Preface to Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume (35)

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Volume 35 of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels contains Volume I of Capital, Marx’s principal economic work. Volume I deals with the process of production of capital.

The present publication of Volume I is based on the first English edition (including the preface to the first and the afterword to the second German editions), prepared by Frederick Engels and published in 1887. The present volume further includes the preface and the afterword to the first French edition (1872-75) of Volume I, and also the prefaces to the third (1883) and the fourth (1890) German editions.

Significant textual divergences between the English translation and the German editions are indicated in this volume by editorial footnotes, which are marked with index letters. Editorial footnotes also point out inadequate translations of German economic terms (except for Fabrik, Fabrikant and große Industrie, translated in Engels’ English edition as “manufacture”, “manufacturer” and “modern industry”).

Engels’ addenda to the fourth German edition are given in this volume in double oblique lines (they replace the square brackets used in the first English edition). His footnotes, likewise placed in oblique lines, are marked with the initials “F. E.”

The title page is given in accordance with the German editions.

In preparing this publication of Volume I, obvious slips of the pen and printer’s errors in the first English edition have been corrected by the Editors without comment; bibliographical data, figures and facts

have been checked. Editorial elucidations are supplied in square brackets. Foreign words and phrases are given as used by Marx and Engels, with the translations supplied in footnotes where necessary. Some of the English words used are now antiquated or have undergone changes in usage. For example, Marx uses the word “nigger”, which has acquired generally — but especially in the USA — a more profane and unacceptable status than it had in Europe in the 19th century.

Quotations from English authors are given as they occur in the 1887 edition. Quotations from French, Italian, Latin and Greek sources (except for those from fiction and the Bible) have been translated into English. Here the Editors have drawn on Ben Fowkes’ translation of Volume I of Capital (Penguin Books, London, 1976). The translations of passages from earlier works of Marx and Engels quoted in the 1887 English edition may differ from those in the corresponding volumes of these Collected Works.

In compiling the bibliographical notes the Editors used, where necessary, Marx’s excerpt notebooks and preparatory manuscripts.

The editorial notes at the end of the volume are indicated by superior numbers; the author’s footnotes are marked by superior numbers with a round bracket.

The text of the volume was prepared and the notes to it written by Yelena Vashchenko and Lyubov Zalunina, and edited by Alexander Chepurenko (Russian Independent Institute of Social and National Problems). The Index of Quoted and Mentioned Literature and the Name Index were prepared by Svetlana Kiseleva.

The volume was prepared for the press by Lydia Belyakova, Yelena Kalinina and Mzia Pitskhelauri (Progress Publishing Group Corporation).