Letter to Eduard Bernstein, June 29, 1884

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To Bernstein in Zurich

London, June 29, 1884

Dear Ede,

1. I return Wage Labour and Capital herewith. The Silesian edition has certainly required a great deal of revision. I did not, it is true, have time to compare it with the original throughout, but only those passages that worried me most. However, you chaps have got it there and will be able to attend to that when correcting the proofs.

2. I shall get another portrait of Marx done by the same man who did mine, and let you have it. It is not a chalk drawing but an enlarged photograph. But how will a colour-print turn out if the chap has never seen Moor and his singularly dark complexion?

3. A parcel of 40 Revolutions went off from here yesterday addressed to Volksbuchhandlung, 3 Kasinostraße, Hottingen-Zurich, Switzerland, ‘BOOKS, VALUE £3 CARRIAGE FORWARD’ (i. e. not prepaid) per CONTINENTAL PARCELS Express, which is the correspondent of the German Imperial Post Office and of the Swiss Post Office, and likewise of the French parcels offices. The association stuff [Vereinssachen] from Zurich also comes here by the same route. There is no parcel post between England and the Continent, hence no ‘postal packages à 5 kilos’, or not, at any rate, for this country; splitting them up would mean doubling the cost over here. Not splitting them up into 2 parcels surely wouldn’t raise the cost of consignment there as much as would splitting them up over here.

4. Schorlemmer writes to say that his brother Ludwig in Darmstadt has not yet received a single number of the Sozialdemokrat despite the fact that receipt of his subscription was acknowledged in the paper. Is this an isolated misfortune or general one? Please look into it.

5. I can’t get hold of any socialist poems specifically by Weerth. There are some in Moses Hess’ old Gesellschaftsspiegel of 1845, but I believe you have already seen those. I once heard something about a collection of his verse but have never set eyes on it. In any case, he never published such a thing any more than we did.

6. The archivist will have to wait; I haven’t the time to get my own things in order. If I do get round to it, you may be sure he won’t be overlooked. But now the prime consideration is the completion of the 2nd volume of Capital. The thing’s going swimmingly, the preliminary edition of about 1/3 having been done, and is progressing by something like l/2 a printed sheet a day, or a little under. As soon as we get to the last part (‘The Circulation of the Aggregate Social Capital’), Eisengarten can, with my help, copy out the existing ms. of 1878, while I can get on with the final editing of what has already been done. In this way we shall finish before so very long, and then go on to the 3rd, most important book.

Only then will it be possible to consider putting the old pre-’48 mss. in order and preparing extracts thereof for the press. It’s not that I am unwilling, but this requires work, i. e. time.

So you, too, are finally coming round to the view that one can, after all, deal with the “wise men” quite well. I sent for a few copies of Neue Welt to get to know the gentlemen chez eux. So far, I've only read the editorial post column. German schoolboy impudence, which assumes a very tame readership.

For the rest, don’t allow yourself to be drawn by pinpricks, that is the first rule in battle. Remember that:

There’s nothing nicer in this world
Than all one’s foes to answer back,
Than about all those clumsy blokes
One’s feeble little jokes to crack.

Regards to Kautsky.

Your

F.E.