THE FIRST BRITISH TRANSLATION OF ANY PART OF "DAS KAPITAL"

MARX, KARL.

Capital. I. - The Serfdom of Work. II. - The Lordship of Wealth. [In "To-Day: A Monthly Gathering of Bold Thoughts. Vol. I. May - September, 1883].

London, The Modern Press, 1883.

Royal8vo. Entire volume present, in the original olive green full cloth binding with gilt lettering to spine. Front board with black line-borders, black vignette, gilt lettering and gilt ornamentation depicting the sun. Spine with small mark and professional repairs to head and tail of spine. Light occassional brownspots to first leaves, otherwise a fine and clean copy. (Capital:) Pp. 57-68; 145-150. (Entire volume:) IV, 600 pp. Housed in a cloth clamshell box with gilt lettering to spine.


The exceedingly rare first British translation of any part of ‘Das Kapital’ and the first English translation of any part of the work to be published in Britain. When Karl Marx was finalizing the first volume of “Das Kapital”, he was already planning an English translation; British socialism was dominated by trade unionism and Marx wanted to propagate his ideas among the British working class. It would take 16 years, however, before the present translation was published and a full 20 years before the first full translation of the first volume of Das Kapital was published.

The present work is of the utmost scarcity and we have not beeen able to find a single auction record of it. 

Marx' research for ‘Das Kapital’ was in large part carried out in the reading room of the British Library, and the British working class during the industrial revolution in the late 18th century and early 19th century was highly important to Marx' class analysis. Consequently, Marx was eager to have an English translation published and for years, Marx and Engels tried to find an English translator and an editor for “Das Kapital”. While several unauthorized translations were planned and even begun, nothing came of it in Marx’s lifetime.

The present book is the first volume of a journal, edited by Ernest Belfort Bax & James Leigh Joynes, which specialized in the publication of free-thinking and radical works. It was published from 1883 to 1889, and To-Day's guiding principle was to 'shake itself free from all fetters, save those of truth and taste'. Its political stance is indeed bold and not entirely unfitting for a first translation of ‘Das Kapital’: 'the equal rights of every human being to health, wealth, wisdom and happiness shall be our watchword'.

Two sections of ´Das Kapital´, namely: I. The Serfdom of Work; II. The Lordship of Wealth. According to the heading, the second installment is being translated from the French edition of 1872, but a footnote states: “this chapter is translated from the second and third sections of chapter X of the original".

The first complete English book edition appeared in 1887, under the title Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production. It was translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (the partner of Karl Marx's daughter Eleanor), overseen by Engels.

Order-nr.: 60072

DKK 155.000,00