Marx's French Edition of Capital as Unexplored Territory

Abstract

This chapter questions two widespread assumptions that Marx was a German rather than a multilingual, cosmopolitan thinker and that the 1890 fourth German edition of Capital, Vol. I established by Engels – the basis for over a century for almost all translations of the work, including English ones – actually constitutes a definitive edition of Capital, Vol. I. First, the chapter shows Marx’s clear preference for a version of the work Engels did not take very seriously, the French edition of 1872–75. No mere translation, this was the author’s last version, which, as he wrote in the 1875 postface, ‘possesses a scientific value independent of the original and should be consulted even by readers familiar with German’. Second, the chapter shows Engels’s tendency to dismiss the French edition in favour of the 1872 German one. Third, a few parts of the work where Engels did incorporate some passages from the French edition into his edition, most importantly on the centralization of capital, are taken up, as is their influence on theorists of state capitalism. Fourth, passages left out by Engels, especially on a multilinear approach towards societies outside Western Europe, are discussed in relation to development and revolution. Finally, the translation of the French edition as a unique version of Capital is proposed.