Paris. Gallimard, NRF. 1976. Coll : Bibliothèque des Idées. 2 volumes in-8. pleine toile avec jaq. Tome I : Une Philosophie de la Réalité. 479 p. Tome II : Une Philosophie de l'Economie. 486 p. BE.
Reference : 36050
Librairie Ancienne Laurencier
Patrick et Liliane Laurencier
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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).
High Holborn, for the Council by Edward Truelove, 1871. Small 8vo. Near contemporary quarter cloth with silver lettering to front board. Binding with signs of use, but overall good. One closed marginal tear and title-page with a few brownspots, otherwise very nice and clean. 35 pp.
Exceedingly rare first edition (with the names of Lucraft and Odger still present under ""The General Council"") of one of Marx' most important works, his seminal defense of the Paris Commune and exposition of the struggle of the Communards, written for all proletarians of the world. While living in London, Marx had joined the International Working Men's Association in 1864 - ""a society founded largely by members of Britain's growing trade unions and designed to foster international working class solidarity and mutual assistance. Marx accepted the International's invitation to represent Germany and became the most active member of its governing General Council, which met every Tuesday evening, first at 18 Greek Street in Soho and later in Holborn. In this role, Marx had his first sustained contact with the British working class and wrote some of his most memorable works, notably ""The Civil War in France"". A polemical response to the destruction of the Paris Commune by the French government in 1871, it brought Marx notoriety in London as 'the red terror doctor', a reputation that helped ensure the rejection of his application for British citizenship several years later. Despite his considerable influence within the International, it was never ideologically homogenous... (homas C. Jones: ""Karl Marx' London"").The work was highly controversial, but extremely influential. Even though most of the Council members of the International sanctioned the Address, it caused a rift internally, and some of the English members of the General Council were enraged to be seen to endorse it. Thus, for the second printing of the work, the names of Lucraft and Odger, who had now withdrawn from the Council, were removed from the list of members of ""The General Council"" at the end of the pamphlet. ""[Marx] defended the Commune in a bitterly eloquent pamphlet, ""The Civil War in France"", whose immediate effect was further to identify the International with the Commune, by then in such wide disrepute that some of the English members of the General Council refused to endorse it."" (Saul K. Padover, preface to Vol. II of the Karl Marx Library, pp. XLVII-XLVIII).""Written by Karl Marx as an address to the General Council of the International, with the aim of distributing to workers of all countries a clear understanding of the character and world-wide significance of the heroic struggle of the Communards and their historical experience to learn from. The book was widely circulated by 1872 it was translated into several languages and published throughout Europe and the United States."" (The Karl Marx Archive)Marx concluded ""The Civil War in France"" with these impassioned words, which were to resound with workers all over the world: ""Working men's Paris, with its Commune, will be forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class. Its exterminators history has already nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the prayers of their priests will not avail to redeem them.""The address, which was delivered on May 30, 1871, two days after the defeat of the Paris Commune, was to have an astounding effect on working men all over the world and on the organization of power of the proletarians. It appeared in three editions in 1871, was almost immediately translated into numerous languages and is now considered one of the most important works that Marx ever wrote. "" ""The Civil War in France"", one of Marx's most important works, was written as an address by the General Council of the International to all Association members in Europe and the United States.From the earliest days of the Paris Commune Marx made a point of collecting and studying all available information about its activities. He made clippings from all available French, English and German newspapers of the time. Newspapers from Paris reached London with great difficulty. Marx had at his disposal only individual issues of Paris newspapers that supported the Commune. He had to use English and French bourgeois newspapers published in London, including ones of Bonapartist leanings, but succeeded in giving an objective picture of the developments in Paris. ...Marx also drew valuable information from the letters of active participants and prominent figures of the Paris Commune, such as Leo Frankel, Eugene Varlin, Auguste Serraillier, Yelisaveta Tornanovskaya, as well as from the letters of Paul Lafargue, Pyotr Lavrov and others.Originally he intended to write an address to the workers of Paris, as he declared at the meeting of the General Council on March 28, 1871. His motion was unanimously approved. The further developments in Paris led him, however, to the conclusion that an appeal should be addressed to proletarians of the world. At the General Council meeting on April 18, Marx suggested to issue ""an address to the International generally about the general tendency of the struggle."" Marx was entrusted with drafting the address. He started his work after April 18 and continued throughout May. Originally he wrote the First and Second drafts of ""The Civil War in France"" as preparatory variants for the work, and then set about making up the final text of the address.He did most of the work on the First and Second drafts and the final version roughly between May 6 and 30. On May 30, 1871, two days after the last barricade had fallen in Paris, the General Council unanimously approved the text of ""The Civil War in France"", which Marx had read out.""The Civil War in France"" was first published in London on about June 13, 1871 in English, as a pamphlet of 35 pages in 1,000 copies. Since the first edition quickly sold out, the second English edition of 2,000 copies was published at a lower price, for sale to workers. In this edition [i.e., MECW], Marx corrected some of the misprints occurring in the first edition, and the section ""Notes"" was supplemented with another document. Changes were made in the list of General Council members who signed the Address: the names of Lucraft and Odger were deleted, as they had expressed disagreement with the Address in the bourgeois press and had withdrawn from the General Council, and the names of the new members of the General Council were added. In August 1871, the third English edition of ""The Civil War in France"" came out, in which Marx eliminated the inaccuracies of the previous editions.In 1871-72, ""The Civil War"" in France was translated into French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Flemish, Serbo-Croat, Danish and Polish, and published in the periodical press and as separate pamphlets in various European countries and the USA. It was repeatedly published in subsequent years....In 1891, when preparing a jubilee German edition of ""The Civil War in France"" to mark the 20th anniversary of the Paris Commune, Engels once again edited the text of his translation. He also wrote an introduction to this edition, emphasising the historical significance of the experience of the Paris Commune, and its theoretical generalisation by Marx in ""The Civil War in France"", and also giving additional information on the activities of the Communards from among the Blanquists and Proudhonists. Engels included in this edition the First and Second addresses of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association on the Franco-Prussian war, which were published in subsequent editions in different languages also together with ""The Civil War France"". (Notes on the Publication of ""The Civil War in France"" from MECW Volume 22). Only very few copies of the book from 1871 on OCLC are not explicitly stated to be 2nd or 3rd editions, and we have not been able to find a single copy for sale at auctions within the last 50 years.
Zürich & Winterthur, Literarischen Comptoirs, 1843. 8vo. Bound in one nice later half calf binding in contemporary style with gilt title and blindstamped ornamentation to spine. Faded inscription of ""Eigenthus des Literar. Museum"" to both title-pages and last leaf of bot volumes. Stamps of the same Litarary Museum to volume 1, at both title-page, last leaf and a few leaves inbetween. Neat pencil annotations to a few leaves of volume 1. Neatly washed and with a few tiny closed tears to second gathering. A small spot to lower blank margin of pp. 195-8 of vol. 1. Contents generally clean and crisp. All in all a evry nice copy. IV, 320 + IV, 288 pp. [Marx' paper: Vol. I, pp. 56-88].
Extremely scarce first edition of this two-volume periodical, which contains the first printing of Marx' first newspaper article, being the first political article written by Marx for publication, namely his ""Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction"". This important debut work, which constitutes the foundation of Marxian dialectic and his formulation of Critical Hegelianism, was written between January 15 and February 10, 1842, but due to censorship restrictions, it first appeared here, in Ruge's ""Anekdota"", in Switzerland in 1843, to avoid German censorship. ""The young Marx and the young Engels ridiculed the Prussian Censorship Law of 1841. The attack of the young Mark, ""Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction,"" was written in 1842 but published a year later in Ruge's ""Anekdota"".""Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction"" is an early exercise by the young Marx in the application of the categories of Hegelian critique. In this essay, the young Marx employed the Hegelian modalities of substance and essence to demonstrate the authoritarian nature of the Prussian Censorship Instruction. The young Marx utilized the concepts of substance and essence in the defence of free press. ""Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction"" defines the essence of a free press as free mind, or the essence of reason as freedom. The young Marx argues that it was impossible for reason to act in accordance with its essence unless it was totally free, because without absolute freedom, reason cannot follow its own insights to their logical conclusion. Consequently, when the Prussian Censorship Instruction limits the freedom of reason, when it sets boundaries beyond which reason cannot go, the Prussian Government annihilates the essence of reason. The strategy of the young Marx is his essay is to adopt Hegelian logic in the cause of liberalism. He wished to show how Hegelian categories could be adjusted, could be transformed into weapons in the cause of political reform. In this essay, the young Marx proved two things, that he interpreted Hegel as a critical Hegelian and that he himself continued this Critical Hegelian tradition. In 1842, the young Marx explored, experimented with the use of Hegelian categories, essence, and appearance as devices by which to advance the cause of political progressivism, and this was the meaning of Critical Hegelianism in the generation of Gans."" (Norman Levine: Divergent Paths: Hegel in Marxism and Engelsism, pp. 142-43).""Karl's [i.e. Marx] politics had closely followed those of Ruge ever since the end of the 1830s. In 1842 and 1843, their responses to immediate events, not least the ""frivolous diatribes of the ""Free"", had remained very close. An established author, and in the possession of independent means, ""Papa Ruge"" - as Jenny called him - was clearly the senior partner in this collaboration. The banning of the ""Deutsche Jahrbücher"" in January 1843 as the result of Prussian pressure, together with the suppression of the ""Rheinische Zeitung"", meant the effective silencing of Young Hegelianism within Germany. The aim of the criticism, as it was applied among Young Hegelians, was to highlight the gap between the demands of reason and the behavior of the government, but its failure to make any significant headway against the Prussia of Friedrich Wilhelm IV had also pushed them both towards an open criticism of Hegel's political philosophy. (Gareth Steadman Jones: Karl Marx, Greatness and Illusion, p. 142).Although another anonymous essay ""Luther als Schiedsrichter zwischen Strauß und Feuerbach"" (Vol. II, pp. 206-208) has long been attributed to Marx, the preface to MECW I now states that ""recent research has proved that it was not written by Marx (Draper, register, p. 58). The piece might be by Feuerbach himself.
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/
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).