London, 27 April 1888 
122 Regent’s Park Road, N. W. 

Dear Citizen Deville, 

Thank you for your book on Balzac,* which I will read with pleasure. 
After Cervantes Balzac is, or so I think, the greatest novelist of all time, 
as well as the most faithful recorder of French society between 1815 and 
1848. I am fond of Balzac in whatever form. 

Your interpretation of Marx’s formula is faultless. In manuscript it 
read: M— C < fp and it was only for his own convenience and delecta- 
tion that the printer put the symbol <, which has given rise to endless 
misunderstandings. 

Hence the complete formula on p. 18° 

L 
a ¢ Pa 

M— oe Piaakd GC = M° or 
“~~ MP 
ae 

M—C = wees Pwo. (C+0)-(M+m) 
“> MP 

means: 

M, money, converted into C (commodity), which commodity is made 
up of L (labour power) and of MP (means of production); the said 
commodity C is subjected to a process of production P, this last result- 
ing in a new commodity C’ (of different quality, but this does not 
concern us here where we have to do only with values), of greater value 
than and hence equal to C plus an increment c (C + c); this C’ is once 
more exchanged for money, that is to say for an amount M‘ greater than 
M, or equal to M plus an increment m (M + m). 

The symbol — serves to mark the conclusion of an exchange; the.... 

*G. Deville, La Femme et l’Amour. Paris, 1888 — > K. Marx, Capital. A Critique 
of Political Economy, Vol. 11, Book Il, The Process of Circulation of Capital, Part 
1, The Metamorphoses of Capital and Their Circuits, Ch. 1, Circuit of Money 
Capital 

indicates that the value in question undergoes a change of form which is 
not an exchange—in this case the process of production. 

Should you wish to have anything else explained, I shall always be at 
your service. This second volume will, I am afraid, prove something of a 
headache for you, while failing to reward you with brilliant new solu- 
tions. It is concerned with transactions between bourgeois and the 
results are very nice theoretically but do not have any practical applica- 
tion. That is why I am in no hurry to see it translated into French or 
English; it needs to be complemented by Volume III. 

Iam Sir, etc., 

Your 
F. Engels