Congratulation Announcement to the Publishing of the Reitter-North Version of Capital (and a Brief View of Translations)

19 January 2025

Comrades, as usual I am late to the proceedings of the Left, but I must give congratulations never the less to a new translation of Comrade Marx's Capital, composed by Paul Reitter, Paul North, and published by Princeton University (Amazon page here). Thoughts of a Comrade whole-heartedly supports this project and any which may in the future stem from it.

Long-time comrades will know that, due to the negative experience of reading Capital in my reading club (and all the stress and hostility such an undertaking causes when the logistic is simply not there for it), I have never technically/actually read Marx's Capital. That is to say, whilst I did 'read' it in full, I did not engage with it as I should have liked to consider the work indeed read. Thus it may seem odd for me to issue an endorsement of the kind here. Now, granted, I can not relate the quality of the Reitter-North Version (RNV) to you or to existing translations. Be that so, I feel it my duty to support the creation of a new translation, specially one as this, which has to all appearances had exceeding care placed into it by those involved, not least Paul Reitter and Paul North.

There have been three other translations of Capital, for those comrades found unbeknownst:

1887. Authorised Comrade Engels Version; Translated: S Moore, E Aveling; Edited: F Engels; Manuscript Tradition: Third Deutsch Edition; Translation Philosophy: Formal Equivalence.

1901. Charles Kerr Version (I know absolutely nothing about this one, except that Ernest Untermann was a translator, and Kerr the publisher).

1929. Eden-Cedar Version; Translated: M E Paul, C Paul; Edited: (Communist Party Great Britain?); Manuscript Tradition: Fourth Deutsch Edition; Translation Philosophy: Dynamic Equivalence.

1976. New Fowkes Version; Translated: B Fowkes; Edited: ?; Manuscript Tradition: Fourth Deutsch Edition, Marx-Engels Werke Revision (restoration of some obscure passages); Translation Philosophy: Dynamic Equivalence(?)

2024. Reitter-North Version; Translated: P Reitter; Edited: P North; Manuscript Tradition: based on Second Deutsch Edition, utilises Critical Text; Translation Philosophy: Formal Equivalence. (Note: may include 'Gender Revisitive Language').

2065. New Thoughts of a Comrade Annotated Capital??? (we need study Capitals one day!).

2097. Union Council Commentary on the First Volume of Capital???

Of these four translations of Capital, officially only two of them encompass a translation of all three volumes of Capital, that being the woefully obscure and costly Charles Kerr Version and the New Fowkes Version from Penguin. The three volume set of Capital published by the Soviet Progress Publishers comprises the first volume A-CEV, but the other two translations are apparently anonymous. Reitter may be working on a translation of volumes two and three, but we shall see when those are published. I have all these translations except the CKV, again costly and obscure. I have multiple copies of the Authorised CEV; if such an inspired translation was good enough for Comrade Marx, then it is good enough for me! But in seriousness, I in fact have only read the CEV, so I can not say much about the others.

I feel obligated to push back against some of the harshness with which Paul Reitter spoke about the Eden-Cedar Version. Eden and Cedar Paul worked hard on their translation effort, as Reitter retroactively admitted after retracting his calling it 'not a good translation'. He mentioned the criticism (it is too sparse to be considered a critique) of David Riazanov (here) regarding the ECV, implying Riazanov's intellectual weight as a Marx scholar justified the criticism. One wonders why Reitter did not mention the response produced by Eden and Cedar Paul to each single (of the concrete, referenced) criticism made by Riazanov (here). Of all the referenced 'errors' Riazanov lists, according to the Comrade Pauls, only point three is a true error which they 'are glad to have had the error pointed out, and are correcting it in the reprint now being made'. The rest of his points are matters of text criticism, usually whether you agree with Kautsky, the printers, or Engels. Eden and Cedar Paul always sided with Engels, much to Kautskyite-Menshevik Riazanov's (r)aging displeasure.

Why am I insulting Riazanov; does this uncordialness not infringe upon Gladsnost? Nayso, comrades, for I am insulting him not regarding his tendency or ideology, but because he portrays himself as an arrogant, annoying, and supposedly Comrade Engels Onlyist, but he proves himself to be a Kautsky Jerry-writ Onlyist, against the editorial choices made by Comrade Engels! Remember that he outright confesses to having but 'a hasty perusal' (to look for supposed errors?) right before giving his list of referenced ,,mistranslations''; yet Riazanov whines about how much better, and how inspired the Authorised CEV is, how it ought to have been a 'revising the edition of Moore and Aveling' instead of choosing to 'make an entirely new translation'. Then, at the very end, without having read the damn translation, Riazanov issues an ultimatum to Eden and Cedar Paul:

'as long as E. and C. Paul do not convince me by a thorough criticism of the old translation that a revision (the necessity of I do not deny) has been absolutely impossible, I maintain and shall continue to maintain the standpoint of considering their new translation from a scientific point of view superfluous'.

If Riazanov had been around, he would be holding events to burn copies of not just the ECV, but the RNV as well. Marx knows what he would do to the Radical Surplus Version! Suffice it to say, I think that Riazanov's case is neither convincing nor coming from a place of legitimate, well-considered critique of a new translation— as a new translation. If he loves the inerrant Kautsky Jerry-writ Version so much, why did he not translate it? I should argue that Riazanov violated Gladsnost first, with his utterly insincere review of the ECV.

I am in favour of dynamic equivalence, generally speaking. I am aware that this translation philosophy opens up the text to corruption via interpretation, hindering proper exegesis, but the alternative is to be lost at the text's purpose. I am also in gross favour of study editions and helps, which is unfortunately an unpopular opinion when it comes to non-scriptural texts. I suppose Engels was incorrect when he called Capital the 'Bible of the working class', for if so it were, then we should possess far more tools for the exposition and elucidation of this most important work.

I sincerely hope, then, that this publication is the beginning of a revitalisation of the usage and format of Marx's and Engels' (and Lenin's, et alia) works. To think that I used to complain about the lack of a critical edition of Capital, now here we are! I only hope this trend should last and expand immeasurably.

If I had to point to one possible folly I consider the RNV to suffer from, it must be the introduction of that dreaded 'Gender Revisitive Language' speech which Woke academicans are ever trying to force into sacred texts (we will cover a specific example of how this hinders scholarship in a moment). I suspect the presence of this plague based upon two sources of evidence:

I. Paul Reitter told Plastic Pills that concern for the feminists' back-lash caused them to potentially mistranslate 'unproduktive arbeit' as non-productive labour, opposed to the more traditional (and insinuated to be the more formal/literal) rendering 'unproductive labour'. Reitter gave the lame excuse that such a rendering is innately insulting. Perhaps Woe-men should grow a set of ,,testosterone aggression generators'', or you know, be reasonable in accepting that this is a text written by a male, for a technical audience and purpose, in the 1860s?

II. I saw as well in one of the front-matter materials, I believe the translator's preface, an inordinate usage of 'she' instead of 'he', or even 'them'. This is why feminists are rightly accused of wishing to stoke the sex-war for personal social gain: there is nay good reason to replace 'he' and 'him' with 'she' and 'her' instead of the neutral plurals, except to stir the pot in anticipation for some manner of reward or benefit (even if said reward or benefit is 'feeling included' or bluntly put, having one's ego stroked).

It is to be recalled how the New International Version Bible translation actually managed to de-radicalise Paul, by corrupting his use of 'son' in Galatians 4:7 into 'child'.

The problem is that, in the ancient and mediaeval world, sons had grosser privileges to inheritance and heirship generally. Thus, by Paul saying you are nay longer a slave, but God's son, he is arguing that everyone, regardless of sex, now has a claim to the title which was previously sonship exclusively. It is well to recall also that Wokerite feminists were really pushing hard for the 'Paul is a raging, unhinged misogynist' school of thought, which had growing sway until only two or three years ago. Maybe it is that the feminists just misunderstood Paul, you know, from mistranslating him in the name of a mythical yet destructive ,,inclusivity''? Paul the forward-thinking progressive has lived long enough in the pages of history to become an evil N-Wort woman-beater.

This demonstrates that Wokerites either prioritise agenda above history, or simply do not care about history full stop of the measure. Which is the more criminal I leave for you to decide. We have already heard the claim by Wokerites that Marx was a fanatical anti-Semite, that Hitler was a Marxist, that Stalin was a Phobeistite even worse than Hitler, et cetera. Socialists must denounce this vulgar ideologuery and demagoguery. If socialism is the truth, then it must stand for the truth, not an agendum to replace the truth— for then it should be a religion, unsubstantiable and dogmatic.

Because of feminists' unwillingness to compromise, I have stopped even using the neutral plural they and them, returning to my evil maniacal and misogynistic use of he and him. It goes without saying on grounds of high culture and my sociality, I have never so much as thought to end my usage of the good English man, manly, mannish, manful, and mankind, for some inferior, Politically Right-Think Latin supersubstantialsubstitutionushumanum...

Latin also loves Patria—rchy REEEEEEEEEE!!!

Aside from that one minor problem, which is hardly the fault of a poor translator living in the Muttermandia of Vokenhite 2481, who likely has nay choice in the matter, I verily do hope that more translations, and really projects relating to these works of the masters, are uptaken in the preferably near future. Das Kapital is a work which will live on and be studied for generations hereafter. Some say that it will become irrelevant come the institution of a phase called socialism or communism; but I retort that this work may help us immensely with the construction of both these phases, despite the present notion.