London, 12 November 1858 
9 Grafton Terrace, Maitland Park, 
Haverstock Hill 

Dear Lassalle, 

Post tot pericula! My answer to your last letter‘ was held up by 
an infamous toothache. I didn’t answer your letter from Frankfurt‘ 
because you gave no address. 

Well, d’abord: beatus ille who is not seen through Késter’s eyes 
but who sees with the eyes of Késter. I and Freiligrath had 
explained at length to Koster himself that throughout the summer 

aE. Bauer, ‘Vortrage tiber die Geschichte der Politik...’, Die Neue Zeit, No. 20, 
6 November 1858. - > After so many dangers! - © of 22 October 1858 - 4 This letter 
is not extant. - ¢ first: Blessed is he (Horace, Epedes, II, 1). 

134-194 

the most severe liver trouble had virtually incapacitated me for 
work. And as for my ‘splendid circumstances’, Freiligrath and I 
had deemed fit to conjure up the brightest of pictures for the 
benefit of this average German bourgeois, while altogether 
concealing the darker side, since we both opined that even the best 
bourgeois of this type could not fail to derive a certain malicious 
satisfaction from the knowledge of what the fuoruscitis* cir- 
cumstances were really like. So rar Késter. 

As regards the delay in sending off the manuscript,” I was first 
prevented from doing so by illness, and subsequently had to catch 
up on the other ‘bread and butter’ work. But the real reason is 
this: the material was to hand and all that I was concerned with was 
the form. But to me the style of everything I wrote seemed tainted 
with liver trouble. And I have a twofold motive for not allowing 
this work to be spoiled on medical grounds: 

1. It is the product of 15 years of research, i.e. the best years of 
my life. 

2. In it an important view of social relations is scientifically 
expounded for the first time. Hence I owe it to the Party that the 
thing shouldn’t be disfigured by the kind of heavy, wooden style 
proper to a disordered liver. 

My aim is not to produce an elegant exposé, but only to write as 
I usually do, which, during these months of sickness, was 
impossible—at least on this subject, although over the same period 
I was compelled to write, and hence did write, the equivalent of at 
least 2 printed volumes of English leading articles de omnibus rebus 
et quibusdam aliis.< : 

I believe that even if someone less intelligent than you were to 
acquaint Mr Duncker with this state of affairs, he could not but 
sanction a mode of conduct which, so far as he as a publisher was 
concerned, merely signified the endeavour to give him the best 
value for his money. 

{ shall have finished about 4 weeks from now, having only just 
begun the actual writing. 

There is a further circumstance which, however, you should not 
put to him until the arrival of the manuscript. The first section, 
‘Capital in General’, is likely to run to 2 instalments since I have 
discovered while elaborating it that here, at the very juncture 
where the most abstract aspect of political economy is to be 
discussed, undue brevity would render the thing indigestible to the 
public. But on the other hand this second instalment must come 

« refugees’ - b K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. - © about 
everything under the sun and more 

out at the same time as the first. This is demanded by their intrinsic 
coherence, and the whole effect depends upon it. 

Apropos. In your letter from Frankfurt you said nothing about 
your economic work.”” As far as our rivalry is concerned, I don’t 
believe that the German public suffers from an embarras de richesses 
in this field. In racr economics as a science in the German sense of 
the word has yet to be tackled and to that end not just the two of 
us but a dozen will be needed. I hope, at any rate, that my work 
will result in drawing a number of better brains into the same field 
of research. 

I should be infinitely obliged to you if you could write to me 
from time to time about conditions in Prussia and send me the 
relevant newspaper clippings. 

My wife sends her regards and says she is afraid Késter is as 
mistaken about ‘her beauty’ as he is about her husband’s health. 

Freiligrath likewise sends his regards. He is completely im- 
mersed in his profession of banker. Hence you should not hold his 
silence against him. 

Salut. 
Your 
K. M.