London, 10 February 1883 

Dear Mr Kautsky, 

At long last I can get round to answering you and thanking you for 
the various things you have sent. You have no idea of the way im- 
pediments of all kinds have prevented me, not only from working, but 
also from attending to the most urgent correspondence. Since Marx 
has been ill the burden has fallen upon myself alone and, on top of 
that, the number of inquiries, etc., has doubled. Moreover, I cannot 
very well write in the evenings because it tires my eyes and interferes 
with my sleep. Thus all written work is dependent on the few—in 
wintertime here, all too short — hours of daylight and, in view of the 
distances one has to cover here, a single trip into town will, as often as 
not, disrupt one’s entire working day. And some fine to-ing and fro- 
ing I have had to do of late! 

Enough of that. I have not yet seen Die Neue Zeit. But I shall write 
to Dietz today. I must have street and house number if I am to send the 
subscription per money order; that’s the rule here. 

Your treatise on American food production is most timely. The fact 
that you make such use of the information supplied by Mr Meyer 
must have made him very proud. *97 Is he still in Vienna, and do you 
still see him from time to time? 

But what irony of history! 3 or 4 years ago you, a neonato* Malthu- 
sian, were advocating the necessity of restricting the population by 
artificial means, because otherwise the time would soon come when 
we should none of us have enough to eat. And now you prove that the 
population is not even large enough to consume America’s surplus 
food production as well as what Europe herself produces. Solve, 
I pray, Count Oerindur, this conundrum posed by nature! Presuma- 
bly, then, it won’t be rations that are withheld, but rather that much- 
vaunted little sponge! Which is not to say, of course, that this same or 
some other method might not be of great practical use in middle-class 
families to keep the number of children proportionate to income, and 
prevent the wife’s health being ruined by too frequent 
confinements, etc. But I still maintain that this is a private matter be- 
tween husband and wife, or at most the family doctor (in one such 
case I myself recommended what you call the ‘Raciborski method’), 
and that our proletarians will continue as before to live up to their 
name by producing numerous proles.< 

It will not surprise you to learn that my standpoint in regard to 
your article on hetaerism *°° still remains the same, namely that com- 
munity of wives (and of men for women) was the basis for sexual rela- 
tions within the tribe. The psychological argument against this, de- 
riving from jealousy, interpolates more recent views, and is disproved 
by countless facts (some of which below). Darwin is no more of an au- 
thority in this field than in that of political economy, whence he im- 
ported his Malthusianism. We know practically nothing about apes 
in this respect, since observations in a menagerie prove nothing and 
are difficult to make in the case of a troop of wild apes, while such as 
are alleged to have been made cannot claim to be accurate, conclu- 
sive or even universally valid. Gorillas and orang-outangs must in 
any case be excluded, since they do not live in troops. Those primitive 
tribes you adduce, with a loose form of monogamy, are, in my view, 

@ new born-> A. Miillner, Die Schuld, Act 2, Scene 5.-° progeny 

degenerate, as Bancroft has shown of the Californians of the peninsu- 
la.* Proof of primitivity is provided, not by barbarism, but by the de- 
gree of integrity of ancient tribal blood ties. These, therefore, must 
first be established in each individual instance before conclusions can 
be drawn from individual manifestations in this tribe or that. For in- 
stance, in the case of the peninsular Californians, these ancient ties 
have become very much looser, nor has any other organisation come 
to take their place; a sure sign of degeneracy. But even these argue 
against you. For amongst them, too, the women periodically revert to 
concubinage. And this is a crucial point though you do not so much 
as mention it. Just as it may be confidently inferred that, wherever,— 
e.g. with the Hutzwang — the land periodically reverts to com- 
mon ownership, there will once have been complete common owner- 
ship of land, so too, I believe, one may confidently conclude that 
there has originally been community of wives wherever women — 
symbolically or in reality periodically revert to concubinage. And 
this happens, not only amongst your peninsular Californians, but also 
amongst many other Indian tribes, not to mention the Phoenicians, 
Babylonians, Indians, Slavs and Celts, either symbolically or in real- 
ity; hence it is very ancient and widespread and entirely refutes the 
psychological argument based on jealousy. I am curious to see how, 
in due course, you will contrive to overcome this obstacle, for you 
cannot after all omit all mention of it. 

Here comes Pumps with her husband and child and that means 
no more writing. This is always happening. 

With kindest regards, 

Yours, 
F. E.