“MARX WAS ABOVE ALL A REVOLUTIONARY”: FIRST AMERICAN EDITION OF MARX’S MAGNUM OPUS, DAS KAPITAL, VERY SCARCE IN ORIGINAL CLOTH

MARX, Karl. Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production. New York: Humboldt, [circa 1889]. Octavo, original maroon cloth, decorative endpapers.

First American edition (in English) of the first part of Marx’s landmark Das Kapital, the only part published in his lifetime, containing substantial revisions made by Marx for the first French translation, edited by Engels and translated from the third German edition. A most scarce and important printing of a seminal work in economic and political thought, especially scarce in publisher's original gilt-lettered cloth.

Expelled from Paris in 1844, from Brussells in 1848, and from Cologne in 1849, Karl Marx moved to London where, with the loyal financial support of Frederick Engels, he endured hunger, the deaths of three children and his wife's nervous breakdown, spending most of the next two decades in the British Museum, immersed in research for his great historical analysis of capitalism. "Marx himself modestly described Das Kapital as a continuation of his Zur Kritik des Politischen Oekonomie, 1859. It was in fact the summation of his quarter of a century's economic studies… The 'Athenaeum' reviewer of the first English translation (1887) later wrote: 'Under the guise of a critical analysis of capital, Karl Marx's work is principally a polemic against capitalists and the capitalist mode of production, and it is this polemical tone which is its chief charm.' The historical-polemical passages, with their formidable documentation from British official sources, have remained memorable; and, as Marx… wrote to Engels while the volume was still in the press, 'I hope the bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles all the rest of their lives.' Carbuncles, financial embarrassment and political preoccupations of many kinds hampered Marx's work on Das Kapital, which he would never have completed but for the material and moral support of Engels…" (PMM 359). This first volume features Marx's innovative concept of surplus value. "In his funeral eulogy for Karl Marx, Engels concluded that 'Marx was above all a revolutionary… It is doubtful that any figure in history has inspired more violently contradictory opinions than Karl Marx" (Downs, 22). "Only this first part of Marx's magnum opus appeared in his lifetime," with its publication in German in 1867 (PMM 359). The remainder was constructed by Engels from Marx's posthumous papers. The translations of the first American (this copy) and first English editions are the same and both were printed from the same plates; there were only small differences between the printings, including different imprints and bindings. The text is translated from the third German edition of Moore and Aveling, which incorporated the important revisions Marx made in the course of the preparation of the French translation and with editorial revisions by Frederich Engels. While auction records often give priority to the Humboldt edition (with no publication date on the title page), there are reputable bibliographers who give precedence to the Swan Sonnenschein edition, based largely on evidence that no New York area advertisements have been found prior to 1889. Any American or English first edition in English of Capital is quite rare. Engels published the German edition of volume II in 1885; his preface notes that a translation of it without volume III was necessarily incomplete; the German edition of volume III did not appear until 1894. Publisher's advertisements dated 1889: listing Capital in this one-volume edition and separately in four serial printings, no priority established. Draper II:M129, ST/M5. Occasional small library inkstamps. Bookseller ticket.

Text generally fresh and clean; title page with evidence of inkstamp removal, evidence of bookplate removal from pastedown, joints and cloth extremities with expert restoration, gilt bright.