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The Grundrisse' is a series of seven notebooks written by Karl Marx in the winter of 1857-58, organising and developing, in rough-draft form, the results of his economic studies. Left aside by Marx in 1858, it remained unpublished until the Institute of Marx-Engels-Lenin in Moscow published it in 1939-41 as Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy). It was not translated into Russian until 1968-69 and English until 1973.[1]
Timeline of translations[edit | edit source]
This is a chronological table of translations of the manuscripts in different languages.[2]
| Year | Language |
|---|---|
| 1858 | German, originally written by Karl Marx, unpublished |
| 1939 | German, published by Marx–Engels Institute |
| 1953 | Second German edition |
| 1958–65 | Japanese |
| 1962–78 | Chinese |
| 1967–8 | French |
| 1968–9 | Russian |
| 1968–70 | Italian |
| 1970–1 | Spanish |
| 1971–7 | Czech |
| 1972 | Hungarian |
| 1972–4 | Romanian |
| 1973 | English |
| 1974–5 | Slovak |
| 1974–8 | Danish |
| 1979 | Serbian/Serbo-Croatian |
| 1985 | Slovenian |
| 1985–7 | Farsi |
| 1986 | Polish |
| 1986 | Finnish |
| 1989–92 | Greek |
| 1999–2003 | Turkish |
| 2000 | Korean |
| 2008 | Portuguese |
Description[edit | edit source]
The following paragaphs from Robert C Tucker's Marx Engels Reader describe some of its content:
In recent years [The Grundrisse] has attracted growing attention because of the intrinsic interest of various parts, because it forms an important link between the early writings and Capital, and because the very rawness of much of the text enhances its value as a revelation of Marx's creative mental process.[3] The great bulk of it consists of an Introduction, a "Chapter on Money," and a "Chapter on Capital"....
The Introduction, besides stating Marx's view of the method of political economy, develops his thesis on production as the basic category; shows (in the final paragraph of its third section) that the work on which he was embarked, and which later came to fruition in Capital, was no more than one part of a more ambitious total project; and concludes with a discussion of the timeless character of great art. Section B defines "society." Section C deals with capitalism as incessant drive for surplus value and alludes to future communism as a society in which labour "appears no longer as labour, but as the full development of activity itself...." Section D suplements Capital on primitive accumulation. Section E deals with pre-capitalist economies and the birth of capitalism. Section F summarizes Marx's views on population and Malthus. Section G contains a now-famous discussion of ever-increasing automation under capitalism.[4] Section H envisages capitalism's ultimate violent overthrow. Section I contrasts the alienation of labour under capitalism with the postulated ending of alienation in the future. In these and other passages of the Grundrisse Marx here and there uses the "alienation" terminology which had been pervasive in the 1844 manuscripts but would grow inconspicuous in Capital.
— Marx Engels Reader, Chapter 2. Free in text format
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ “The first full [English] translation (by Martin Nicolaus) appeared in 1973, 20 years after the 1953 German edition. The title was Grundrisse, and the subtitle: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft).”
Marcello Musto (2008). Karl Marx's Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy 150 years later (p. 250). Routledge. [LG] - ↑ Marcello Musto (2008). Karl Marx's Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy 150 years later (pp. 185-186). Routledge. [LG]
- ↑ This last point is made compellingly by Martin Nicolaus in his informative Foreword to Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, translated by Martin Nicolaus (New York: Vintage, 1973), p. 7. The same point could be made with reference to the 1844 manuscripts.
- ↑ Some have interpreted these passages as heralding the end of manual labour under capitalism. Nicolaus (Foreword, p. 52) objects that "neither here nor anywhere else in Marx's work is there a prediction that manual industrial labour will be abolished in industrial society...."