MEGA

The reception and dissemination of Karl Marx’s opus in Greece, in its first steps during the interwar period, is combined with the development of the nascent labour movement. Already before WWII, there were more several attempts to translate Das Kapital, whereas many of the minor ‘canonical’ works (Manifesto of the Communist Party, On the Jewish Question, etc.) had been translated and published in the form of brochures (or newspaper articles) for the benefit of the militant classes. The militant aspect of the translations, i.e., their instrumental incorporation into the realm of political praxis in the form of an exemplary discursive reference,[1] was a feature that would accompany the translations of the majority of Marxian works in the following decades.

The aim of this article is to present the main features of the Grande édition Marx et Engels (GEME)[1] project from a specific angle: that of the dissemination, in France and more generally in the French-speaking world, of the philological advances made possible by the second Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA-2).[2] The aim here is not to revisit the general theoretical issues[3] of the GEME project, but, rather, to situate it within the history of Marx and Engels editions in France in order to show the contribution made by the various volumes published since its launch in 2008 and to indicate how future volumes are likely to extend it.

Everyone knows the wordplay “traduttore-traditore (translator-traitor)”: valid in general, it is particularly relevant in the case of Marx and even more so in that of Capital. Marx’s style is that of a scientist and person of learning, but, at the same time, that of one who revels in the brilliance of a seasoned publicist. His language reflects this background, juxtaposing the rigour of systematic argument with polemical sarcasm, a strictly dialectical lexicon with salacious banter, and the linguistic geometries of philosophical German with polyglot slang. It is difficult to render all this in translation. We have done everything possible to reflect the liveliness of his style. As for the more strictly scientific issues, we thought it necessary to devote a few pages to explaining the translation of certain key terms. The choices made in this new edition are in fact linked to the problems that emerged from a comparison of existing translations and the methodological problems that developed in parallel with the publication of the new historical-critical edition. Translating a certain term often implies interpretative choices; if that is inevitable, it seems only fair to make that clear. Below, the reader will encounter a list of fundamental categories, for each of which an Italian translation and theoretical justification is provided. In this way one has the possibility, at least in the case of the concepts listed, to go back to the German and, even where one might disagree with the translator, to know what the category in question is.[1]

The second Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe has enjoyed a degree of popularity in Italy since the late 1970s.

Karl Marx’s 1852 work The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte opens with the famous remark that men ‘make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please.’[1] He goes on to argue that whatever happens in the present time arises from and is a reaction to a political past. Recollecting and interpreting the past for present purposes requires a language. Such a language is not naturally given but needs to be socially constructed. What is more, its vocabulary and grammar stem from linguistic legacies of past ideologies. Marx draws in this regard an analogy, comparing acquisition of a political language with mastering a natural language:

Translation of the entry ‘MEGA’ in the Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism (Historisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus [HKWM]), vol. 9/I (Hamburg: Argument, 2018), pp. 388-404. Part I written by Rolf Hecker, Manfred Neuhaus, Richard Sperl, and part II by Hu Xiaochen.