Letters of Marx and Engels from Science and Society

Karl Marx to John Swinton


Written: June 2, 1881;
Source: Science and Society Volume II, No. 2, Spring 1938;
Translated and Edited: by Leonard E. Mins;
HTML Mark-up: Andy Blunden and Sally Ryan.


41, Maitland Park Road
London N.W. June 2, 1881.

Dear Mr. Swinton:

I need hardly recommend you the bearer of these lines, my excellent friend Mr. Hartmann. I send you through him a photogram of mine; it is rather bad, but the only one left to me.

As to the book of Mr. Henry George, I consider it as a last attempt — to save the capitalistic regime. Of course, this is not the meaning of the author, but the older disciples of Ricardo — the radical ones — fancied already that by the public appropriation of the rent of land everything would be righted. I have referred to this doctrine in the Misère de la Philosophie (published in 1847, against Proudhon).

Mrs. Marx sends you her best compliments. Unfortunately her illness assumes more and more a fatal character.

Believe me, dear Sir,

Yours most sincerely,
Karl Marx

The “Viereck” was so stultified at his arrival in the U.S. that he confounded my friend Engels with myself, and transformed my compliments to you in those of Engels; he did the same with regard to another American friend of mind by whose letter I was informed of the quid pro quo.