{London,] 25 February 1859 

Dear Engels, 

I am writing to you again this evening because Time presses. I am 
morally convinced that, in view of what I’ve written to Lassalle, 
Duncker will accept the pamphlet. Admittedly, little Jew Braun 
hasn’t written to me since my manuscript‘ arrived, and that was 
over four weeks ago. For one thing, he was busy with the 
publication of his own immortal, ‘inflammatory’ work? (sti, the 
litle Jew, even his Heraclitus, although atrociously written, is 
BETTER THAN ANYTHING THE DEMOCRATS COULD Boast oF), and then he will 
probably have to do the final proof-reading of my scrawl. For 
another thing, he may be a trifle stunned by the terrible knock on 
the head dealt him indirectly by my analysis of money. For his 
Heraclitus contains the following note which I shall now quote 
verbatim despite its interminable length (you’ve got to read it, 
though): 

‘If we remarked above that in the said fragment Heraclitus has specified the 
true nature and function of money in political economy’ (Heraclitus in fact says: 

a Johann Carl Juta - > F, Engels, Po and Rhine. - « A Contribution to the Critique of 
Political Economy - 4 F. Lassalle, Franz von Sickingen. - ¢ F. Lassalle, Die Philosophie 
Herakleitos des Dunklen von Ephesos. Further on Marx quotes Note 3 to p. 224 of Vol. I 
of this work. 

‘mypos TdviapeiBeodar TavTa, xal TIP andviwy Gonep xpvoov ypjpaTa, xai 
XPNLATwWY xpvads’4), ‘this, we need hardly point out, is not to make a political eco- 
nomist of him, and hence it is far from our intention to suggest that he had grasped 
any of the wider implications of that fragment. But although this science neither 
existed nor could have existed at that time and therefore was not the object of 
Heraclitus’ thought, it is correct to say that, precisely because he never goes by 
reflex categories but only by the speculative concept, Heraclitus has, in that frag- 
ment, discerned the nature of money in all its profundity and this more truly than 
many a modern economist. And it may not be altogether without interest or, 
indeed, so irrelevant as might at first appear, to observe how what is simply a 
consequence of that thought automatically gives rise to the modern discoveries in 
this field.”> (Nota bene. Lassalle doesn’t know the first thing about these disco- 
veries.) 

“When Heraclitus suggests that money as a medium of exchange is the antithesis 
of all real products entering exchange and owes its real existence solely to the same’ 
(I underline where Lassalle has underlined), ‘this is not to say that money as such is 
itself a product invested with a material value of its own, one commodity among 
other commodities, as Say’s school’ (a nice Continental DELUSION that there is such a 
thing as Say’s school) ‘persists in regarding coin up to this very day; rather it is but 
the ideal representative of circulating real products, a symbol of value for the latter, 
which merely stands for them. And that is only in part a conclusion drawn from the 
fragment, in part only the concept implicit in it for Heraclitus himself. 

‘But if all money is merely the ideal unit or expression of value of all real 
circulating products and owes its real existence solely to these, which are at one and 
the same time its antithesis, it follows from the very consequence’ (nice style! It 
follows from ‘the very consequence’) ‘of this concept that a country’s sum of values 
or its wealth may be increased only by an increase in real products, but never by an 
increase in money since money, of course, far from being even merely a factor of 
wealth and value’ (now we have wealth and value; before it was sum of values or 
wealth), ‘never expresses, as an abstract unit, more than the value which is situated 
in the products’ (and a nice district, too‘), ‘and is real only therein. Hence the error 
of the balance of trade system.’ (This is worthy of Ruge.) ‘It further follows that All 
money is always equal in value to all circulating products, since it merely reduces the 
latter to an ideal unit of value, hence merely gives expression to their value; hence 
that, by an increase or decrease in the amount of money available, the value of this 
total sum of money will never be affected and will always remain equal only to that 
of all circulating products; that strictly speaking it is never possible to talk of the 
value of all money as compared with the value of all circulating products, because 
such a comparison supposes that the value of money and the value of products are 
two values in their own right, whereas only one value exists, which is realised in 
concrete form in the material product, and expressed as an abstract unit of value in 
money; or rather, value itself is nothing but a unit abstracted from real things, in 
which it does not exist as such, and finding its special expression in money; not 
only, then, does the value of all money remain equal to the value of all products 
but, properly speaking, all money is only the value of all circulating products.’ (This 
ultra-bold type is the author's.) ‘Hence it follows that, with an increase in the 

« ‘All things are exchanged for fire and fire for all things, as wares are exchanged for 
gold and gold for wares.’ Here and below the insertions in parentheses are 
Marx's. - > Marx’s italics - ¢ An allusion to a joke current at the time: one woman tells 
another of her son’s death in action near Leipzig (1813), whereupon the other 
remarks: ‘And a nice district, too!’ (Auch eine schéne Gegend!’) 

quantity of coin, since the value of the total remains the same, that of each 
individual coin can only fall, just as it will rise again with a decrease in the quantity 
of coin. It further follows that, since money is merely the unreal theoretical 
abstraction of value and represents the antithesis of real products and materials, 
money as such does not need to have any intrinsic reality, ie. need not consist of 
any truly valuable material, but may equally be paper money, and it is precisely 
then that it corresponds most closely to its concept. All these and many other 
conclusions, which have only been reached, and along entirely different lines, since 
Ricardo's studies and have by no means found universal acceptance, follow from the 
mere consequence of that speculative concept discerned by Heraclitus.’ 

I, of course, paid not the slightest heed to this Talmudic wisdom 
but roundly slated Ricardo for his theory of money which, by the 
way, did not originate with him but with Hume and Montesquieu. 
So Lassalle may feel this to be a personal insult. There was actually 
no harm in it, for in my anti-Proudhon piece’* I myself adopted 
Ricardo’s theory. But I'd had a perfectly ridiculous letter from 
little Jew Braun in which he said that he had ‘the early publication 
of my manuscript at heart, although he himself was engaged in 
writing a major work on political economy’?” for which he had 
‘allocated two years’. But if I were to ‘deprive him of too much 
that was new, he might abandon the whole thing’. Wet, to this I 
replied that there was no fear of rivalry since this ‘new’ science 
could accommodate himself and me and a dozen more besides.” 
My disquisition on money will now show him, either that I know 
nothing of the subject—although if ’m wrong, so is the whole 
history of the monetary theory—or else that he is an ass, since, 
with a few empty abstract expressions such as ‘abstract unit’, he 
presumes to lay down the law about empirical matters which, if 
one wishes to hold forth about them, call for study, and prolonged 
study INTO THE BARGAIN. For this reason he may, in the innermost 
recesses of his heart, be nourishing something of a grudge against 
me just now. But—and this is what I have been leading up 
to—firstly, Lassalle has really too great a stake ‘in the cause’ and, 
secondly, he is too much of an ‘Ephraim Artful’ not to keep in 
with us cotite que coüte, which is all the more necessary to him 
because of his quarrel with the Düsseldorf people.“ Moreover, 
living in Berlin has made him see that, for an energetic fellow 
like himself, the bourgeois party holds out no prospects what- 
ever.**! 

So with clever Manacement the man will be ours, body and soul, 
no matter how much he indulges in ‘inflammatory’ antics or makes 

* The Poverty of Philosophy. Answer to the Philosophy of Poverty by M. Proudhon - » See this 
volume, p. 355. - © cost what it may - 4 See this volume, pp. 23-24 and 27. 

Heraclitus pay for being the most succinct of philosophers by 
providing him with the most prolix of commentaries. For the same 
reason I am sure that en cas de besoin* he will force Duncker to take 
your pamphlet. I have, by the by, so framed my letter that he can 
show the whole of it to Duncker. It was, in fact, written for 
Duncker rather than Lassalle, though for all his artfulness 
Ephraim is unlikely to notice the fact. 

Hence I consider it certain that Duncker will take the pamphlet, 
so the main thing now is for you to set to work on it at once, for 
this is like a newspaper article. There’s no time to be lost. For the 
same reason—immediacy of impact—I believe you shouldn't 
exceed 4 or 5 sheets (if as much is needed). So you may regard 
yourself as totally absolved from the Tribune work (unless some 
martial occurrence steals a march on your pamphlet, which is 
improbable), until you’ve finished the thing. The most sensible 
thing to do would be to plead sudden illness and stay away from 
the office, so as to write the thing all at one go. 

Amicus Engels Senior, amicus Ermen (Gotofredus!), sed magis 
amicum 16 @povetv’.? 

‘ped, PEV, Ppovetv ws Secvov, Evda pH TEAH 
AvEL PpovovvTt,’¢ 
as your old man might say to you, like Tiresias did to King 
Oedipus, to which, however, you would reply that he 
‘<év Tots xépdeor 
pL6vov SéSopxe, THY TéxUNY Sav TupPdAds»’.4 

Salut. 

Your 
K. M.