Cafiero to Marx

Les Molières, 27 July 1879

Most Esteemed Sir,

I’m sending with the same courier two copies of your work Capital, summarized briefly by me. I wanted to deliver them to you sooner, but only now was I able to obtain some copies by the benevolence of a friend, who with his intervention was able to affect the publication of the book.

In fact, if the publication could have been done at my expense, I would have desired to submit the manuscript to your examination beforehand. But in fear of seeing a favorable opinion escape me, I hurried to allow the publication proposed to me. And it is only now that I was able to address you in the hopes that you may say if I was able to comprehend and express your exact concept.

I pray, sir, that you appreciate the expressions of my deepest respect and that you put your trust in me.

Most devotedly,
Carlo Cafiero

Marx to Cafiero

Dear Citizen,

The sincerest of thanks for the two copies of your work! At the same time I received two similar works, one written in Serbian, the other in English (published in the United States), but they both are faulty, wanting to give a succinct and popular summary of Capital and clinging, at the same time, too pedantically to the scientific form of discussion. In this way, they seem to me to miss more or less their principle purpose: that of moving the public for whom the summaries are intended.

And here is the great superiority of your work.

As far as the conception of things, I believe I’m not deceiving myself in attributing a gap to the considerations espoused in your preface, and that is the proof that the material conditions necessary to the emancipation of the proletariat are generated spontaneously by the development of capitalist exploitation. After all, I agree with you (if I interpreted your preface well) that it isn’t necessary to overload those who you wish to educate. Nothing will prevent you from returning, at the opportune time, to the charge of bringing out this materialist basis of Capital.

Renewing my thanks, I am most devoted to you,
Karl Marx

[1] See Karl Marx: Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I.

[2] See John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy.