Capital

Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1

Karl Marx, Paul North, Paul Reitter

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9780691240473
  9780691190075
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691240466
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Theory
• Index: Economics

Marx for the twenty-first century
The first new English translation in fifty years—and the only one based on the last German edition revised by Marx himself
Featuring extensive original commentary, including a foreword by acclaimed political theorist Wendy Brown
“An astounding achievement.”—China Miéville, author of October: The Story of the Russian Revolution

Karl Marx (1818–1883) was living in exile in England when he embarked on an ambitious, multivolume critique of the capitalist system of production. Though only the first volume saw publication in Marx’s lifetime, it would become one of the most consequential books in history. This magnificent new edition of Capital is a translation of Marx for the twenty-first century. It is the first translation into English to be based on the last German edition revised by Marx himself, the only version that can be called authoritative, and it features extensive commentary and annotations by Paul North and Paul Reitter that draw on the latest scholarship and provide invaluable perspective on the book and its complicated legacy. At once precise and boldly readable, this translation captures the momentous scale and sweep of Marx’s thought while recovering the elegance and humor of the original source.

For Marx, our global economic system is relentlessly driven by “value”—to produce it, capture it, trade it, and, most of all, to increase it. Lifespans are shortened under the demand for ever-greater value. Days are lengthened, work is intensified, and the division of labor deepens until it leaves two classes, owners and workers, in constant struggle for life and livelihood. In Capital, Marx reveals how value came to tyrannize our world, and how the history of capital is a chronicle of bloodshed, colonization, and enslavement.

With a foreword by Wendy Brown and an afterword by William Clare Roberts, this is a critical edition of Capital for our time, one that faithfully preserves the vitality and directness of Marx’s German prose and renders his ideas newly relevant to modern readers.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• More praise for Capital
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Editorial Board
• Table of Contents
• Foreword by Wendy Brown
• Editor’s Introduction
• Translator’s Preface
• On the Choice of Edition
• Quotations, Numerals, and Symbols in Marx’s Text
• Preface to the 1867 Edition
• Volume One: Capital’s Process of Production
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments
• The French Reconstruction of Capital, 1872–75 by William Clare Roberts
• Appendix 1 Comparative Tables of Contents
• Appendix 2 The First German Edition, Published 1867
• Appendix 3 The French Translation, Published 1875
• Appendix 4 Changes toward a Third German Edition
• Sources Cited by Marx
• Notes
• Index