London, 20 September 1884

Dear Kautsky,

I return the mss.?°° herewith by registered post.

Your article on Rodbertus was very good in regard to economics; what I would take issue with here again are your apodictic assertions in fields where, as you yourself know, you are not on firm ground, and in which you also lay yourself open to attack by Schramm who has been astute enough to seize on that opportunity.

This applies particularly to ‘abstraction’ which you undoubtedly come down on far too heavily in a general way. The distinction here is as follows:

Marx reduces the common content shared by things and circumstances to the most general conceptual expression, hence his abstrac- tion merely reproduces in conceptual form the content already inherent in things.

Rodbertus, on the other hand, concocts what is a more or less imperfect conceptual expression and measures things against that con- cept to which they must conform. He is looking for the true, eternal content of things and of social conditions of which, however, the content is essentially transient. Hence true capital. This is not capital as zt is today, which is only an imperfect realisation of the concept. Instead of deducing the concept of capital from capital as it is today— the only sort, after all, that really does exist— he seeks to arrive at true capital from present-day capital by the device of taking an isolated individual, and asking what might figure as capita] in that individual’s production. Namely, the simple means of production. In this way true capital is simply lumped together with the means of production which, depending on circumstances, is or is not capital. In this way all the dad properties of capital, namely all the real properties, are eliminated therefrom. He can now demand that real capital

should conform to this concept, i.e. merely continue to function as a simple, social means of production, discard everything that makes it capital, and yet remain capital, indeed become true capital precisely as a result of this.

You do the same kind of thing in the case of value. Present value is that of the production of commodities, but with the suppression of the production of commodities, value ‘changes’ or rather, value as such remains and merely changes its form. But in fact economic value is a category that appertains to the production of commodities, disappearing with it (cf. Dihring, pp. 252-62*), just as it did not exist before it. The relation of labour to product prior to and after production of commodities no longer expresses itself in the: form of value.

Fortunately Schramm is also a bit shaky in the matter of philosophy, and lays himself open to attack, as you have perfectly well ap- prehended and demonstrated.

Further:

1) Schramm recognises material interests that do not derive — either directly or indirectly — from the mode of production. On this, cf. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique, preface,” where the matter is presented concisely and cogently in 20 lines.

2) Long before Rodbertus, the English and French Utopians had criticised existing society just as well as, if not better than, he, as had the post-Ricardian school of socialist economists on the basis of Ricardo’s theory of value; Marx cites some of these in the Poverty, pp. 49 and 50.‘

3) The Robinson mentioned by Marx is Daniel Defoe’s genuine, original Robinson Crusoe, whence the attendant circumstances —the objects salvaged from the shipwreck, etc.—are also taken. Later on he, too, has his Freitag (Fripay); he was also a shipwrecked merchant who, unless I am mistaken, likewise engaged from time to time in the slave trade. A proper ‘bourgeois;, therefore.

4) To talk of the Marxian school of history was certainly most premature. I should curtail that part of your reply and refer primarily to Marx himself,— the above-mentioned passage from A Contribution to the Critique, and also Capital itself, in particular primitive accumula-

tion,’ in which Schramm can find out for himself about the chicken and the egg.

In other respects it’s really fortunate that all the bourgeois elements should now be rallying to Rodbertus. We could ask for nothing better.

You will have got your Poverty ms.''* As will Ede my letter of last Sunday containing the contribution to the election fund.?

Tussy asks that in future the Sozialdemokrat, etc., be sent to her at the following address:

Mrs Aveling 55 Great Russell Street, London, W. C.

Your F. E.

I return Bebel’s letter herewith.

So we can expect you here in January or February.

To-Day has simply become a ‘symposium’, i.e. a review in which anybody can write for or against socialism. In the next number there’s to be a critique of Capital!’ The idea was that I should answer this anonymous piece but I politely refused.?9° Dr Drysdale has also written for the paper, invoking you.?°* There’s a reply from Burrows asking about you. I attended to this, but somewhat cautiously, not knowing whether Drysdale mightn’t have your book.