Capital (Paperback)

Paperback. 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 Marxs 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 Marxs thought while recovering the elegance and humour 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 labour deepens until it leaves two classes, owners and workers, in constant struggle for life and livelihood. In Capital, Marx reveals how value came to tyrannise our world, and how the history of capital is a chronicle of bloodshed, colonisation, 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 Marxs German prose and renders his ideas newly relevant to modern readers.'An astounding achievement.' China Mieville, author of October: The Story of the Russian Revolution'No previous English version of Capital has featured such an erudite critical apparatus or such an exacting translation. Its a remarkable achievement that forces readers to attend to the philosophical subtleties of Marxs argument.' James Miller, New York Times Book Review'A new landmark translation' Jacob Berger, Wall Street Journal'Truly excellent it made me read it again, cover to cover, with the old Moore-Aveling and Fowkes translations also open on the desk, for fun.' Brad DeLong'Reitters meticulous care with Marxs terminology, however, doesnt inhibit his efforts to render other language in the book more colloquial. The resulting text is remarkably crisp and contemporary, laden with contractions and slang, at times even bordering on the conversational. [This] translation will richly reward those well versed in Marx in addition to those approaching Capital for the first time.' Alyssa Battistoni, The Nation'Here in the third decade of the twenty-first century, Princeton University Press presents Capital as the story not of inevitable proletarian triumph but of "value" and how the law of value "came to tyrannise our world".[Reitter and North's Capital] represent.this original document, [and] make for a new and somewhat undiscovered book, even to Marxist adepts. Reitters literalism restores a proper.honesty to a text whose nature is to reveal itself only fitfully, and never once and for all.' Benjamin Kunkel, Harper's'Paul Reitter, a professor of Germanic languages and literatures at Ohio State University, has produced a new translation of the first volume of Capital that restores to the book a freshness it had lost in the half-century since Ben Fowkess 1976 translation. Paul North, a professor of German at Ya Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…