A nervous complaint which has assailed me periodically over the 
last ten years has prevented me from replying any sooner to your 
letter of February 16. I am sorry that I cannot provide you with a 
concise exposé, intended for publication, of the question you have 
done me the honour of putting to me. Months ago I promised the St. 
Petersburg Committee*! to let them have a piece on the same 
subject. I hope, however, that a few lines will suffice to dispel any 
doubts you may harbour as to the misunderstanding in regard to 
my so-called theory. 

In analysing the genesis of capitalist production I say: 

‘“‘At the core of the capitalist system, therefore, lies the complete 
separation of the producer from the means of production ... the 
basis of this whole development is the expropriation of the 
agricultural producer. To date this has not been accomplished in a 
radical fashion anywhere except in England... But all the other 
countries of Western Europe are undergoing the same process” 
(Capital, French ed., p. 315). 

Hence the “historical inevitability” of this process is expressly 
limited to the countries of Western Europe. The cause of that 
limitation is indicated in the following passage from Chapter 
XXXII: 

“Private property, based on personal labour ... will be supplanted by 
capitalist private property, based on the exploitation of the labour of 
others, on wage labour”’ (l.c., p. 341). 

In this Western movement, therefore, what is taking place is the 
transformation of one form of private property into another form of 


Letter to Vera Zasulich 371 


private property. In the case of the Russian peasants, their communal 
property would, on the contrary, have to be transformed into private 
property. 

Hence the analysis provided in Capital does not adduce reasons 
either for or against the viability of the rural commune, but the 
special study I have made of it, and the material for which I drew 
from original sources, has convinced me that this commune is the 
fulcrum of social regeneration in Russia, but in order that it may 
function as such, it would first be necessary to eliminate the 
deleterious influences which are assailing it from all sides, and 
then ensure for it the normal conditions of spontaneous develop- 
ment. 

I have the honour to be, dear Citizen, 


Yours very faithfully, 
Karl Marx: