# How to Translate Value in Marx's Capital? Political Economy in Global Perspective

Alessandro Stanziani

► To cite this version:

Alessandro Stanziani. How to Translate Value in Marx's Capital? Political Economy in Global Perspective. Global Intellectual History, 2025, pp.1-24. 10.1080/23801883.2025.2456699. halshs-05475789

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# How to translate value in Marx's *Capital*? Political economy in global perspective

Alessandro Stanziani

Full professor EHESS

Senior research director CNRS Paris

## Summary

This article aims to provide a comprehensive political and intellectual history of a topic that has fallen out of favour in recent decades: Marx's notion of value. While political economy extensively discussed this topic in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it has been largely overlooked since the late 1990s, when discussions on Marx's eurocentrism took precedence. This article proposes a novel approach to examining how the actors themselves, including Marx, conceptualized and addressed the challenges of translation and transferability of his notion of value. Firstly, it analyses the transfer between German, French, English, and Russian during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Secondly, it examines the adaptation to several vernacular Indian languages during the twentieth century. This particular approach aims to broaden the scope of debates beyond philological concerns, emphasizing their crucial relevance and implications for global political and social dynamics. The article will demonstrate that the translation of "wert" as "cost of production" led to a significant modification of Marx's theory and its political implications, contributing to the tensions surrounding Marxism and socialist policies during the twentieth century.

## Introduction

In 1899, a new translation of Marx's *Capital* appeared in Russian, the second after that of 1872.¹ In the introduction, Petr Struve, a Marxist who was still close to the Social Democratic Party at the time, noted that the Russian translation posed a problem; in principle, the word *wert* was equivalent first and foremost to *tsennost*' (value), but possibly also to *stoimost*' which, in Russian, could mean either value or production cost. Struve concludes that, on several occasions, translators have rendered *wert* as *stoimost*'.² He relates these translation problems to the more general problem of transferring Marxian concepts, and European political economy in general, to the Russian context. This transfer is all the more difficult in that, according to him, within Russia itself, a subsequent gap is emerging between the 'current' notion of value and that of political economy.
Just over a century later, chapters 2 and 3 of Dipesh Chakrabarty's *Provincialising Europe* are devoted to Marx: chapter 2 discusses the notion of capital while chapter 3 studies labour. The author's ambition is to show, in the wake of Said, that Marx is Eurocentric and that the attempt by some Indian Marxists to build on him is doomed to failure because of the incompatibility between the Indian context and the one studied by Marx.³ His criticism of Indian Marxists and of Marx himself overlap. The non-transferability of Marxian notions of capital and labour serves as a point of support for his demonstration. On the other hand, Chakrabarty pays no attention to the way in which *Capital* has been translated into Indian languages, and he puts the interpretation of the categories in the foreground. In this case, the (non)transferability of concepts is independent of linguistic issues. These two approaches to 'translation' are, of course, intertwined; however, whether one or the other takes precedence has important consequences⁴ for historical investigation, as well as for literary analysis and epistemological perspectives.

This perspective may initially appear unconventional when considered in the context of Marx's theories. The majority of studies on his theory of value have historically cantered on its economic and political implications,⁵ with a focus that persisted for over a century. However, this focus shifted with the transition of political economy into economics, predominantly within the framework of neoclassical standards. Subsequently, Marxist ideologies experienced a decline, the welfare state underwent a shift in the 1980s, and the concept of "real socialism" came to an end following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

However, a few exceptions have emerged, including specialized journals such as *Actuel Marx*, which continue to explore Marx's theories. Recent efforts have also emerged to reinterpret Marx from a transnational and global vantage point. Kevin Anderson has studied Marx "on the margins," focusing on regions such as India, China, and Ireland.⁶ Nevertheless, his work remains influenced by a set of debates that have become somewhat outdated. Anderson's focus on "Asian capitalism" and the censorship allegedly imposed on this concept within Marxist thought is noteworthy. He contends that this perspective could potentially restore the centrality of Marx's thought in the globalized era. On this last topic, Vivek Chibber's book and his critics of postcolonial thought provide a valuable reference,⁷ and yet, its main purpose consists in criticizing the postcolonial approach and defending the universalism of Marx.

From this standpoint, Simin Fadaee's recent book on Global Marxism provides a crucial step forward insofar as he proves, in detail, how political activists across the world referred to Marx's writings and how, therefore, the global and the local connected.⁸ Musto's work, in particular, emphasizes the challenges and complexities surrounding the translation and
reception of the German author's works.⁹ In collaboration with other scholars, Musto endeavoured to demonstrate that the translations of Marx's oeuvre, unencumbered by the constraints imposed by the Cold War, would substantiate the contemporary relevance of his theoretical contributions. A precise interpretation would facilitate a revaluation of Marx. This article adopts a novel perspective by considering the following fundamental premise: all previous interpretations and works on Marx focus on his "actuality," and therefore insist on correcting (or reinforcing) critics of Marx. These approaches are characterized by a strong methodological foundation, with commentators often distinguishing between "bad" and "correct" interpretations of Marx. This methodological approach, which is valuable in the social sciences such as sociology and political economy, involves the extraction of texts from their context and the provision of explanations that are heavily grounded in social theories. I do not reject this approach in absolute terms; the political ramifications inherent in scholarly pursuits are inevitable. However, I posit that there is considerable merit in exploring alternative perspectives on Marx and his texts, offering a multifaceted approach that can complement existing methodologies in normative social sciences. I refer to an approach prevalent in history, particularly in the context of intellectual history, where the social and intellectual conditions that facilitate the production and circulation of texts are of consequence. The crux of the matter is not the veracity of Marx's assertions, but rather an examination of how he and his interpreters approached the issue through the lens of words, categories, and their translations. The stake lies not in determining Chakrabarty's accuracy in his assessment of Marx, but rather in elucidating the fundamental question that emerged during Marx's era and the textual and semantic sources from which Chakrabarty derived his interpretation.

From this vantage point, philology and hermeneutics emerge as pivotal, as they elucidate the temporal displacements of meanings and texts. The present study will adopt this approach on two levels. Firstly, it will consider the perspective of a contemporary historian confronted with a plethora of texts and translations of Marx. Secondly, it will take into account the perspective of Marx and his followers. It will be demonstrated that the conventional inquiries within the historiography could not have been conceptualized by Marx and other historical actors without addressing the issues of words, meanings, and their transposition over time and space. Regrettably, these concerns have been largely disregarded in the historical discourse, or they have been swiftly transformed into the conventional normative discourse surrounding the relevance of Marx's actuality. From this perspective, philology and hermeneutics can be understood as significant political tools, in addition to their traditional role in the humanities.
Therefore, the primary objective of this article is to ascertain the reasons why "correct"
translation and interpretation were so imperative to Marx, Engels, and a multitude of Marxists
and non-Marxists, including intellectuals, economists, and political activists, over the course
of more than a century. The concept of "correct" interpretation may be approached from
various epistemological perspectives, including the preservation of sacred texts, as seen in
religious traditions; the linguistic and philological investigation of texts, as seen in literary
and historical scholarship; and the logical structure of a text, as seen in political economy. The
tension within Marxism, since Marx himself, between these orientations (the capital as a
bible?) has guided the diffusion, strength, and limitations of the political economy of
Marxism.

Secondly, and starting from this, we may reconsider the usual debate in political economy
about value. The translation of wert either as value or as cost of production meant,
accordingly, either that all value derived from labour or that capital and the land participated
to the creation of value. This study will demonstrate how and why Marxism deviated between
these perspectives, with the former being regarded as revolutionary and the latter as reformist.
Additionally, it will be elucidated how, within the Soviet Union, the prevailing doctrine
underwent a shift from one orientation to another. This ideological shift guided the strategic
actions of Communist parties and Marxist groups throughout the twentieth century, both in
Europe and in India.

Thirdly, the tensions between universality and eurocentrism in Marx's thought were also
grounded in the notion and translation of value. By examining Marx's perspective on non-
European regions and the subsequent adaptation of his theories in Russia and India, this
article aims to demonstrate that universalism and eurocentrism are not merely abstract
concepts, but rather tangible practices embedded within specific local contexts, albeit
perpetually influenced by global dynamics. ¹⁰ The article's objective is to underscore the
significance of the interplay between the local and the global, while emphasizing that the
pursuit of contemporary definitions of these concepts is not the primary focus. Instead, the
article seeks to elucidate the conceptualizations of international, local, and global that were
held by Marx, his adherents in Russia, Europe, and India.

I will follow these debates from the middle of the nineteenth century until the First World
War; I will then discuss their legacy in the USSR, then within the Comintern, in colonial and
post-colonial India in particular, and will conclude with the discussions at the end of the
twentieth century on Marx's Eurocentrism.

Marx and "the others"

Marx's first reflections on value took place in the mid-nineteenth century, at a time when
political economy was facing two fundamental questions: the uniformity of historical
trajectories and the links between economics, philosophy and the "science of society". The so-
called "historical school" in Germany asserted the heterogeneity of "paths" of development
and, at the same time, the need to link economics to history.¹¹ Marx intervened in these
debates in his columns on India published in the *New York Tribune in the* early 1850s. While
denouncing British colonialism, he admitted that it brought elements of progress, such as the
introduction of private property and the fight against caste. Probably under the influence of
Hegel¹², he saw the commune and the village as the bedrock of Indian immobility.¹³ As early
as 1853, he also identified in public works and in the role of the State, the specificity of Asian
powers, India, China, but also Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.¹⁴

Marx began to modify his opinion after the Sepoys' revolt of 1857-8. The British press and
public opinion were shocked by these events, which they saw as ingratitude towards the
efforts of civilisation and resources that Great Britain had brought to India¹⁵. This process
affected the management of the Empire, where it was no longer just a question of invading the
world with British textiles, but also, and increasingly, of resolving the tensions between local
political authority and the imperial power.¹⁶ The end of the East India Company and the direct
control of India by the British Parliament responded to these demands.¹⁷ Marx noted that the
revolt was the consequence of British colonial policies, which were authoritarian and
exploitative.¹⁸ This was a complete reversal of his previous position. Events in Russia in 1858
contributed to this development. Marx was astonished that Alexander II had set up
commissions to consider the abolition of serfdom. In a letter to Engels dated 29 April 1858, he
noted that "the movement for the emancipation of the serfs in Russia strikes me because it
seems to indicate the beginning of an internal development which could contrast with the
usual foreign policy of this country".¹⁹

It was at this point that he finished writing the *Grundrisse*; in contrast to his earlier work,
Marx envisaged the possibility of several historical dynamics in the transition from pre-
capitalist systems to capitalism; it was in this context, on the strength of his readings on India
and Russia, that he introduced the notion of an Asian system of production.²⁰ In his view, the
differences between the Asian model and the European model could be translated into an
equally different evolution in the capitalist era and in the transition to socialism. In the same
perspective, in the so-called "Economic Manuscript" - in reality the first draft of *Capital* - of
1861-3, Marx concluded that the commune and the village in India were not necessarily
sources of immobility.²¹

However, he remained uncertain about the validity of this scheme. In the German edition of
the first volume of *Capital* (1867), he returned to the uniqueness of the historical development
of societies and accused the political economy of Senior, Malthus and Ricardo of putting
forward abstract theories and laws that overlooked the historically situated character of
capitalism.²² He contrasts this abstraction with the concrete empirical analysis of societies
and their history. In reality, his historicism in no way contradicts the positivist search for the
general laws of history and capitalist development.²³ Marx does not attack abstraction as such,
of which he accuses political economy, but only its particular expression, which consists in
naturalising capitalism.²⁴ He proposes a scheme that is intended to be historical, but just as
general and universalist as that of his opponents: the transition from feudalism to capitalism is
valid everywhere, as are the main features of each of its systems. The historical stages are in
fact the different phases of a philosophical (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) and political (the
overcoming of capitalism) argument. From this perspective, England is showing the way to
other countries and regions of the world.

This is where the notion of value comes in: by linking value and labour, Marx formulates an
economic theory and a political proposition. Labour-value is expressed above all in the
process of primitive accumulation, which is supposed to be the same everywhere. The
expropriation of peasants' land transforms them into proletarians and concrete labour into
abstract labour, the source of value. It was at this point, at the turn of the 1860s-70s, that Marx
came into contact with Russian authors; these contacts were to have a decisive influence on
his reflections on the universality (or otherwise) of historical trajectories. Whereas for India
he relied solely on his readings, for Russia he found himself confronted with real-life authors
and with debates that were already well advanced on the question of historical specificity and
capitalist development. The famous quarrel between the Westernizers and the Slavophiles of
the 1840s and 60s concerned exactly whether historical dynamics could be reduced to those of
the West or whether other solutions were possible. The Slavophiles believed that the peasant
commune could serve as the basis for the modernisation of Russia, while their opponents
believed that, as in Great Britain, the first step should be the privatisation of communal land
and the proletarianisation of the peasants. It is important to note that this was a political and empirical opposition, but also an epistemological one: the Westernizers likened history and economics to the natural sciences and their "universal laws", while the Slavophiles insisted on the irreducibility of one to the other.²⁵ This is where the debate with Marx comes in; it concerns both the universality of historical trajectories and how *Capital* should be translated into Russian.

## First translations

In his correspondence with Nikolai Daniel'son, a populist author who was translating *Capital* into Russian, Marx insisted that he should use the French version, which was also being published, rather than the German edition. Why was this?

Marx began his contacts for the French translation as early as 1867, the year of publication. of the first volume of *Das Kapital* in German. This was particularly important to him because he considered France to be fundamental for the dissemination of his ideas. Marx and Engels in fact devoted a great deal of their energies to the translations, which they followed closely, believing that the coherence of the International depended on them. This concern about translations was therefore political and revealed their ambition to establish a standardised version of Marx's thought. Precisely because of these demands, several attempts to translate Marx's work into French were not followed up, and others were initiated but not completed.²⁶ Finally, Joseph Roy set to work and, despite several points of disagreement with Marx and the publisher, he made progress. The first fascicles were published in 1872, the others over the following three years; the complete edition of the first volume appeared in 1875.²⁷ Marx himself intervened by deciding to modify many passages compared with the German edition. In particular, in the sections devoted to primitive accumulation, he cut some passages and added others in order, as he explained in his correspondence, to show the possibility of different historical paths towards capitalism.²⁸ However, the publisher Lachâtre regretted the difficulty of the book: "I read your dissertations with respect, but without understanding them". He wanted the book to be written "in language that is within the reach of the vulgar, of whom I am one" (15 February 1875). Marx revised his text to make it more accessible to French readers.²⁹ He appreciated the resonance between his words and Roy's work and insisted that the title page of the book should read "completely revised by the author". However, this "accessible" language, like the changes in content, annoyed Engels who, after Marx's death, did not hesitate to recommend, again and again, that the French translation
should not be taken into consideration, but only the German edition.³⁰ He criticised the simplification of the text and the confusion surrounding the universality of the law of primitive accumulation, which, in his view, should not be called into question. Despite this ostracism, the French version was the source of translations into Italian between 1882 and 1886, into Spanish and Portuguese, and then, a century later, into Arabic and Vietnamese.

Still in 1872, Marx corresponded with Daniel'son, who was preparing the Russian translation, recommending that he use the French version, which was more accessible and in which he pointed out that he had made changes that would undoubtedly be of interest to the Russian reader, particularly with regard to the multiple historical paths.³¹ The Russian translation appeared in 1872 and immediately sold 3,000 copies, generating hundreds of reviews in just a few years, despite censorship. Already famous Slavophiles like Mikhailovskii declared themselves enthusiastic followers of Marx.³² Another economist, Nikolai Ivanovich Ziber, who had already helped to propagate Marx's thought before the publication of the Russian translation, stepped up his contributions, making a decisive contribution to the reception of Marx in Russia.³³ It is interesting to note that in his thesis on Ricardo, Ziber put forward the idea that labour-value and production costs were synonymous; he took up this argument in relation to Marx and this idea had a major influence on certain interpreters of Marx in Russia. It was in this context that revolutionaries such as Piotr Tkachev, Nikolaii Mikhailovskii and Vera Zasulich questioned Marx and Engels on the subject of the commune and the "historical laws of development": was it possible to follow a different path of development from that of the West and thus achieve socialism without going through capitalism?

In a letter to Mikhailovskii in 1877, Marx believed that Russia could take a different path from the West. Four years later, in another letter to Vera Zasulich, he confirmed that the peasant commune could form the basis for social regeneration in Russia.³⁴ Inspired by these exchanges, Marx returned to India by reading a young Russian intellectual, Maksim Kovalevskii, who wrote a work on ancient customs and the village in Russia that was openly inspired by a volume that Henry Sumner Maine had published almost twenty years earlier on India. Maine had exerted an immense influence in England and Europe on the way Indian and European institutions were interpreted.³⁵ In particular, he was at the origin of the opposition between so-called status societies and contract societies. In the former - ancient societies, India, Old Regime France - legal status prevails over social hierarchies, whereas England, and then the rest of Europe, dismantle this system by giving priority to the market and the contract as a social marker. This approach was bound to have a major influence in Russia, where the
old regime 'orders' (*sosloviia*) persisted and were described as 'feudal' by both Marxists and liberals like Kovalevskii. Prompted by his reading of Kovalevskii, Marx also turned his attention to Maine;³⁶ in his correspondence between 1880 and 1882, he noted that, even in the absence of private property, and perhaps precisely because of this absence, it was possible for social hierarchies to become rigid, with the help of religion. According to Marx, this is perhaps the origin of the castes.³⁷ Marx seemed to appreciate Kovalevskii, whom he considered intellectually to be a close friend³⁸ and he adopted his typology of forms of power and property.³⁹ The role of institutions (the village, the peasant commune) thus became central to Marx's thinking and enabled him to differentiate historical trajectories.

It was from these shifts in focus - Russia, India - that Marx ended up partially modifying his approach. This often involved the mediation of Russian authors and their interpretation not only of Russia, but also of India. If this is Eurocentrism, as Said and Chakrabarty would assert, then it is the result of heterogeneous English, German and Russian influences on Marx, in which the primacy of Europe is less assumed than questioned.

These elements found their way into the English version, to which Marx and Engels attached particular importance because of the role of English socialists within the International. As in the case of France and Russia, they looked for a translator as early as 1867, but it would take almost twenty years for the first volume of *Capital to* see the light of day in English (1886). The reason was always the same: Marx and Engels wanted to keep control of the translation, but Marx's thinking evolved over time, as did his disagreements with Engels. Several attempts at translation, unauthorised by Marx and Engels, were made and quickly blocked by them. Finally, after Marx's death, it was the third German edition that was translated by Samuel Moore (a businessman and lawyer who was a close friend of Marx's) and Edward Aveling (a biologist who had married Marx's youngest daughter), under Engels's supervision and with significant contributions. This first English edition was immediately followed by a second in 1887, a third the following year, a fourth in 1891 and a fifth in 1896. By 1908, twelve English editions had been published. The second and third volumes of *Capital* were translated in the United States twenty years later.

Concurrently, Engels' hand became increasingly prominent in Germany as a reaction to the newly published English editions. The fourth German edition, published in 1890, was substantially modified by him. Its aim was to eliminate the influences of the Russian and French translations that still persisted in the second and third editions and return to the uniqueness of the historical developments of the first German version. This fourth version
was canonised in several Western countries and, as we shall see, in the USSR throughout the
twentieth century, in the name of an orthodoxy which, initiated by Engels himself, never
ceased to divide Marxists.

There is value and there is value

In 1894 Engels, who died the following year, published the third volume of *Capital* (the second had been published three years earlier) based on the notes that Marx had written in 1864-5. Engels significantly altered these notes, as became clear when, in 1992, the Russians finally allowed access to the original manuscript.⁴⁰ The reasons for this censorship, as well as for the corrections made by Engels, lie in the difficulties of reconciling the third and first volumes. The first was based on the famous labour theory of value, while the third seems to indicate that, for Marx, value can now be equated with production costs. Beyond the theoretical contradictions, the political implications are enormous. If value is not only the product of labour, but also of capital and land, then, rather than revolution, it is possible to rely on negotiations about the distribution of income within the capitalist system.

In fact, contrary to what most histories of Marxism claim, the origins of revisionism can be
found in Russia.⁴¹ Before Bernstein, as early as 1894, Piotr Struve questioned the Marxist
thesis that the state was an expression of the ruling class.⁴² The following year, Serguei
Bulgakov, another social democrat, highlighted the contradictions between the theory of value
set out in the first volume and that of the third volume, i.e. between labour value and value as
an expression of production costs.⁴³ In their reasoning, these Russian authors demonstrated a
notable interest in neo-Kantian theories.⁴⁴ Bulgakov believed that Marxist thought could be
complemented by Stammler's thesis, according to which the characteristics of causality and
necessity proper to the Marxist philosophy of history should abandon their historical
determinism and take account of individual will.⁴⁵

Similar considerations were expressed in Germany. Between 1897 and 1899, Edouard
Bernstein, Engels's former secretary and now a leader of the German Social Democratic Party,
published a series of articles accompanied by a book on *The Preconditions of Socialism*.
Under neo-Kantian influence, he gave an important role to the individual, his will and his
ideas, and not just to transformations in the economic structure. He therefore proposed a
revision of the social democratic party programme in which the party could take the initiative
without waiting for economic transformations. In fact, these trajectories did not seem to
confirm Marx's predictions on primitive accumulation: peasants and small businesses
coexisted in Germany alongside large capitalist enterprises. From this, he drew the conclusion that the Social Democratic Party would not necessarily have to aim for proletarian revolution, but would have to enter into a complex game of wage and political negotiations.⁴⁶

The "orthodox" retort was not long in coming: in 1898, Lenin published the famous *The Development of Capitalism in Russia*, in which he tried to demonstrate that capitalism was well established in Russia and that the peasants would soon disappear, becoming either owners or wage earners. He concluded by asserting that Marx had clearly shown that the historical development of the economy was the same everywhere according to well-established "laws".⁴⁷

The following year, the three volumes of *Capital* appeared in Russian in a new translation by Gurvich and Zak,⁴⁸ preceded by a preface by Struve. It was in this context that Struve challenged the translation, in certain passages, of *wert* by *stoimost*'. In his view, these errors by the Russian translators actually reflected the contradictions of Marx himself, who was uncertain about the origin of value: only labour in the first volume, labour, land and capital in the third. A revisionist himself, he was inclined to give priority to the third volume. To do this, he relies on the Russian language, which would solve this problem. He begins by pointing out that, in Russian, *tsennost*' has the same etymology as *tsen*, price, and would therefore be entirely compatible with the notion of "cost of production". In his view, we should rely on this "popular language" instead of turning economics into an "abstract" discipline. In concrete terms, this means that value originates in prices, rather than the other way round, as Marx suggests. More specifically, Struve refers to the notion of a 'fair price' which, in both Western Europe and Russia, is the economic and moral reference point for price formation. This proposal is accompanied by another: from a neo-Kantian perspective, common knowledge is the foundation on which political economy should be built. He considers that, by resorting to abstract notions such as "value", political economy is in the process of separating itself from philosophy and other disciplines, whereas "social science" (*obshchestvennaia nauka*) is one and indivisible. This perspective of a unified social science reflects the stated ambition of many Russian authors, who are opposed to the separation of economics, philosophy, law and sociology, as is currently taking shape in Western Europe and, increasingly, in Russia itself.⁴⁹ In this perspective, the meaning of value in economics is both a political and an epistemological project: it guides the division within Marxist currents between orthodox revolutionaries and revisionists, and defends the unity of social science.⁵⁰
The political implications are fundamental: after defending the role of the trade unions and revisionism against revolutionary orthodoxy, in 1900 Bulgakov and Struve joined the Movement for the Liberation (of Russia), *Osvobozhdenie*, to which other revisionist Marxists, populists and liberals belonged. Together, they supported the establishment of a constituent assembly in Russia. However, they were divided over the political system (constitutional monarchy, democracy, limited or universal suffrage) and land tenure (private property, cooperatives, socialism) to be adopted.⁵¹

The revolution of 1905 changed again the situation: while Lenin radically changed his policies and began to take into account the revolutionary role of the peasantry, in the Duma (National Assembly), many economists were elected to the main parties, particularly among the socialist-revolutionaries (populists) and the "cadets" (liberal-socialists who had inherited the Liberation Movement). The latter included Struve and another economist, Mikhail Tugan-Baranovskii, who was already well known in Russia and Europe. The latter published a manual of political economy in 1905, followed by a new edition in 1911. In this latest version, he returned to the question of the translation of *Capital*, a new translation of which had been published two years earlier,⁵² by Ivan Ivanovich Skvortsov-Stepanov and Vladimir Aleksandrovich Bazarov. Originally populists, these authors had moved towards Marxism at the turn of the century, along with other renowned intellectuals (Anatolii Lunacharskii, Aleksandr' Bogdanov).⁵³ Together, they sought a dialogue between economics, philosophy and science (for example, Bogdanov saw work as an expenditure of energy, in conjunction with the laws of thermodynamics). After years of collaboration, these orientations led them into major conflicts with Lenin, partly for reasons of leadership in the party (especially with Bogdanov, who was very popular), partly for doctrinal questions, as the group in question had questioned Marxist orthodoxy and opened a dialogue with the "idealists" (Bulgakov and his group) on the one hand, and certain scientists on the other. It was in this context that Bazarov and Skvortsov-Stepanov translated Marx; the 1909 edition went a long way towards systematically translating *Wert as stoimost', because, in their opinion, tsennost' would have undermined the scientific basis of Marx's thought. This new translation encouraged a revisionist interpretation of *Capital* and aroused Lenin's ire. But he was not alone. On the other side of the political spectrum, Tugan-Baranovskii also criticised the translation, but for an entirely different reason: while he too was a revisionist, he sought to formulate a synthesis between Marxism and marginalism (utilitarianism).⁵⁴ To this end, the dialectic between price, value, production costs and utility is indispensable to him.⁵⁵ His theory constitutes an original
synthesis between Marxism, Ricardo and marginalist thought. A huge theoretical debate was taking place at the time in Russia, Germany, Italy and England on the relationship between prices and values in Marx's theory, and in particular on the transformation of values into prices: while in the first volume the value of labour was the reference measure, in the third the relationship between production costs (and the contribution of the factors of production), prices and value (expressed in labour) was raised on a conceptual and mathematical level. At the time, the best formal (mathematical) solution to this question came from Russian authors such as Ladislau von Bortkiewicz and Vladimir Karpovich Dmitrev, and was to have a major impact in the West.⁵⁶

On the eve of the First World War, the Marxist world seemed deeply divided around certain central questions: the uniqueness of the historical development of economies; the relationship between prices, values and production costs; revolution or revisionism. The translation of Capital and the definition of value linked these three debates; within this framework, the universality and interpretation of Marx's theory now required a double level of translation, literal and interpretative. The October Revolution would once again modify these debates by adding a new tension between a prophetic historicity and the historicity that emerged as a result of the revolution.

## Translating Marx: the legacy

The Marx-Engels Institute was founded in 1919 with the aim of collecting the works, letters, manuscripts, editions and translations of Marx and Engels. By 1930, it had already collected 400,000 books and journals and 55,000 letters by Marx and Engels. Its task was to ensure that the "correct" interpretation of Marx was disseminated; to this end, documents such as the *Grundrisse* and the correspondence between Marx and Russian intellectuals during the years 1870-1882 were censored because of the passages on the multiplicity of historical trajectories envisaged by Marx. The Institute was also in charge of preparing and editing the complete works of Marx and Engels, for which it is not only necessary to select, but also to choose the right original version and the most appropriate translation. It was in this context that the dispute over the translation of *Capital* resurfaced. It gave rise to endless discussions within the Institute, in magazines and newspapers, and even within the Bolshevik party. In 1919, Tugan-Baranovskii re-edited his textbook, confirming his criticisms of the translators. Lenin immediately reacted by accusing him of revisionism and marginalism⁵⁷. In reality, these comments were made in a political context that had radically changed since before the war.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, apart from a group of diehard communists insisting on the need to distribute all income to the proletarians, in accordance with the labour-value theory, other orientations were emerging. Some, close to populists and economists like Aleksandr' Chayanov, insisted on the importance of the peasantry for the survival of the regime and the need to guarantee them a share of the income in accordance with their contribution to production.⁵⁸ The Mensheviks⁵⁹ and, increasingly, certain Bolsheviks, including Lenin, also realised that it was important not only to win the support of the peasants, but also to keep part of the national product for the state.⁶⁰ It is in this context that the ideological justification for a major political and ideological about-turn by Lenin and the majority of his party emerges: of course, Marx's theory of value was still valid; however, until the advent of communism, under socialism, a transitional phase, the national product must be distributed between the factors of production, land, labour and the state, the latter having replaced capital, with the nationalisation of the banks.⁶¹ In this case, value could well mean the cost of production.

This trend gradually took hold during the civil war, from 1919-20, and especially with the adoption of the NEP in 1921. Of course, it was out of the question to allow the distribution of national income to be negotiated between the party-state on the one hand and the workers' unions and peasant representatives on the other. While the unions were gradually marginalised and wage demands were banned, differences emerged over the peasants within the Bolshevik leadership group itself. Some, like Bukharin,⁶² insisted that the peasants should play an active role in economic development, while others advocated primitive socialist accumulation (Preobrazhenskii)⁶³ which consisted of extracting as much as possible from peasant incomes.

These ambiguities eventually spilled over into the design of the plan, in relation to which the economists involved were torn not only over its objectives, but also over how it should be conceived.⁶⁴ The attempt to express the whole plan in units of labour is certainly tempting, but this solution is extremely difficult to put into practice, because for decades the best economists in Europe and Russia had been working on it without arriving at any solution that was truly reliable from a mathematical point of view and coherent from an economic point of view. The alternative was to structure the plan on the basis of the factors of production, taking inspiration from the third volume of *Capital*. In principle, this solution is not so far removed from the one that was spreading in Europe and the United States at the same time, which consisted of measuring and summarising national income in a single table.⁶⁵ Market prices make it possible to add up the factors of production (or national income expenditure) into a
coherent whole. The problem was that, in the USSR, this solution came up against ideological factors: the Soviet economy was not a capitalist economy, prices were controlled and did not necessarily express the value of goods. This is why, after the gradual dismissal of economists from all sides, starting with the "populists" and the Mensheviks, and ending with the elimination of a large number of the Bolshevik economists themselves, the plan was carried out, in a simplistic way, according to the precepts of the party administrators, i.e. in quantities and weights and with the inability to follow a sector in its entirety (how many tonnes of wheat to produce a tractor?) and even less to cross-reference the different production sectors.

It was in this orientation, which was ultimately quite close to a war economy, that the endless discussions on the translation of Marx's *Capital* found their epilogue. In 1931, the directors of the Marx-Engels Institute were dismissed and the institute merged with the Lenin Institute (which had been founded in 1923). The new institute continued to publish the works of Marx and Engels: after a first series was interrupted towards the end of the 1920s, 28 volumes were finally published (*Sochineniia*). However, it was not until 1937 that *Capital* saw light. This edition, which was to become canonical until the fall of the USSR, was based on the fourth German edition (the famous version reworked by Engels) and, forgetting the criticisms addressed by Lenin himself to the Russian edition of 1909, *wert* is most often rendered as the cost of production.⁶⁶ The value of labour becomes an opaque category and value is synonymous with costs, as Stalin wished in his effort to industrialise the USSR while excluding the working class from the benefits of growth. It was not until 2015 that, amidst general indifference, a new translation of *Capital* was published in Russian, in which *wert* was translated as value (*tsennost*').⁶⁷

To sum up, the Soviet experience transformed the problem of the translation of *Capital* into a major political and ideological issue with often contradictory results: on the one hand, the theory of labour-value remained valid, but only in a time frame (the advent of communism). In the meantime, value was determined by production costs, but still in purely physical quantities, because of the absence of markets. These were physical units arbitrarily fixed by the party seeking to mobilise the economy as if it were a war economy, while keeping wages to the indispensable minimum. It is by taking these elements into account that we need to understand the ways in which Marx was disseminated and translated outside the USSR, in the West, as well as in its colonies, and then former colonies; this passage is fundamental if we are to understand the interrelation between the debates on Marx and Marxism in Europe (and the various countries), the USSR, and the other countries, from the Cold War to its end and,
from then on, to the translation of the debates and questions of 'translation' into a post-colonial context. These are not two separate histories, but one and the same.

**Value and capital: from the emergence of the 'Third World' to post-colonial studies**

After the 1917 revolution, two approaches to oriental studies emerged in the USSR, one in Leningrad, led mainly by historians inherited from the old regime, using ethnography and oriental languages as their main research tools.⁶⁸ The other school, in Moscow, was much closer to the new regime and sought to develop theories and empirical studies on the different ethnic groups of the Soviet empire according to Marxist-Leninist theory.⁶⁹ The question is still whether the "Eastern" and "African" countries have to go through the great general stages of history (ancient, medieval, pre-capitalist, capitalist, socialist and communist) or whether they can skip some of them and go straight to socialism.⁷⁰ The Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East in 1920 showed deep divisions on this issue; Lenin and the main Bolshevik leaders sought to impose a dual orientation: the peoples of Central Asia under Soviet control should develop in accordance with the guidelines laid down in Moscow, while in the "East" and in Africa the anti-imperialist struggle should continue.⁷¹

It is at the junction of these reflections and those of development economics that the age-old question of the validity of Marxian categories and the translation of *Capital* returns. They are taking place in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, from India to China,⁷² from Vietnam to Korea. Pending research that can link the history of these translations, in the following pages we will summarise the main aspects of these discussions in India, which, along with Russia, had been central to Marx's reflections and to the debates on the universality of his thought. Emphasis will be placed not only on the multiplicity of translations and editions available in the subcontinent, but also on a fairly simple question: which versions are the translations in India based on? This is where the history presented in the preceding pages acquires all its importance and produces its legacy.

Works on the peasantry in India, comparing it with the Russian experience, were published as early as the 1880s; their authors were aware of the exchanges between Marx and the Russian revolutionaries on this subject⁷³. However, it was only after the October Revolution and the formation of the Indian Communist Party (in Tashkent, in 1920⁷⁴) that discussions of Marxist doctrine took off in the sub-continent. The first Indian commentators found in Marx a synthesis of different traditions. For example, Maulavi Mohammad Barakatullah wrote in 1919 that Marx would combine the Platonic tradition of "divine man", in The Republic, with that of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.⁷⁵ A monograph published in 1921 by an Indian
student, Shripat Amri Dange, compared Marx and Gandhi and concluded by showing the superiority of one over the other.⁷⁶ Over the following years, it was mainly Marx, filtered through Lenin and his *Development of Capitalism in Russia*, that was discussed in India. The transformation of India into a capitalist country, or its direct access to socialism from village communities, were at the heart of these debates. Mahabendra Nath Roy (his real name was Narendra Nath Bhattacharya), a young Indian communist from Bengal living in exile in Mexico, criticised Lenin at the Congress of the International Communists in 1920 for not giving a leading role to revolutionary movements outside the Western world. He was also critical of the leading role given to the bourgeoisie in relation to the "poor" and the peasants.⁷⁷ Roy connected the Communists in Mexico with the office of the Communist Party of India in Tashkent; the first Communist members in India maintained important links with these regions.⁷⁸

Between the two wars, Roy and the Indian Communist Party initially refused any alliance with the nationalists, whom they sought to divide by opposing Gandhi's programme with a revolutionary perspective. Roy, who had direct links with a communist group in Bengal that had already been behind several attacks, attacked Gandhian non-violence. However, there were still major differences with the majority of the Comintern, which advocated the anti-imperialist struggle but described India as a "feudal" country, which Roy rejected. A major turnaround occurred in 1935, when the resolute anti-capitalism of the first orientation was replaced by the attitude that the rise of nationalism and capitalism in India were necessary in order to develop the working class and socialism. In this latter approach, the historical stages were the same everywhere; however, some Indian communists remained faithful to the first orientation, which encouraged the publication of the first vernacular language versions of the first volume of *Capital* and the *Communist Manifesto* explicitly addressed to the revolutionary peasants. The *Manifesto was* translated into Marathi in 1931.⁷⁹ The translator, Gangadhar Adhikari, was a chemist who had received his doctorate in Berlin in 1926, was a member of the German Communist Party and then of the Indian Communist Party, where he was arrested in 1928. He completed his translation in prison, based on the fourth German edition. In the preface, he sought to demonstrate the compatibility between Marx's notion of class and that of caste. In 1938, the first Marathi edition of volume 1 of *Capital* was published. *It* was an abridged and simplified version, produced by P.D. Gadgil. The author did not hesitate to use folk tales to make the work accessible to as many people as possible. But it was in Bengali that Marx's translations caused major disputes.⁸⁰ The reason is simple: it is Bengal which,
since the nineteenth century and right up to the present day, has often been taken as a
paradigmatic example of English occupation and which has given rise to the most discussion.
The well-known historiography of land expropriation and the transformation of the zamindars
into landowners, which has fuelled the work of Marx, Hobsbawm, Polanyi, Chakrabarty and
Prakash, just to mention a few examples, does not focus on the subcontinent, but on Bengal
alone. Bengal became a kind of ideal type of British penetration of India, forgetting the rest of
the subcontinent and, above all, the fact that it was the East India Company, rather of the
British crown and often in conflict with it, that penetrated Bengal and kept its administration
until 1858. These interpretations also overlook the specific nature of Bengal and the important
role played by Islamic communities, in particular.⁸¹ The Marxists in Bengal evolved over
time, with a strong urban and industrialist orientation between the 1930s and 1950s, before
developing an equally strong rural component (at times close to Maoism). This is why it is
important to understand which texts by Marx, in which languages, are available in this region.
A first edition of an abridgement of *Capital*, vol. 1, appeared in Bengali in 1938 (the same
year as the Marathi version). It was the work of Rebati Barman,⁸² a communist who spent
many years in prison, where he translated certain passages of *Capital* from the 1886 English
edition. He too sought to simplify the selected passages in order to make them accessible to
the Indian readership. Here we find a point already underlined by Struve in 1899, namely the
importance of bringing Marx's language closer to the "popular language", except that in these
vernacular versions in India, the effort goes a long way in this direction, to the point of
modifying entire passages to bring them closer to local folk tales.

This situation changed after the war, with independence. After years of reticence, and even
open criticism of the Indian Nationalist Party, by Gandhi and even Nehru,⁸³ in the mid-1950s
the Soviet presence in India increased, and with it development aid plans that openly
competed with those of Western countries.⁸⁴ Nehru and his followers adopted an approach
close to that of the USSR, emphasising the importance of industrialisation⁸⁵ while
maintaining India's non-alignment. From 1954 onwards, Soviet economic cooperation gained
momentum as it sought to intervene in both industrial and agricultural development.
Krushchev announced the USSR's interest in the development of non-socialist countries, and
rehabilitated Bukharin, Nep and farmers' cooperatives⁸⁶. This tension between
industrialisation and agricultural development, one or more historical trajectories towards
socialism, was accentuated by the Chinese revolution. Within the communist international and
the main communist movements in India, as in Latin America, the differences between
Leninists and Maoists, between those who continued to give priority to the workers' movement and those who insisted on the revolutionary potential of the peasantry, became more pronounced. It was in this context that the old debates between Marxists and populists in tsarist Russia resurfaced, each finding their emulators, the former insisting on industrialisation, the latter on the modernisation of peasant agriculture<sup>87</sup>. These quarrels became paradigmatic not only for discussing underdevelopment, but also Marx's theory and the historical development of the economy. The split of the Communist Party of India into two in 1964 reflected these differences. Contrary to the stylised image Chakrabarty would give decades later, Indian Marxists were deeply divided: some were Leninists, others were inspired by the Marx of the multiplicity of historical trajectories; some preached revolution, others were reformists.<sup>88</sup> Above all, Marxism took profoundly different turns in Calcutta and Bombay, in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra<sup>89</sup>: sometimes industrialist approaches dominated, sometimes, in the agrarian regions, but also in Bengal outside Bombay, it was a Marxism emphasising the role of the peasantry that prevailed.<sup>90</sup> But what editions and in what language did these authors read Marx?

In fact, in English, two versions of *Capital* circulated in India between 1950 and 1970: one, taken directly from the English editions of the late nineteenth century, and the other, translated from Russian into English during the 1950s, from the canonical Soviet edition of the 1930s. The two versions are very different, as we have shown, particularly as regards the universality of the laws of development and the relationship between values and prices. The virulent debates within the Indian Marxist movement partly reflect this duality of the versions of *Capital* circulating in the sub-continent. Authors who quote the English translation produced by the Soviets defend Marxist orthodoxy: India is supposed to develop along the lines advocated by Marx and Lenin (whom they most often equate). Others, on the other hand, rely on the English edition of 1886, on the correspondence between Marx, Engels and the Russian authors, and on Marx's "economic manuscripts", gradually made available to international researchers from the 1960s onwards. Labour-value thus accompanies the theory of a multiplicity of historical trajectories.<sup>91</sup>

It was in this context that the unabridged Marathi version of the three volumes saw the light of day in the 1970s, on the basis of the Soviet edition of 1954, which had previously been translated into English by the Soviet presses themselves and was highly critical of the 1938 Marathi version, accused of being vulgar and not in keeping with Marx's original. The translator, Vasant Tulpule, who had already translated Lenin, claimed to have used the
English-Marathi "scientific dictionary" (Marathi Paribhasha Samiti) ratified by the University of Pune in 1958.⁹² Nevertheless, the use of the 1954 Soviet canonical edition means that in many passages value has now become the cost of production, which is how it is rendered in Marathi (*utpadana kharka* instead of *Mulya*).

For his part, K.G. Mashruwala, a Communist party member, published numerous texts by Marx and on Marx in English, Hindi and Gujarati, while from the 1960s onwards, the Hindi translation of *Capital* gradually saw the light of day, still under the control of Moscow and its canonical edition.

The first full Bengali translation appeared in 1974. It was written by an economist, Piyush Dasgupta, and published by Bani Prakash in Calcutta. Dasgupta, a Communist, was expelled from the party in 1974 on charges of extreme left-wing activities and anti-partisanship. In his introduction, he criticised the partial and vulgarised translations available until then in Bengali. Dasgupta reproduces the same criticism (without knowing it) that Lenin had addressed to Struve when the latter had insisted on the need to render *Capital* in a "popular" Russian language (and that Engels had addressed to Marx for his French version). Orthodoxy goes hand in hand with a language that claims to be "scientific", against the communist vulgate, and where, once again, the universality of historical trajectories and the translation of values are crucial. However, unlike the editions in other vernacular languages, Dasgupta's edition does not use the Soviet edition; it is based on the English version of 1886 which, as we have seen, did not entirely conform to Engels' requirements and retained a certain influence from the French and Russian translations, with the idea of a multiplicity of historical trajectories, and, moreover, with a clear distinction between value and the cost of production, without any temptation to replace one by the other.

In short, Indian Marxists have to deal with different editions of *Capital*: one supplied by the Soviets, another derived directly from the English edition of 1886, not to mention the many versions in the vernacular languages, in turn based on different editions, Soviet or English, and just as heterogeneous in their final result (abridged, mixed with stories, etc). This panoply of editions reflects the heterogeneity of Indian Marxism and raises an essential question for us: to which version of *Capital* and to which current does Chakrabarty refer when he attacks Marx and Indian Marxists?

The reality is that Chakrabarty essentializes Marx and Marxism, no less than he essentializes the subalterns, the North and the South: no matter the differences between versions, between Marxist currents, no matter the hesitations of Marx himself, for Chakrabarty it is possible to identify a hard core of Marx's thought and its reception in India. We can take a closer look at
Chakrabarty's reflections, starting with an aspect that has escaped his commentators: what language and what edition of *Capital* is he reading?

His notes cite the 1990 English edition by Ben Fowkes (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1990), the ultimate revision of the 1886 English edition. This is a far cry from the famous fourth German edition, reworked by Engels and used by the Soviets. It is interesting to follow Fowkes' long introduction, almost 90 pages long; he could not be clearer: Marx never proposed universal laws; on the contrary, he would always have preached the diversity of historical trajectories. It was a last bend, immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, made in order to save *Capital*. Fowkes goes further in this perspective: he adds that there is no contradiction between the first and third volumes, because they are two different levels of abstraction. A century of disputes on this subject is obscured. It is therefore paradoxical that Chakrabarty uses an edition that emphasises Marx's historical 'relativism' to assert the exact opposite: Marx is Eurocentric, imagining notions and historical trajectories that are valid everywhere, and Indian Marxists take this error to its extreme. Following in Spivak's footsteps, he concludes by attacking the supposed universalism of Western social sciences.

## Conclusion

The aim of this article is not to present the 'real' Marx, or Marx 'today', but rather to discuss the way in which Marx, his contemporaries (starting with Engels), commentators and followers have discussed two related issues: the universality of historical trajectories, and the transferability and translatability of Marxian categories. On the epistemological level, these questions relate to the delimitation of political economy, its objects and its methods, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, while on the level of political orientations, these same discussions relate to the strategies and tactics of the socialist international, and then of the Comintern. The normative nature of political economy, especially in its Marxist variant, makes it difficult to separate these issues. Thus, during Marx's lifetime, his ambition and that of Engels concurred in the attempt to affirm a doxa, but diverged as to the content of that doxa: a single historical trajectory or several? Labour-value or value as production costs? These issues explain the exasperated attention paid by both Marx and Engels to the translations and different versions of the first volume of *Capital*. Of course, the desired standardisation of the theses put forward and the categories used did not take place. In this context, the category of value is central: it determines the others (labour, capitalism, accumulation), and, at the same time, it introduces a fundamental indeterminacy into Marx's thought between not only the different versions of the first volume of *Capital*, but also and
above all between this one and the third. The tension between value and the costs of production is not an exclusively economic and mathematical question (the transformation of values into prices, on which generations of economists, philosophers and political scientists have broken their heads), but a political and philosophical one: it is a question of determining the origin of value and, by the same token, the tactics of the socialist movement.

Between the 1850s and 1880s, the first variant of this debate took place when the English industrial revolution raised the question of the transformations of the other European powers, on the one hand, and non-European countries on the other: were they all supposed to follow the same path?

Then, at the turn of the century, the third volume of Capital saw the light of day at a time when the economic and political context was changing radically; with the emergence of the social state and the affirmation of socialist parties, the tension between reform and revolution constituted the main divide within this movement. The tension between value-labour and value-cost of production split the Socialist International.

A third stage opened with the Russian revolution of 1917. The question then became one of the relevance of this revolution within the framework of Marxist historical trajectories, and of the export of the revolution itself to other countries. Once again, the definition of accumulation and the distribution of income, including in the USSR, and the identification of value accompanied these debates. After the uncertain years of the civil war, an interpretation emerged, first in part with Lenin, then definitively with Stalin: contrary to what the former, above all, had asserted up until then to counter the various oppositions in the socialist field in Russia, the expression of value by production costs was correct insofar as, during the "transitional" phase of socialism, the accumulation of capital was important and labour could not appropriate all of the value. This new orthodoxy soon came up against the emergence of communist parties elsewhere in the world and competition from "revisionist" socialism. The Soviet leaders sought to produce an 'orthodox' version and interpretation of Capital that would be accepted everywhere. However, as in Marx's time, this attempt failed in the face of the multiplication of translations and versions of Capital available in different countries. For much of the twentieth century, the same questions - what is value, what are the historical trajectories of the economies of different countries - continued to animate debates. In the case of India in particular, several English and vernacular versions circulated, each with different presentations of these elements, confirming the fact that, at the time of the Cold War, the circulation of Marx's texts transcended ideological divisions and the Iron Curtain, and reflected highly heterogeneous political strategies.
Finally, the collapse of the USSR and the end of decolonisation, accompanied by the emergence of post-colonial studies and the cultural turn, seemed to put an end to these debates. The quarrels surrounding Marx and his thought fell into disuse; economics lost interest in value, a question deemed philosophical, and referred to the term only in a macroeconomic and accounting posture: value added, which emerged after the Second World War and now occupies the field. For its part, on the fringes of political philosophy, the 'subaltern' and Saidian approach proposes a new reading key: Marx is Eurocentric. The emphasis is on the transferability of his notions, on their impossible circulation. It is an attempt to radically separate the two meanings of translation-transferability, which had previously been strongly superimposed. It is an approach that, in principle, seeks to move beyond the Cold War, but which proposes, in a North-South dimension, the same approaches, the same impossibility of linking different worlds, beyond their connections. Since Marx, these connections have not only been, as the 'subaltern' interpretation asserts, from the 'centre' (and which) to the periphery (and which), but have expressed the strong bilateral influence between the highly heterogeneous thinking carried out in Western Europe and the equally significant influences coming mainly from India and Russia. As the millennium drew to a close, authors from India and the Middle East, who were highly integrated into Anglo-American universities, denied this multilateral dimension and freezed confrontations between more or less idealised worlds. In this context, value was no longer a relevant category, any more than it was in mainstream economic analysis.

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<footnote n="1">¹ Marks (I keep here the transcription from his name in Russian for his titles in Russian), *Kapital*.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Struve, "Vvedenie" (preface), in Marks, *Kapital*, XVIII-XIX.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Chakrabarty, *Provincializing Europe*.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ Severi, *La déésse parole*; Quine, *Meaning and Translation*.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ The works of Michael Edward and John Edward King provide an excellent introduction to these debates, for example *A history of Marxian Economics*.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ Anderson, *Marx at the Margins*.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ Chibber, *Postcolonial Theory*.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ Fadaee, *Global Marxism*. I adopted this approach in my previous works, seeking to show how peasants and their organizations in Russia and Europe made use of Marx and Chayanov. Stanziani, *L'économie en révolution* and "Cayanov, *Kerblay*".</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ Musto, *Marx and Le Capital*;</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ I developed this approach in my connected and global history of the notion of eurocentrism since the 18th century to the present days. Stanziani, *Eurocentrism*.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ Tribe, *Strategies of Economic Order*; Cardoso and Psalidopoulos, *The German Historical School*; Stanziani, *Les entrelacements du monde*.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² Löwy, *L'humanisme historiciste de Marx*.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ Marx, Engels, *Collected Works*, Vol. 12, 132, 217-8; vol. 39, 333-34.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ Marx, "The Military Question - Parliamentary Affairs - India"; Marx, Engels, *Collected Works*, vol. 12, 126-132.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ Chakravarty, *The Indian Mutiny*.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ Mehta, *Liberalism and Empire*.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ Metcalf, *The Aftermath of Revolt*; Dirks, *The Scandal of Empire*.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ Marx, Engels, *Collected Works*, vol. 15, 297-305. Husain ed, *Karl Marx on India*.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ Marx, Engels, *Collected Works* vol. 40, 310.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ Marx, *Grundrisse*.</footnote>

<footnote n="21">²¹ Marx, Engels, *Collected Works*, vol. 31, 236; vol. 34, 118-9.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²² Althusser, *Pour Marx*.</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ Blackledge, *Reflections on the Marxist Theory of History*.</footnote>

<footnote n="24">²⁴ Perry, *Marxism and History*.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵ Stanziani, *L'économie en révolution*.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶ Lefebvre "Introduction", *Marx, Le Capital*.</footnote>

<footnote n="27">²⁷ Translation by M.J. Roy. See also: Balibar, *La philosophie de Marx*.</footnote>

<footnote n="28">²⁸ Lefebvre, "La première traduction française".</footnote>

<footnote n="29">²⁹ Gaudin *Traduire Le Capital*. Huard, "Traduire Le Capital".</footnote>
30 Marx, Engels, *Collected Works*, vol. 44, 540-41.

31 Marx, Engels, *Collected Works*, vol. 44, 385. Fondu, "From Moscow To Paris".

32 Mihailovskii, "Po povodu russkogo izdaniia".

33 Ziber, "Marx's Theory of Value and Money". On Ziber Allisson, *Value and Prices*.

34 Perepiska K. Marksa i F. Engel'sa. Shanin, ed, *Late Marx and the Russian Road*.

35 Mantena, *Alibis of Empire*.

36 Maine, *Ancient Law*; *Villages communities*.

37 Marx, *Ethnological Notebooks*; Marx, *Notes on Indian History*. Anderson, *Marx on the Margins*, 207.

38 Marx, Engels, *Collected Works*, vol. 45, 409.

39 Marx, "Excerpts from M. M. Kovalevskij".

40 Heinrich, "Engels' Edition".

41 Kinderslay, *The First Russian Revisionists*; Stanziani, *L'économie en révolution*; Scherrer, *Die Peterrsburger Religiös-Philosophischen Vereinigungen*; Scherrer and Steila, *Gorkij-Bogdanov*. Steila, *Nauka i revoliutsiia*.

42 Struve, *Kriticheskie zametki*.

43 Bulgakov, "Tretii tom Kapitala".

44 Resis, "Das Kapital Comes to Russia".

45 Bulgakov, *Iz marksizma k idealizmu*.

46 Lidtke, *The Outlawed Party*.

47 Lenin, *Razvitie kapitalizma*.

48 Marks, *Kapital*.

49 Stanziani, *L'économie en révolution*.

50 Bulgakov, "O zakonomernosti".

51 Freeze, "A National Liberation Movement". Galai, *The Liberation Movement*.

52 Marks, *Kapital*.

53 Scherrer, *Steila, Gor'kii-Bogdanov*.

54 On Tugan's synthesis, Allison, *Value and Prices*; Burnett, "Tugan-Baranovsky".

55 Tugan-Baranovskii, *Osnovy politicheskoi ekonomii*.

56 On these debates, Allisson, *Value and Prices*.

57 Kabanov, *Krest'ianskoe khoziaisvo*.

58 Stanziani, *L'économie en révolution*.

59 The Mensheviks had been opposed to the Mensheviks since the early 1910s, precisely on the subject of historical trajectories and the possibility of a revolution in Russia. In their view, unlike Lenin, capitalism was underdeveloped in Russia and a proletarian revolution would therefore have been impossible.

60 Rtskhidni (party archives, Moscow), fund 17, opis' 84, delo 42, 1.3

61 Rtskhidni, fond 5, opis' 1, delo 1935, 1.6

62 Bukharin, *Novii kurs*.

63 Preobrazhenskii, "Osnovnyj zakon".

64 Bazarov, "O metodakh postroieniia".

65 Coyle, *GDP*.

66 Tul'chinskii, "Politicheskii Kontekst"; Kaser, "The Debate on the Law of Value".

67 Published by Rosspen.

68 Hirsch, *Empire of Nations*.

69 Filatova, "Indoctrination or Scholarship?".

70 Dunn, *The Fall and Rise*; Fogel, "The Debates over the Asiatic Mode".

71 Martin, *The Affirmative Action Empire*.

72 In China, the first translation of Marx was based on the German edition rather than the canonical Soviet edition. Prior to this, lengthy discussions focus precisely on the difficulty of adapting the Chinese language to Marx's text. Barlow, "History's Coffin".

73 Ghosh, "The Village Community".

74 The founder was an Indian, formerly a member of the Mexican Communist Party, Manabendra Nath Roy (original name: Narendra Nath Bhattacharya).
<footnote n="75">⁷⁵ Maulavi Mohammad Barakatullah, *Bolshevism and the Islamic Nations*, original in Persian, Tashkent, 1919, English translation by Captain Samad Shah, British-Indian Army, manuscript available at the National Archives of India, Home and Political Department, 1919, File No. 2295. Dange, *Gandhi vs Lenin*.</footnote>

<footnote n="77">⁷⁷ Roy, *The Restless Brahmin*.</footnote>

<footnote n="78">⁷⁸ Overstreet and Windmiller, *Communism in India*.</footnote>

<footnote n="79">⁷⁹ Shaikh, “Translating Marx”.</footnote>

<footnote n="80">⁸⁰ Sarkar and Das, *Bangalir Samyavad Charcha*; Serin, “Marxism, Communism, and Translation”; Serin, “The Use-Value of Idioms”; Chakraborty et alii, “*Capital* in the East. On Marxism in Bengal: Roy, *Bengal Marxism*.</footnote>

<footnote n="81">⁸¹ Sartori, *Liberalism in Bengal*.</footnote>

<footnote n="82">⁸² Dasgupta, *Capital in Bangli*.</footnote>

<footnote n="83">⁸³ “K ustanovleniiu”; Roy, *Indo-Russian Relations*.</footnote>

<footnote n="84">⁸⁴ Engerman, *The Price of Aid*; Westad, *The Global Cold War*.</footnote>

<footnote n="85">⁸⁵ Nehru, *Toward Freedom*.</footnote>

<footnote n="86">⁸⁶ Stanziani, “Cajanov, Kerblay et les sestdesiatniki” See also: *Istoriia russkoi ekonomicheskoi mysly*; Iz istorii politicheskoi ekonomii.</footnote>

<footnote n="87">⁸⁷ Harrison, “Chayanov and economics”; Harrison, “The Peasant Mode of Production”; Harrison, “Chayanov and the Marxists”; Cox, *Rural Sociology*; Cox, *Peasants*.</footnote>

<footnote n="88">⁸⁸ Ray, “Indian Historiography”; Mitra, “Ashiya Utpadan Paddhati”; Chatterjee, *Marxist Thought in India*; Chowdhury, “From Pre-Capitalist”; Vasudevan, “Communism in India”.</footnote>

<footnote n="89">⁸⁹ Chakrabarty, *Communism in India*.</footnote>

<footnote n="90">⁹⁰ Roy, *Bengal Marxism*. For a critique of 'subaltern' interpretations of Indian Marxism and the importance and regions and peasantry-based approaches, Mannathukkaren, *Communism, Subaltern Studies*.</footnote>

<footnote n="91">⁹¹ Menon, *Cast, Nationalism*.</footnote>

<footnote n="92">⁹² The three volumes of *The Capital* were published as: *Bhandval Khand 1: Bhandvali Utpaadanaachi Moolgaami Mimamsa* in 1970. *Bhandval Khand 2: Rajakiya Arthashastra chi Mimansa*, 1975, and *Bhandval Khand 3* in 1980. Pune: Praagatik Prakashan.</footnote>