[lbo-talk] [Pen-l] Missing Passage in English Versions of Capital

[socialismorbarbarism]

Is Fowkes still alive? (I know nothing about him, including his age.)
I didn't google up any obituary. Maybe you can just ask him why the
sentence didn't appear. Does anybody here know him, or know his bio?
Here's a page from a November 2011 conference that seems to give an
email address:

http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/8annual/submit/communism-and-islam

ben.fowkes2 at ntlworld.com

Apologies ahead of time if I've got the wrong Ben Fowkes.

Note: In his translator's preface (ca. 1975), Fowkes makes reference
to "whole sentences omitted by Engels" because "Engels [as editor]
always tried to spare Marx's readers from grappling with difficult
passages." Which would explain why a sentence might not appear in the
(Engels-edited) Aveling translation... but not Fowkes's own...

Maybe they're all trying to shield the memory of Isaac Newton. ;) But
I bet it's some variation of "oops."

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 3:36 AM, Angelus Novus
<fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> In the German original text, when Marx writes about the historical role of the Bank of England, there is the following passage:
>
> "Allmählich wurde sie der unvermeidliche Behälter der Metallschätze des
> Landes und das Gravitationszentrum des gesamten Handelskredits. Um
> dieselbe Zeit, wo man in England aufhörte, Hexen zu verbrennen, fing man dort an, Banknotenfälscher zu hängen."
>
> The first sentence is reproduced both in the Ben Fowkes and Edward Aveling translations.  In the Aveling translation at the MIA, it reads as follows:
>
> "Gradually it became inevitably
> the receptacle of the metallic hoard of the country, and the centre of
> gravity of all commercial credit."
>
> The second sentence is **missing from both English translations**.  It means: "In England, at the same time that the burning of witches ceased, counterfeiters of bank notes were starting to be hanged."
>
> So I checked the Spanish edition, translated by Wenceslao Roces, and the missing sentence is there: "Por los años en que Inglaterra dejaba de quemar brujas, comenzaba a colgar falsificadores de billetes de banco."
>
>
> Does anybody know what the story is as to why this passage is missing from **both** English translations?  Can you all confirm its absence or presence in other languages?
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