Yes interestingly this is being billed as the first translation which wasn't done by socialists. Would be curious to see how it differs from previous versions, and what people familiar with previous versions think about it
The translation into colloquial American English reads ok but the 15-page Foreword and a 30-page Editor’s Introduction are both unhelpful and undermine the rest of the book. The Preface is mainly gibberish by someone who dismisses as ‘fantasy’ what she calls ‘a perfectly rational, controlled and transparent communist political economy on the far side of a capitalist epoch’; according to her, Capital is a work of philosophy, a ‘deep ontological and epistemological critique of capitalism’. The Editor, too, sees Marx as basically a philosopher and opines that in Capital ‘nowhere really does Marx condemn the capital system or call for revolution’. But, then, both of them are philosophers who only want to interpret the world.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the Wendy Brown preface. Here's the full quote that alb mentioned:
Brown wrote: Leaving aside the fantasy of a perfectly rational, controlled, and transparent communist political economy on the far side of a capitalist epoch, the brilliance and enduring relevance of Marx’s anatomy of capitalism rest in his formulating of its object as at once singularly theoretical and material, as human made yet beyond human control, with more power to set the conditions for all planetary life than anything the species has ever unleashed. (xxvi)
Doesn't it sort of make the reader not want to bother with the book if you describe as "fantasy" something Marx, who was a communist after all, and millions of other workers strove for? A socialist/communist society, which is implied throughout the pages of Vol. 1, is also the overcoming of all of capitalism's socially and environmentally destructive effects. Marx highlighted these consequences of capitalism throughout his work, which Brown echoes in her preface. If a society in which people directly relate with one another in order to meet their needs without the mediation of markets or exchange is just a "fantasy," then it's not clear what Brown thinks people should actually do. Similarly, Marx also never argued that a socialist/communist society would be "perfectly rational"—that would be an impossible dystopia—so it's unclear who or what Brown is critiquing there.
In any case, it's also worth mentioning that there is plenty to critique in Ernest Mandel's introduction to Fowkes' translation, in addition to the editorial/introductory content in the Marx-Engels Collected Works, which uses the Moore-Aveling translation in Vol. 35. In other words, I wouldn't dismiss Paul Reitter's (American-English) translation on the basis of a preface or the editorial content. It seems like a nice contribution, filled with explanatory notes about how certain passages were translated. I don't think Reitter's translation renders the previous translations obsolete though, and neither does Reitter himself:
Reitter wrote: Of course, to identify gaps between what a translation promises to do and what it does isn’t to suggest that it lacks merit. I regard the Moore-Aveling and Fowkes editions of Capital as works that for the most part treat their source material carefully and thoughtfully. They also have moments of inventive brilliance, such as when Moore and Aveling translate "das Bürgertum und seinen doktinären Wortführern" as "bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors." (lxxi)
The Moore-Aveling translation was never so "faulty" that a new translation was ever needed in the first place; many people still use and cite the MECW. One just has to bear in mind the criticisms that have been made against it, and the same applies to Fowkes' translation. There will always be people criticizing any translation, which they should. If you want Marx in his own words, then you have to read the German original. I'm also fairly certain that people will criticize Reitter's translation as well.
Any German speakers, I'd be…
Any German speakers, I'd be interested to see how it compares to Hans G Ehrbar's translation:
https://content.csbs.utah.edu/~ehrbar/akmc.pdf
Yes interestingly this is…
Yes interestingly this is being billed as the first translation which wasn't done by socialists. Would be curious to see how it differs from previous versions, and what people familiar with previous versions think about it
The translation into…
The translation into colloquial American English reads ok but the 15-page Foreword and a 30-page Editor’s Introduction are both unhelpful and undermine the rest of the book. The Preface is mainly gibberish by someone who dismisses as ‘fantasy’ what she calls ‘a perfectly rational, controlled and transparent communist political economy on the far side of a capitalist epoch’; according to her, Capital is a work of philosophy, a ‘deep ontological and epistemological critique of capitalism’. The Editor, too, sees Marx as basically a philosopher and opines that in Capital ‘nowhere really does Marx condemn the capital system or call for revolution’. But, then, both of them are philosophers who only want to interpret the world.
It’s a nice looking book…
It’s a nice looking book though.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the…
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the Wendy Brown preface. Here's the full quote that alb mentioned:
Doesn't it sort of make the reader not want to bother with the book if you describe as "fantasy" something Marx, who was a communist after all, and millions of other workers strove for? A socialist/communist society, which is implied throughout the pages of Vol. 1, is also the overcoming of all of capitalism's socially and environmentally destructive effects. Marx highlighted these consequences of capitalism throughout his work, which Brown echoes in her preface. If a society in which people directly relate with one another in order to meet their needs without the mediation of markets or exchange is just a "fantasy," then it's not clear what Brown thinks people should actually do. Similarly, Marx also never argued that a socialist/communist society would be "perfectly rational"—that would be an impossible dystopia—so it's unclear who or what Brown is critiquing there.
In any case, it's also worth mentioning that there is plenty to critique in Ernest Mandel's introduction to Fowkes' translation, in addition to the editorial/introductory content in the Marx-Engels Collected Works, which uses the Moore-Aveling translation in Vol. 35. In other words, I wouldn't dismiss Paul Reitter's (American-English) translation on the basis of a preface or the editorial content. It seems like a nice contribution, filled with explanatory notes about how certain passages were translated. I don't think Reitter's translation renders the previous translations obsolete though, and neither does Reitter himself:
The Moore-Aveling translation was never so "faulty" that a new translation was ever needed in the first place; many people still use and cite the MECW. One just has to bear in mind the criticisms that have been made against it, and the same applies to Fowkes' translation. There will always be people criticizing any translation, which they should. If you want Marx in his own words, then you have to read the German original. I'm also fairly certain that people will criticize Reitter's translation as well.