London, 6 July 1863 

Dear Engels, 

D’abord,” my best thanks for the £250. About four months ago 
Dronke sent me £50, and today £200. 

Unfortunately, little Jenny still isn’t quite as she should be. The 
cough hasn’t completely gone yet, and the child has grown too 
‘light’. I shall send her to a resort with the others as soon as the 
school term is over. Although I have great confidence in Allen, I 
should be glad if Gumpert, who I presume will be going on holiday 
on the Continent, would pay us a flying visit here, see for himself 
how things are, and let me have his opinion. To be frank, I am 
much alarmed about the child. To lose flesh at this age seems to 
me most dubious. 

“ See this volume, pp. 479-80.- ¥ First 

Palmerston plays His op tricks in the Polish affair.* The Notes 
presented to the Russians had originally been sent from 
St. Petersburg to London.’ Pam bought Hennessy from Urquhart by 
giving the said Irish blackguard a remunerative post (sinecure) 
with a Franco-English railway in France. Indeed, the venality of 
the patricians here eclipses anything that goes on in that line on 
the Continent. No one at home or in France can have any 
conception of this absolute shamelessness. As for ‘Count Zamoyski’, 
I had repeatedly told the Urquhartites that the fellow betrayed the 
Poles in 1830/31 by leading an intact corps across the Austrian 
border instead of against the Russians. In the end, this fellow has 
aroused their suspicions because of his perpetual personal 
underhand dealings with Pam.‘ 

The Sournerners’ expedition against the North** was, in my 
opinion, forced on Lee by the clamour of the Richmond papers and 
their supporters. I regard it as a coup de désespoir* This war, by the 
by, is going to be a lengthy business, which is, so far as European 
interests are concerned, altogether desirable. 

Izzy has sent me yet another pamphlet, his speech at Frankfurt 
am Main.° Since I now spend 10 hours a day working ex officio at 
economics,’'? I can hardly be expected to waste my leisure hours 
on reading these schoolboy essays. So, for the present the thing’s 
been filed away. My spare time is now devoted to differential and 
integral calculus. Apropos, I have a superfluity of works on the 
subject and will send you one, should you wish to tackle it. I 
should consider it so be almost essential to your military studies. 
Moreover, it is a much easier branch of mathematics (so far as 
mere technicalities are concerned) than, say, the more advanced 
aspects of algebra. Save for a knowledge of the more ordinary 
kind of algebra and trigonometry, no preliminary study is 
required except a general familiarity with conic sections. 

Will you write me a reasonably well-founded assessment of the 
enclosed pamphlet by the ‘Duc du Roussillon’—you may still have 
some recollection of him under the name of ‘Pi’ '—since he writes 
to me daily asking me for my ‘opinion’? 

3 See this volume, pp. 462-63. - > This presumably refers to the Notes on the Polish 
question Britain, France and Austria sent to the Russian government on 17 and 18 
June 1863. - © ‘The Intervention in Poland’, The Free Press, V. XI, No. 7, 1 July 
1863. - 4 act of despair - © Arbeiterlesebuch. Rede Lassalle’s zu Frankfurt am Main am 17. 
und 19, Mai 1863. - This seems to refer to the pamphlet [Pi de Cosprons,] Mémoire 
sur Vorigine scythocimmérienne de la langue romane, par M. le duc du Roussillon. 

If at all possible in this heat, will you take a reasonably close 
look at the enclosed. “Tableau Economique’ which I am substituting 
for Quesnay’s table °° and let me know your objections, if any. It 
embraces the whole process of reproduction. 

As you know, A. Smith sees the -Natural’ OY ‘NECESSARY PRICE’ aS 
being composed of wages, profit (interest) and rent—i.e. as wholly 
resolved into revenue. This nonsense has been taken over by 
Ricardo, although he excludes rent from the catalogue as being 
purely fortuitous. Nearly all economists have taken this over from 
Smith, and those who contest it succumb to some other folly. 

Smith himself is conscious of the nonsensicality of subsuming 
the gross product of a society simply under revenue (which may be 
consumed annually), whereas in the case of each individual branch 
of production he resolves price into capital (raw materials, 
machinery, etc.) and revenue (wages, profit, rent). If this were so, a 
society would have to start each year de novo, without capital. 

Now as regards my table, which figures in one of the last 
chapters of my work by way of recapitulation, the following 1s 
essential to a proper understanding of it: 

1. The figures, which are arbitrary, represent millions. 

2. Here means of subsistence are taken to mean everything that 
goes into the consumption fund each year (or might without 
accumulation, which is excluded from the table, go into the 
consumption fund), 

In Class I (means of subsistence) the gross product (700) consists 
of means of subsistence which are, by their very nature, not 
therefore included in constant capital (raw materials and machin- 
ery, buildings, etc.). Similarly, in Class II, the entire product consists 
of commodities that constitute constant capital, i. e. re-enter the 
process of reproduction in the form of raw materials and 
machinery. 

3. Ascending lines are dotted, descending ones continuous. 

4. Constant capital is that part of capital that consists of raw 
materials and machinery. Variable capital that which is exchanged 
for labour. 

5. For example, in agriculture, etc., one part of the same 
product (e.g. wheat) goes to form means of subsistence, whereas 
another part (wheat, for instance) re-enters reproduction in its 
natural form (e.g. as seed) as a raw material. But this does nothing 
to alter the case, since such branches of production figure under 
Class II or Class I according to which capacity is involved. 

a afresh 

6. The hub of the matter, then, is as follows: 

Category I. Means of subsistence. Working materials and 
machinery=e.g. £400 (i.e. that part of these that is included in the 
annual product as dechet*; that part of the machinery, etc., which 
is not used up does not figure at all in the table). The variable 
capital exchanged for labour=100, reproduces itself as 300, since 
100 replaces wages in the shape of the product, and 200 
represents surplus value (unpaid surplus labour). The product=700, 
of which 400 represents the value of the constant capital which, 
however, has passed entirely into the product and must hence be 
replaced. 

In the case of this relationship between variable capital and 
surplus value it is assumed that the worker. works '/; of the 
working day for himself and °/; for his natural supERiors. 

Hence 100 (variable capital), as is indicated by the dotted line, is 
paid out in money as wages; with this 100 (indicated by the 
descending line) the worker buys the product of this class, i.e. 
means of subsistence for 100. Thus, the money flows back to 
capitalist class I. 

The surplus value of 200 in its general form= profit, which, 
however, is split up into industrial profit (commercial included), and 
further into interest, which the industrial capitalist pays in money, 
and rent, which he likewise pays in money. This money paid out 
for industrial profit, interest and rent, flows back (indicated by 
descending lines) since the product of class I is bought in return 
for it. Hence all the money laid out by the industrial capitalist 
within class I flows back to him, while 300 of the product, 700, is 
consumed by the workers, entrepreneurs, MonigD MEN and LANDLORDS. 
In class I this leaves a surplus of products (of means of subsistence) 
of 400, and a deficit of constant capital of 400. 

Category II. Machinery and raw materials. 

Since the gross product of this category, not only that part of the 
product which replaces constant capital, but also that which 
represents the equivalent of wages and surplus value, consists of 
raw materials and machinery, the revenue of this category cannot 
be realised in its own product but only in the product of category 
I. Disregarding accumulation, as is done here, category I can, 
however, buy only as much from category II as it needs for the 
replacement of its constant capital, while category II can lay out 
on the product of category I only that part of its product which 
represents wages and surplus value (revenue). Hence the workers 

a depreciation 

in category II lay out their money,=133'/s, on the product of 
category II. The same thing happens with the surplus value in 
category II, which, as sub I. is split up into industrial profit, interest, 
and rent. Hence 400 in money flows from category II to the 
industrial capitalists in category I, who, in return, transfer the 
remainder of their product, =400, to the former. 

’ With this 400 in money, class I buys what is necessary to replace 
its constant capital, =400, from category II, to which the money 
paid out in wages and consumption (by the industrial capitalists 
themselves, the moniep MeN and the LanpLorps) thus flows back. 
Hence category II retains 533'/,; of its gross product, and, with 
this, it replaces its own constant capital, which has been used up. 

The movement, partly within category I, partly between 
categories I and II, also shows how money flows back to the 
respective industrial capitalists in both categories, money which 
will again go to pay wages, interest and rent. 

Category III represents reproduction as a whole. 

The gross product of category II is shown here as the constant 
capital of society as a whole, and the gross product of category I as 
that part of the product which replaces the variable capital (the 
wages fund) and the revenues of the classes which share the 
surplus value between them. 

I have put Quesnay’s table underneath and will explain it in some 
worps In my next letter. 

Salut. 

Your 
K. M. 

Apropos. Edgar Bauer has been given a post in—the Prussian 
Press Department.