London, 8 March 1881 
41 Maitland Park Road, N.W. 

Dear Citizen, 

A nervous complaint which has assailed me periodically over the 
last ten years has prevented me from replying any sooner to your let- 
ter of 16 February. I am sorry that I cannot provide you with a con- 
cise exposé, intended for publication, of the question you have done 
me the honour of putting to me. Months ago I promised the St Peters- 
burg 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 indi- 
cated 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 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 spe- 
cial 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 development. 

I have the honour to be, dear Citizen, 

Yours very faithfully, 
Karl Marx