[London,] 9 August 1862 

Dear Engels, 

Izzy doesn’t want to pay the £15 before 1 January." 

So, ’ve been to see Borkheim. You are to draw 400 talers on 
Lassalle (I didn’t, of course, in speaking of Lassalle to Borkheim, 
say anything as ro tHe £15 to be paid by Lassalle). At 3 months. 
Then, however, the thing will have to be renewed, as I told 
Borkheim that it wasn’t payable until 1 January. (This being the 
date stipulated by Lassalle.) 

So, the main thing is that you should send Borkheim the bill. 

As regards the theory of rent, I shall, of course, have to wait until 
I get your letter.” But what follows will simplify the ‘debate’, as 
Heinrich Bürgers would say: 

I. All I have to prove theoretically is the possibility of absolute 
rent, without infringing the law of value. This is the point round 
which the theoretical controversy has revolved from the time of the 
physiocrats**' until the present day. Ricardo denies that possibility; 
I maintain it. I likewise maintain that his denial rests on a 
theoretically false dogma deriving from A. Smith—the-supposed 
identity of cost prices’and vatces or commoprriss. Further, that where 
Ricardo illustrates the thing with examples, he invariably presup- 
poses conditions in which there is either no capitalist production 
or (factually or legally) no landed property. But the whole point is to 
examine the law precisely when such things do exist. 

II. As regards the existence of absolute rent, this would be a 
question that would require statistical solution in any country. But 
the importance of a purely theoretical soluuon may be gauged 
from the fact that for 35 years statisticians and practical men 
generally have been maintaining the existence of absolute rent, 
while the (Ricardian) theoreticians have been seeking to explain it 
away by dint of very forced and theoretically | feeble abstractions. 
Hitherto, I have invariably found that, in all such guarress, the 
theoreticians have always been in the wrong. 

4 See this volume, p. 401. - > ibid., pp. 394-98; 402. - © ibid., pp. 396-97. 
P pp pp