Re: [OPE] The English sub-titling of 'Capital'?

Here is a bit from my collection Engels Today a centenary
appreciation p. 177:

More alarming to students than the chapter renumbering may be the
fact that the very title was changed in Engels’s English edition. The
German book was Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Oekonomie and the
first volume was Der Produktionsprocess des Kapitals. The English
version put out by Engels in 1887 was called Capital: A Critical
Analysis of Capitalist Production with the first part called
Capitalist Production.[1]

It seems to me that these are very different in that the emphasis in
the German seems to be on how capital produces itself as a value form
(with a promise of how it circulates to come), whereas the English
sounds rather more pedestrian: there is production in general but
here we look specifically at its capitalist form. However, whether
there is anything in such reflections or not, Engels was not the
originator of a deviation from the German. For Marx’s French edition
was called simply Le Capital with the first volume called
Développement de la Production Capitaliste. The English version was a
cross between the two earlier ones.[2]

[1] Translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and
Edward Aveling: see MEGA II 9.

[2] A 1954 edition, originating from Foreign Languages Publishing
House of Moscow, continued with Engels’s title. But in 1965, without
notice, the same translation (now from Progress Publishers) had its
title changed to correspond with the German: Capital: A Critique of
Political Economy, Volume I, Book One, The Process of Production of
Capital. The 1983 publication by Lawrence & Wishart, London, of this
edition, printed in the USSR, is so titled; and in accordance with
the above-mentioned reflections, I complied with the new format in
preparing my Student Edition (Lawrence & Wishart 1992) on the basis
of this edition.

christopher j. arthur
arthurcj@waitrose.com
http://www.chrisarthur.net/

On 25 May 2009, at 16:16, Paul Zarembka wrote:

> Marx's title for Volume 1 in German reads "Das Kapital: Kritik der
> politischen Oekonomie. Erster Band. Buch I: Der
> Produktionsprocess des
> Kapitals", but the Progress edition (based upon Moore and Aveling)
> reads "Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production.
> Volume I".
> These are not the same.
>
> What do you know about this disparity? (I don't have the French or
> the Vintage English editions in front of me.)
>
> Paul Z.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> ~~~~~
> (Vol.23) THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF 9-11 Seven Stories Press soft, 2nd
> ed. 2008
> (Vol.24) TRANSITIONS IN LATIN AMERICA ~~~Research in Political
> Economy~~~
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/
> PZarembka
>
>
>
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Received on Tue May 26 00:08:09 2009