ENGELS TO MARX ‘*”? 

Manchester, 19 November 1869 

Dear Moor, 

I hope Eccarius will force Potter to publish the report belatedly,” 
particularly because of the Lanp anp Lasour Leacue.*” 

I think an addition on the amnesties in the rest of Europe 
would only weaken the resolution“ since, apart from Russia (which 
would be very good on its own*”), Russia would have to be 
excluded because of those sentenced in the Guelphic conspiracy.""* 
I would, however, polish up the language somewhat in: Alinéa 2 I 
would insert tmprisonep or something of the sort before victims, to 
make it evipenr at first sight who is meant. 

Alinéa 3, it is questionable whether one can speak of THE TEETH oF 
A PosiTion, and instead of steps 1n I would say Turns ROUND. 

Alinéa 4. Witx REGARD To appears to me more direct than with 
REFERENCE TO. 

4 little grand man - > See this volume, p. 375. - © Ibid., pp. 375-76. - ¢ paragraph 

Lizzie immediately passed a vore or THANKS to you for the 
resolution, and is vexed that she will not be able to be there on 
Tuesday. 

The business with Holyoake is vexatious.* The fellow is simply a 
Go-BETWEEN for the radical bourgeoisie with the workers. The question 
is this: is the composition of the Generat Councu. such that a swamping 
by such rabble is to be feared or not? If you accept Holyoake, then 
others might follow, and they will do so as soon as the affair 
becomes more important. Moreover, if the times become more 
tempestuous, these gentlemen will certainly also visit the sessions, 
and try to grasp the leadership. And as far as I know, Mr 
Holyoake has never done the slightest thing for the working class 
as such. A priori, everything against his acceptance, but if his 
rejection would lead to splits in the Councn, while his acceptance 
would, in practice, make little difference to the constitution of the 
Genera Counc, eh bien’! Despite this I cannot well envisage a 
workers’ councn. with this fellow on it. 

Before the receipt of yours of yesterday, I had sent Wilhelm‘ 
£5 with a few frosty lines. The fellow really is too brazen-faced. 
First he insults me in every way, then I should give moral and 
material support, and send him articles for his sheet,’ which he 
has ceased sending me without saying a word. If you should write 
to him, you would be doing me a favour if you let him understand 
that, if he wants articles from me, he should pray write directly to 
me. To act as bootblack to Mr Wilhelm—that crowns it ail! 
Enclosed, the letter returned. 

Best thanks for the Irish pampHLers and reports,© I shall deliver 
the two for Moore and Schorlemmer. 

When was Reclus in London“? And how is the French 
translation of your book going “*!? Since I have been back here I 
haven’t heard a word about it. 

And now for Carey.‘ 

The entire point at issue does not seem to me to be directly 
connected with political economy as such. Ricardo says that rent is 
the surplus yield of the more productive plots of land over that of 
the least productive. Carey says exactly the same. 

Continuation by 2nd _ post. 

Your 
F. E. 
They are agreed upon what renr is. But, how and by what agency 

a See this volume, p. 376. - > very well - © Wilhelm Liebknecht - 4 Der Volksstaat - 
¢ See this volume, p. 375. - £ H. Ch. Carey, Principles of Social Science. 

rent materialises, is a matter of dispute. Now, Ricardo’s description 
of the process by which rent originates (Carey, p. 104), is just as 
unhistorical as all such historical travesties by the economists, and 
Carey’s own great Robinson-Crusoe-story about Adam and Eve 
(p. 96 et seq.). With regard to the older economists, including 
Ricardo, this is still excusable to some extent; they do not wish for 
historical knowledge; they are just as unhistorical in their whole 
conception as the other apostles of the 18th-century Enlightenment, 
for whom such alleged historical digressions are always only a fagon 
de parler*, enabling them to represent the origin of this or that in a 
rational manner, and in which primitive men always think and 
behave as if they were 18th-century French philosophers. But when 
Carey, who wants to propound an historical theory of his own, 
proceeds to present Adam and Eve to us as Yankee backwoodsmen, 
then he cannot demand that we believe him, for he lacks the same 
excuse. 

The entire point at issue would be nil, had not Ricardo, in his 
naivety, simply called the more productive land ‘rerrite’. According 
to Ricardo, THE MOST FERTILE AND MOST FAVOURABLY SITUATED LAND iS 
cultivated first. Just the way a thoughtful bourgeois, on land 
cultivated for centuries, must picture things. Now Carey clings to 
the ‘rerTie’ and foists upon Ricardo the assertion that the lands 
that are in themselves the most productive are those first cultivated, 
and states: No, on the contrary, the lands in themselves the most 
capable of production (the Amazon valley, the Ganges delta, 
tropical Africa, Borneo and New Guinea, etc.) are not cultivated 
even today; the first settlers, because they cannot do otherwise, 
always commence cultivation on self-draining land, that is to say, 
strips situated on hills and slopes, and these are by nature poorer. 
And when Ricardo says: FERTILE AND THE MOST FAVOURABLY SITUATED, he is 
saying the same thing, without noticing that he is expressing 
himself roosery and that a contradiction can be seen between these 
two qualifications connected by ano. But when Carey gives a sketch 
on p. 138 and claims that Ricardo places his first settlers in the 
valley, while Carey puts them on the heights (in the sketch on bare 
crags and impracticable slopes of 45 degrees) he is simply falsely 
imputing this to Ricardo.” 

Carey’s historical examples, as far as they apply to America, are 
the only useful things in the book. As a Yankee, he himself lived 
through the process of serriements, could follow it from the 

a manner of speech - > The reference is to D. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political 
Economy, and Taxation. See also present edition, Vol. 31. 

15* 

beginning, and is well posted about it. Nevertheless, there is 
undoubtedly a lot of uncritical stuff mixed up in it, which would 
have to be sifted. When he speaks of Europe, however, the 
structures and the untenableness get under way. And that Carey is 
not unprejudiced with regard to America is shown by the 
eagerness with which he attempts to prove the worthlessness, 
indeed the nzcarive value-quality of the uncultivated land (that the 
Jand is, so to speak, worth minus 10 dollars an acre) and praises 
the self-sacrifice of societies that, to their own certain ruin, make 
waste land serviceable for mankind. Related in the country of 
colossal land jobbery, this becomes ludicrous. Incidentally, he 
never mentions prairie land here, and elsewhere it is touched upon 
very lightly. The whole story of the negative value-quality of the 
waste land, and all his calculated proofs are best contradicted by 
America itself. If the story were true, America would not only be 
the poorest of countries, but would become relatively poorer every 
year, because more and more labour would be thrown away on 
this worthless land. 

Now, as for his definition of RENT: THE AMOUNT RECEIVED AS RENT IS 
INTEREST UPON THE VALUE OF LABOUR EXPENDED, MINUS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE 
PRODUCTIVE POWER (THE RENT-PAYING LAND) AND THAT OF THE NEWER SOILS WHICH 
CAN BE BROUGHT INTO ACTIVITY BY THE APPLICATION OF THE SAME LABOUR THAT HAS 
BEEN THERE GIVEN TO THE Work (pp. 165, 166), this may have a certain 
amount of validity here and there, within certain limits, especially in 
America. But Rent is, in any case, such a complicated thing, to which 
so many other circumstances contribute, that even in these cases it 
can apply only ceteris paribus,” only when 2 pieces of land lie side by 
side. Ricardo knew as well as he that interest FoR THE VALUE OF LABOUR 
EXPENDED i§ also included in renr. If Carey declares land as such 
worse than worthless, then rent must naturally be tnrerest upon 
THE VALUE OF LABOUR EXPENDED or theft, as it is called on p. 139. Carey 
still owes us an explanation of the transition from theft to 
interest. 

It seems to me that the origin of rent in different countries, 
and even in one and the same country, is by no means such a 
simple process as both Ricardo and Carey imagine. In Ricardo, as 
I said, this is excusable; it is the history of the fishers and hunters 
in the sphere of agriculture. It is not, in fact, an economic dogma, 
but Carey wants, furthermore, to make a dogma out of his theory 
and prove it to the world as such, for which, indeed, historical 
studies of a very different sort from Mr Carey’s are necessary. 

4 other things being equal 

There may even have been localities where rent originated as 
Ricardo suggests, and others where it originated in Carey’s way, 
and yet others where it had quite different origins. To Carey one 
may also remark that, where fever has to be reckoned with, in 
particular tropical fever, economics more or less come to an end. 
Unless his theory of population can be thus interpreted: with the 
increase in population, the surplus people are forced to cultivate 
the most fertile, i.e., the most unhealthy stretches of land, in which 
they either succeed or perish; in this way he would successfully 
establish harmony between himself and Malthus. 

In northern Europe, rent originated neither in Ricardo’s nor in 
Carey’s way, but simply from the feudal burdens, later brought by 
free competition to their correct economic level. In Italy it was 
different again, vide* Rome. To calculate what part of the rent in 
the long civilised countries is really original rent and what part is 
interest on labour invested is impossible, since it differs in each 
case. Moreover, it is of no importance, once it has been shown that 
RENT Can also increase without labour being put into land. The 
grandfather of Sir Humphrey de Trafford at Old Trafford near 
Manchester had such a load of debts on his back that he had no 
idea what to do. His grandson, after paying off all the debts, has 
an income of £40,000 a year. If we subtract about £10,000, which 
comes from building sites, £30,000 remains as the yearly value of 
the agricultural estate, which 80 years ago brought in perhaps 
£2,000. Further, if £3,000 be taken as the interest on invested 
Jabour and capital, and that’s a lot, there remains an increase of 
£25,000, which is five times the former value, including improve. 
ments. And all this, not because labour is contained in it, but 
because labour was put into something else nearby, since the Estate 
lies close to a city like Manchester, where good prices are paid for 
milk, butter and garden produce. The same happens on a big 
scale. From the moment when England became a corn- and 
cattle-Importing country, and even before then, population density 
became a factor determining or increasing RENT, quite indepen- 
dently of the labour invested generally in the land of England. 
Ricardo, with his Most FAVOURABLY SITUATED LANDS, also considers the 
relation to the market, but Carey ignores this. And if he were then 
to say: the land itself has only a negative value, but the location has 
a positive value, he would thereby admit what he denies—that 
land, just because it can be monopolised, has, or can have, a value 
independent of the labour invested. But on this point Carey is as 
quiet as a mouse. 

« see 

It is equally a matter of indifference whether the labour 
invested in land in civilised countries pays regularly or not. I 
asserted more than 20 years ago that in today’s society no 
instrument of production exists that could last 60-100 years—no 
factory, no building, etc.—that, by the end of its existence, has 
covered the cost of its production.*” All in all, I still believe this is 
perfectly true. And if Carey and I are both right, this proves 
nothing either about the rate of profit or the origin of rent, but 
simply that bourgeois production, even measured by its own 
standards, is rotten. 

These random comments on Carey will no doubt be enough for 
you. They are very mixed, because I made no excerpts. As for the 
historic-materialist-scientific trimmings, their entire value=those 
two trees, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge, which he has 
planted in his paradisiacal work, not indeed for his Adam and Eve 
who have to drudge in the backwoods, but for their descendants. 
His ignorance and slovenliness are only equalled by the impu- 
dence that allows him to present such nonsense publicly. 

You will not expect me to read the other chapters. It is pure 
blather, and the grammatical errors are no longer strewn so 
closely. P’li send you the book as soon as I go up to town; out here 
no pillar-box is large enough to take it. Monday or Tuesday. 

Wilhelm’s sheet is really disgraceful. I am not referring to the 
free-church-clerical babble,*”° but all the news from their associa- 
tions, etc., is always 8-14 days old before it is printed. Schweitzer 
holds a meeting on the 9th in Leipzig, and dispatches triumphal 
telegrams, which are printed on the 10th in Social-Demokrat.* On 
the 12th the Social-Demokrat states that Liebknecht receives 1,000 
thaler from Frankel the banker. Up to the 17th no reply!! And we 
are supposed to take the responsibility for such stupidity and 
sloppiness. 

Tussy will be getting a letter soon. 

With best greetings. 

Your 
F. E.