5. Agreement Between Mr. Karl Marx and Mr. Otto Meissner, Publisher and Bookseller
5. Agreement Between Mr. Karl Marx and Mr. Otto Meissner, Publisher and Bookseller[262]
1. We, the undersigned, jointly undertake to publish the first and all subsequent editions of the work entitled "Capital. A Critique of Political Economy" by Karl Marx on the following terms. The book will be approximately 50 signatures in length and will appear in two volumes. Each of the contracting parties will receive one half of the net earnings which are arrived at after deducting 33Vs per cent discount for the retailers from the gross receipts and after deducting the costs of paper, printing, binding, transport and advertisement, etc., from the remainder.
2. The accounts will be drawn up each August for the copies sold during the preceding year and the profit will be shared out at the same time. The Publisher reserves the right, however, to pay one-third of the sum not more than three months later.
3. The cost of paper, printing and binding will be calculated on the basis of the original invoices. To cover the costs of advertising, transport, circulars, postage, etc., Otto Meissner will debit the production costs with the round sum of 100 Thalers for each edition, irrespective of whether the actual sum be greater or less.
4. Should the work yield no profit, any resulting loss will be borne by the Publisher, Otto Meissner, alone.
5. Neither of us may transfer his rights in the publication to a third party without the consent of the other, except in the event of death, when the ownership passes to the heirs without the need for an additional deed of assignment.
6. The size of the edition and the format of the work shall be determined by mutual agreement. The Publisher shall have the discretion to determine the price and the method of sale of the work.
7. Each of the contracting parties has the right to receive ten free copies of the work for his own private purposes and these, together with the review copies to be sent to newspapers, will be deducted from the edition when the accounts are presented.
8. The Author undertakes to deliver the complete manuscript of the work to the Publisher on or before the last day of May of this year, while the latter undertakes to publish the work in its entirety by October of this year at the latest, and to dispatch the first volume sooner if possible.
We regard the above eight points as binding upon us and our heirs.
Hamburg and Otto Meissner in Hamburg
Drawn up not later than March 21, 1865 Printed according to the manuscript First published in the book: Karl Marx.
Dokumente Seines Lebens, Leipzig, 1970 Published in English for the first time
Endnotes
[262] letter of February 1. In the latter, which has not survived, Marx outlined a plan to draw the broad sections of British workers into the electoral reform movement under the leadership of the Central Council. In his reply, Jones expressed his agreement with the measures outlined and stressed, in particular, the need to put forward a slogan of radical reform in contrast to the moderate programme of the liberal National Reform Union in Manchester. Marx read a letter to him from Ernest Jones of February 25, 1865. Jones had written about the success of the reform movement in Manchester and welcomed the mass meeting in London on February 23 which declared the formation of the Reform League. He invited delegates of the League to Manchester to take part in a mass meeting in support of the demand for universal suffrage. • The only extant report of Marx's speech, delivered in early February 1865 at the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the German Workers' Educational Society in London, when Marx criticised the idea of the bourgeois state giving assistance to workers' associations and other Lassallean and Proudhonist dogmas, was made by Johann Georg Eccarius and is rather unsatisfactory. In his letters to Wilhelm Liebknecht on February 23 and to Engels on February 25 (see present edition, Vol. 42), Marx drew their attention to mistakes in the report and emphasised that some ideas in it were completely the opposite of what he had said. This particularly applied to the last sentence about the impossibility of joint action by the proletariat and the bourgeoisie against reactionary regimes. Marx attributed these blunders in Eccarius' report to ill health. The German Workers' Educational Society in London was founded in 1840 by German worker refugees, members of the League of the Just. After the foundation of the Communist League in 1847, representatives of its local communities played the leading role in the Society, which had branches in various working-class districts in London. In 1847 Marx and in 1849-50 Engels took an active part in the Society's work, but in September 1850 they temporarily withdrew because the Willich-Schapper sectarian-adventurist group had increased its influence in the Society. In the late 1850s, when Marx's followers (Georg Eccarius, Friedrich Lessner and Karl Schapper, who had rejected his sectarian views, and others) prevailed again, Marx and Engels resumed their activities in the Educational Society. When the International Working Men's Association was founded, the Society became its German section in London. Eccarius, Kaub, Lessner, Lochner, Bolleter and other members of the Society joined the Central Council of the International Association and played an important part in its activities. The Society existed until 1918, when it was closed by the British government. . See Note 46. Marx was put in touch with the Hamburg publishing house of Meissner und Behre through former member of the Communist League Wilhelm Strohn, a commercial clerk from Bradford who often went to Hamburg on business. At the end of January 1865 Strohn and Otto Meissner agreed on the terms on which the book was to be printed. The text of the agreement was sent to Marx by Meissner in his letter of March 21, 1865. The date of the agreement was not indicated. Meissner left it to Marx's discretion to decide how the manuscript was to be delivered to him: by instalments or as a whole. Marx could avail himself of the agreement only in two years' time. In April 1867 Marx personally handed in the manuscript of the first volume of Capital. The first edition appeared in September of that year. The term of the agreement giving Meissner the right to put out subsequent volumes and reprint the book was observed during Marx's lifetime and after his death. Until 1914 the German edition of all three volumes of Capital was published by Meissner und Behre.