MARX TO FERDINAND DOMELA NIEUWENHRUIS ”* 

London, 27 June 1880 
41 Maitland Park Road, N. W. 

Dear Sir, 

At the urgent insistence of my doctor I must refrain from work of 
any kind for some time to come; [indeed] I should already have left 
London on a recuperative trip to the seaside or mountains had I not 
been prevented from doing so by the very serious illness of my wife. 
Letters sent to the above address, however, will always find me, as 
they will be forwarded. 

But my present state of health apart, I could not have complied 
‘with your request, ?° if only because I don’t know enough Dutch to 
be able to judge whether this or that expression is appropriate. 

Nevertheless, to go by the essays of yours I have read in the Jahr- 
buch der Sozialwissenschaft (Volume I, Second Half),? I have not the 
slightest doubt that you are the right man to provide the Dutch with 
a résumé of Capital—-I would also mention en passant that 
Mr Schramm (C.A.S., p. 81) mzsconstrues my theory of value. From a 
note in Capital to the effect that A. Smith and Ricardo are mistaken 
in lumping together value and price of production?’ (let alone market 
prices, therefore) — he could already have gathered that the connec- 
tion between ‘value’ and ‘price of production’, hence also between 
‘value’ and the market prices that oscillate about the ‘price of pro- 
duction’, has no place whatever in the theory of value as such, still 
less can it be anticipated by cliché-ridden, scholastic generalisations. 

Under present circumstances the 2nd part of Capital? cannot 
appear in Germany, which I am quite glad of inasmuch as certain 
economic phenomena are, at this precise moment, entering upon 
a new phase of development and hence call for fresh appraisal. 

With kindest regards, 

Yours sincerely, 
[Karl Marx]