In my Preface to the fourth edition of the first volume of 
Marx’s Capital* I found myself obliged to return to a polemic 
against Marx, initiated by Anonymous in the Berlin Concordia in 
1872, and taken up again by Mr. Sedley Taylor of Cambridge in 
The Times in 1883. Anonymous, revealed by Mr. Taylor as Mr. 
Lujo Brentano, had accused Marx of falsifying a quotation. The 
short report on the affair which I gave in my Preface (it is printed 
amongst the attached Documents, No. 12‘), certainly was not 
intended to be pleasant to Mr. Brentano; nothing was more 
natural than that he should answer me. And this took place in a 
pamphlet: Meine Polemik mit Karl Marx. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur 
Frage des Fortschritts der Arbeiterklasse und seiner Ursachen. Von Lujo 
Brentano, Berlin, Walther & Apolant, 1890.° 

This pamphlet gives us too much and too little. Too much, 
because it “also” gives us at length Mr. Brentano’s views on “the 
advance of the working class and its causes’. These views have 
absolutely nothing to do with the point at issue. I remark only 
this: Mr. Brentano’s constantly repeated declaration that labour 
protection legislation and trade association organisations are fitted 
to improve the condition of the working class is by no means his 
own discovery. From the Condition of the Working Class in England 

and The Poverty of Philosophy to Capital and down to my most 
recent writings,” Marx and I have said this a hundred times, 
though with very sharp reservations. Firstly, the favourable effects 
of the resisting trade associations are confined to periods of 
average and brisk business; in periods of stagnation and crisis they 
regularly fail; Mr. Brentano’s claim that they “are capable of 
paralysing the fateful effects of the reserve army” is ridiculous 
boasting. And secondly—ignoring other less important reserva- 
tions—neither the protection legislation nor the resistance of the 
trade associations removes the main thing which needs abolishing: 
capitalist relations, which constantly reproduce the contradiction 
between the capitalist class and the class of wage labourers. The 
mass of wage labourers remain condemned to life-long wage 
labour; the gap between them and the capitalists becomes ever 
deeper and wider the more modern large-scale industry takes over 
all branches of production. But since Mr. Brentano would gladly 
convert wage-slaves into contented wage-slaves, he must hugely 
exaggerate the advantageous effects of labour protection, the 
resistance of trade associations, social piecemeal legislation, etc.; 
and as we are able to confront these exaggerations with the simple 
facts—hence his fury. 

The pamphlet in question gives too little, since it gives, of the 
documents in the polemic, only the items exchanged between Mr. 
Brentano and Marx, and not those which have appeared since 
with regard to this question. So in order to place the reader in a 
position to form an overall judgement, I give, in the appendix: 
1. the incriminated passages from the Inaugural Address of the 
General Council of the International? and from Capital; 2. the 
polemic between Mr. Brentano and Marx; 3. that between Mr. 
Sedley Taylor and Eleanor Marx; 4. my Preface to the 4th edition 
of Capital and Mr. Brentano’s reply to it; and 5. passages relevant 
to Gladstone’s letters to Mr. Brentano. It goes without saying that 
I thereby omit all those passages of Brentano’s argument which do 
not touch upon the question of falsification of quotation, but only 
constitute his “contribution to the advance’, etc. 

I 

In No. 10 of the Berlin Concordia, March 7, 1872, there was a 
fierce anonymous attack upon Marx as the author of the 
Inaugural Address of the General Council of the International in 
1864.7 In this Address, it was stated, Marx had falsified a 
quotation from the budget speech made by Gladstone, at that time 
English Chancellor of the Exchequer, on April 16, 1863. 

The passage from the Inaugural Address is printed in the 
appendix, Documents, No. 1.” The article from the Concordia also 
there, document No. 3.° In the latter, the charge is formulated as 
follows: 

“What is the relationship between this speech and the quotation by Marx? 
Gladstone first makes the point that there has undoubtedly been a colossal increase 
in the income of the country. This is proved for him by the income tax. But 
income tax takes notice only of incomes of 150 pounds sterling and over. Persons 
with lower incomes pay no income tax in England. The fact that Gladstone 
mentions this so that his yardstick can be properly appreciated is utilised by Marx 
to have Gladstone say: ‘This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely 
confined to classes of property. Yet this sentence is nowhere to be found in Gladstone’s 
speech. It says quite the opposite. Marx has added the sentence lyingly, both in form 
and in content!” 

This is the charge and, let it be noted, the only charge, that 
Anonymous, who has now admitted he is called Lujo Brentano, 
makes against Marx. 

No. 10 of the Concordia was sent to Marx from Germany in May 
1872. The copy still in my possession today bears the inscription 

“Organ of the German Manufacturers’ Association”. Marx, who 
had never heard of this sheet, assumed the author to be a 
scribbling manufacturer, and dealt with him accordingly. 

Marx demonstrated in his reply in the Volksstaat (Documents, 
No. 4’) that the sentence had not only been quoted in the same 
way by Professor Beesly in 1870 in The Fortnightly Review,’ but also 
before the publication of the Inaugural Address in [H. Roy,] The 
Theory of the Exchanges, London, 1864; and finally that the report 
in The Times on April 17, 1863 also contained the sentence, in 
form and in content, as he had quoted it: ; 

“The augmentation I have described” (namely as “this intoxicating augmenta- 
tion of wealth and power”) “is an augmentation entirely confined to classes of 
property.” ¢ 

If this passage, a passage which is certainly compromising in the 
mouth of an English Chancellor of the Exchequer, is not to be 
found in Hansard,‘ this is simply because Mr. Gladstone was 
clever enough to get rid of it, in accordance with traditional 
English parliamentary practice. 

In any case, proof was given here that the sentence allegedly 
lyingly added is to be found verbatim in The Times of April 17, 
1863 in its report of the speech delivered by Mr. Gladstone the 
evening before. And The Times was a Gladstonian organ at that 
time. 

And what is the reply now from Mr. “Modesty” Brentano? 
(Concordia, July 4, 1872, Documents, No. 5.°) 

With an impertinence he would never have dared under his 
own name, he repeats the charge that Marx lyingly added the 
sentence: this charge, he adds, is 

“serious, and combined with the convincing evidence provided, absolutely 
devastating”. 

The evidence was nothing but the passage in Hansard in which 
the sentence is missing. It could thus at the most be “devastating” 
for this selfsame ill-fated sentence, which appeared in The Times 
and not in Hansard. 

Review, No. XLVII, November 1, 1870.— Ed. 

No. 24535, April 17, 1863).— Ed. 

But this victorious crowing was only intended to help negotiate 
this same unpleasant fact that the “lyingly added” sentence had 
been confirmed as authentic by the Times report. And with the 
feeling that this evidence for the prosecution was pretty “convinc- 
ing’, and that it would become “absolutely devastating” in time, 
our anonymous would-be professor now zealously attacks the 
quotation in Beesly and in The Theory of the Exchanges, causes a big 
stir, claims that Beesly quoted from the Inaugural Address and 
Marx from The Theory of the Exchanges, etc. All these are minor 
points. Even if they are true, they prove nothing on the question 
as to whether Gladstone spoke the sentence or Marx invented it. 
But by their very nature they could not be settled with absolute 
finality, either by Mr. Brentano at that time, or by me today. On 
the other hand, they serve to divert attention from the main point, 
namely from the fatal Times report. 

Before venturing to deal with this, Anonymous flexes his 
muscles by using various items of strong language, such as 
“frivolity bordering upon the criminal”, “this lying quotation”, 
etc.; and then he lays in with gusto as follows: 

“But here we come, to be sure, to Marx’s third line of defence, and this far 
exceeds, in its impudent mendacity, anything which came before. Marx actually does 
not shrink from citing The Times of April 17, 1863 as proof of the correctness of 
his quotation. The Times of April 17, 1863, p. 7, page” (should be column) “5, line 
17 et seq., reports, however, the speech as follows: 

And here follows the Times report, which runs: 

“The augmentation I have described” (namely as “this intoxicating augmenta- 
tion of wealth and power”) “and the figures of which are founded, I think, upon 
accurate returns, is entirely confined to classes of property.” 

And now we- can only stare wide-eyed at the “impudent 
mendacity” of Marx, who still dares to claim that the Times report 
contained the sentence: This intoxicating augmentation, etc., is 
entirely confined to classes of property! 

The Inaugural Address states: “THis INTOXICATING AUGMENTATION OF 
WEALTH AND POWER IS ENTIRELY CONFINED TO CLASSES OF PROPERTY.” 

The Times states: ‘THE AUGMENTATION THERE DESCRIBED” (which not 
even Mr. Brentano, anonymous or not, has so far argued is not 
the ‘“augmentation” in the phrase “THIS INTOXICATING AUGMENTATION OF