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

socrates77 at riseup.net socrates77 at riseup.net
Mon Feb 27 06:51:49 PST 2012


This quote is in the Brazilian Portuguese translation also!

I don't know why it's missing in english ones.


> 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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