Translating ‘Capital’ for the 21st Century

A conversation with Paul North, Paul Reitter, and Michael Heinrich

The appearance of a new English-language edition of Marx’s Capital, Volume I, translated by Paul Reitter and edited by Paul North and Paul Reitter, has been a momentous occasion. Join a conversation with Reitter, North, and noted Marx scholar Michael Heinrich on the challenges of translating Marx for 21st century readers, the weaknesses and strengths of earlier translations, and the ways the new edition can help us understand Marx’s analyses of capital and value.

Paul Reitter is Professor of Germanic languages and literatures at The Ohio State University, where his scholarship focuses on German-Jewish culture and the history of higher education. He is the author of The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siecle Europe; On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatred, and Bambi’s Jewish Roots: Essays on German-Jewish Culture.

Paul North is Professor of Germanic languages and literature at Yale University. He has written books on Franz Kafka and on likeness in culture and thought. He co-directs Critical Theory in the Global South, in collaboration with faculty at the Universidad Metropolitana de Sciencias de la Educación in Santiago, Chile.

Michael Heinrich served on the Editorial Board for the new edition of Capital. He taught economics in Berlin and was managing editor of PROKLA: Journal for Critical Social Science. He is the author of a number of books on Marx and Capital, including An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital, Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society, and The Science of Value: Marx’s Critique of Political Economy between Scientific Revolution and Classical Tradition.