Socialism

I didn't know about this new translation and I think it's cool, that people do the work to make it more accessible. I'm just a bit surprised to learn, that it's still based on the second German edition, because "it's the last edition approved by Marx" before he died. Is Reitter mistrusting Engels? In German language, everyone reads the MEW version, which is based on the fourth edition. Engels says in the foreword to the third edition, that the changes are based on detailed comments by Marx on the French version. I trust him on that. He adds more of Marx changes and additional changes to the fourth edition of the German text by Marx daughter Eleanor, which are sensible too: she adds the original English versions of citations from English texts, instead of the versions which were translated to German and then retranslated to English. Which just makes total sense, but was also a lot of work for Eleanor, to find the original English versions of all those cited books. Everything else added by Engels is clearly marked.

The MEW version of capital, based on the fourth German edition, was published by the SED of the GDR and closely based on the version approved by the Soviet Unions CPSU. Reitter basing it on the second German edition instead, doesn't avoid the necessity of all this editorial work, it just replaces Engels as an editor, which I find a bit strange. But still, I'm not against this edition. It's great, that it exists. It's just interesting to think that everyone is reading slightly different versions of the text.