London, 12 October 1872 

Dear Citizen, 

You will, I am sure, excuse my long silence, which has been 
caused by an excessive amount of work. I have at last rid myself 
of the burdensome administrative business which devolved 
upon me as a member of the General Council of the Interna- 
tional and which, as the days went by, was becoming more 
and more incompatible with my theoretical studies. At present 
I still have various tasks entrusted to me by the Hague Cong- 

a Lydia Burns - © This refers to the minutes of the Hague Congress, which were to be 
published. 

ress,°*? but after that I shall be able to dispose of my time more 
freely. 

The first series of Capital”° has been well done on the whole—I 
refer to those things incumbent upon the editor. However I was 
much shocked at the errata which it contains and which were not 
in the last proofs corrected by me. As an example I am sending 
you a bit from instalment II p. 16 which reads: 

‘Ensuite nous avons vu que dés qu'il s’exprime dans la valeur, tous les 
caractéres qui distinguaient le travail productif de valeurs d’usage 
disparaissent. * 

In instalment II as published (p. 16) they have this totally 
meaningless sentence: 

‘Ensuite nous avons vu que dés que le travail productif s’exprime dans 
la valeur, tous les caractéres qui le distinguaient des valeurs d’usage 
disparaissent.’” 

There are other errors of this kind and I have sent a list of 
them to Mr Vernouillet, at the same time informing him that I 
shall pass nothing for press until I have in front of me the whole 
series of five instalments to be published. 

Mr Vernouillet has been good enough to send me Mr Maurice 
Block’s pamphlet (extracted from the Journal des Economistes).°” 
Here we have a man of brains who doesn’t even know what an 
‘average’ is, although he purports to have devoted his whole life to 
statistics! I wouldn’t deny that there may have been a certain 
amount of ill-will on his part, but on the whole there is more 
stupidity in him than malice. 

The changes it was necessary to make in Mr Roy’s translation 
have taken a great deal of time, but it gets better from the third 
section onwards. 

In Russia my book‘ has proved an extraordinary success. As 
soon as I have a little more time, I shall send you some extracts 
from the Russian reviews. The Russian translation (in a fat 
volume) was published at the end of April (°72) and I have already 
been advised by Petersburg that a second edition will be appearing 
in 1873.°° 

At The Hague I found Laura very unwell and her health 

456 

a ‘Later on, we have seen that as soon as it finds expression in value, all the 
characteristics that distinguished labour as a creator of use values disappear’; cf. the 
corresponding passage in Section 2, Chapter I of the authorised English edition of 
Capital (present edition, Vol. 35). - > ‘Later on, we have seen that so far as productive 
labour finds expression in value, all the characteristics that distinguished it from use 
values disappear.’ - © Volume I of Capital 

deteriorated still further after my departure. A letter received 
yesterday brings better news and next month I shall have the 
pleasure of seeing her here with her husband.’ 

Last Friday the wedding took place between. Jenny, my eldest 
daughter, and Longuet (who sends you his regards).” 

How goes it with public affairs in Spain? In my opinion you and 
many of the other proscribed Frenchmen“ (save, perhaps, for 
those most compromised) will soon be able to return home. 

I remain, dear Citizen, 

Yours very sincerely, 

Karl Marx