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

Yes. I agree with you. I am desperately trying to leave texts behind
but people will keep asking about what Marx really meant!
Chris
christopher j. arthur
arthurcj@waitrose.com
http://www.chrisarthur.net/

On 27 May 2009, at 13:07, Anders Ekeland wrote:

>
> Chris has some very good points here, regarding the French/English/
> German edition(s). But, since he points to the "aber" versus
> "daher" controversy regarding simple and complex labour, one might
> ask why Engels in the subsequent (3rd and 4th) editions of the
> German Kapital did not use the French solution - I have not studied
> that "problem".
>
> I presented a paper on heterogeneous labour at the 2007 Ass. of
> Hetero. Ec. conf. - the relevant passage quoted below. But I really
> want to as Chris, does he think that any of the major problems of
> Marxian economics stems from bad translations, modifications made
> by Engels etc.
>
> I am of course in favour of scholarly editions, the MEGA is a great
> tool when studying the process of the formation of Marx&Engels
> economic thought, but I really think we need to think ourselves, to
> solve the *real* theoretical/political problems of Marxian
> economics. Textual exegesis will be of limited value. Blaming
> Engles or Progress will have negative value.
>
>
> Regards
> Anders
>
> ---------------- on the difference of the French and the German
> editions regarding heterogeneous labour ----
>
> "The second German edition was published in 1873 – two years before
> – so not all revisions could have been transferred to the original
> and the change made in the “education cost” passage was not. Why
> Engels did not include it in the third and fourth German edition is
> a question I have not studied.
>
> En examinant la production de la plus value, nous avons supposé que
> le travail, approprié par le capital, est du travail simple moyen.
> La supposition contraire n'y changerait rien. Admettons, par
> exemple, que, comparé au travail du fileur, celui du bijoutier est
> du travail à une puissance supérieure, que l'un est du travail
> simple et l'autre du travail complexe où se manifeste une force
> plus difficile à former et qui rend dans le même temps plus de
> valeur. Mais quel que soit le degré de différence entre ces deux
> travaux, la portion de travail où le bijoutier produit de la plus-
> value pour son maître ne diffère en rien qualitativement de la
> portion de travail où il ne fait que remplacer la valeur de son
> propre salaire. Après comme avant, la plus-value ne provient que de
> la durée prolongée du travail, qu'il soit celui du fileur ou celui
> du bijoutier <http://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1867/
> Capital-I/kmcapI-7.htm#sdfootnote19sym#sdfootnote19sym>[Footnote 1].
> D'un autre côté, quand il s'agit de production de valeur, le
> travail supérieur doit toujours être réduit à la moyenne du travail
> social, une journée de travail complexe, par exemple, à deux
> journées de travail simple <http://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/
> works/1867/Capital-I/kmcapI-7.htm#sdfootnote20sym#sdfootnote20sym>
> [Footnote 2]. Si des économistes comme il faut se sont récriés
> contre cette « assertion arbitraire », n'est ce pas le cas de dire,
> selon le proverbe allemand, que les arbres les empêchent de voir la
> forêt ! Ce qu'ils accusent d'être un artifice d'analyse, est tout
> bonnement un procédé qui se pratique tous les jours dans tous les
> coins du monde. Partout les valeurs des marchandises les plus
> diverses sont indistinctement exprimées en monnaie, c'est à dire
> dans une certaine masse d'or ou d'argent. Par cela même, les
> différents genres de travail, représentés par ces valeurs, ont été
> réduits, dans des proportions différentes, à des sommes déterminées
> d'une seule et même espèce de travail ordinaire, le travail qui
> produit l'or ou l'argent.[1]
>
> There are several minor differences for example that the passage
> does not start with “on a previous page” and that Marx warns those
> economists that cry out against this arbitrary assertion that they
> do not see the wood for the trees, but the core of the passage is
> almost identical to the German “education cost” passage. Marx uses
> the now well-known spinner (fileur) as an example of simple labour
> and the jeweller (bijoutier) as an example of complex labour. There
> are two main differences: ‘
>
> a) that the "whose production has cost more time and labour" is
> replaced by the much more general "une force plus difficile the
> former" = “a power more difficult to form/educate/make competent”.
> In French the word "formation” often has the meaning "education".
> But it is not the meaning of the word “former” in this context
> which is really important. It is the absence of “production” and
> all the problems that this word produces, since labour power is not
> produced under the same profit seeking logic as ordinary
> commodities. One could ask if the bijoutier really needs more years
> to be “formed” than Braverman's farm worker, but probably more than
> a “mere spinner”. But the “education cost” solution favoured by
> Marxists like Hilferding and Rosdolsky do get significantly less
> support in this last and most authoritative version of Marx Capital.
>
> b) The most important difference comes in the final sentence where
> Marx makes the labour producing gold or money to a kind of
> numeraire: "Par cela meme les différents genres de travail,
> représentés par ces valeurs, ont été réduits, dans des proportions
> différentes, à des sommes déterminées d'une seule et même espèce de
> travail ordinaire, le travail qui produit l'or ou l'argent." One
> possible translation to English is: “In the same way these
> different types of labour, represented by their values, have been
> reduced, in different proportions by one sole kind of simple
> labour, the labour that produces gold or silver[2]".
>
> Whatever the correct translation of this ”French" solution is,
> there is in my opinion no doubt that that nowhere in the German/
> English editions is the gold producing labour given any particular
> role. One interpretation might be that the gold/money producing
> labour here is the “particular kind of labour” that Marx quotes
> from Cazenove. But in my opinion it would be more in the spirit of
> Capital to se the gold producing labour as the labour that directly
> produces the monetary expression of labour time (MELT). It is
> beyond the scope of this article to discuss the role of money,
> commodity money versus “symbolic” money, but there is no doubt that
> for Marx, the gold producing labour was special as have been argued
> for example by Ernest Mandel (1984).
>
>
> [1] Quoted from <http://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1867/
> Capital-I/kmcapI-7.htm>http://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/
> 1867/Capital-I/kmcapI-7.htm. The two footnotes, including the "the
> long footnote" are just translated from the German version.
> [2] Argent can be mean both silver or money, but in this context my
> feeling is that silver is the most accurate translation.
>
>
>
>
> At 13:16 27.05.2009, you wrote:
>> Paul,
>> I agree the omission in the French of 'Critique" is embarrassing
>> for those of us who interpret Marx that way. Here is an extended
>> passage from my paper already cited.
>> Chris
>>
>> The key thing here is the existence of the French edition,
>> virtually written by Marx himself, since he went over every word
>> as Roy submitted it to him, section by section, correcting it,
>> freely editing his own text, and inserting many new passages to
>> the point where he felt able to add a note at the end informing
>> the reader that the French edition ‘possessed a scientific value
>> independent of the original and must be consulted even by readers
>> familiar with German’.[1] Given this, the strategy of comparing
>> the English edition supervised by Engels with the German original,
>> in order to detect interference by him, is defective. The fact is
>> that changes made by Engels generally follow changes Marx had
>> already made in the French.
>>
>> Of great importance in this connection are Marx’s letters to N.
>> Danielson, his Russian translator. —For example: ‘In regard to the
>> second edition of Capital … I wish that the division into chapters
>> - and the same goes for the subdivisions - be made according to
>> the French edition.’[2] No doubt he gave Engels the same
>> instructions.
>>
>> Given this, it is odd that Ben Fowkes in his modern translation
>> published by Penguin should attribute the English chapter
>> divisions to ‘Engels’s arrangement’[3] without mentioning why this
>> was done. Also A. Oakley, following Fowkes, complains that ‘Engels
>> chose to rearrange’ the chapter and part divisions of Capital; for
>> the English ones do not follow the German.[4] Quite so. They do
>> not. They follow the French![5] From the second edition on, the
>> German has 25 chapters in 7 parts. The French, and later the
>> English, has 33 chapters in 8 parts.
>>
>> Still more astonishing, given his erudition, is that Hal Draper
>> failed to say this in his monumental Marx-Engels Cyclopedia. In
>> Volume Two, The Marx-Engels Register, he says that Engels
>> renumbered the chapters for the English edition, but he does not
>> say why; nor does he mention the matter of renumbering when
>> dealing with the French edition.[6]
>>
>> Raya Dunayevskaya, in spite of calling attention to the importance
>> of the French edition, became confused herself when (probably
>> misled by Fowkes) she charged Engels with creating ‘a new Part
>> Eight’ for the section on ‘so-called Primitive Accumulation’; this
>> was a mistake in her view ‘for that section … should have been
>> inseparable from [that on] the Accumulation of Capital’.[7] But —
>> alas! — the culprit was Marx, who himself introduced ‘Huitiéme
>> section. L’accumulation primitive’! Engels was simply copying his
>> master in preparing the English with the same divisions.
>>
>> 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.[8]
>>
>> 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.[9]
>>
>> In general the lesson is that no assessment of Engels’s work as
>> editor of Marx’s Volume One can be made without close examination
>> of the French edition. It seems certain that Marx instructed him
>> to use this as a guide for other translations; for he wrote to
>> Danielson: ‘I was obliged to rewrite whole passages in French to
>> make them accessible for the French public. Later it will be so
>> much easier to translate from the French into English.’[10] But
>> then he had doubts about the French, complaining to Danielson in
>> 1878 that he was ‘sometimes obliged - principally in the first
>> chapter - to “aplatir” the matter in its French version’.[11] (t
>> might be thought the same ‘flattening’ happened to the 1887
>> English version.) A few days later, probably with this in mind, he
>> decided that ‘the first two sections (“Commodities and Money” and
>> “The Transformation of Money into Capital”) are to be translated
>> exclusively from the German text’.[12]
>>
>> The French is a great help in other matters too: for instance,
>> when translating from the German, the French can be consulted for
>> guidance.[13]
>>
>> At all events, it should be noted that Engels did not feel it
>> incumbent on him to annotate his editions as carefully as we might
>> demand today. For example, the explicit reference to Hegel in note
>> 21 of his English edition does not occur in any German or French
>> edition, and was therefore inserted by Engels without particular
>> notice.[14]
>>
>> An omission, which has acquired importance because of the central
>> place given to the term ‘Träger’ in structuralist interpretations
>> of Capital [15], occurs in chapter 2. After Marx said that ‘the
>> characters who appear on the economic stage are but the
>> personifications of the economical relations that exist between
>> them’[16], he added: ‘it is as bearers [Träger] of these economic
>> relations that they come into contact with each other’[17]. Engels
>> missed this out; but in doing so he was simply following the
>> French.[18] (What is odd, however, is that in neither of the
>> respective Apparat volumes to the French and English MEGA editions
>> is the omission noted![19])
>>
>> But sometimes the Engels edition unaccountably omits something.
>> For example, the sentence ‘What is the case with the forces of
>> nature, holds for science too.’ is left out of the chapter on
>> machinery after the reference to ‘the elasticity of steam’.[20]
>> (Oddly, the Fowkes translation which claims to restore ‘whole
>> sentences omitted by Engels’[21] does not restore this one[22]
>> even though it is there in the Werke edition from which the
>> translation was made.[23])
>>
>> Engels’s Prefaces to the Third and Fourth German editions indicate
>> his reliance on notes left by Marx on what was to be incorporated
>> from the French. Engels’s additions were not consistent, however.
>> The sentence ‘The religious world is but the reflex of the real
>> world.’ added to the English from the French[24] he failed to put
>> in these German editions.
>>
>> An example where a mere word may make all the difference to the
>> reading of a passage occurs in the case of the controversial topic
>> of skilled labour. Bernstein claimed to have found a passage in
>> Capital in which it appeared that Marx had directly derived the
>> higher value produced in a given time by skilled labour from the
>> higher value of that sort of labour power. The sentence quoted
>> was: ‘Ist der Wert dieser Kraft höher, so äussert sie sich aber
>> auch in höherer Arbeit und vergegenständlicht sich daher, in
>> denselben Zeiträumen, in verhältnissmässig höheren Werten.’[25]
>>
>> Hilferding, in his polemic of 1904 against Böhm-Bawerk, digressed
>> from his main theme in order to point out that the sentence does
>> not say what Bernstein claimed it does. (It is in truth compatible
>> with the Marxian axiom that the value of a product cannot come
>> from the ‘value of labour’.) He argued further that, for it to do
>> so, ‘aber’ would have to be changed to ‘daher’.[26] Bernstein was
>> using the second edition, Hilferding the third; but, as
>> Hilferding’s translators point out in a note, in the fourth
>> edition, edited by Engels, ‘aber’ is replaced by ‘daher’![27]
>>
>> As Hilferding pointed out, the issue under discussion is
>> valorisation, so Marx’s purpose in raising the topic of skilled
>> labour is to argue that it makes no difference to the basic
>> process. Even if the skilled labourer receives a higher wage,
>> surplus value is still obtained because he produces more value in
>> a given time. Given this, it is clear that ‘aber’ is needed to
>> emphasise this point. I would translate: ‘Albeit of higher value,
>> this power manifests itself, however [aber], in labour of a higher
>> sort, [which] objectifies itself therefore … in proportionately
>> higher values.’ Substituting ‘daher’ (‘therefore’) considerably
>> weakens the force of the sentence, and could indeed lead to a
>> Bernsteinian reading, as Hilferding thought. In fact, Engels is
>> doubly at fault; for he let pass a sloppy translation of this
>> sentence in the English edition: ‘This power being of a higher
>> value, its consumption is labour of a higher class, labour that
>> creates in equal times proportionately higher values....’[28] –
>> ‘aber’ has simply disappeared!
>>
>>
>> [1] Le Capital Paris 1872-75 tr. M. J. Roy; MEGA II 7 p.690
>>
>>
>>
>> [2] Letter to Danielson 15 Nov. 1878; Letters on Capital p.190.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [3] Capital I (Fowkes Trans.) p.110.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [4] Allen Oakley The Making of Marx’s Critical Theory (1983) p.98.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [5] The Pauls when translating (1928) from the fourth (1890)
>> German edition deal with the different chapter numberings from the
>> earlier translation by falsely informing the reader that earlier
>> German editions of Capital had more chapters.(Everyman edition
>> p.xliv)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [6] Op. cit.: p.28, p.27, p.188.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [7] Talk of 5 Aug 1986 published in News & Letters November 1990,
>> p.4. Also see her Rosa Luxemburg and Women's Liberation (1982) p.
>> 139n., and her Women’s Liberation and the Dialectic of Revolution
>> (1985) p.254, p.200, and p.59.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [8] Translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and
>> Edward Aveling: see MEGA II 9.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [9] 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.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [10] Letter to Danielson 28 May 1872. See also Marx to Sorge 27
>> Sept. 1877, CW45 pp.276-77. But note that Engels did not like the
>> French. (Letter to Marx 29 Nov. 1873.)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [11] Letter to Danielson 15 Nov. 1878, CW45 p. 343.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [12] 28 Nov. 1878, CW45 p.346.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [13] See my note in Science and Society (Summer 1990), using the
>> French, for an important case where the Engels edition is to be
>> preferred to the modern translation by Fowkes.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [14] Capital I (1983 ed.) p.63; MEGA II 9 p.49. The Apparat
>> volume to the MEGA edition of the first English translation of
>> 1887 has an inventory of deviations of the translation from the
>> third German edition on which it was based.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [15] This debate was initiated by Althusser and Balibar in their
>> Reading Capital (English trans. 1970). See the Index and Glossary
>> under ‘support’.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [16] Capital I (1983 ed.) p.89; MEGA II 9 p.74.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [17] Op. cit. (3rd German Edition) MEGA II 8 p. 112: ‘als deren
>> Träger sie sich gegenübertreten’. Capital I (Fowkes trans.) p.179.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [18] MEGA II 7 p.64; MEGA II 9 p.74. In view of its interest, I
>> restored the sentence in my Student Edition: p.41, otherwise based
>> on the 1983 edition published by Lawrence & Wishart.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [19] MEGA II 7 p.790; MEGA II 9 p. 739.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [20] Capital I (1983 ed.) p.365; MEGA II 9 p.337; Apparat p. 754.
>> It is in the French: MEGA II 7 p.331.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [21] Capital I (Fowkes Trans.) Translator’s Preface p.87.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [22] Capital I (Fowkes Trans.) p.508.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [23] Das Kapital, Erster Band; Marx-Engels Werke, vol. 23 Berlin
>> (1962) 1983 p.407. M. Postone has already pointed out the omission
>> in Fowkes (Time, labor, and social domination, 1993, p.338).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [24] Capital I (1983 ed.) p.83; MEGA II 9 p.69; MEGA II 7 p.59.
>> Another example is the note on Necker (Capital I, 1983 ed., p.
>> 552; MEGA II 9 p.510) which is not in any German edition. See for
>> Engels’s editorial principles Capital I (1983 ed.), Pref. to
>> English ed. p.14.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [25] MEGA II 5 Capital 1867 p.147. In the French edition (MEGA II
>> 7 p. 162) the sentence is omitted, and replaced by other matter.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [26] Rudolf Hilferding Böhm-Bawerk’s criticism of Marx, [trans.
>> by E. & C. Paul] ed. P. Sweezy, London, Merlin Press, 1975, pp.
>> 141-43.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [27] Ibid 143n. It isn’t clear why Hilferding did not use the
>> fourth edition.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [28] Capital I (1983 ed.) p.192; MEGA II 9 Capital 1887, p.
>> 171-2. Fowkes, translating from the fourth edition, is faced with
>> ‘daher’ of course (Das Kapital, MEW 23 p.212), and gives: ‘This
>> power being of a higher value, it expresses itself in labour of a
>> higher sort...etc.’Capital I (Fowkes Trans.) p.305.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> christopher j. arthur
>> <mailto:arthurcj@waitrose.com>arthurcj@waitrose.com
>> http://www.chrisarthur.net/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 26 May 2009, at 20:24, Paul Zarembka wrote:
>>
>>> Another major issue in marxist economics, Anders, regards the
>>> role, or lack thereof, of Hegel. Progressive German editions of
>>> Vol. 1 reflect
>>> a reduced role of Hegelian language, and the French edition, the
>>> most so. Thus, a simpler titling may be reflective of Marx's
>>> decreasing
>>> interest in Hegelian thought as being important for understanding
>>> the capitalist mode of production. Such a trend downward can be
>>> claimed to
>>> start for Marx in the 1840s, but never fully completed (which is
>>> a reason we still discuss the significance of Hegel).
>>>
>>> In any case, I think Jerry makes a good point in asking us to
>>> think about any other major scientific advance defined
>>> significantly by
>>> a 'critique' - in this case, of classical political economy. I
>>> could ask whether 'critiquing' (which is, in fact, thinking about
>>> thinking)
>>> is not a form of idealism.
>>>
>>> Paul Z.
>>>
>>>> But on any major issues "haunting" Marxist economics
>>>> (transformation problem, productive and unproductive labour,
>>>> commodity vs. fiat money
>>>> etc.) - the editions are equal, the solution to the problem must be
>>>> sought in creative reflection/confrontation on various theories -
>>>> and not the least - the stylized facts of economic reality.
>>>>
>>>> Just my 2 cents
>>>>
>>>> Anders E
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Received on Wed May 27 10:06:16 2009