‘Selected Correspondence on the French Translation of Capital’

During the preparation of the French translation of Capital, Karl Marx engaged in extensive correspondence with Maurice Lachâtre, a Communard, and the publisher of Le Capital, as well as with the printer and others involved in its production. Much of this relates to the editing in batches, and the first letter, reproduced here in full, already gives ample flavour of Marx’s exasperation with the delays, stray proofs, and other inadequacies, sometimes causing him considerable personal expense. This chapter includes a selection of the most significant letters, written by Marx, Lachâtre, Vernouillet, and Engels on Le capital. The first letter selected announces the problems that Marx had with Roy’s translation, and the endless hours of correction and emendation that he put into it clearly justify its reputation as a significantly distinctive text. The contract signed by Marx and Lachâtre on 13 February 1872 assured Marx of considerable control over the final product. Also interesting is Marx’s approval of the plan to publish Capital as a series, which he considers will make it more accessible to working-class readers. The letters from Lachâtre provide fascinating material on the difficulties that the government placed in the way of radical publishers well into the 1870s. Among all the short asides in the correspondence is Marx’s judgement on the socialist novelist Eugène Sue, who is too little known in the English-speaking world

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