On the publication of I. I. Rubin's Essays

Submitted by Sewer Socialist on April 15, 2017

How widely known was Rubin's work before its translation? Where did Perlman & Samardžija obtain their copy?

Ogion

6 years 11 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Ogion on August 5, 2017

deleted

Noa Rodman

7 years 3 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Noa Rodman on April 16, 2017

It seems only Princeton has the relevant 1928 edition that Perlman believed was the last print. But Princeton also has the 1930 edition (as does Harvard)... A couple of other US libraries have only the first or second editions. The co-translator Miloš Samardžija was visiting professor in 1966/67 at Western Michigan University.

I think any of the older soviet economists who had been active in the 1920s-early 30s would have been deeply familiar with Rubin's work. Given the wide discussion of it in various journals etc. it would seem also that younger Marxist scholars could have at least known of Rubin's work, assuming that these journals themselves were available. Imagine it like knowing of works of Trotsky or Kautsky via Stalin or Lenin's polemics against them.

jura

7 years 3 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by jura on April 16, 2017

I think Perlman discovered Rubin through Samardžija. Perlman first went to Belgrade, where Samardžija was a professor. When the former got back to the states, he invited his teacher Samardžija to Michigan. It was during the latter's stay in the US that they translated Rubin. Lorraine Perlman's biography of Freddy states that he found a copy of the work in the Library of Congress. This must have been the penultimate, 1928 edition.

The book was generally prohibited (i.e., not published or translated) in the Eastern bloc, but as Noa says, people familiar with the 1920s/30s debates and the accusations during the purges knew about it, just as they knew about Deborin in philosophy. So one can see, e.g., Rubin's journal articles quoted in some Czechoslovak works from the late 1950s and the 1960s. There were not that many, though, and the original works themselves were inacessible. I guess in Yugoslavia, where the climate was generally more liberal, it could have been easier to come across Rubin's work and certainly less dangerous to discuss it. Samardžija was born in 1920, though, so he must have learnt about Rubin sometime during the war or shortly after it (he graduated Belgrade university in 1947).

Here's the very last Russian edition from 1929: https://archive.org/details/OcherkiPoTeoriiStoimostiMarksaessaysOnMarxsTheoryOfValue

I'm in Eastern Europe but in order to scan this, I had to get an interlibrary loan from Passau (which is former West Germany).

Karetelnik

7 years 3 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Karetelnik on April 16, 2017

According to Lorraine Perlman, "Fredy and Samardžija translated I.I. Rubin’s Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value from Russian, via Samardžija’s Serbo-Croatian, into English." This implies that the English version is a translation of a translation.

Noa Rodman

7 years 3 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Noa Rodman on April 16, 2017

Serbo-Croation translation (includes reply to critics) dates from 1978:

Isaak Iljič Rubin, Ogledi o Marxovoj teoriji vrijednosti, Zagreb: Stvarnost, 1978.

Sewer Socialist

7 years 3 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Sewer Socialist on April 17, 2017

Karetelnik

According to Lorraine Perlman, "Fredy and Samardžija translated I.I. Rubin’s Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value from Russian, via Samardžija’s Serbo-Croatian, into English." This implies that the English version is a translation of a translation.

Did Perlman know Russian well? It may have been that Samardžija aided the translation from Russian for Perlman indirectly into Serbo-Croatian (a common language between the two?) here and there, on the spot, but not translating the entire book into Serbo-Croatian.

Thanks for the responses, everyone.

Authored on
April 15, 2017