London, 8 February 1883 

Dear Mr Bernstein, 

1. I trust you have received the final ms. (The Mark) which was 
sent off from here registered on 20 December. But the printing delays 
are now getting really too outrageous. If it goes on like this you had 
better reset the title and put 1884 on it. When, exactly, will there be 
another sheet? 

* A reference to Max Kayser’s speech in the Reichstag on 1] January 1883.-" of En- 
gels’ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, German edition 

2. I have received —netther the first Accident Bill, nor Bebel’s 
speech on the subject. Meanwhile it has struck me that a specific 
attack on Bismarckian socialism has become outdated. * Viereck’s little 
paper” has lost all inclination for it. Singer, who had been suffering 
badly from nationalisation mania on the last occasion but one, 
was, on the last occasion, completely free of it and genuinely revo- 
lutionary,*°* while as for those weaklings in the Reichstag, 
Blos, Geiser & Co., their courage, if not their enthusiasm, would 
appear to have evaporated. So why crack a nut with a sledgeham- 
mer? I think we should let Bismarckian socialism dig its own 
grave. After which all that remains is a criticism of the rotten Las- 
sallean remnants. But if the pamphlet is printed so slowly, this 
attack, too, may have ceased to be topical by the time the thing 
comes out. 

3. You are mistaken about Malon. The man is not as stupid, or 
rather as naive, as he makes himself out to be. C’est un faux bonhomme< 
who has learnt from the Bakuninists how to manipulate people on the 
sly while making out that it is he himself who is being manipulated. 
One of these days you will see that I am right. 

4, Stock exchange tax. Has long existed here in England in the 
form of a simple, everyday stamp on the transfer document — '/2% of 
the amount paid and 5/- transfer fee (securities au porteur are rare 
over here; they are free). ‘The only consequence is that the real specu- 
lation on the stock exchange is in margin dealings where no actual 
transfer takes place. Hence only affects the so-called ‘solid capital in- 
vestment’. Nor has anything ever been devised that the stock market 
speculators cannot circumvent. 

I am against it, 1. because we, after all, demand only direct taxa- 
tion, rejecting any that is indirect, so that the people may know and 
sense what they are paying, and also so that capital can be got at in 
this way, 2. because we certainly cannot vote one penny to this gov- 
ernment. 

You are right in describing the outcry against the stock exchange 
as petty-bourgeois. The stock exchange simply adjusts the distribution 
of the surplus value already stolen from the workers, and how that is do- 
ne may at first be a matter of indifference to the workers as such. 
However the stock exchange adjusts this distribution in the direction 

@ See this volume, pp. 324-25.-> Siddeutsche Post-° Shifty customer -4 to bearer 

of centralisation, vastly accelerates the concentration of capitals and 
is therefore as revolutionary as the steam engine. 

Equally petty-bourgeois, though perhaps just excusable, are taxes 
with a moral purpose — beer, spirits. In this context they are quite 
ludicrous and altogether reactionary. Had the stock exchange 
in America not created colossal fortunes, how would large-scale 
industry and a social movement have been possible in that land of 
farmers? 

It would be quite a good idea if you were to lash out here. But with 
circumspection. There must be no gap in one’s defences where your 
Stoeckers are concerned. 

5. 3rd edition of Capital. ??’ Will doubtless take some time yet as 
Marx is still ailing. His stay in Ventnor, where it rained continuously, 
did him no good. On top of that there has been the loss of his daugh- 
ter. *°° He has been back here for the past 3 weeks and is so hoarse 
that he can barely speak, so not much could be discussed (only don’t 
mention this in the paper,* of course). 

6. We should be grateful for the Rodbertus-Meyer book.* 
At one time the man was almost on the point of discovering 
surplus value, but his estate in Pomerania prevented him from 
doing so. 

Very many thanks for the photograph. 

Kautsky has sent me his pamphlet on American grain. Choice 
irony: 3 years ago the population was to be reduced because it would 
otherwise have nothing to eat; now the population does not even suf- 
fice to eat what America produces! *9° That’s what happens when 
you study so-called ‘questions’ one by one without linking them 
together. In so doing you naturally fall victim to that dialectic which 
‘is objectively present’, Dühring notwithstanding, ‘in things them- 
selves’. 

I am delighted to hear that the Hohenzollern family again boasts 
a professing pederast. It would not bé complete without one. Admit- 
tedly Prince Karl, like Frederick William II, also ‘operated’ in that 
line, but he also included women. That reminds me, did Adolf Beust 
give you Mirabeau’s Secret History of the Court of Berlins which I gave 
him to pass on to you? If not, get hold of it. The book is inimitable on 

 Der Sozialdemokrat -° (J. K.] Rodbestus-Jagetzow, Briefe und Socialpolitische Aufsdtze, 
Berlin [1882], edited and with a preface by R. Meyer.-* H.G. Mirabeau, Histoire se- 
créte de la cour de Berlin... 

the subject of Frederick William II; the best bits have been dog’s- 
eared. 
Kindest regards. 

Yours, 
F. E.