Wheen Francis - Marxs Das Kapital

Marxs Das Kapital

A Biography

Francis Wheen is the author of The Soul of Indiscretion, a life of Tom Driberg; Karl Marx; The Irresistible Con; Hoo Hahs and Passing Frenzies, which won the Orwell Prize in 2003; and the best-selling How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions.

Other titles in the Books That Shook the World series:
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Platos Republic by Simon Blackburn

Darwins Origin of Species by Janet Browne

Thomas Paines Rights of Man by Christopher Hitchens

The Quran by Bruce Lawrence

Adam Smiths On the Wealth of Nations by P. J. ORourke

Forthcoming:

The Bible by Karen Armstrong

Machiavellis The Prince by Philip Bobbitt

Homers The Iliad and the Odyssey by Alberto Manguel

Carl von Clausewitzs On War by Hew Strachan

First published in Great Britain in hardback in 2006 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic.

This paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2007 by Atlantic Books.

Copyright Francis Wheen 2006

The moral right of Francis Wheen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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ISBN 978 1 84354 401 2
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CONTENTS

A NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS

If you wish to read Marxs masterpiece for yourself, the least intimidating option is Capital: A New Abridgement, edited by David McLellan (OUP Worlds Classics), a one-volume collection of the most important chapters. Its extracts from Volume I are in the original English translation of 1887; the translations from Volume II are by McLellan himself; the material for Volume III comes from the anonymous Moscow translation published in 1971.

If you want to plunge straight into a full, unabridged version, I recommend the Penguin Classics edition in three volumes, translated by Ben Fowkes and with an introduction (which you may decide to skip) by Ernest Mandel.

Since no single translation is perfect, I have used various sources for the passages from Das Kapital cited in this book. Some of the quotations are from the Penguin text, some from the Worlds Classics, some from the Marx & Engels Collected Works (50 vols, Lawrence & Wishart) and some are my own.

INTRODUCTION

The Unknown Masterpiece

In February 1867, shortly before delivering the first volume of Das Kapital to the printers, Karl Marx urged Friedrich Engels to read The Unknown Masterpiece by Honor de Balzac. The story was itself a little masterpiece, he said, full of the most delightful irony.

We dont know whether Engels heeded the advice. If he did, he would certainly have spotted the irony but might have been surprised that his old friend could take any delight in it. The Unknown Masterpiece is the tale of Frenhofer, a great painter who spends ten years working and reworking a portrait which will revolutionize art by providing the most complete representation of reality. When at last his fellow artists Poussin and Porbus are allowed to inspect the finished canvas, they are horrified to see a blizzard of random forms and colours piled one upon another in confusion. Ah! Frenhofer cries, misinterpreting their wide-eyed amazement. You did not anticipate such perfection! But then he overhears Poussin telling Porbus that eventually Frenhofer must discover the truth the portrait has been overpainted so many times that nothing remains.

Nothing on my canvas! exclaimed Frenhofer, glancing alternately at the two painters and his picture.

What have you done? said Porbus in an undertone to Poussin.

The old man seized the young mans arm roughly, and said to him: You see nothing there, clown! varlet! miscreant! hound! Why, what brought you here, then? My good Porbus, he continued, turning to the older painter, can it be that you, you too, are mocking at me? Answer me! I am your friend; tell me, have I spoiled my picture?

Porbus hesitated, he dared not speak; but the anxiety depicted on the old mans white face was so heart-rending that he pointed to the canvas saying: Look!

Frenhofer gazed at his picture for a moment and staggered.

Nothing! Nothing! And I have worked ten years!

He fell upon a chair and wept.

After banishing the two men from his studio, Frenhofer burns all his paintings and kills himself.

According to Marxs son-in-law Paul Lafargue, Balzacs tale made a great impression on him because it was in part a description of his own feelings. Marx had toiled for many years on his own unseen masterpiece, and throughout this long gestation his customary reply to those who asked for a glimpse of the work-in-progress was identical to that of Frenhofer: No, no! I have still to put some finishing touches to it. Yesterday, towards evening, I thought that it was doneThis morning, by daylight, I realized my error. As early as 1846, when the book was already overdue, Marx wrote to his German publisher: I shall not have it published without revising it yet again, both as regards matter and style. It goes without saying that a writer who works continuously cannot, at the end of six months, publish word for word what he wrote six months earlier. Twelve years later, still no nearer completion, he explained that the thing is proceeding very slowly because no sooner does one set about finally disposing of subjects to which one has devoted years of study than they start revealing new aspects and demand to be thought out further. An obsessive perfectionist, he was forever seeking out new hues for his palette studying mathematics, learning about the movement of celestial spheres, teaching himself Russian so he could read books on the countrys land system. Or, to quote Frenhofer again: Alas! I thought for a moment that my work was finished; but I have certainly gone wrong in some details, and my mind will not be at rest until I have cleared away my doubts. I have decided to travel, and visit Turkey, Greece and Asia in search of models, in order to compare my picture with Nature in different forms.

Why did Marx recall Balzacs tale at the very moment when he was preparing to unveil his greatest work to public scrutiny? Did he fear that he too might have laboured in vain, that his complete representation of reality would prove unintelligible? He certainly had some such apprehensions Marxs character was a curious hybrid of ferocious self-confidence and anguished self-doubt and he tried toforestall criticism by warning in the preface that I assume, of course, a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for himself. But what ought to strike us most forcibly about his identification with the creator of the unknown masterpiece is that Frenhofer is an