London, 15 October 1888 

Dear Sir, 

I was prevented from replying to your kind letters of 8/20 January 
and 3/15 June—as also to a great many other letters—first by a weakness 
of my eyes which made it impossible for me to write at my desk for 
more than two hours a day, and thus necessitated an almost complete 
neglect of work and correspondence, and second by a journey to 
America during August and September from which I am only just 
returned. My eyes are better but as I now shall take in hand Volume II? 
and finish it, I must still be careful not to overwork them, and conse- 
quently my friends must excuse me if my letters are not too long and not 
too frequent. 

The disquisitions in your first letter on the relation between rate of 
surplus value and rate of profits are highly interesting and no doubt of 
great value for grouping statistics; but it is not in this way that our 
author? attacks the problem. You suppose, in your formula, that every 
manufacturer keeps all the surplus value, which he, in the first hand 
appropriates. Now upon that supposition, merchant’s capital and 
banker’s capital would be impossible, because they would not make any 
profit. The profit of a manufacturer therefore cannot represent all the 
surplus value he has extracted from his workmen. 

4 of Capital ~» Karl Marx 

Letters ~ 1888 229 

On the other hand, your formula may serve to calculate, approxi- 
mately, the composition of different capitals in different industries, 
under the rule of a common and equal rate of profit. I say may, because 
I have not at this moment materials at hand from which to verify the 
theoretical formula established by you. 

You wonder why in England political economy is in such a pitiful 
state. It is the same everywhere; even classical economy, nay, even the 
most vulgar Free Trade Hausierburschen are looked upon with 
contempt by the still more vulgar ‘superior’ beings who fill the univer- 
sity chairs of economy. That is the fault of our author, to a great extent; 
he has taught people to see the dangerous consequences of classical 
economy; they find that 7o science at all, on this field at least, is the safe 
side of the question. And they have so well succeeded in blinding the 
ordinary philistine, that there are at the present moment four people in 
London, calling themselves ‘Socialist’3°? who claim to have refuted our 
author completely by opposing to his theory that of—Stanley Jevons!?"5 

Paris friends insist upon saying that Mr Mutual? is not dead;?! I have 
no means of testing their information. 

I have read with great interest your physiological observations upon 
exhaustion by prolonged labour time and the quantity of potential 
energy in the shape of food required to replace the exhaustion. To the 
statement of Ranke quoted by you‘ I have to make a slight exception: if 
the 1,000,000 kgmetres in food merely replaced the amount of heat and 
mechanical work done, it will still be insufficient, for it does not then 
replace the wear and tear of muscle and nerve; for that not only heat- 
producing food is required but albumen and this cannot be measured in 
kgmetres alone, as the animal body is incapable of building it up from 
the elements. 

I do not know the two books of Ed. Young and Phil. Bevan,? but 
there must be some mistake in the statement that spinners and weavers 
in the Cotton Industry in America receive $90-120 a year. That repre- 
sents $2— a week,—8/— sterling, but in reality equals, in purchasing 
power, less than 5/— in England. From all I have heard, the wages of spin- 
ners and weavers in America are nominally higher but in reality only 

@ peddlers — > Hermann Lopatin — ¢ J. Ranke, Grundzüge der Physiologie des 
Menschen mit Rücksicht auf die Gesundheitspflege und das praktische Bedürfniss 
des Arztes, Leipzig, 1868 — 4 Ed. Young, Labor in Europe and America... 
Washington, 1875; G. Ph. Bevan, The Industrial Classes, and Industrial Statistics, 
London, 1876 

fully equal to those in England; that would make them about $5-6 a week, 
corresponding to 12/— to 16/— in England. Remember that spinners and 
weavers now are all women or boys of 15-18 years. As to Kautsky’s state- 
ment, he made the mistake of treating dollars as if they were pounds ster- 
ling; in order to reduce them to marks, he multiplied by 20 instead of by 
5, thus obtaining fourfold the correct amount. The figures from the 
Census (Compendium of the 10th census of the United States, 1880, 
Washington, 1883;? p.1125, specific Cotton Manufacture) are: 

Operatives and officers 174,659 
Deduct clerks, managers etc. 2,115 
172.544 operatives 
(Men 59,685 (over 16 years) 
boys 16,107 (under 16 years) 
women 84,539 (over 15 years) 
girls 13,213 (under 15 years) ) 

172,544, total wages $42,040,510 or $243.06 per head per annum, 
which agrees with my estimate given above, as what the men get more 
will be made up by what girls and boys get less. 

To prove to you to what depths of degradation economical science has 
fallen, Lujo Brentano has published a lecture on Die Klassische 
Nationalékonomie (Leipzig, 1888), in which he proclaims: general or theo- 
retical economy is worth noting, but special or practical economy is every- 
thing. Like natural science (!), we must limit ourselves to the description of 
facts; such descriptions are of infinitely higher value than all apriori deduc- 
tions. ‘Like natural science’! That is impayable in the century of Darwin, of 
Mayer, Joule and Clausius, of evolution and the transformation of energy! 

Thanks for the No. of Russkiye Vedomosti with the interesting article 
on the interference with the statistical work of the Zemstvos. It is a great 
pity that this valuable work should be interrupted. 

Very sincerely yours 
P. W. Rosher*?