Against Laying Marx’s Capital Gently on Its Deathbed: Review of the Princeton Translation of Marx’s Capital

This review article is an assessment of the most recent translation of Marx’s Capital , Volume I into English, edited by Paul Reitter and Paul North and published by Princeton University Press. Since the authors of the article do not speak German, the main focus is not on the quality of the translation, but on the theoretical and ideological tendencies revealed by this edition, although there is a more technical section at the end that deals with the preferred terminology, the choice of edition, and the Index. The glaring problem with this edition is the fact that the younger generation is being introduced to Capital by two authors, Wendy Brown and Paul North, who are neither experts in the domain of political economy and its Marxist critique, nor aware that Capital lays out an earthshaking scientific discovery that lays bare the general laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production and of its consequent demise.