The first translated publication of Das Kapital was in the Russian Empire in March 1872. It was the first foreign publication and the English edition appeared in 1887.[12] Despite Russian censorship proscribing "the harmful doctrines of socialism and communism", the Russian censors considered Das Kapital as a "strictly scientific work" of political economy, the content of which did not apply to monarchic Russia, where "capitalist exploitation" had never occurred and was officially dismissed, given "that very few people in Russia will read it, and even fewer will understand it". Nonetheless, Marx acknowledged that Russia was the country where Das Kapital "was read and valued more than anywhere". For instance, the Russian edition was the fastest selling as 3,000 copies were sold in one year while the German edition took five years to sell 1,000, therefore the Russian translation sold fifteen times faster than the German original.[13]
The foreign editions of Capital. Critique of Political Economy (1867) by Karl Marx include a Russian translation by the revolutionary socialist Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). Marx revised, rewrote, and monitored a French translation, published in 44 installments from August 1872 through May 1875, and then as a single work with a printing of ten thousand copies, the largest up until then.[14] Eventually, Marx's work was translated into all major languages. The definitive critical edition of Marx's works, known as MEGA II (Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe), [15] includes Das Kapital in German (only the first volume is in French) and shows all the versions and alterations made to the text as well as a very extensive apparatus of footnotes and cross-references.
The first unabridged translation of Das Kapital to Bengali was done by professor Piyush Dasgupta. It was published in six volumes by Baniprakash, Kolkata, India between 1974 and 1983.[16][17]
In 2012, Red Quill Books released Capital: In Manga!,[18] a comic book version of Volume I which is an expanded English translation of the successful 2008 Japanese pocket version Das Kapital known as Manga de Dokuha.[19]
English Translations
The English translation of volume 1 by Samuel Moore and Eleanor Marx's partner Edward Aveling, overseen by Engels, was published in 1887 as Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production by Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey, & Co.[20] This was reissued in the 1970s by Progress Publishers in Moscow, while a more recent English translation was made by Ben Fowkes and David Fernbach (the Penguin edition).
