous? Donnez-moi un an tout entier, ou cherchez vous même un diamant. – Mais cela m’entraînerait à dix ans de pénibles recherches, sans compter une déception probable au bout. Je trouve plus sage, plus profitable d’employer ces dix ans d’une autre manière. – C’est justement pour cela que je crois vous rendre encore service en ne vous demandant qu’un an. Je vous en épargne neuf, et voilà pourquoi j’attache beaucoup de valeur à ce service .» Is this not the wine-traveller, as he lives and breathes? Incidentally – what the German Bastiatites do not know – this unfortunate turn, that the value of commodities is determined by the labour which // not that which they cost, but that which they save the buyer (a childish phrase, fumbling around a little about the connection between exchange and the division of labour), is as little an invention of Bastiat’s as any other of his wine-traveller categories. The old ass Schmalz, the Prussian demagogue-hunter, says (German edition 1818, French edition 1826): «le travail d’autrui en général ne produit jamais pour nous qu’une économie de temps , et cette économie de temps est tout ce qui constitue sa valeur et son prix . Le menuisier, par exemple, qui me fait une table, et le domestique qui porte mes lettres à la poste, qui bat mes habits, ou qui cherche pour moi les choses qui me sont nécessaires, me rendent l’une et l’autre un service absolument de même nature: l’un et l’autre m’épargne et le temps que je serais obligé d’employer moi-même à mes ces occupations, et celui qu’il m’aurait fallu consacrer à m’acquérir l’aptitude et les talents qu’elles exigent.» The old Schmalz was an epigone of the physiocrats. He says this in polemic against A. Smith’s productive and unproductive labour, and proceeds from their principle that agriculture alone produces real value. He found the stuff in Garnier. Something similar, on the other hand, in the epigone of the mercantilists, Ganilh. Likewise in polemic against that distinction in A. Smith. Thus the epigone polemic from two standpoints which still have not the slightest conception of value – Bastiat copies out. And that is the latest discovery in Germany! A pity there is no paper in which one can expose this plagiarism of B.’s. Salut D KM