[London,] 14 August 1851 
28 Dean Street, Soho 

Dear Engels, 

In a day or two I shall be sending you the Proudhon itself,” but 
send it back as soon as you’ve read it. For I intend—for the 

a fair price of the shopkeepers. Four francs, sir, that’s the fairest price! - 
b P. J. Proudhon, Idée générale de la Révolution au XIX€ siécle. 

money—to publish 2-3 sheets about the book. So let me have your 
views in greater detail than your hasty letter-writing generally 
allows.*™ 

The Proudhon business—and the whole is first and foremost a 
polemic against communism, however much he may filch from it 
and however much it may appear to him in the light of the 
Cabet-Blanc transfiguration—boils down, in my opinion, to the 
following line of reasoning: 

The real enemy to be combatted is capital. The pure economic 
affirmation of capital is interest. So-called profit is nothing but a 
particular form of wage. We abolish interest by transforming it 
into an annuity, i.e. repayment of capital by annual instalments. 
Thus the working class—read industrial class—will be assured 
precedence for ever, while the actual capitalist class will be 
condemned to an ever-diminishing existence. The various forms 
of interest are money interest, rent interest and lease interest. In 
this way bourgeois society is retained, justified, and divested only 
of its mauvaise tendance. 

Liquidation sociale is simply a means of building anew a ‘healthy’ 
bourgeois society. Quick or slow, peu nous importe.” I want first to 
hear your views on the contradictions, uncertainties and obs- 
curities of this liquidation as such. The truly healing balm of the 
newly built society, however, consists in the abolition of interest, 
i.e. in the yearly transformation of interest into an annuité. This, 
introduced not as a means but as an economic law of the reformed 
bourgeois society, has, of course, a twofold result: 

1. The transformation of small, non-industrial capitalists into 
industrial capitalists. 2. The perpetuation of the big capitalist class, 
for au fond‘ if one takes an overall view of the thing, it becomes 
apparent that, by and large,—and aside from industrial profits— 
society never pays anything except the annuité. Were the converse 
true, Dr Price’s compound interest calculations’ would become a 
reality and the entire globe would not suffice to pay interest on a 
capital, however tiny, invested at the time of Christ. In fact, 
however, it may be confidently said that the capital invested, 
whether in Jand or otherwise, over the past 50 or 100 years e.g. in 
England—the most tranquil and bourgeois of countries, that 
is—has never as yet paid interest, at least in terms of price, which 
is what we are concerned with here. Let us assume, e.g., that at 
the highest estimate, England’s national wealth amounts to e.g. 5 

a evil tendency -> it matters little to us - © basically -4 The reference is to 
R. Price’s An Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the National Debt and Observations 
on Reversionary Payments... 

thousand million. Suppose England produces 500 millions each 
year. Hence England’s entire wealth merely=England’s annual 
labour X10. Hence, not only is this capital not paying interest, it is 
not even reproducing itself in terms of value. And this by reason of 
the simple law. Value originally determined by the original 
production costs, in terms of the working time originally needed 
to manufacture the object. But once the product is produced, its 
price is determined by the costs necessarily incurred in reproducing 
it. And reproduction costs fall steadily and at a speed proportion- 
ate to the current state of industrialisation. Hence the law of 
the continuous depreciation of capital value itself, through which 
the law des rentes* and of interest, which would otherwise lead to 
absurdity, is nullified. This also explains the thesis you yourself 
put forward that no factory covers its production costs. Thus 
Proudhon cannot refashion society by introducing a law which, au 
fond, is already being observed without his counsel. 

The means by which Proudhon proposes to achieve all this is 
the bank. Il y a ici un qui pro quo.” The bank’s business is divisible 
into two parts: 1. The conversion of capital into cash. Here money is 
simply substituted for capital, which can, of course, be done simply 
at production cost, i.e. at '/) to '/, per cent. 2. Advances of capital in 
the form of money, and here the interest rate will adjust itself in 
accordance with the amount of capital. Al! that credit can do here 
is to convert by means of concentration, etc., etc., existing but 
unproductive wealth into truly active capital. Proudhon considers 
No. 2 to be as easy as No. |, and au bout du compte’ he will find 
that by making over an illusory mass ot capital in the form of 
money he will at best reduce the interest on the capital, only to 
increase its price in like proportion. Whereby nothing is gained 
but the discrediting of his paper. 

I shall allow you to savour in the original the correlation 
between customs and interest. The thing’s too delicious to spoil it 
by mutilation. Mr Proudhon entirely fails to elucidate either the 
commune’s share in the houses and land—something he certainly 
should have done as regards the communists—or how the workers 
come into possession of the factories. At any rate, while anxious 
to have ‘des compagnies ouvriéres puissantes’,” he is so afraid of 
these industrial ‘guilds’ that he reserves the right, if not for the 
State, then for société, to dissolve them. As a true Frenchman who 
knows neither a Moses & Son* nor a Mivcorutan rarmer, he confines 

a of rents - Here there is a quid pro quo. - © in the final analysis - ¢ powerful 
workers’ associations - © a large firm of men’s clothiers in London 

201. Marx to Engels. 14 August 185] 425 

association to the factory. To him, the French peasant and the 
French shoemaker, tailor, mercuanr appear as des données éternelles 
et qu'il faut accepter.* But the more I go into the stuff, the more I 
become convinced that the reform of agriculture, and hence the 
question of property based on it, is the alpha and omega of the 
coming upheaval. Without that, Father Malthus will turn out to be 
right. 

So fay as Louis Blanc, etc., are concerned the piece is capital, 
notably because of its cheeky outpourings about Rousseau, 
Robespierre, God, fraternité and similar twaddle. 

As to the New-York Tribune, you've got to help me, now that Pm 
so busy with political economy. Write a series of articles on 
Germany, from 1848 onwards." Witty and uninhibited. The 
gentlemen of the foreign department are exceedingly uppish. 

In a few days’ time I'll send you 2 volumes of Roman stuff. To 
wit Economie politique des Romains. Par Dureau de la Malle. I sent 
to Paris for the book (very erudite). It will open your eyes to, 
amongst other things, the economic backing of the Roman way vf 
waging war, which was nothing else than the— cadastre. What’s the 
cheapest way of sending the thing to your There are 2 fat 
volumes. 

You must pinch the Lithographische Correspondenz article” or try 
to get hold of a copy. As soon as Weydemeyer gets there, he must 
make the jackasses in New York run the gauntiet. For that all the 
documents are needed. Faucher is correspondent of the Neue 
Preussische Zeitung. Sigel has not yet turned up. Willich, of course, 
is a unifying member of the Emigré Fraternity. They held their first 
general meeting on Friday. We had a spy there. The proceedings 
opened with a reacing (by General Haug) of the Pihoprapiascte 
Correspondenz article in which we are attacked. For because of us 
they live and move and have their being. Next, a resolution in 
favour of all manner of undesirable and contentious lectures. Mr 
Meyen undertook to do Prussia, Oppenheim, England; Ruge, 
France; and Kinkel, i 
forward, by the way, to hearing what you think about ail this.