“MARX WAS ABOVE ALL A REVOLUTIONARY”: COMPLETE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF MARX’S CAPITAL

MARX, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1908-09. Three volumes. Thick octavo, original maroon publisher's cloth.

Early mixed multi-volume edition in English, with first edition of Volume III, second editions of Volumes I-II, this work considered the definitive English edition, including the first volume written by Marx and the second and third volumes written by Frederich Engels from Marx’s notes, in original gilt-lettered publisher’s cloth.

"It is doubtful that any figure in history has inspired more violently contradictory opinions than Karl Marx… In his funeral eulogy for Marx, Engels concluded that 'Marx was above all a revolutionary" (Downs, 22). Expelled from Paris in 1844, Marx moved to London where, with Engels' support, he endured poverty and family tragedy, spending decades researching his defining analysis of capitalism. Upon publication of Marx's masterpiece in Hamburg, 1867, the International Working Men's Association officially named Das Kapital the "Bible of the working class." Only the first volume of the work was completed and published in Marx's lifetime, with the remainder constructed by Engels from Marx's posthumous papers. "Marx described Das Kapital as a continuation of his Zur Kritik des Politischen Oekonomie, 1859… The 'Athenaeum' reviewer of the first English [edition] 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… [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" (PMM 359). Das Kapital's English translations have a complex history. As Untermann, editor of this edition, notes, "The first English translation of the first volume of Capital was edited by Engels and published in 1886. Marx had in the meantime made some changes in the text of the 2nd German edition and of the French translation, both of which appeared in 1873, and he had intended to superintend personally the edition of an English version. But the state of his health interfered with this plan. Engels utilised his notes and the text of the French edition of 1873 in the preparation of a 3rd German edition, and this served as a basis for the 1st edition of the English translation. Owing to the fact that the title page of this English translation (Swan Sonnenschein [1887]) did not distinctly specify that this was but volume I, it has often been mistaken for the complete work, in spite of the fact that the prefaces of Marx and Engels clearly pointed to the actual condition of the matter. In 1890, four years after the publication of the 1st English edition, Engels edited the proofs for a 4th German edition of volume I and enlarged it still more after repeated comparison with the French edition and with manuscript notes of Marx. But the Swan Sonnenschein edition did not adopt this new version in its subsequent English issues. The American edition will be the first complete English edition of the entire Marxian theories of Capitalist Production. It will contain all three volumes of Capital in full." Untermann does not mention or was unaware that Volume I only of Capital, "Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production," was published in New York concurrent with the London Swan Sonnenschein edition. This three-volume edition contains the first edition of Volume III: second editions of Volumes II-III (preceded respectively by the 1906 and 1907 editions). Owner inkstamps (Vols. I-II).

A fine copy.