Retranslating Marx’s Capital

Interview by
Wendy Brown

The language of Karl Marx’s Capital, which was originally published in 1867, has shaped the political imagination of socialism’s proponents as well as its critics. From the opening discussion of the commodity, in which Marx declares that capitalists are “in love with money” only to add, in ironic Shakespeare-laden prose, that the “course of true love never did run smooth,” to the iconic line delivered in the section on “so-called original accumulation,” that in an unspecified future the “expropriators are expropriated,” the language of Capital has become as memorable as its message. Retranslating this well-known language, so complex, so canonical, poses daunting challenges.

The political theorist Wendy Brown spoke to Paul North and Paul Reitter, coeditors and translator of a new edition of Marx’s Capital, the first to appear in fifty years, about the significance of this undertaking. In a wide-ranging discussion, Brown, who wrote the preface to the new edition, discusses Marx’s literary style and the relevance of his analysis for understanding exploitation and inequality today. North and Reitter give insights into the challenges of the work and their hopes for its impact ahead of the publication of their new translation this month.

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