Decades pass and, although Capital has often been described as an outdated text, the debate surrounding this book persists. Despite being 157 years old, Karl Marx’s critique of political economy retains all the qualities of a great classic: it sparks new insights with every reading and continues to shed light on key aspects of both the past and the present. Moreover, it has the remarkable ability to place the chronicle of the present ~ and the often-inadequate figures at its helm ~ into the relative perspective they deserve.
It is no coincidence that the well known Italian writer and journalist Italo Calvino asserted that a classic is one that helps us “relegate the present to the status of background noise”. Classics point to the essential issues and inescapable truths necessary to understand the problems thoroughly and resolve them. This is why they consistently captivate new generations of readers. A classic remains indispensable despite the passage of time and, in the case of Capital, one could argue that its relevance only grows as capitalism spreads to every corner of the globe and expands into all aspects of our lives.
Following the outbreak of the 2007-2008 economic crisis, the rediscovery of Marx’s magnum opus became a real necessity, almost a response to an emergency: bringing back into circulation the text ~ long forgotten after the fall of the Berlin Wall ~ that offered still-relevant interpretative keys to understanding the true causes of capitalism’s destructive madness. As global stock market indices were burning through hundreds of billions of euros, and numerous financial institutions declared bankruptcy, within a few months Capital sold more copies than it had in the previous two decades combined. The current revival of Capital, however, responds to a different need: the need to define, thanks to the substantial body of recent scholarship, which version of the work to trust as the most reliable one.
Marx’s original intention ~ outlined in the early preparatory manuscript of the work (the Grundrisse of 1857-58) ~ was to divide his work into six books. The first three would focus on capital, landed property, and wage labour; the following books would cover the state, foreign trade, and the world market. Over time, Marx’s realization of the impossibility of undertaking such an expensive project forced him to adopt a more feasible approach. He considered leaving out the last three volumes and incorporating parts on landed property and wage labor into the book on capital.
Capital was then conceived as a three-part structure: Book I would focus on The Process of Capitalist Production, Book II on The Process of Circulation of Capital, and Book III on The Overall Process of Capitalist Production. A fourth book was plan – ned to cover the history of theory, but it was never started and is often mistakenly conflated with Theories of Surplus Value. As is well known, Marx was only able to complete Book I of Capital in accordance with his original plan. Books II and III were published posthumously, in 1885 and 1894, respectively, thanks to a massive editorial effort by Friedrich Engels.
While scholars have long debated the reliability of these two volumes ~ based on incomplete, fragmented manuscripts written years apart and containing numerous unresolved the oretical issues ~ fewer have delved into another equally crucial question: whether a definitive version of Book I existed. This debate has resurfaced, capturing the attention of translators and publishers, and this year two major new editions of Capital were released. In Italy ~ the third country after Russia and France to translate the work, which was intended as a key tool in the struggle for proletarian emancipation ~ the text was published by the prestigious Einaudi. This represents the eighth Italian translation, the first having been published in 1886.
In the United States, the prestigious Princeton University Press released, in a print run of 13,000 copies, the first new English translation in fifty years ~ the fourth English edition. First published in 1867, after over two decades of prep – a ratory research, Marx was neverfully satisfied with the structure of the volume. He ended up dividing it into just six lengthy chapters and, notably, was dissatisfied with how he presented the theory of value, which he had to split into two parts: one in the first chapter and the other in an appendix, hastily written after the manuscript had already been submitted. As a result, the work continued to occupy Marx’s attention even after its publication. In preparation for the second edition, published in installments between 1872 and 1873, Marx rewrote the crucial section on the theory of value, added various supplements addressing the distinction between constant and variable capital, surplus value, and the use of machinery and technology.
He also reorganized the entire structure of the book, dividing it into seven sections, comprising 25 chapters, which were then meticulously subdivided into paragraphs. Marx closely followed the progress of the Russian translation (1872) as much as possible and devoted even more energy to preparing the French version, which appeared in installments bet – ween 1872 and 1875. In fact, he had to spend much more time than anticipated correcting the drafts. Dissatisfied with the work of the translator, who had rendered the text too literally, Marx rewrote entire sections to make the dialectical parts more digestible for the French audience and to implement changes he deemed essential. These revisions were mainly concentrated in the final section, dedicated to the “Process of Accumulation of Capital”.
He also altered the structure of the chapters, which increased after further adjustments to the distribution of the material. In the postscript to the French edition, Marx did not hesitate to assign it “scientific value independent of the original” and observed that it should “also be consulted by readers who know German.” Not by chance, when the possibility of an English edition arose in 1877, Marx emphasized that the translator should “necessarily compare the second German edition with the French edition”, in which he had “added something new and better described many things”. These were not merely stylistic tweaks. The changes Marx made to the various editions also reflected the results of his ongoing studies and the evolution of his critical thought. Marx and Engels differed on the issue. Marx, satisfied with the new version, considered it, in many parts, an improvement over the previous ones.
Engels, on the other hand, while praising the theoretical improvements in certain areas, was highly skeptical of the literary style imposed by the French translation, vigorously writing: “I would consider it a great mistake to take this version as the basis for the English translation.” Consequently, when Engels was asked shortly after his friend’s death to publish the third German edition (1883) of Book I, he limited his changes to “only the most necessary ones”.
In the preface, he informed the reader that Marx’s intention had been to “rework the text largely,” but that his poor health had prevented him from doing so. Engels worked with a German copy, corrected in various places by Marx, and a copy of the French translation, in which Marx had indicated the passages he considered indispensable. Angels kept his revisions to a minimum and could confidently declare: “In this third edition, no word has been changed that I am not certain the author himself would have changed”. However, he did not include all the variations Marx had indicated. The English translation (1887), fully supervised by Engels, was based on the third German edition. Engels claimed that this edition, like the second German edition, was superior to the French translation ~ especially in terms of the structure of the index. The fourth German edition was published in 1890; it was the last one prepared by Engels.
With more time at his disposal, he was able to incorporate ~ though still excluding some ~ other corrections Marx had made to the French version. The 1890 Engels edition became the canonical version of Capital, from which most translations worldwide were derived. However, the debate has never truly ended. Which of these five versions presents the best structure for the work? Which edition incorporates the theoretical advancements of the later Marx? The editors of the new American translation decided to rely primarily on the 1872-73 edition ~ the last German edition revised by Marx. A recent new German version (edited by T. Kuczynski) proposed an alternative that, claiming greater fidelity to Marx’s intent, includes additional changes made for the French translation.
The former has the flaw of neglecting parts of the French version that are clearly superior to the German, while the latter produced a text that is confusing and difficult to read. In contrast, the best is to include all the variants of each edition and various other preparatory manuscripts written by Marx in the long process of writing his masterpiece (the Italian translation does so). Nevertheless, no definitive version of Book I exists, and the systematic comparison of the revisions made by Marx and Engels remains a task for future scholars.
(The writer is Professor of Sociology, York University, Toronto)