‎HENRY Michel‎
‎Marx.‎

‎Lettre autographe signée à la socialiste André Léo sur Karl Marx‎

‎Varvara Nikolayevna Nikitina [Nikitine] dite Barbe Gendre (1842-1884), journaliste, écrivain socialiste. L.A.S. + enveloppe + photographie originale, 26 mars 1883, 4p in-8. Magnifique lettre à Victoire Léodile Bera, dite André Léo (1824-1900), militante féministe, appelée ici « madame Champseix », du nom de son mari Grégoire qu'elle épousé en 1849 et dont elle fut veuve dès 1863 : « Chère et excellente amie, ne voyant arriver ni lettre de vous, ni de visite promise de votre fils je finis par être inquiète sur votre compte. J'ai beau savoir mieux que personne que l'on peut n'être point disposée à écrire à ses amis tout en les aimant beaucoup, j'ai beau me répéter que vous aurez quelque travail pressé absorbant tout votre temps, l'inquiétude est toujours là. D'ailleurs sans le rapport de l'exactitude en correspondance comme sans mille autres je vous crois bien supérieure à mon pauvre individu et suis persuadé que vous aurez du temps pour quantité de choses que je néglige. Si vous êtes très occupée ou souffrante écrivez moi un mot, rien qu'un mot, sauf à reprendre la plume au moment où vous serez disposée de la faire, je serai bien heureuse de recevoir une de ces lettres qui font tant de biens au coeur aussi bien qu'à l'esprit. Ne sachant rien de ce qui vous touche si ce n'est de vous entretenir de moi même, de ce moi "haïssable" selon Pascal, mais que, je le crois, n'est pas sans intérêt pour ceux qui nous aiment. Ma vie est toujours la même, entièrement consacrée au travail et à la société de quelques amis intimes, société qui me suffit amplement puisque j'ai le bonheur d'en posséder quelques avec qui on peut faire le tour du monde de la pensée et remuer tous les problèmes sociaux ou psychique faits pour passionner l'être humain. Ce dernier temps j'ai eu le chagrin de voir rompre un des chainons de cette chaine d'affection qui m'est si précieuse. ma chère Marie, celle que j'appelais mon rayon de soleil a été rappelée subitement en Russie par la mort de sa mère et je doute qu'elle revienne. Certes l'absence ne détruit pas ce lien de sympathie, mais dans certains cas, surtout, elle la relâche beaucoup quand, comme ici par ex : cette sympathie est un élément de la vie quotidienne, une habitude affective plutôt qu'une liaison fondée principalement sur la communauté d'idée et d'opinions. Cette dernière, grâce à son caractère plus intellectuel résiste mieux à l'épreuve du temps et de l'absence. Pour le reste, mon entourage est le même et tous mes amis qui sont aussi les vôtres me chargent de vous dire mille choses affectueuses. Je suis en train de finir la traduction du Voyage de [Ernst] Haeckel à Ceylan et comme j'en ai une autre sur les bras et que j'ai fait ce temps quelques articles, je me sent un peu fatiguée. Ma santé est toujours détestable et j'attends le printemps pour pouvoir respirer un peu et m'aérer davantage. A présent nous avons des froids si vifs qu'on ne sort pas impunément quand on tousse, surtout on ne sort pas pour longtemps. Il est donc dit que chaque fois que je vous écrierai il y aura la mort de quelques hommes illustres sur le tapis. Celle de Marx a douloureusement frappé ses disciples et ses amis. C'était un des hommes pour lesquels je nourrissais une vive admiration - je crois que c'est une des intelligences les plus puissantes de notre siècle et tout ce que j'ai entendu dire de lui par ceux qui l'ont connu de près n'a fait qu'augmenter mon enthousiasme. Lav [i.e. Piotr Lavrov], très sévère dans ses appréciations parce qu'il est très exigeant, soutient qu'il n'a jamais rencontré une telle réunion de qualités qui s'excluent souvent : Vaste intelligence, érudition énorme, esprit pétillant et vif, coeur ardent dans ses amours comme dans ses haines. Cet homme d'un esprit si hardi, si réel, ce terrible révolutionnaire a été abattu du coup que lui a porté la mort de sa femme, l'indispensable compagne de ses travaux et de ses lettres, - et n'a pu le relever. Je trouve quelque chose de très touchant da‎

‎Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion‎

‎Allen Lane 2026 768 pages 16 26x23 62x4 83cm. 2026. Cartonné jaquette. 768 pages.‎

‎Très Bon Etat de conservation intérieur propre bonne tenue avec sa jaquette‎

‎Herr Vogt. - [MARX' STRUGGLE AGAINST DEFAMATION ]‎

‎London, 1860. 8vo. Bound partly uncut with the original wrappers in a nice recent half calf pastiche binding with four rasied bands and gilt lettering to spine. Front wrapper with marginal repairs and back wrappers with repairs with minor loss of text. Light brownspotting to first and last leaves. A fine copy. VI, (2), (1)-191, (1, -errata) pp.‎

‎The rare first edition of Marx' landmark defense against defamation, a seminal work in his struggle for a new human society. Written in the midst of his writing of ""The Capital"", ""Herr Vogt"" constitutes the work that took precedence over this most important critique of political economy and the work that gives us one of the most profound insights into the mind of the great Marx. ""Herr Vogt"" is furthermore the work that we have to thank for the influence that ""The Capital"" and Marxist socialism did come to have upon our society. ""In 1857, Karl Marx resumed work on his critique of political economy, a process that culminated in the publication of ""Capital"" a decade later. He wrote a rough draft (the ""Grundrisse"") in 1857 and 1858, parts of which he then reworked into the ""Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy"", which was published in June 1859. Then, in 1861 through 1863, he wrote a revised draft of the whole of ""Capital"", which was followed by a more polished draft written during 1864 and 1865. Finally, he revised the first volume yet again, during 1866 and 1867. It appeared in September, 1867.The careful reader will have noticed a rather lengthy gap in this chronology. From the second half of 1859 through 1860, Marx was not working on his critique of political economy. What was he doing instead? What was so important, so much more of an urgent priority than his theoretical work?The answer is that Marx was fighting back against Carl Vogt's defamatory attack. He fought back in order to defend his reputation and that of his ""party."" ... "" Herr Vogt"", the book Marx wrote in order to set the record straight."" (Klimann, Marx' Struggle Against Defamation).Vogt was a prominent radical German politician and materialist philosopher who had immigrated to Switzerland, where he served in parliament and was also a professor of geology. His position on the 1859 war over Italian unification had a pro-French tilt, which resulted in the publication of a newspaper article and an anonymous pamphlet that alleged (correctly) that Vogt was being paid by the French government. Vogt believed Marx to be the source of the allegation and the author of the pamphlet.Vogt fought back by attacking Marx. He published a short book that described Marx as the leader of a band of blackmailers who demanded payment in return for keeping quiet about their victims' revolutionary histories. The book also contained a number of false and harmful allegations against Marx, and Vogt did everything in his power to destroy Marx' reputation. Not only did he attack Marx personally, he also falsified facts and made up untrue allegations to libel the Communist League, portraying its members as conspirators in secret contact with the police and accusing Marx of personal motives.There is no doubt that this work of slander put both Marx' own future as well as that of the Communist League at stake. ""Ferdinand Lassalle warned Marx that Vogt's book ""will do great harm to yourself and to the whole party, for it relies in a deceptive way upon half-truths,"" and said that ""something must be done"" in response (quoted in Rubel 1980, p. 53). Frederick Engels also urged Marx to respond quickly, and he provided a good deal of assistance when Marx wrote ""Herr Vogt""....Carl Vogt and the circumstances that gave rise to his defamatory attack against Marx and his ""party"" are dead and gone. But ""Herr Vogt"" and Marx's battle against defamation remain living exemplars of how one responds in a genuinely Marx-ian way-i.e., the way of Marx. Do not separate theory from practice, or philosophy from organization. Do not retreat to the ivory tower or suffer attacks in silence"" set the record straight. Use the bourgeois courts if necessary. Enlist the assistance of others."" (Klimann).""Marx's Herr Vogt, almost entirely unknown in the English-speaking world. It is nevertheless one of the most brilliant of his writings. Engels considered it better than the Eighteenth Brumaire"" Lassalle spoke of it as ""a masterpiece in every respect"""" Ryazanov thought that ""in all literature there is no equal to this book"""" Mehring rightly wrote of its ""being highly instructive even today""."" (Karl Marx on Herr Vogt - from The New International, Vol. X No. 8, August 1944, pp. 257-260. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O'Callaghan for ETOL).‎

‎El Capital. Resumido y acompanado de un estudio sobre el socialismo científico por Gabriel Deville. Primera edición [Marx / Deville] (+) Socialismo Utopico y Socialismo Cientifico [Engels] (+) La Ley de Los Salarios y Sus Consecuencias [Guesde]. - [FIRST SPANISH EDITION OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ABRIDGED VERSION OF ""THE CAPITAL""]‎

‎Madrid, Ricardo Fé, 1887. 8vo. Contemporary brown half calf with gilt lettering and ornamentation to spine and red paper covered boards. Most leaves evenly browned (due to the quality of the paper) and some brownspotting to last few leaves. Overall a very good copy indeed of this otherwise fragile book. [Socialismo Utopico... :] pp. (1)-91, (1) + frontispiece of Engels" [La Ley de Los Salarios... :] pp. (1)-44 + frontiespiece of Guesde" [El Capital:] pp. (I)-LVI, 263 pp.‎

‎The exceedingly scarce first Spanish edition of the most important abridged version of Marx's Capital ever to have appeared, published in the same year as what is generally accepted as the first Spanish edition of ""Das Kapital"" (Zafrilla's abridged version - defectively translated from Roy's French version - which was published in newspaper installments 1886-87).This Spanish translation was made from the French of Gabriel Deville (1854 -1940), the great French socialist theoretician, politician and diplomat, who did more than almost anyone else to raise awareness of Karl Marx's theories of the weaknesses of capitalism - most effectively through the present work, which came to have a profound influence upon the spreading of Marxist thought throughout the Spanish speaking part of the world. ""The epitome, here translated, was published in Paris, in 1883, by Gabriel Deville, possibly the most brilliant writer among the French Marxians. It is the most successful attempt yet made to popularize Marx's scientific economics. It is by no means free from difficulties, for the subject is essentially a complex and difficult subject, but there are no difficulties that reasonable attention and patience will not enable the average reader to overcome. There is no attempt at originality. The very words in most cases are Marx's own words, and Capital is followed so closely that the first twenty-five chapters correspond in subject and treatment with the first twenty-five chapters of Capital. Chapter XXVI corresponds in the main with Chapter XXVI of Capital, but also contains portions of chapter XXX. The last three chapters-XXVII, XXVIII, and XXIX-correspond to the last three chapters-XXXI, XXXII, and XXXIII-of Capital."" (ROBERT RIVES LA MONTE, Intruductory Note to the 1899 English translation).The Spanish translator of the work is Antonio Atienza, a typographer and translator at the press of Ricardo Fé, who in 1886 volunteered his work at the newly founded ""El Socialista"", the Spanish flagship publication of Marxist socialism. It was also in 1886 that Atienza translated the present work, with the publication following in 1887. This translation happened almost simultaneously with the ""translation"" by Zafrilla, which appeared in weekly installments in the rival newspaper ""La Républica"", and the two first versions of ""Das Kapital"" to appear in Spanish tell the story of more than just the desire to spread Marx's ideas in Spain. Both versions were part of an ongoing struggle between political parties vying for the loyalty of Spain's workers (see more below). THE WORK IS OF THE UTMOST SCARCITY, WITH MERELY THREE COPIES LISTED ON OCLC (two in Bristish Library and one in Bibliothèque Nationale) and none at auction over the last 40 years at least.Backgrund for the publication:Among the numerous nascent political organizations that sprouted in the last half of 19th century Spain, many of them as a result to the tumultuous years after the so-called ""Glorious Revolution"" of 1868, was the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE). The party was founded by Pablo Iglesias in 1879, and it was the second socialist party in Europe, preceded only by the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD). Notably, of the original twenty-five founding members sixteen were typographers. March of 1886 was a turning point for the PSOE, as they began to publish a weekly newspaper, ""El Socialista"", in order to reach a wider audience throughout Spain and thus advance the Marxist socialist agenda, of which the paper became the flagship. (To this day, it is the official paper of the PSOE, the present ruling party in Spain, although it was suppressed during the years of Franco's dictatorial regime and published sporadically in exile, in France, or clandestinely in Spain. It was again published regularly since 1978. The PSOE gave up Marxism in 1979 in favor of Democratic Socialism.)In 1886 the translator of the present work, Antonio Atienza, was a typographer and translator at the press of Ricardo Fé. At the same time, he volunteered his work at the newly founded El Socialista, as the PSOE funds were quite limited-he wouldn't have a paid position in the paper until 1913. He translated articles by Engels, Guesde, and Buechner, among others.""Das Kapital"" had been published twenty years earlier. That it took so long to reach Spain in book form reveals, among other things, that up to that moment most of Marx's thoughts had filtered through to the workers' unions and parties by way of the writings of his followers as they were interpreted and explained by the intellectuals in charge of these organizations. It is also evident that the complexity of the book wouldn't be of much use to the average worker, factory and otherwise. Enter Deville's abridged version, which was more accessible in that some of the most basic ideas of Marx were digested and re-explained. The point was not to publish a book that could only be only be understood by economists and philosophers, but one that could be given to the workers. A rival party leftist party, considered by the PSOE as bourgeois, was the Partido Republicano Federal. One of its members, Pablo Correa y Zafrilla, undertook the task of translating the first volume of Das ""Kapital"". Quite usual for Spain at the time, the translation was published in weekly instalments to subscribers of their newspaper, ""La República"", starting in 1886 and ending in 1887. The paper then sold the cloth binding to its subscribers and offered to collect the installments to have the book bound for its customers. According to the ad in ""La República"" (22/1/1886), the translation is purportedly from the German original, but it has been clearly demonstrated that it is a defective translation from the French translation of Roy (Ribas). It seems very plausible that when the PSOE found out that someone else in Spain was beginning to publish a translation of the first volume of ""Das Kapital"", El Socialista decided to publish Deville's translation. In fact, the publication of El Capital by ""La República"" was briefly mentioned once in ""El Socialista"", and not in flattering terms (7/10/1887). That a Marxist newspaper disparaged against the first Spanish publication of ""Das Kapital"" reveals, among other things, that they were not terribly excited about some other party's publication producing a defective rendering of their guiding principles. On the other hand, that ""La República"" had decided to publish the book was probably brought about by the foundation of ""El Socialista"", as they saw that the PSOE now had the means to spread their ideas throughout the country. It is in no small way possible that the haste to publish the book brought about the many defects in the translation from the French of Roy as Correa hurried to finish it.José Mesa y Leompart, a typographer, translator, and Marxist ideologue and activist, had experienced the upheavals of the Commune of Paris during his exile after the 1868 revolution. He developed a friendship with Marx's son in law, Paul Lafargue, and his wife, Laura Marx-who themselves had been in exile in Spain during 1871-72-, as well as with Engels, with whom he shared much correspondence, and many other figures of the Marxist movement. He also met both Marx and Engels during their exile in London. His friendship with Pablo Iglesias was a major driving force behind the formation of the PSOE, and he collaborated with El Socialista both as a writer and as a financial supporter. Mesa writes to Engels in April of 1887 lamenting that some Spanish thinkers were using Marx's theories and the policies of the German Socialist Party to deny the concept of class struggle, despite the fact that ""we have […] proven to them that you and Marx have always said the opposite, and having quoted to them the very clear statements of the German Socialist Party"" [but] they remain unmovable, and at some point they even wanted to publish the abridged Capital by Deville, without the preface, and with notes interpreting the meaning in their own way-which we have impeded-(the Resumen [abridgement] of Deville will soon be published, faithfully translated into Spanish.""Therefore, as early as April of 1887 the present translation was already in progress, and in fact, according to Mesa, soon to be published, so it was apparently very advanced. It is then quite possible that Antonio Atienza was commissioned to translate the Deville's abridgement a few months earlier, and not unlikely as far as 1886, when ""La República"" was still publishing installments of the Correa translation. The PSOE is obviously trying to obscure and minimize Correa's translation by publishing the Deville book, as the task of translating ""Das Kapital"" from the original would be lengthy and costly, and it would have come out too late to ascertain their political hold on Marx's ideas. This translation of Deville, then, sees the light is in the very midst of the bickering between leftist parties, and is in fact a product of the confrontations between leftist ideologies. It was finally published about nine months after Mesa's letter to Engels. The first announcement in ""El Socialista"" appears in their November 11th, 1887 issue. The price is four pesetas, or about the cost of an entire year's subscription to the paper, although subscribers could purchase it at half price. Still, given that many subscribers were workers of scarce means, less than three hundred copies were sent out to the main Spanish cities, and that the total edition was probably about a thousand copies at most.The scarcity of this book can be underlined if one considers the virulent war that was waged against all socialist and Marxist literature during and after the Spanish Civil War by the dictatorial regime of Francisco Franco. Book purges and burnings were considerable throughout Spain since the onset of the war, in 1936. It is not that books were burnt sporadically and occasionally, but rather they were destroyed in a systematic and terrifyingly efficient manner. As early as September of 1936 official orders were given to all civil governors, mayors, school inspectors in the nationalist areas to purge all ""harmful"" books, such as pornography and books of a communist or Marxist content. Teachers, librarians, and private citizens, often purged their own libraries, public or personal, of such works in order to comply with the official orders. Countless people were summarily executed for owning certain books that revealed their political tendencies. Obviously, owning actual edition of a book by Marx was reason enough to be deemed guilty and likely executed. As the war advanced, many other such official orders were issued, and unfathomable numbers of books were burnt. To this is added that many libraries were burnt down during the bombardments that took place throughout the country, and that all the libraries of the leftist parties were systematically destroyed. The end of the war, in 1939, only made it official throughout the entire country that communist and socialist literature was banned. So even the few copies that might have survived the fires and the purges were surely disposed of by their owners. It is no small wonder that this particular copy did manage to survive.Withbound in the present volume is the first Spanish translation of Engels' ""Socialism: Utopian and Scientific"" and Jules Guesde's work on the Law of Wages. See:Ribas, Pedro. ""La primera traducción castellana de El capital, 1886 - 1887"", in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Madrid, junio de 1985, pp. 201-210.Castillo, Santiago. ""Marxismo y socialismo en el siglo XIX español"", in, Movimiento sociales y estado en la España contemporánea, Manuel Ortiz et al (coord.), Universidad de Castila-La Mancha, 2001Boza Puerta, Mariano, and Sánchez Herrador, Miguel Ángel. ""El martirio de los libros: una aproximación a la destrucción bibliográfica durante la Guerra Civil."" In Boletín de la Asociación Andaluza de Bibliotecarios. Año nº 22, Nº 86-87, 2007, págs. 79-96Tur, Francesc. https://serhistorico.net/2018/04/04/el-bibliocausto-en-la-espana-de-franco-1936-1939/‎

‎J. St. Mill’s Ansichten über die soziale Frage und die angebliche Umwälzung der Sozialwissenschaft durch Carey. - [A MAIN SOURCE OF INSPIRATION FOR MARX]‎

‎Duisburg, Falk & Lange, 1866. 8vo. Original publisher's black cloth with gilt lettering to spine and blindstamped borders to boards. Small tears to top capital and a small tear to the top of hinges. Otherwise very clean and fresh, aslo internally. VIII, 256 pp.‎

‎Scarce first edition of Lange's highly influential work, which came to serve as a great source of inspiration to Karl Marx, who read it extensively. Especially Lange's theories on rent theory and soil exhaustion (chapter 4 in the present work) influenced Marx profoundly.Apart from his influence through Marx, Lange was seminal in the spreading of Darwinism in Germany. Nietzsche was introduced to Darwin via Lange, which became pivotal in his construction of his theory of the Übermensch. ""[Lange], elucidates his critique against the Leibig school in the 1866 book [the present], the title which ironically mocks Dühring's book. Marx made some excerpts from this book in the beginning of 1868 and possessed a copy in his library. These excerpts are important because Marx focused on chapter 4 in which lange criticizes Carey's and Dühring's view on agriculture. Marx documented a passage in which Lange rejects Carey's idea of the harmonious development"" especially the latter's treatment of a ""protective tariff"" as ""panacea"" which should automatically lead to the establishment of an autarchic. "" (Karl Marx's Ecosocialism).""Thus in 1868 Marx began reading the work of authors who took a more critical stance toward Liebig's Agricultural Chemistry. He was already familiar with arguments such as Roscher's, which held that the robbery system should be criticized from the point of view of ""natural science"" but could be justified from an ""economic"" standpoint insofar as it was more profitable. According to Roscher, it was only necessary to stop the robbery just before it became too expensive to recover the original fertility of the soil-but market prices would take care of that. Adopting Roscher's arguments, Friedrich Albert Lange, a German philosopher, argued against Dühring's reception of Liebig and Carey in his J. St. Mill's Views of the Social Question [J. St. Mills Ansichten über die sociale Frage] published in 1866. Marx read Lange's book at the beginning of 1868, and it is no coincidence that his notebook focuses on its fourth chapter, where Lange discusses the problems of rent theory and soil exhaustion. Specifically, Marx noted Lange's observation that Carey and Dühring denounced ""trade"" with England as a cause of all evils and regarded a ""protective tariff"" as the ultimate ""panacea,"" without Lange's recognizing that ""industry"" possesses a ""centralizing tendency,"" which creates not only the division of town and country but also economic inequality. Similar to Roscher, Lange argued that ""despite the natural scientific correctness of Liebig's theory,"" robbery cultivation can be justified from a ""national economic"" perspective.""( Saito, Marx's Ecological Notebooks)Lange is a significant figure among the mid nineteenth century German intellectuals who were concerned to think through the impact of developments in natural science for philosophy, pedagogy, and politics.""Lange was one of the originators of ""physiological neo-Kantianism"" and an important figure in the founding of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. He played a significant role in the German labour movement and in the development of social democratic thought. He articulated a socialist Darwinism that was an alternative to early social Darwinism."" (SEP)Die Bibliotheken von Marx und Engels (MEGA IV.32).‎