...amusingly reviewed by James Miller. Professor Miller notes:
Marx asked Engels, in one of the German reviews he wrote, to summarize “Capital” simply, using language that Marx helpfully supplied: It showed how “present society, economically considered, is pregnant with a new, higher form,” and it revealed in human civilization “the same gradual process of evolution that Darwin has demonstrated in natural history,” thus confirming the “doctrine of progress.”
It’s a sign of our times that the editor and translator of an eagerly anticipated new English edition of the book — the first major translation in half a century — largely ignore both Darwin and the idea of progress in their copious notes.
It certainly tells us something about the editors at least. Maybe also a "sign of the times" is the introduction by political theorist Wendy Brown (what an odd choice to write an introduction for Capital?):
[W]ith capitalism still firmly intact, the American political theorist Wendy Brown briskly lays aside such hopes [of transformation in the preface of the new Princeton translation, calling them a “fantasy.” She also worries that if the workers of the world were ever to use freely what Marx called “the free gift of nature” in order to create more abundance for human beings, they might trigger an “ecological catastrophe,” something that she says the author of “Capital” only considers in passing. Brown suggests that the main contemporary value of Marx’s text is as a “critical theory” that reveals the system of capital as “a philosophical object.” In other words, it might not be the best guide for political practice.
Certainly, “Capital” is a cerebral read and the dangers of the world Marx lived in are not all the same as ours. Still, it’s a bit weird (if that’s the right word) that the scholars working on this new English edition of Marx’s most revered text should downplay Marx’s own deepest hopes, not just for a future classless society, but also for an ongoing process of upheaval that results, yes, in suffering, but also in ongoing technological and moral progress.
For if capital is just “extremely unnatural and incompatible with human flourishing,” and inexorably leading toward the destruction of the planet, what’s the point? Marx couldn’t predict the future, and neither can we. But, as he once put it, “the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
Well-said. The choices of the editors and introducers to one side, the translation itself is favorably reviewed. (I have not seen a copy yet.)
Recent Comments