English

The best introductory textbook to Marx's Capital now ready!

――A new Japanese translation of Capital and Labor by Johann Most

In 1873, at the time when the Paris Commune only 2 years before was still exerting enormous impact on the whole world and Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were alive, Johann Most (born in February, 1846), a revolutionary young worker of Social Democratic Party of Germany wrote an introductory textbook to Marx's Capital to be read by workers. When Most worked on this book, he was 27 years old and was a political prisoner. He made a bold attempt to abridge the Vol.1 of Capital (25 chapters in total) into a booklet of a hundred and several tens of pages with 12 chapters. This was published in 1874 with a title: Capital and Labor -A popular Digest of Capital of Karl Marx.

One year later Karl Marx himself set to elaborate this booklet with revision of, and addition to, Most's writings. This second edition, published in 1876, contains excerpts from Capital and own writings of Marx, occupying 22% and 20% of the whole pages respectively. This illustrates a unique character of the second edition as an unparalleled introductory textbook to Marx's Capital. There are indeed numerous textbooks of Capital around the world but none of them was worked over by Marx himself.

World revolutionary situation is ripening as current Global Economic Crisis deepens day by day. The time is coming rapidly when we overthrow capitalist class and carry out Proletarian World Revolution. Let's read Marx's Capital now! Let's get back Marx's Capital into the hands of workers now! To offer workers an excellent guidance to Capital, the Committee for New Translation of Capital and Labor has decided to publish a new translation of this booklet..

Our new translation of Capital and Labor has 3 characteristics.
Firstly: We have made every effort to correct past erroneous translations and tried to form simple sentences for fresh readers.
Secondly: We have divided each chapter into sections with short titles for better learning (there are neither sections nor short titles in the original German text.).   
Thirdly: We have indicated which paragraphs are excerpts from Capital and which are the own writings of Marx, as distinct from others.

Let's study this booklet with the utmost energy in each workplace, campus and community in order to "mobilize soldiers of Social Revolution around the red flag, the symbol of brother- and sisterhood of all human beings"! (Capital and Labor, p.135 of the Japanese translation)
JRCL (Japan Revolutionary Communist League), armed with Communist Manifesto and Capital, must now make a distinct appearance both at home and abroad. Let's build up our organization dynamically, taking offensive against phony left-wing parties as well as against system-friendly leadership of labor unions!

(The booklet costs 1000yen.)

K.H., a member of The Committee for New Translation of Capital and Labor