KARL MARX

9
280 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY
form. But in everything that I wrote I could detect an illness of the liver.' 54
It was important for the style to be good for it represented the result of
fifteen years' research and 'the first attempts at a scientific presentation
of an important view of social relationships'. 55 By the end of November,
however, Jenny was copying a manuscript to which Marx had added a
chapter on commodities which was not in his original draft and expanded
the section on money. By mid-December that manuscript would soon be
ready but 'devil take me if anyone else could have been ready so early
with such a lousy liver'. 56 By the end of January the manuscript was in
fact ready but could not be sent off 'because I have not even a farthing
to buy a stamp and register it'. 57 Marx's previous letter to Engels had
continued the shocking denouement to the whole affair: 'The manuscript
is about 12 printer's sheets long and - take a grip on yourself - in spite
of its tide ... contains NOTHING on Capital.' 58 In other words, Marx had
dropped the idea of publishing the second part on Capital simultaneously
in spite of his previous insistence to Lassalle that 'this second part must
appear simultaneously. The inner consistency makes it necessary and the
whole effect depends on it.' 59 Even when the manuscript was despatched,
Marx's worries were not at an end: he suspected the authorities in Berlin
of having confiscated his parcel and, when Lassalle still had not informed
him of its arrival after two weeks, he was 'sick with anxiety'. 60 When
eventually it did arrive, the printing was much too slow for Marx: it took
Duncker six weeks to produce the proofs. Even worse, two weeks after
Marx had sent off the last corrected proof sheets, the arrival of an
unfranked pamphlet by Lassalle, obviously given priority by Duncker,
compelled Marx to pawn his last respectable coat to pay the necessary
two shillings excess postal charge.
In the manuscript, which was finally published in early June, by far
the most valuable part was the Preface which contained as succinct an
account of the materialist conception of history as Marx ever produced.
Marx opened the Preface with a statement of the scope of his 'Economics'
and his progress to date. There followed a short piece of intellectual
autobiography in which Marx stressed the importance of his journalistic
work for the Rheinische Zeitung in giving him an insight into the importance
of 'material interests' and 'economic questions'. He then withdrew
into his study to examine Hegel's political philosophy The conclusion of
this retreat was that
legal relations as well as forms of state are to be grasped neither from
themselves nor from the so-called general development of the human
mind, but rather have their roots in the material conditions of life, the
sum total of which Hegel, following the example of the Englishmen
and Frenchmen of the eighteenth century, combines under the name