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Title: Marx to Laura Lafargue, London, 22 December 1868
Description: Marx promises his daughter a book of Oriental mysticism and asks her to tell Lafargue that the degradation of the English agricultural labourers is explained by primitive accumulation, not by the Corn Laws.
Author: Karl Marx
Date: 1868-12-22
URL: https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/cartas/originales/1868-12-22%20Marx%20to%20Laura%20Lafargue
---


*Letter from Karl Marx to his daughter Laura Lafargue, in Paris, written in London on 22 December 1868. The manuscript is preserved (RGASPI, Moscow). Text from the manuscript, [MEGAdigital](https://megadigital.bbaw.de/briefe/detail.xql?id=M0000885) (MEGA² III/15, letter no. 394), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, CC BY-SA 4.0, without the editors’ apparatus. [Traducción al español](https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/cartas/1868-12-22%20Marx%20a%20Laura%20Lafargue)*

London 22 Dec.’68.

My dear child,

I wanted to send you together with Rückert a truly delicious book—„ *Blüthen Morgenländischer Mystik von Tholuck* ”. Mais la plus belle fille de France ne peut donner que ce qu’elle a. The book was not to be had in all London. I have ordered it from Germany. You will get it in about 3 weeks.

Tell Lafargue that he must excuse my silence. I was really overworked during the last months, as I wanted to have done with certain studies before the beginning of the new year. However, aufgeschoben ist nicht aufgehoben. Meanwhile tell him that Dr. Hunter, excellent as his report is, knows as little as most Englishmen do of the past (social) history of his own country. The degradation of the rural labourers has nothing whatever to do with the Cornlaws of 1815. If he wants to know the real causes which have brought them down to the zero of their present position, you must translate him Ch. VI, Section II *(Ursprüngliche Accumulation)* of my book.

Happy new year

Your most devoted “Old One”

K. Marx