Letter to Karl Kautsky, June 26, 1894

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To Karl Kautsky in Stuttgart

London, 26 June 1894

122 Regent’s Park Road, N. W

Dear Baron,

Marx’s two chapters despatched by registered mail at the same time as this. You might entitle them: ‘From Book III of Capital by K. Marx’ – I and II, and indicate in a note that these are Chapters XXIII and XXIV, taken from Part V, ‘Division of Profit into Interest and Profit of Enterprise. Interest- bearing Capital’. The titles of the chapters must be retained in each case. In order to simplify things I have deleted the Greek, also all the notes save one important one.

The article ‘On the History of Early Christianity’ – that is what I shall probably call the thing – is in hand and, WELL ADVANCED. But yesterday there was a Handel festival at the Crystal Palace and Louise, I and the Avelings went to hear The Messiah. Today I have got to deal with my letters and tomorrow I shall probably buckle to again, but Liebknecht is here and we are having a heat-wave.

Thank you for the bit of the Volksanwalt. As regards the thing from the Critica Sociale, Victor has really been leading me up the garden path. After I had agreed to let him have it, he simply dropped the thing altogether and now proposes to await the moment when it ‘becomes topical’ again. Next time I shall be more wary; he treats his contributors in a very odd way. Well, I look forward keenly to seeing what the fate of your daily will be. Not, I hope, that of Guesde’s and Lafargue’s Socialiste quotidien ‘pour paraître en octobre’; only yesterday we were chaffing poor Bonnier about it when he passed this way.

So Carnot has been stabbed to death. A poor, stupid, boring fellow – the first Frenchman to rise to the top through being a bore – and in France too! But now Alexander III will repudiate the French alliance. ‘Merci’, he will say, ‘there’s plenty of that sort of thing to be had at home and at less expense!’ Incidentally, there might be a certain element of vengeance for Aiguesmortes in this. I shall be curious to see how the sixty self-styled ‘Socialists’ in the Chamber will now behave. That the affair will be exploited à la Hödel there can be no doubt, but on the other hand the sixty will weigh heavily in the scales at the presidential elections next Wednesday.

Kindest regards from one household to the other.

Yours,
F. E.

27 June. Left unfinished yesterday,

Benno Karpeles intervened. During the past three days there has been 1. One Hellmut von Gerlach of Berlin, 2. Liebknecht, 3. Karpeles and, today, 4. Prof. Tonnies of Kiel – not to mention the Handel Festival the day before yesterday – so how can a man be expected to work?