FIRST COMPLETE ITALIAN TRANSLATION OF MARX' "DAS KAPITAL"

MARX, CARLO. [KARL].

Il Capitale. Critica dell'economia politica.

Torino, Unione Tipografico-Editrice, 1886.

Royal8vo. Bound uncut and largely unopened with the original printed wrappers in a very nice recent red half calf binding with marbled paper covered boards. Half-title and title-page browned. Published as "Biblioteca dell'Economista", Third Series, volume 9. An unusually fine copy. Il Capitale: 685 pp. [Entire volume: (4), 903, (1) pp.].

First full Italian translation of Marx' landmark work, constituting what is arguably the greatest revolutionary work of the nineteenth century. The work proved immensely influential in both communist and fascist circles. Antonio Gramsci, founding member and one-time leader of the Communist Party of Italy (PCI), based much of his theoretical and practical work on the present translation of Marx' work and Ezra Pound read this Italian translation (which is among the most heavily marked annotated volumes in his personal library) and was horrified by the accounts of the exploitation of labor given by Marx which eventually grew into his sympathy for fascism and Mussolini's socialist roots. (Rainey, Textual Studies in the Cantos).

The translation was done in nine installments beginning in 1882 but was not published until 1886. The translation, however, remained relatively unknown: "It was difficult in Italy during that period [late 19th century] to obtain Marx's works. With the exception of Cafiero's hard to find summary and some other summarizing pamphlets published by another Southern scholar, Pasquale Martiguetti of Benevent, those Italians who sought to consult Marx were forced (unless they could read the original German) to have recourse to the French translation of the first volume of 'Capital', published in 1875. True, in 1886 Boccardo had published in Biblioteca dell'Economista, an Italian translation of 'Capital', but this was inaccessible to those of modest means." (Piccone, Italian Marxism).

The first edition of the work originally appeared in German in 1867, and only the first part of the work appeared in Marx' lifetime.

Bert Andréas 154
Einaudi (not numbered, between no. 3769 and 3770)
Mattioli 2287 (a reprint from 1916).

Order-nr.: 55866