Letter to Nikolai Danielson, June 10, 1890

From Marxists-en
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 10 June 1890


MIA-bannière.gif
First published in Russian in Minuvshiye gody, No. 2, 1908

Extract: Marx & Engels on the Irish Question, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1971, p. 352;

Published in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48
Collection(s): Ireland and the Irish Question (Marx-Engels), Minuvshiye gody
Keywords : Letter, Nikolai Danielson, Capitalism, Labor, Rent, Ireland, Insurrection

To Nikolai Danielson (Nikolai-on) in St Petersburg

London, June 10, 1890[edit source]

My dear sir,

I am in possession of your kind letters of 18th December, 22 January, 24th February and 17th May, as also of Mr. Lafargue’s article returned which was sent back to him. I wrote to him that you had written to him twice in March and April but have not had any positive reply as to whether he received these two letters. His wife who is here at present, cannot from memory tell positively. She regrets very much the change of ownership in the Northern Review and desires me to convey to you her and her husband’s thanks for your kind efforts in their interest.

Of the 4th edition Capital I am now reading proof-sheets 39-42, there will be less than 50 in all, as the print, though larger, is closer. As soon as out, it will be forwarded to you.

I have had the letters of our author [Marx] you kindly lent me, copied by typewriter (the author’s youngest daughter [Eleanor Marx-Aveling] did them) and shall now return them to you in a registered letter, unless you instruct me to the contrary. I thank you very much for your continued and interesting information respecting the economic condition of your great country. Under the smooth surface of political quietude there is as great and as important an economical change going on as in any other European country, to watch which is of the highest interest. The consequences of this economic change must sooner or later develop themselves in other directions too. We had heard here of the death of Н.Г.Ч.[1], and with much sorrow and sympathy. But perhaps it is better so.

Many thanks for your congratulations of 24th February—they have rejoiced more than one.

I have been so exceedingly busy, and my eyes, though improving, are still so much affected by reading Russian printing, that I have not as yet been able to read the article in the Statistical Yearbook[2] but shall do so as soon as I find a free moment. The misuse of economic terms, you point out, is a very usual defect of all literatures. Here in England, Rent is applied as well to the payment of the English capitalist farmer to his landlord, as to that of the Irish pauper farmer, who pays a complete tribute composed chiefly of a deduction from his fund of maintenance, earned by his own labour, and only to the smallest extent consisting of true rent. So the English in India transformed the land-tax paid by the ryot (peasant) to the State into “rent,” and consequently have, in Bengal at least, actually transformed the zemindar (tax-gatherer of the former Indian prince) into a landlord holding a nominal feudal tenure from the Crown exactly as in England, where the Crown is nominal proprietor of all the land, and the great nobles, the real owners, are by juridical fiction supposed to be feudal tenants of the Crown. Similarly when in the beginning of the 17th century the North of Ireland was subjected to direct English dominion, and the English lawyer Sir John Davies found there a rural community with common possession of the land, which was periodically divided amongst the members of the clan who paid a tribute to the chief, Davies <transformed> declared that tribute at once <into> to be “rent.”[3] Thus the Scotch lairds-chiefs of clans profited, since the insurrection of 1745, of this juridical confusion, of the tribute paid to them by the clansmen, with a “rent” for the lands held by them, in order to transform the whole of the <common> clan-land, the common property of the clan, into their, the lairds, private property; for — said the lawyers, if they were not the landlords, how could they receive rent for that land? And thus this confusion of tribute and rent was the basis of the confiscation of all the lands of the Scottish Highlands for the benefit of a few chiefs of clan who very soon after drove out the old clansmen and replaced them by sheep as described in C[apital] chapter 24,3/ (p.754, 3rd edition).[4]

With kind regards

Yours very faithfully

P. W. Rosher.

  1. ↑ N. G. Chernyshevsky.
  2. ↑ This word is written in Russian in the original
  3. ↑ Davies, J. Historical tracts
  4. ↑ K. Marx, Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, Erster Band, Buch I. Der Produktions-process des Kapitals. Dritte vermehrte Auflage. Hamburg. Verlag von Otto Meisner, 1883
Retrieved from "https://wikirouge.net/texts/en/w/index.php?title=Letter_to_Nikolai_Danielson,_June_10,_1890&oldid=96565"