Wang Zhan: A Study on the History of the Dissemination of Marx's Capital in Germany
Das Kapital is the crowning achievement of Marx's lifelong theoretical research, as well as the crystallization of the collective wisdom and painstaking efforts of Marx and Engels. From its conception and creation to its final delivery for publication, this work spanned a considerably long period. During the process of writing Das Kapital, an extremely vast corpus of manuscripts was produced, which constitutes an inseparable and vital component of the work. The history of the dissemination of Das Kapital and its manuscripts is a significant part of the history of the spread of Marxism. Its history of dissemination and reception in Marx's homeland and the native language of the written text—Germany—not only encapsulates the deep historical context of Marx's creation of Das Kapital, but also presents a dual theoretical narrative developed by German scholars based on both revolutionary and academic discourses. At the same time, it demonstrates the rigorous philological style and philosophical depth [1] prominent in German academia.
I. Marx, Engels, and the Early Dissemination of Das Kapital (1860s–1890s)
(i) Struggling against the "Conspiracy of Silence"
After the publication of the first volume of Das Kapital in 1867, bourgeois political economists attempted to strangle this great work with a "conspiracy of silence"—just as they had done with many of Marx's previous writings. To counter the premeditated "silence" of bourgeois political economists while better popularizing the work among the general public, Engels wrote a large number of book reviews for the first volume of Das Kapital between 1867 and 1868, which were published in major German newspapers and journals. Engels explained his reasons for doing so to Marx: "I am convinced that your book will have a great effect as soon as it is out, but it is very necessary to stimulate the zeal of the learned citizens and officials a little, and not to despise small stratagems." The "small stratagems" Engels referred to involved writing reviews of Das Kapital for bourgeois-democratic newspapers to trigger discussions and break through the public opinion barriers created by the "conspiracy of silence." In November 1867, Engels also discussed this point in a letter to his close friend Ludwig Kugelmann: "The brave vulgar economists are quite clever enough to be careful with this book; they will not say a word about it unless they are forced to. Therefore, we must force them to give their opinion."
On October 30, 1867, Engels published the first review of Das Kapital in the German newspaper Die Zukunft (The Future), titled "Review of Volume One of Das Kapital by Karl Marx—For Die Zukunft"; the preface to the first German edition of Das Kapital was published alongside this review. Subsequently, Engels published a series of reviews in the Elberfelder Zeitung, Düsseldorfer Zeitung, Würtembergischer Staats-Anzeiger, Neue Badische Landeszeitung, and Demokratisches Wochenblatt. On one hand, Engels adopted the tone and stance of bourgeois political economists to provoke debate; on the other hand, in these reviews, he provided a relatively comprehensive introduction to Marx's main views in Das Kapital regarding commodities, money, the value of labor-power, wages, surplus value, and capital accumulation. He argued for the rigor and scientific nature of the work: "All the factual material cited by Marx is taken from the most reliable sources, mostly from official parliamentary reports." Engels also strongly recommended the work to the public, affirming its combined scientific rigor and readability: "Whatever the reader’s attitude toward the author’s socialist views may be, we believe that all the above can still be pointed out to him: that the reader finds here a work that ranks far above the usual Social-Democratic literature of today... with the exception of the somewhat difficult dialectics in the first forty pages, the book is easy to understand, despite its strictly scientific character, and it is even interesting due to the author’s biting, sarcastic style."
In 1868, Engels specially drafted an outline to provide a popular explanation of the basic positions, viewpoints, and methods of the first volume of Das Kapital, providing a scientific and effective guide for leaders of working-class parties and social progressives to study and master the work. This introductory literature not only theoretically influenced a younger generation of Marxist theorists and activists, such as August Bebel and Paul Lafargue, but also facilitated the wide dissemination of Das Kapital among the general populace, particularly the working class. As the influence of Das Kapital continued to expand, many bourgeois scholars were compelled to respond to the theoretical issues raised in the work. In an anonymous article published in the Literarisches Centralblatt für Deutschland, a bourgeois scholar admitted: "Refuting the theory of value is the sole task of those who oppose Marx, for if this theorem is granted, then almost all the conclusions made by Marx with iron logic must be accepted." It can be said that Engels made a vital contribution to shattering the "conspiracy of silence" and expanding the influence of Das Kapital among both the intelligentsia and the general public.
(ii) Establishing the Important Status of Das Kapital in the Labor Movement
The publication of the first volume of Das Kapital was of great significance for the establishment of the program of scientific socialism within the First International. On January 28, 1868, the General Council of the First International proposed including the issue of the use of machinery under the capitalist system on the agenda of the upcoming Brussels Congress. Although Marx did not attend the congress in September of that year, he participated in the preliminary preparatory work and presented some of the main viewpoints of the first volume of Das Kapital at two General Council meetings; the content of these speeches was later published in The Bee-Hive, the organ of the First International. On August 11, during the General Council's discussion on the draft resolution for shortening the working day, Marx countered the view raised by some members that shortening the working day would lead to a reduction in production. Marx pointed out that without shortening the working day, the condition of the working class could not be improved; the various sections of the First International should take measures to achieve a reduction in the working day. These views were ultimately included in the draft resolution submitted by the General Council to the congress.
At the Brussels Congress, Friedrich Lessner cited several assertions from the first volume of Das Kapital to argue the position on the use of machinery under capitalism. In the name of the German delegation, he urged workers of all countries to study Das Kapital, calling Marx "the first economist to provide a scientific analysis of capital." The congress also passed a proposal by Johann Philipp Becker designating the first volume of Das Kapital as the "Bible of the working class," affirming its important status in the labor movement. At the Brussels Congress, many scientific conclusions proposed in Das Kapital were recognized as programmatic principles of the First International. As Engels pointed out: "No one familiar with the labor movement will deny that the conclusions of this book are daily becoming the basic principles of the great working-class movement... the working class everywhere increasingly regards these conclusions as the truest expression of its own condition and its own expectations."
(iii) Engels's Posthumous Arrangement and Publication of Das Kapital
After Marx's death, Engels devoted an enormous amount of time and energy to editing and publishing the third and fourth German editions of Volume One, the English edition, as well as Volume Two (published in 1885) and Volume Three (published in 1894) of Das Kapital. At the end of 1883, the third German edition of Volume One was published. To help readers better understand the content, Engels added many new notes. In 1890, the fourth German edition of Volume One was published; Engels "once again compared the French edition and notes written by Marx's own hand," "added some parts of the French edition back into the German original," and "added some explanatory notes," marking them with his initials or "D.H." [2] for distinction. Furthermore, Engels re-verified and corrected Marx's citations. It was precisely because of Engels's rigorous and conscientious work that the fourth German edition of Volume One became the internationally standard and most widely disseminated version.
Beyond editing the manuscripts of Das Kapital left by Marx, Engels continued to defend the work and struggle against various opponents after Marx's death. Engels's theoretical output in his later years played a very important role in popularizing the theoretical viewpoints of Das Kapital, particularly in refining the political economy framework that Marx had not yet completed. Eike Kopf, an editor of the MEGA2 [3], believes that one of Engels's significant achievements in his later years was the promotion and popularization of Marx's thought, especially his further explanation of many theoretical points in Das Kapital, which helped proletarian revolutionaries better master these views. It was with the help of Das Kapital as edited by Engels that the international labor movements of the 19th and 20th centuries were able to use this work as theoretical support in the struggle against capitalism; proletarian revolutionaries like Lenin were also able to apply the brilliant insights conveyed in this work to provide methodological guidance for establishing socialist systems in underdeveloped countries. Kopf specifically noted: "Engels edited and published the second and third volumes of Das Kapital from Marx's posthumous manuscripts. This was a feat of Engels's genius; I believe no one but Engels could have done it, and even today's critics of Marx or Engels could not have done it better."
II. Popularization and Massification of Das Kapital (1890s–1930s)
(i) The Dissemination of Popular and People’s Editions of Das Kapital
According to the definition provided by Professor Rolf Hecker, a renowned German editor of Marx and Engels's works and Chairman of the Association to Promote the MEGA, in his article "Popular and People’s Editions of Das Kapital," a "popular edition" (通俗版) generally refers to a mass-market work that "facilitates understanding for the broad masses" and explains Marx's political economy theories in Das Kapital in a vernacular way; in other words, the popular edition is primarily a "re-interpretation" of the text. Meanwhile, a "people’s edition" (普及版) mainly refers to a version that presents the original text of Das Kapital in a simplified and reformatted manner, highlighting the theoretical essence by compressing the original length and adding "Introductions," "Notes," and "Indices" to create a version of Das Kapital for mass reading.
To understand the early history of the dissemination of popular and accessible versions of Capital, it is necessary first to trace the initial round of popularization attempts undertaken before the 1890s—that is, during the first twenty years after the publication of Volume I—and then to examine the history of its maturation and systematization from the 1890s to the 1930s. The earliest German popular version of Capital was Capital and Labor: A Layman’s Guide to Karl Marx’s "Capital" (Kapital und Arbeit. Ein populärer Auszug aus „Das Kapital“ von Karl Marx), compiled by the German labor movement activist Johann Most [4] and published in 1873. This book was the fruit of Most’s intensive study of Capital while imprisoned following his arrest for an anti-war demonstration. In the summer of 1875, Karl Liebknecht and Karl Julius Vahlteich submitted Most’s book to Marx for his review and approval. Marx made several textual revisions to the book, primarily refining the proofs regarding the essence of the value of commodities, the formation of surplus value, and the connection between these two and wages; he also personally rewrote several chapters concerning value, money, and wages. This version, authorized by Marx, was later included in Volume II/8 of the MEGA2 [5]. In 1883, the French socialist Gabriel Deville wrote a popular work explaining Capital titled The "Capital" of Karl Marx. Engels was dissatisfied with the manuscript, believing it contained certain "irremediable defects." In an 1884 letter to Karl Kautsky, Engels pointed out that while Deville’s theory was correct, his expression was too hasty, relegating major chapters such as those on manufacture and large-scale industry to a secondary position while elaborating in excessive detail on less important chapters like monetary circulation. Furthermore, Engels noted that certain principles summarized by Marx were conditional, yet Deville glossed over these prerequisites, giving the principles an absolute and universal significance that led to a distortion of Marx's theory. Consequently, Engels suggested that Kautsky write a "new, popular, and short (half the length of Deville's) work explaining the theory of surplus value." Kautsky took up this task, completing the book The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx in 1886, which was published in 1887. This text, intended as a guide, circulated widely among workers and exerted an extremely important influence. It focused primarily on Volume I of Capital, emphasizing the analysis and interpretation of the theory of surplus value. Later, in a letter to Nikolai Danielson, the translator of the Russian edition of Capital, Engels affirmed the value of Kautsky's book, noting that "although not always quite accurate, it is not bad," and recommended it to Danielson.
In December 1910, Austro-Marxists including Max Adler, Otto Bauer, and Rudolf Hilferding proposed the publication of a complete edition of the works of Marx and Engels to ensure the authority of their published writings; the editing and publication of a popular edition of Capital became a major subsequent project of this plan. The Executive Committee of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) eventually decided that Dietz Verlag should publish this popular edition before the 30th anniversary of Marx’s death in 1913, entrusting the task to Kautsky. In 1914, through the joint efforts of Kautsky and David Riazanov, the popular edition of Volume I of Capital was officially published. In the editorial process, Kautsky chose the second German edition of Volume I—personally revised by Marx—as the base text, while also referencing changes made by Engels in the third and fourth German editions and the French edition. Additionally, he verified citations and sources, translated foreign-language expressions in the text, and replaced some loanwords with German terms. Riazanov contributed an 80-page index to the popular edition. The work completed by these two not only helped many ordinary worker-readers better grasp the specialized essence of the ideas in Capital but also opened an important chapter in the overall editorial project of popularizing Capital.
In 1919, the German socialist political commentator Julian Borchardt edited a new popular edition that condensed the three volumes of Capital into one. He believed that the popular edition edited by Kautsky merely translated foreign citations and Germanized loanwords without performing any pioneering synthesis or summary, whereas his own edition was the one truly easy for the public to understand. For Borchardt, a detailed and faithful reproduction of the work was no longer paramount; rather, his aim was to ensure "readers can understand the entire basic line of thought presented in Marx's own language without being intimidated or exhausted by its great length." Consequently, Borchardt’s version possessed a strong personal character. He carried out drastic cuts and mergers of the contents of the three volumes of Capital, and rather than strictly following Marx’s original logical sequence in the chapters, he broke them apart and integrated them according to his own understanding, renaming chapter titles and discarding much content from Volumes II and III (such as Marx’s exposition on ground rent). After publication, Borchardt’s popular edition of Capital became a bestseller for a time, going through more than 12 editions over a decade. Naturally, this version was highly controversial, facing its most vehement criticism from Kautsky’s son, Benedict Kautsky, who was then working with his father on the popular edition of Volumes II and III. Benedict argued that for readers without a specialized knowledge base, much of the content in Volumes II and III was difficult to understand and required the editor to select textual material prudently; he contended that Borchardt’s version lacked logic and focus, destroyed the holistic conception Marx presented in Capital, and was liable to seriously mislead readers.
In 1926 and 1929, the Kautskys, father and son, completed the publication of the popular editions of Volumes II and III of Capital. Specifically, they re-edited the texts of Volumes II and III previously edited by Engels, marking discrepancies with the original manuscripts and placing Engels's additions in square brackets. As for other changes Engels had made to the text, they restored Marx’s original phrasing in the footnotes. Furthermore, they performed a very important task: re-deriving and verifying all formulas and data across the three volumes of Capital, correcting errors and omissions in the original figures. Of course, their editorial process did not only look toward the masses but also sought to make this edition serve readers engaged in scientific research. In this regard, Kautsky wrote in the preface: "Just as with the first volume I edited, the popular editions of the latter two volumes should not only be equipped with tools (i.e., auxiliary materials) for study by those without academic training but should also serve professionals engaged in research, becoming the most reliable version of Capital to date." However, the popular edition edited by the Kautskys also faced several problems: first, it excised almost all of Marx’s original descriptions of the social conditions of the working class, presenting Capital as a pure, abstract work of economics; second, the prefaces were devoted to promoting reformist [6] propositions, thereby losing the dimension of revolutionary critique. Facing these issues, the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute of the Soviet Union issued concentrated criticisms and, under the direction of its director Vladimir Adoratsky, re-edited a new three-volume popular edition of Capital (in German) between 1933 and 1934, which was published and distributed in Germany. However, due to the interference of Nazi forces, this version did not exert a significant influence within Germany.
(2) Kautsky and the Editing and Publication of Volume IV of Capital
After Marx’s death in March 1883, Engels, acting as the executor of Marx’s literary remains, began organizing Marx’s unpublished manuscripts and, during the last twelve years of his life, edited and published Volumes II and III of Capital. By late 1888, due to deteriorating eyesight, Engels felt it necessary to teach others to decipher Marx’s handwriting and assist him in completing the organization and editing of the manuscripts. He thus began instructing Eduard Bernstein and Kautsky on how to read Marx’s handwriting and suggested that Kautsky transform the original manuscript of the History of the Theory of Surplus Value (Theories of Surplus Value) into a readable draft. Kautsky only completed the transcription of the first notebook of the manuscript; he later delayed the subsequent transcription work due to personal affairs and failed to complete the task entrusted to him by Engels on schedule. In the latter half of 1894, Engels concluded the organization and editing of Volume III of Capital. Despite his illness, he began organizing Volume IV in late March 1895, proofreading and revising the portion of the manuscript Kautsky had transcribed, persisting in this work until his final breath. After Engels’s death, the manuscripts were passed to Marx’s legal heir, his youngest daughter Eleanor. In September 1895, with the consent of her sister Laura, Eleanor handed over Marx’s economic manuscripts of 1861–1863 to Kautsky, commissioning him to publish the History of the Theory of Surplus Value as Volume IV of Capital. After ten years of intermittent effort, Kautsky published the first and second volumes of the History of the Theory of Surplus Value in 1904 and 1905, respectively, followed by the third volume in 1910.
Kautsky meticulously identified the main text, making many important corrections and supplementing incomplete calculations in tables. For the more significant changes to the main text and all corrections concerning calculations, Kautsky provided explanatory notes. When verifying and translating citations, he did not rely blindly on existing translations but used every means to find the original documents; when individual rare editions could not be found and he was forced to use others, he noted this in the comments. Through his verification, many omissions and errors present in the original manuscript were corrected. While editing the History of the Theory of Surplus Value, Kautsky also earnestly studied the economic manuscripts of 1861–1863, breaking beyond the scope of notebooks VI–XV prescribed by Engels in the preface to Volume II of Capital. He incorporated supplementary comments and notes on 17th- and 18th-century economists from notebooks XX–XXIII, as well as parts from notebook XXI discussing Thomas Hodgskin, George Ramsay, Antoine Elisée Cherbuliez, and Richard Jones into the third volume of the History of the Theory of Surplus Value. Kautsky divided the material and titled the sections according to the table of contents Marx had written on the manuscript covers, editing them according to the original sequence and logic of Marx’s manuscripts.
However, Kautsky’s editorial work also suffered from certain shortcomings. For instance, while editing the second volume of the History of the Theory of Surplus Value, he attempted to replace the logic of the original manuscript with the logic of Volume III of Capital, recutting and rearranging the material; where this proved unfeasible, he reverted to chronological order or Marx’s original sequence. Furthermore, when editing the first and second volumes, he did not follow the table of contents and plan written by Marx on the manuscript covers, but instead acted on his own initiative in arranging the material and formulating titles. This, to some extent, destroyed the original coherent narrative and internal connections of the manuscript, which is why his edition of the History of the Theory of Surplus Value has been heavily criticized. Overall, however, Kautsky’s editorial work possessed a degree of rigor, particularly his extremely meticulous deciphering and scrutiny of the manuscript, his detailed research into relevant terminology, and his repeated derivation and verification of all data calculations in the manuscript, which provided an important reference for the subsequent re-editing and publication of the Theories of Surplus Value by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute of the Soviet Union.
III. The Emergence of the Capital Manuscript Corpus and the Rise of the "New Reading of Marx" Movement (1930s–1990s)
(1) The MEGA1 and MEGA2 Projects and the Emergence of the Capital Manuscript Corpus
The MEGA1 project was history’s first editorial and publishing undertaking planned to systematically release a historico-critical edition of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels, including the manuscripts and preparatory materials for Capital. In early 1921, prior to the launch of MEGA1, Ryazanov [7] traveled to Berlin to collect original documentary materials by Marx and Engels from various sources. One major achievement was the collection of many little-known and precious manuscripts of Capital, including all 23 notebooks written by Marx between 1861 and 1863. Furthermore, Ryazanov located all the manuscripts for Volume II of Capital edited by Engels (with the exception of the eighth manuscript), those for Volume III, and a large number of manuscripts related to Volume I (including the Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858 [8] as we know them today). In 1924, with the approval of the Fifth Congress of the Communist International, Ryazanov began organizing colleagues from the Marx-Engels Institute of the Central Committee of the CPSU in Moscow to edit MEGA1, which was published in Frankfurt and Berlin, Germany. Ryazanov set the following goal for MEGA1: "To provide an objective basis for every kind of Marx-Engels research, which is to say, to accurately reproduce the entire intellectual legacy of Marx and Engels in a clear arrangement." According to the plan, the second section of MEGA1 was to publish Marx’s representative work of political economy, Capital, along with its extensive original manuscripts and all preparatory materials, estimated at no fewer than 13 volumes. However, with Ryazanov’s arrest in 1931, a shadow was cast over the editing and publishing of MEGA1. In 1933, Hitler's rise to power dealt a severe blow to the MEGA1 publishing enterprise; the publication and dissemination of Marx and Engels' works were no longer permitted within Germany. Many Marx-Engels publications, including the historico-critical edition of the Collected Works, were seized and burned by Nazi forces. The work of MEGA1 had to be withdrawn to the Soviet Union, shifting publication to Moscow and Leningrad. After the outbreak of World War II, the Soviet Union was forced to concentrate all its strength on national defense, and ultimately, under the combined influence of internal and external factors, the work on MEGA1 was terminated entirely. Nevertheless, although MEGA1 met an untimely end, the vast amount of data and documentation collected and organized by this project, as well as the historico-critical editorial principles it established, laid a solid foundation for the later MEGA2 project.
In the early 1960s, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) became the primary site for the new MEGA project. Following multi-party consultations, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) officially passed a resolution on December 4, 1963, to prepare for the publication of the new MEGA. At Khrushchev’s proposal, researchers from the Institute of Marxism-Leninism (IML) in the Soviet Union and their counterparts from the IML in the GDR jointly completed the preparatory work for the new edition, and the editing of MEGA2 officially commenced. MEGA2 inherited the three major editorial philosophies of MEGA1—namely, "completeness," "fidelity to the original text," and "presentation of texts according to their historical process"—while placing even greater emphasis on "academic rigor." According to the general plan proposed by the MEGA2 Editorial Board in the 1980s, the section for Capital and its preparatory materials was to consist of 16 volumes (in 24 parts), later reduced to 15 volumes (in 23 parts). The volumes of the second section of MEGA2 began publication in 1976 and were completed in 2012. Among them, Volumes 1 through 4 contain, in sequence, Marx’s Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858, the Economic Manuscripts and Works of 1858–1861, the Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863, and the Economic Manuscripts of 1863–1868. Volumes 5 through 10 comprise six representative versions of Volume I of Capital in German, French, and English. Volumes 11 through 13 contain the 1868–1881 manuscripts for Volume II of Capital, Engels’s editorial drafts, and the final published version of Volume II. Volumes 14 and 15 include the 1871–1882 manuscripts for Volume III of Capital, Engels’s editorial drafts, and the final published version of Volume III. The second section of MEGA2 organized and edited a massive corpus of manuscripts and documentary resources from the period when Marx wrote Capital. Many historical documents were made public for the first time, providing a vital textual basis for scholars to authentically reconstruct and evaluate Marx's thought, and offering solid textual evidence for long-standing debates regarding Marx’s political economy.
(2) Early Research on Capital by the Frankfurt School
Beginning in the 1920s, with the founding of the Institute for Social Research (IfS) at the University of Frankfurt, a large elite group of Marxist theoretical researchers gradually gathered around the institute. In 1925, at the invitation of Carl Grünberg, Henryk Grossmann joined the institute and became the primary political economist of the burgeoning Frankfurt School. In his representative work, The Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System: A Theory of Crisis (1929), Grossmann conducted a rigorous investigation into the laws of capitalist accumulation and collapse, using a holistic understanding of the three volumes of Capital as his methodological premise. He took Marx’s theory of the dual nature of commodities as his analytical starting point, arguing that the dual nature of the capitalist production process is the continuation of the internal contradiction between value and use-value within that process. He pointed out that Marx’s critique of political economy is a process that unfolds from the abstract to the concrete, gradually approaching the "concrete reality." In Grossmann's view, Marx’s analysis of reproduction in Capital is directly integrated with his explanation of capital accumulation and collapse; Marx examines the conditions for capital valorization in Volume I, analyzes the effects of capital accumulation and the resulting tendency toward collapse in Volume II, and investigates the factors that modify this tendency in Volume III. Therefore, in terms of understanding capitalist crisis as a manifestation of the laws of accumulation and collapse, Marx’s three volumes of Capital present a complete series of methodological stages.
Friedrich Pollock was another important political economist of the early Frankfurt School. Although he was not a prolific scholar, his research in political economy held unique significance for the formation of the entire school’s critical theory. The theory of late capitalism advocated by Pollock initially explored the validity of the critique of political economy and the legitimacy of social theory under the premise of the expansion of the "authoritarian state." In his doctoral dissertation, On Marx's Theory of Money (1923), Pollock placed special emphasis on the critical role played by monetary theory in the entirety of Marx's works on political economy. He argued that in the opening of Capital and the preceding Grundrisse, a great deal of Marx's discussion revolved around the question of money. He emphasized that money is a "sensuous and supersensuous thing"; its "sensuousness" is its natural form, while its "supersensuousness" is its expression as a social relation—an expression realized through specific portions of money participating in socially necessary labor. The problem of money is a core issue in Marx's theory of value, "indissolubly linked to his entire theoretical system," aimed at seeking the social relations (essence) behind economic categories (forms of appearance). Taking the exploration of Marx’s monetary theory as a starting point, Pollock further analyzed new state forms of capitalism, particularly investigating the "authoritarian state." Pollock noted that with the rise of monopolistic economic organizations, the ruling class utilized the state to achieve "total administration" of society; the state became the dominant actor in the economy, possessing all social capital and "controlling everything it wants," including: "overall economic planning in the spheres of production and circulation," "foreign policy, social rights, and obligations," and even "the life and death of the individual." Whether state capitalism appeared in a totalitarian or democratic form depended on which form of government was chosen and which social groups were in control. Consequently, the primacy of politics over economics gradually became prominent. Pollock’s study of Marx’s monetary theory, his focus on the value-form, the money-form, and their social essence, and his pan-political interpretation of state capitalism as a new variant of capitalism, initially established the primary field of discourse for the Frankfurt School’s critique of political economy.
(3) "New Marx Reading" and the Inheritance of the Frankfurt School’s Research Tradition
The "New Marx Reading" (die Neue Marx-Lektüre) movement originated at the University of Frankfurt in the late 1960s. To some extent, it was a transmission and continuation of the Frankfurt School’s tradition of research on Capital; some scholars regard it as an important branch of the second generation of the Frankfurt School. The founders of the "New Marx Reading" movement, Hans-Georg Backhaus and Helmut Reichelt, studied at the University of Frankfurt under such representative figures of the Frankfurt School as Theodor W. Adorno and Iring Fetscher. It can be said that the "New Marx Reading" movement developed within the soil of the Frankfurt School's research into political economy and critical social theory. Its supporting literature consists primarily of Marx’s late works, including the first German edition of Volume I of Capital, the Grundrisse, Theories of Surplus Value, and the various other manuscript volumes of Capital.
The "New Marx Reading" movement advocates for a "complete understanding of the whole of Marx" and "understanding the early works through the late works," using the mode of presentation of the logical system to distinguish and criticize the forms of capitalist socialization. Its theoretical core is Marx’s theory of the value-form, and Backhaus’s The Dialectic of the Value-Form (1969) is the movement's seminal work. Inspired by Fetscher's advocacy for studying the Hegelian elements in Marx’s thought, as well as the research by Roman Rosdolsky and others regarding the relationship between Marx’s economic methodology and Hegelian dialectics, Backhaus likewise advocated for interpreting Capital from a dialectical perspective. He pointed out that in the first German edition of Volume I of Capital, Marx had already clearly explained that his study of the value-form possessed a strong dialectical character. To help readers better understand this section, Marx also adopted the suggestions of Engels and Kugelmann, specifically adding an appendix titled "The Value-Form" to the end of the book to explain the issue in a lecture-style format. However, in the process of revising the manuscript for Volume I of Capital, Marx—in order to accommodate the comprehension levels of general readers—popularized the treatment of the value-form theory, thereby weakening its original dialectical nature. Consequently, Backhaus explicitly proposed to re-excavate and reconstruct the integrity of Marx’s value-form theory from the economic manuscripts and related political-economic commentaries, restoring its dialectical thought.
Helmut Reichelt took up Backhaus’s discussion of the value-form. He pointed out that in Marx’s "formal" analysis in Capital—including the analysis of the value-form, the money-form, and the dialectical presentation of economic categories—Marx had actually already provided a clear explanation of many issues, including the phenomenon of "reification" [9]. In Reichelt's view, Capital is a pioneering work representing the "first attempt to conceptualize the totality of capitalist society," a theoretical reconstruction by Marx of individual social identity and its corresponding specific social relations. In his representative work, The Logical Structure of Marx's Concept of Capital (1973), Reichelt noted that, according to Marx, the theories of classical political economists succumbed to the appearances of the overall capitalist production process and, in an unconscious manner, took these appearances to be the universal historical process of capitalist society. Behind the value relation, however, is hidden not only the question of the distribution of the products of social labor but also the question of class relations in capitalist society. Therefore, the Marxist critique of the capitalist system is not only a critique of its economic categories but, more importantly, a critique of the class relations behind them. To truly understand the historical nature of capital, one must examine its laws of motion, thereby conducting a thorough analysis of the capitalist economic process.
IV. The Dissemination and Reception of Capital in Germany since the 21st Century
(I) Overview of the Publication of Capital and Its Manuscripts Since the 21st Century Since the start of the 21st century, the MEGA2 project has progressed steadily. In 2012, the publication of the final volume of the second section (Volume 3 of the Economic Manuscripts of 1863–1868) was completed. This marked the full release of all 15 volumes (comprising 23 books) of the second section of the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (Historical-Critical Edition), which covers Capital and its preparatory works. Of these 23 books, six have been published since 2000: II/4.3 (Volume 3 of the Economic Manuscripts of 1863–1868), II/11 (Manuscripts for Volume II of Capital, 1868–1881), II/12 (Engels’s editorial manuscript for Volume II of Capital), II/13 (the first German edition of Volume III of Capital), II/14 (Manuscripts for Volume III of Capital from 1871–1882 and Engels’s editorial manuscript), and II/15 (the first German edition of Volume III of Capital). Additionally, in 2011, the Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863, which had previously been published in six books, were re-released in a three-book format.
The complete publication of the second section of MEGA2, particularly the appearance of many new documents, has provided the academic community with the most detailed research materials for re-examining the creative process and intellectual trajectory of Marx’s Capital. Especially since 2000, the publication of all original manuscripts of Volumes II and III of Capital alongside Engels’s editorial versions has allowed readers, for the first time, to compare Marx’s original drafts with Engels’s edited texts word for word, enabling them to form their own understandings and judgments. These newly published texts also enhance our understanding of the editorial work performed by editors after Engels (such as Kautsky and others). As noted by Professor Michael Heinrich, a renowned contemporary German expert in Marxist philology and member of the MEGA2 editorial board, the completion of the second section of MEGA2 means that discussions concerning Capital now have a sufficiently complete textual basis for the first time. The second section of MEGA2 arranges the relevant texts of Capital in a more meticulous and rational manner, including all variant readings [10] for reference and comparison. Furthermore, "textual annotations, various indexes, and introductions to each volume comprehensively reveal the horizontal relationships between the manuscripts, Marx’s writing sources, and the background of each scientific analysis—a situation unprecedented in any previous edition of Marx’s works." Consequently, "certain content-related mysteries can finally be clarified with the help of the texts published in the second section of MEGA2."
(II) The Rise of the "Marx Autumn School" and the Popular Dissemination of Capital Since the 21st century, a wave of enthusiasm for reading Capital has emerged among the German public, particularly among young university students. The volumes of Capital and its manuscripts published by the MEGA2 project, as well as various recently published popular and introductory editions of Capital, have become important documentary resources for the public to read and study the work. This surge in learning first arose on university campuses and expanded through forms such as "Reading Capital [Das Kapital lesen]" activities and the "Marx Autumn School" (Die Marx-Herbstschule). These initiatives have greatly promoted the dissemination of Capital in Germany and increased the general public’s awareness of Marxism, especially Marx's primary theoretical perspectives in Capital.
In October 2007, the German Left Socialist Student Association (Die Linke.SDS) [11] took the lead in launching the "Rediscovering Marx" initiative. After a year of preparation, the association proposed a nationwide "Reading Capital" campaign at German universities starting in the 2008 winter semester. The initial plan was to spend one year completing the first volume of Capital, then decide whether to proceed with Volumes II and III based on the circumstances. The association also established a dedicated "Reading Capital" website and invited famous German critical theorists to provide academic guidance. This activity was both a highly influential "Reading Capital" event in Germany at the time and the inaugural session of what would gradually become the "Marx Autumn School." Participants primarily discussed the contents of the manuscript "Results of the Direct Production Process," which constitutes the "Sixth Chapter" of Volume I of Capital.
The "Marx Autumn School" is co-sponsored by institutions such as the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the Association for the Promotion of the MEGA Edition in Berlin. It is open to all members of the general public interested in Marx, while also featuring participation in reading groups by scholars familiar with or even expert in Marxist theory, including MEGA2 editorial board members and prominent leftist theorists. The school focuses on short-term (approximately three days) intensive study and seminars. In the six sessions held between 2008 and 2013, participants engaged in heated discussions surrounding Marx’s Capital, its manuscripts, and other vital documents. In addition to the "Marx Autumn School," the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation has offered a year-round "Reading Capital Course" since 2006, explaining Volumes II and III on Monday evenings and Volume I on Tuesday evenings, with occasional guest lectures by experts. These activities have been welcomed by the German public, especially young students, laying a solid foundation for the popular dissemination of Capital and its manuscripts, and helping to trigger a new wave of scholarly engagement with Marxist works in Germany.
(Author's affiliation: School of Marxism, Renmin University of China) Web Editor: Tong Xin Source: Foreign Theoretical Trends, Issue 4, 2021