1. The same gentleman, ‘known by his fame’ (to use Heine’s words), later took the trouble to answer my Preface to Volume 3 – i.e. after this had been translated into Italian in the first issue of Rassegna. His answer can be found in Riforma Sociale of 25 February 1895. After first showering me with the deluge of flattery that is unavoidable with him and therefore doubly repulsive, he declares that he would never have dreamed of plagiarizing Marx’s contribution to the materialist conception of history. He had acknowledged this as far back as 1885, in passing, in the context of a review article. That is why he kept so stubbornly silent where it really mattered, i.e. in his book on the subject, where Marx is not mentioned until p. 129 and even then merely in connection with small-scale landownership in France. And now he boldly declares that Marx was not the original proponent of this theory; if Aristotle had not already indicated it, then Harrington undoubtedly put it forward in 1656,* and it was developed long before Marx by a galaxy of historians, politicians, jurists and economists. All this can be read in the French edition of Loria’s work. A complete plagiarist, in other words. After I had made it impossible for him to go on bragging with his plagiarisms from Marx, he had the cheek to maintain that Marx had also decked himself out with other people’s quills, just as he does himself.

Replying to my other charges, he again insists that Marx never intended to write a second volume of Capital, let alone a third. ‘And now Engels triumphantly replies that he has precisely refuted me with the second and third volumes! But I am most pleased with these volumes, to which I owe such great intellectual stimulation that no victory was ever so dear to me as this present defeat, if in fact it is a defeat. For is it really so? Is it actually true that Marx wrote this mass of disjointed notes, which Engels has put together in a pious spirit of friendship, with the intention of publication? Can it actually be assumed that Marx entrusted the culmination of his work and his system… to these pages of writings? Is it really sure that Marx would have published this chapter on the average rate of profit, in which the solution promised for so many years is reduced to the most disconsolate mystification, the most vulgar playing with words? It is at least permissible to doubt this… This proves, it seems to me, that Marx did not intend, after publishing his splendid book, to give it a successor, let alone planned to leave the completion of this gigantic work to his heirs, and outside his own responsibility.’

This is what is written, on p. 267. Heine showed his utter contempt for his Philistine German public by saying that the author eventually gets into the habit of treating his readership as a rational being. What then must our illustrious Loria take his readers for?

In conclusion, a new load of praise which I am unfortunate enough to bear. Here our Sganarell compares himself with Balaam, who came to curse but whose lips burbled ‘words of blessing and love’ against his will. What distinguished the worthy Balaam was that the ass he rode was more intelligent than its master. This Balaam, however, evidently left his ass at home.