London, 7 November 18687 

Dear Fren, 

THANKS FoR THE £5. 

I (and the whole household here) are very worried because of 
the typhus raging in your parts. It is so contagious. Please report 
again soon on the status rerum? 

It will be impossible to stop that damned Borkheim, whom I 
shall be seeing today, printing your 2 articles‘ (those about 
Bakunin’s manifesto to the Slavs“). However, I shall only tell him 
that you are an old personal friend of Bakunin, so that the 
business may under no circumstances appear in a context insulting 
to the latter. Borkheim takes himself completely au sérieux and 
really believes he has a political mission to fulfil. He is translating 
for me the main passages from a Russian book about agrarian 
disintegration,’ and has also given me a French book on the 
subject by the Russian Schédo-Ferroti.2 The latter is very much 
mistaken—he is altogether a very superficial fellow—in saying 
that the Russian communal system came into existence only as a 
result of the ban on peasants leaving the land. The whole business, 
down to the smallest detail, is absolutely identical with the primaeval 
Germanic communal system. Add to this, in the Russian case (and 
this may be found also amongst a part of the Indian communal systems, 
not in the Punjab, but in the South), (1) the non-democratic, but 
patriarchal character of the commune leadership and (2) the 
collective responsibility for taxes to the state, etc. It follows from the 
second point that the more industrious a Russian peasant is, the 
more he is exploited by the state, not only in terms of taxes, but 
also for supplying provisions and horses, etc. for the constant 
passage of troops, for government couriers, etc. The whole shit is 
breaking down. 

I regard Dietzgen’s exposition, in so far as Feuerbach, etc., in 

ain the original erroneously 1867 -> state of things - © F. Engels, ‘Democratic 
Pan-Slavism’, Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Nos. 222 and 223, 15 and 16 February 
1849.-4 M. Bakunin, Aufruf an die Slaven..., Koethen, 1848. -¢ seriously - 
€ 11. A{mauengenngl, Seman u corr. Cn6., 1868. - € D. K. Schédo-Ferroti, Etudes sur 
Vavenir de la Russie, Dixiéme étude: Le patrimoine du peuple. Berlin, 1868. 

short his sources, do not peep through, as entirely his own 
independent achievement. For the rest, I agree with everything 
you say. I shall have something to say to him about the repetitions; 
it is his bad luck that it was precisely Hegel that he did not study. 

The great Weber* on behalf of ‘German Association for 
Revolutionary Agitation, etc.’ has held a meeting together with the 
French Mayers under Pyat’s chairmanship and with other vag- 
abonds, at which they instructed the Yankees in an address*"* to 
intervene in favour of the Spanish Republic. 

Our Negro, Paul Lafargue, had the misfortune that the French 
would not recognise his English diploma; they want to make him run 
the gauntlet of five new examinations, instead of the maximum 
1 or 2 as he expected.'?! Mrs Laura senns YoU HER COMPLIMENTS. 

Salut. 

Your 
K. M.