MARX TO LUDWIG KUGELMANN *” 

London, 11 July 1868 

Dear Friend, 

The children are getting on well, though still weak. 
Thank you very much for the things you sent. Definitely do not 
write to Faucher, otherwise this mannequin pisse will feel too 

produces a saving of time for us, and this saving of time is the only thing which 
constitutes its value and its price. For example, the carpenter who makes me a table, 
and the servant who takes my letters to the post, cleans my clothes, and procures for 
me the things I need—the one and the other render me services of absolutely the same 
nature. The one and the other save me both the time that I myself would be obliged to 
use for my [these] occupations, and the time that I would have had to devote to 
acquiring the skills they require’ ({Th.] Schmalz, Economie politique, ouvrage traduit de 
Vallemand..., Vol. I, Paris, 1826, p. 304). - 4 productive and unproductive labour 
- b (G. Garnier,] Abrégé élémentaire des principes de l'économie politique. - © Ch. Ganilh, 
Des systémes d’économie politique, de la valeur comparative de leurs doctrines, et de celle qui 
parait la plus favorable aux progrés de la richesse. 

important.” All he has achieved is that, if a second edition 
appears, I shall aim a few necessary blows at Bastiat where I speak 
about the magnitude of value.2? This wasn’t done before, since the 
3rd volume‘! will contain a separate and extensive chapter about 
the ‘vulgar economy’ gentry. Incidentally, you will find it quite 
natural that Faucher and consorts derive the ‘exchange value’ of 
their own scribblings not from the amount of labour power expended, 
but from the absence of such expenditure, that is from ‘saved labour’. 
Moreover, the worthy Bastiat did not even himself make this 
‘discovery’, so welcome to these gentry, but just ‘cribbed’ it, in his 
usual manner, from much earlier authors. His sources are of 
course unknown to Faucher and consorts. 

As for the Centralblatt, the man is making the greatest 
concession possible by admitting that, if value means anything at 
all, then my conclusions must be conceded.* The unfortunate 
fellow does not see that, even if there were no chapter on ‘value’ 
at all in my book, the analysis I give of the real relations would 
contain the proof and demonstration of the real value relation. 
The chatter about the need to prove the concept of value arises 
only from complete ignorance both of the subject under discussion 
and of the method of science. Every child knows that any nation 
that stopped working, not for a year, but let us say, just for a few 
weeks, would perish. And every child knows, too, that the amounts 
of products corresponding to the differing amounts of needs 
demand differing and quantitatively determined amounts of 
society's aggregate labour. It is setr-evipent that this necessity of the 
distribution of social labour in specific proportions is certainly not 
abolished by the specific form of social production; it can only 
change its form of manifestation. Natural laws cannot be abolished 
at all. The only thing that can change, under historically differing 
conditions, is the form in which those laws assert themselves. And 
the form in which this proportional distribution of labour asserts 
itself in a state of society in which the interconnection of social 
labour expresses itself as the private exchange of the individual 
products of labour, is precisely the exchange value of these 
products. 

Where science comes in is to show how the law of value asserts 
itself. So, if one wanted to ‘explain’ from the outset all phenomena 

a This refers to the review, in Literarisches Centralblatt für Deutschland, No. 28, 4 
July 1868, ‘Marx, Karl. Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie (in 3 Bdn.). 
Erster Bd. Buch I. Der Produktionsprozess des Kapitals. Hamburg, 1867. 
O. Meissner’ (signed ‘h’). 

that apparently contradict the law, one would have to provide the 
science before the science. It is precisely Ricardo’s mistake that in 
his first chapter, on value,’ all sorts of categories that still have to 
be arrived at are assumed as given, in order to prove their 
harmony with the law of value. 

On the other hand, as you correctly believe, the history of the 
theory of course demonstrates that the understanding of the value 
relation has always been the same, clearer or less clear, hedged with 
illusions or scientifically more precise. Since the reasoning process 
itself arises from the existing conditions and is itself a natural 
process, really comprehending thinking can always only be the 
same, and can vary only gradually, in accordance with the 
maturity of development, hence also the maturity of the organ 
that does the thinking. Anything else is drivel. 

The vulgar economist has not the slightest idea that the actual, 
everyday exchange relations and the value magnitudes cannot be 
directly identical. The point of bourgeois society is precisely that, a 
priori, no conscious social regulation of production takes place. 
What is reasonable and necessary by nature asserts itself only as a 
blindly operating average. The vulgar economist thinks he has 
made a great discovery when, faced with the disclosure of the 
intrinsic interconnection, he insists that things look different in 
appearance. In fact, he prides himself in his clinging to 
appearances and believing them to be the ultimate. Why then have 
science at all? 

But there is also something else behind it. Once interconnection 
has been revealed, all theoretical belief in the perpetual necessity of 
the existing conditions collapses, even before the collapse takes place 
in practice. Here, therefore, it is completely in the interests of the 
ruling classes to perpetuate the unthinking confusion. And for what 
other reason are the sycophantic babblers paid who have no other 
scientific trump to play except that, in political economy, one may 
not think at all! 

But satis superque.” In any case, it shows the depth of 
degradation reached by these priests of the bourgeoisie: while 
workers and even manufacturers and merchants have understood 
my book and made sense of it, these ‘learned scribes’ (!) complain 
that I make excessive demands on their comprehension. 

I would not advise reprinting Schweitzer’s articles, though 
Schweitzer has made a good job of them for his paper.'” 

aD. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, Ch. I: On 
Value. - enough and more than enough 

You would oblige me if you sent me a few issues of the 
Staats-Anzeiger. 

You should be able to get Schnacke’s address by enquiring at 
the Elberfelder. 

Best greetings to your wife and Franzchen. 

Yours 
K. M. 

Apropos. I have received an article by Dietzgen about my 
book; I am sending it to Liebknecht.