MARX TO ENGELS! 


IN MANCHESTER 
{London,] 2 April 1858 


‘Dear Frederick, 


The Guardian stories highly amusinc. A correspondent of the 
Daily Telegraph (pirectLy unvER Pam's auspices) writes of the great 


a See this volume, pp. 566-68. - > Ibid., p. 289. 


158. Marx to Engels. 2 April 1858 297 


danger of being ‘pear’ in Paris, and says that all ‘pear ENcusHMEN’ 
were being hounded by the police as Allsops. Also that EnciisHMen 
were leaving Paris en masse, partly because of police chicanery, 
partly for fear of an outbreak. For if the latter were to happen 
and the Bonapartists be victorious, the John Bulls feared they 
might be massacred by the mappenep sotpiers, whereat the corre- 
spondent himself naively comments that in sucH A CASE [HE] SHOULD LIKE 
TO BE ANYWHERE ELSE BUT IN Paris. ‘This pesertion by the Bulls at tus 
MOMENT OF COMMERCIAL DEPRESSION is queering the pitch of the Parisian 
épicier? and householder, whores, etc. Have you seen that 300 
million francs have AVOWEDLY ‘DISAPPEARED’ FROM THE BUDGET, AND NOBODY 
KNOWS WHAT HAS BECOME OF THEM? ‘There will, sy anp sy, be further 
REVELATIONS about Bonapartist Finance, and then the asses on the 
Tribune will realise the wisdom of not having published the very 
ELABORATED Articles I sent them on the subject six months ago.” 
The fellows are asses and anything which is not, in the crudest 
sense, a ‘question of the day’ they tend to cast aside as 
UNINTERESTING, Only to go and compile the most egregious rubbish 
about the selfsame subject as soon as it does become 4 U’ordre du 
jour” . 

Nota bene: in the military clubs here it is being rumoured that 
EvipENcE has been discovered among the papers left by Raglan that, 
1. at the battle of the Alma” he rightly suggested to attack the 
Russians, not from the direction of the coast, but from the 
opposite flank, and drive them into the sea; 2. that he proposed to 
advance on Simferopol after the battle of the Alma; 3. that at 
Inkerman™ it was only by dint of the most urgent pleas and 
MENACES that he extorted from Canrobert the order for Bosquet to 
hasten to his [Raglan’s] assistance. It is further said that, if the 
boasting on the other side of the Channel were to continue, these 
papers would be published, providing proof that the French were 
ever ready To BETRAY THEIR DEAR ALLIES. Indeed, a few uints which de Lacy 
Evans dropped in the House or Commons seem to indicate something 
of the kind. 

I’ve been so ill with my bilious complaint this week that I am 
incapable of thinking, reading, writing or, indeed, of anything save 
the artictes for the Tribune. These, of course, cannot be allowed to 
lapse since I must draw on the curs as soon as possible. But my 
indisposition is disastrous, for I can’t begin working on the thing 
for Duncker‘ until I’m better and my fingers regain their vicour 
and Grasp. 


a grocer - > the order of the day - © K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political 
Economy. 


298 158. Marx to Engels. 2 April 1858 


The following is a sHorr ouTLINE OF THE FIRST PART, The whole thing 
is to be divided into 6 books: 1. On Capital. 2. Landed Property. 
3. Wage Labour. 4. State. 5, International. Trade. 6. World 
Market. 

1. Capital falls into 4 sections. a) Capital en général. (This is the 
substance of the first instalment.) b) Competition, or the interaction of 
many capitals. c) Credit, where capital, as against individual 
capitals, is shown to be a universal element. d) Share capital as the 
most perfected form (turning into communism) together with all 
its contradictions. The transition from capital to landed property is 
also historical, since landed property in its modern form is a 
product of the action of capital on feudal, etc., landed property. In 
the same way, the transition of landed property to wage labour is 
not only dialectical but historical, since the last product of modern 
landed property is the general introduction of wage labour, which 
then appears as the basis of the whole business. 

WELL (UT IS DIFFICULT FOR ME TO-DAY TO WRITE), let uS now come to the 
corpus delicti.* 

I. Capital. First section: Capital in general. (Throughout this 
section’ wages are invariably assumed to be at their minimum. 
Movements in wages themselves and the rise and fall of that 
minimum will be considered under wage labour. Further, landed 
property is assumed to be zero, i. e. landed property as a special 
economic relation is of no relevance as yet. Only by this procedure 
is it possible to discuss one relation without discussing all the 
rest.) 

1. Value. Simply reduced to the quantity of labour; time as a 
measure of labour. Use-value—whether regarded subjectively as 
the userutness of labour, or objectively as the utmity of. the 
product—is shown here simply as the material prerequisite of 
value, and one which for the present is entirely irrelevant to the 
formal economic definition. Value.as such has no ‘substance’ other 
than actual labour. This definition of value, first outlined by Petty 
and neatly elaborated by Ricardo,” is simply bourgeois wealth in its 
most abstract form. As such, it already presupposes 1. the 
transcending of indigenous communism (India, etc.), 2. of all 
undeveloped, pre-bourgeois modes of production which are not in 
every respect governed by exchange. Although an abstraction, it is 
an historical abstraction and hence feasible only when grounded 
on a specific economic development of society. All objections to 


a the incriminating evidence. Here, the main topic. - > W. Petty, A Treatise of Taxes 
and Contributions...; D. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy,and Taxation. 


The second page of Marx’s letter to Engels of 2 April 1858 


158. Marx to Engels. 2 April 1858 301 


this definition of value derive either from less developed relations 
of production or else are based on confused thinking, whereby the 
more concrete economic definitions from which value has been 
abstracted (and which may therefore also be seen, on the other 
hand, as a further development of the same) are upheld as against 
value in this its abstract, undeveloped form. In view of the 
uncertainty of messteurs les économistes themselves about the precise 
relation of this abstraction to later, more concrete forms 
of bourgeois wealth, these objections were plus ou moins* 
justified. 

The contradiction between the general characteristics of value 
and its material existence in a particular commodity, etc.—these 
general characteristics being the same as those later appearing in 
money—gives rise to the category of money. 

2. Money. 

Some discussion of precious metals as vehicles of the money 
relation. 

a) Money as a measure. A few comments on the ideal measure in 
Steuart, Attwood,’ Urquhart; in more comprehensible form 
among the advocates of labour money (Gray, Bray,> etc. An 
occasional swipe at the Proudhonists). The value of a commodity 
translated into money is its price. For the moment price appears 
only in this purely formal distinction between it and value. Thus, 
in accordance with the general law of value, a specific amount of 
money merely expresses a specific amount of objectified labour. In 
so far as money is a measure, the variability of its own value is of 
no importance. 

b) Money as a means of exchange, or simple circulation. 

Here we need only consider the simple form of circulation as 
such. All the other conditions by which it is determined are 
external to it, and hence will not be considered till later 
(presuppose more highly developed relations). If the commodity 
be C and money M then, although simple circulation evinces the 
two circuits or final points: C—M—-M—C and M—C—C—M 
(this latter constituting the transition to c), the point of departure 
and the point of return in no way coincide, save by chance. Most 
of the so-called laws put forward by economists do not consider 
money circulation within its own confines, but as subsumed 
under, and determined by, higher movements. All this must be set 


a more or less - » Marx means the following works: J. Steuart, An Inquiry into the 
Principles of Political Oeconomy...; D. Urquhart, Familiar Words..., J. Gray, Lectures on 
the Nature and Use of Money, The Social System...; J. F. Bray, Labour’s Wrongs and 
Labour’s Remedy.... 


302 158. Marx to Engels. 2 April 1858 


aside. (Belongs in part to the theory of credit; but also calls for 
consideration where money appears again, but further defined.) 
Here, then, money as means of circulation (coin). But likewise as 
realisation (not simply evanescent) of price. From the simple 
statement that a commodity, in terms of price, has already been 
exchanged for money in theory before it is so exchanged in fact, 
there naturally follows the important economic law that the volume 
of the circulating medium is determined by prices, not vice versa. (Here, 
some historical stuff on the polemic concerning this point.) Again 
it follows that velocity may be a substitute for volume, but that a 
certain volume is essential to simultaneous acts of exchange in so 
far as the relation of these themselves is not that of + and —, an 
equalisation and consideration which will only be touched on at 
this juncture by way of anticipation. At this point I shall not go 
further into the development of this section and would only add 
that the lack of congruence of C—M and M—C is the most 
abstract and superficial form in which the possibility of crises is 
expressed. If the law concerning the determination of circulating 
volume by prices be developed, it will be found that the 
assumptions made here are by no means applicable to all states of 
society; hence the fatuity of comparing e.g. the influx of money 
from Asia into Rome and its effect on prices there tout bonnement* 
with modern commercial relations. On closer examination, the 
most abstract definitions invariably point to a broader, definite, 
concrete, historical basis. (OF course, since to the extent that they 
are definite they have been abstracted therefrom.) 

c) Money qua money. This is a development of the formula 
M—C—C—M. Money, the independent existence of value as 
opposed to circulation; material existence of abstract wealth. 
Already manifested in circulation in so far as it appears, not only 
as a means of circulation, but as realising price. In this capacity c), 
in which a) and b) appear to be no more than functions, money is 
the universal commodity of contracts (here the variability of its 
value acquires importance: value being determined by labour 
time); it becomes an object of Hoarpinc. (This would still seem to be 
an important function in Asia, as formerly in the ancient world 
and in the Middle Ages ceneraity. Now persists only in a 
subordinate capacity within the banking system. In times of crisis 
money in this form again acquires importance. In this form money 
considered along with the world-historical peLusions which it 
engenders, etc. Destructive properties, etc.) As the realisation of all 


4 just like that 


158. Marx to Engels. 2 April 1858 303 


higher forms in which value will appear; definitive forms in which 
all relations of value are externally concluded. Money, however, 
once fixed in this form, ceases to be an economic relation which is 
lost in its material medium, gold and silver. On the other hand, in 
so far as money comes into circulation and is again exchanged for 
C, the final process, the consumption of the commodity, again falls 
outside the economic relation. The principle of self-reproduction 
is not intrinsic to simple money circulation, which therefore 
implies something extrinsic to itself. Implicit in money—as the 
elaboration of its definitions shows—is the postulate capital, i.e. 
value entering into and maintaining itself in circulation, of which 
it is at the same time the prerequisite. This transition also 
historical. The antediluvian form of capital is commercial capital, 
which always generates money. At the same time the emergence of 
real capital, either from money or merchant capital, which gains 
control of production. 

d) This simple circulation, considered as such—and it consti- 
tutes the surface of bourgeois society in which the underlying 
operations which gave rise to it are obliterated—evinces no 
distinction between the objects of exchange, save formal and 
evanescent ones. Here we have the realm of liberty, equality and of 
property based on ‘labour’. Accumulation, as it appears here in the 
form of Hoarpinc, is merely greater thrift, etc. On the one hand 
then, the fatuity of the economic harmonists, modern free traders 
(Bastiat, Carey,’ etc.), in upholding this most superficial and most 
abstract relation of production as their truth, as against the more 
advanced relations and their antagonisms. Fatuity of the 
Proudhonists and suchlike socialists, in contrasting the ideas of 
equality, etc., corresponding to this exchange of equivalents (or 
presumed as sucn), to the inequalities, etc., to which this exchange 
reverts and from which it emanates. In this sphere, appropriation 
by labour, the exchange of equivalents, appears as the law of 
appropriation so that exchange simply returns the same value in 
another material form. In short, while everything may be ‘lovely’ 
here, it will soon come to a sticky end and this as a result of the 
law of equivalence. For now we come to 

3. Capital. 

This is really the most important part of the first instalment and 
one on which I particularly need your opinion. But today I can’t 
go on writing. My bilious trouble makes it difficult for me to ply 


a Fr. Bastiat, Harmonies économiques; H. Ch. Carey, Essay on the Rate of 
Wages... 


304 159. Engels to Marx. 9 April 1858 


my pen, and keeping my head bent over the paper makes me 
dizzy. So FoR NEXT TIME, 


Salut. 
Your 
K. M. 
First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen Printed according to the original 
F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, ; . Se “te 
oa : oe ee tullgar Published in English in full for the 


first time