f278 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYwilling in 1851 to see reprinted his essays from as long ago as the
Rheinische Zeitung of 1842. His intellectual development was a process of
'clarifying my own ideas' (to use his own expression),^45 which can neither
be split into periods nor treated as a monolith.
By the end of February 1858 , Marx's burst of creative effort had come
to an end, and he was faced with the (for him) more difficult problem of
how to get his 800 manuscript pages into publishable form. Lassalle had
offered to act as Marx's literary agent in Berlin. Marx hit upon the idea
of publishing his work in several short volumes, giving as his reasons that
he had neither the time nor the means to work up the whole of his
material, that it would thus reach a wider audience, and that it would be
easier to find a publisher. At the same time he informed Lassalle of the
stage he had reached in his proposed 'Economics' which he described as
a 'critique of economic categories or, if you like, a critical description of
the system of bourgeois economics'.^44 Three weeks later he informed
Lassalle that he was ready to forgo a royalty on the first part if that would
make it easier to find a publisher. The first part, he went on, would have
to be 'a relative whole' and would contain '1. Value, 2. Money, 3. Capital
(Productive Process of Capital; Circulation Process of Capital; the unity
of both Capital and Profit, Interest)' - material which in fact comprised
the whole of the eventual three volumes of Capital. This part would deal
in particular with the contradictions between Ricardo's correct treatment
of value and his theory of profit, a contradiction which economists would
find on closer inspection 'altogether a dirty business'.^45
By the end of March 1858 Lassalle had found a publisher, Franz
Duncker, who was ready to pay Marx a royalty that was - according to
Lassalle - considerably better than that obtained by Berlin professors.
But in spite of his promise to have the part ready 'by about the end of
May'^46 Marx made litde progress: he sent Engels a long synopsis of the
sections on value and money, but could not manage to complete the one
on capital although it was 'the most important thing in this first part'.^47
Marx's liver was again giving him trouble and Jenny wrote to Engels that
'his state is made much worse by mental stress and excitement which,
with the signing of the publisher's contract, is naturally daily in-
creasing as it is simply impossible for him to bring his work to a
finish'.^48 He made no more than a start before retiring to Manchester for
the whole of May. On his return he was still looking through his manu-
script trying to decide on what to include, but a combination of anxiety
and physical illness prevented him doing anything for the next two
months.
The chief difficulty that impeded Marx was once again financial. Engels
had supposed that Marx's problems were solved once he was installed in