{London,] 10 April 1869 
1 Modena Villas, Maitland Park, 
Haverstock Hill, N. W. 
Dear Sir, 

Being aware of your services to the working class, I should 
before this have given myself the pleasure of sending you my last 
work: Das Kapital (2nd and 3d volumes not yet published *’), if I 
had known you to be a German reader. 

In your article on Lassalle in the Fortnightly* vou say first that 
Lassalle propagated my principles in Germany and say then that I 
am propagating ‘Lassallean principles’ in England. This would 
indeed be what the French call ‘un échange de bons procédés’.” 

In the volume I send you, you will find (Preface, p. VIII, note 
1) the plain facts stated viz. that ‘Lassalle has taken from my 
writings almost literally all his general theoretical developments’, but 
that I ‘have nothing whatever to do with his practical applications’ “ 

a J. M. Ludlow, ‘Ferdinand Lassalle, the German Social-Democrat’, The Fortnightly 
Review, Vol. V. No. XXVIII, 1 April 1869. - b exchange of good manner - © See 
present edition, Vol. 35. 

His practical nostrum, government aid to co-operative societies, I 
call by courtesy his. It belongs in fact to, and was zealously 
preached, at the time of Louis Philippe, by Monsieur Buchez, 
Ex-St. Simonian, author of the Histoire Parlementaire de la 
Révolution Française, glorifying Robespierre and the Holy Inquisi- 
tion.” M. Buchez put forward his views, f.i. in the journal 
L’Atelier, in opposition to the radical views of the French 
communism of that time. 

Since you quote my reply to Proudhon: Misére de la Philosophie, 
you cannot but be aware from its Jast chapter that in 1847, when 
all the political economists and all the socialists concurred on one 
single point—the condemnation of trades’ unions, I demonstrated 
their historical necessity. 

Yours truly 
Karl Marx 
J. M. Ludlow, Esq.