Talk:Das Kapital

question for Marx scholars

(question asked on Wikipedia:Reference desk by 212.9.13.102 (02:07, 20 Mar 2004))

would appreciate help to track down a comment Marx made in Capital where he said there comes a point beyond which the further politizisation of money becomes redundant. could really use this for an essay, but need to be able to reference it. can you pin-point it in Capital?

Das Kapital or Capital?

I was surprised to find that this wasn't at 'Capital'. Everyone I've ever heard refer to it has called it simply Capital. The German title seems very odd. Mattley

Marx entitled his work Das Kapital, and thus it seems fitting that it is labeled under the same title. Das Kapital is the title I hear it referred to as. Shandolad 13:44, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, yes... Most of his other works were given German titles too. They were written in German. But we don't have articles called Bearbeiten von Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Thesen über Feuerbach or Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. Those are always referred to by their translated, English, titles. Conversely, the Grundrisse is only ever known by its original German title. In the case of Capital, usage is mixed. The English title is overwhelmingly preferred by Marx scholars, communists, academics etc. Whether this equates to "common usage" is debateable however, as Das Kapital is in widespread popular usage. IMO, it would be far preferable in this instance to plump for the title which is immediately and unambiguously intelligible to English-speaking users of the English language Wikipedia. This might add to the burden on the capital disambig page though, and I'm not going to push for it.Mattley 16:34, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

jesus christ, i will just add Capital in quotation. is that ok?-- the hammerspake

• It is very well known in English under both titles. Personally I think Das Kapital is a better title here, because 1. it is not hard to distinguish from the English title (it is pretty transparent), and 2. we already have an article on capital, the economic concept, and so this one would acquire the inelegant title of "Capital (book)". I prefer the German over that, personally. --Fastfission 03:49, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I have never heard it caled anything but Das Kapital and I'm English.GordyB 22:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Written in Germany?

Das Kapital ("Capital") is a very large treatise of political economy written by Karl Marx in Germany. - I think, that this is not true. First publishing was in Germany, but Marx had written it in England. I´m not sure, but Encarta and few other sites say this. So what do you think?--jilm 19:25, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Good spotting. The sentence originally said in German. It was changed to in Germany by an anonymous user here [1]. It's definitely wrong.Mattley 11:35, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Lack of Critique

I've spent the last 20 hours reading Wikipedia articles and have noticed that all mature articles on publications and authors include a section on literary or political critique, usually both. Why is this controversial work missing that? It makes me wonder if the much made of IPOV standard is a case of the lady protesting too much.

It's because internet wanna-be intellectuals and hippie college students are drawn to popular representations of Marx, including both pop art such as the ubiquitous Che and the misconception that he represents kindness vs evil capitalism. Sadly most people who profess the religion of Marx have either not read his writing or not understood the pathetically flawed arguments behind it because his horribly contorted writing style is very confusing. You will find a pervasive POV bias in favor of Marxism in many wikipedia articles. Likewise anti-Americanism, which shares similar popularity among the uneducated and uninterested.

No, it is a case of starting from faulty premisses. It is not the case that "all mature articles on publications and authors include a section on literary or political critique, usually both." There is no requirement to have such a section to comply with NPOV and it is often a sign of bad editing where such sections exist - such critiques are often added in an attempt to further a particular POV and turn articles into debates, which is emphatically not the purpose of an encyclopedia. By the way, new comments are added to the bottom of talk pages, not to the top. Mattley ^(Chattley) 19:30, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

This is a view unbecoming of any Wikipedia editor. The specific purpose of any encyclopedia is to bring extensive amounts of correct information about a subject, as long as that information is directly relevant to the subject being covered. An encylopedia in not at all about merely presenting a short and to the point introduction on a given subject. If anything, the logic you present in your former post relates exclusively to the opening section of this article and nothing else. The book of 'Das Kapital' has had a considerable impact on the world in several ways over the last century, and as a result there has been a substantial amount of response to it over time. Your statement about the adding of critiques supposedly turning an article into a so-called 'debate' is dubious if not incorrect, as well. If a subject has been intensely debated then there obviously has been cause for this debate to have been provoked in the first place, and as such that debate has simply become a part of the context of the subject over time. An encyclopedic article which covers a subject, known throughout the world to be controversial and heavily debated, without even merely mentioning the nature of that controversy and the causes and origins of that debate is simply incomplete and 'stubbed'. Which in turn makes its position as an 'encyclopedic' article uncertain alltogether. --81.240.55.213 14:52, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Addendum: One thing that I will agree with, however, is that a section dedicated to the responses to the work in general will be preferable. Thus, the positive responses should, obviously, make mention of the various political schools of thought that were born from it while providing relative links both internal and external, whilst the more negative reactions which form the other half of the work its legacy are obviously to be given the same treatment. --81.240.55.213 15:20, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, two points here: first, he is right, its not really necesary to place a criticism sectio in every little article, as it is very subjective on users rather than in a real effort of knoledge. Secondly, if anyone finds a real critique abotu Das Kapital, then place it. And on the user that went "hippies and liberals like it but didnt even read it", shame on you man, cos you havent read it either and talk about it like you have (how hipocrit).

I am a latin american scholar (an archaeologist) and marxist, and a i have read Das Kapital, and many other works written by Marx and Engels (and by other marxist thinkers, like Gordon Childe or Eric Wolf). Also, i've read works from many others schools of social theory (e.g. cybernetics, functionalism, neovoltionism, cultural materialism, structuralism, post-structuralism, post-modernism, positivism, etc.) At present, i'm sure that Das Kapital is among the most clearly written books that social sciences have to offer, and one whose influence will be present among scientists for a long time. Most of the criticism against marxist theory are biased or merely ideological. For example, the whole idea of a relationship between the development of productive forces and the structure of the relations of productions can be seriously advocated on the basis of the archaeological and the ethnographical records (have you ever taken note of the similarities between marxism, systems theory and neovolutionism?). The same is valid about the annalysis of the process of primitive accumulation, since that process have repeated itself in every national transition between precapitalist and capitalist modes of production. Even the laboer-value and the sur-plus value concepts can be defended on the basis that both have been used succesfuly by many researchers. About the ethical implications of marxist theory, it is true that they have been used to justify totalitarian goverments (as much as Plato, Nietzche. Aristotle have been used to justify slavery of african people, the enlightment to justify colonialism and the Terror, and christianism to justify racism, colonialism, etc.), but that was a perversion of the ideas advocated by MArx in the Communist Manifesto (not in Das _Kapital). Besides, Capitalism has its good share of totalitarian (ups, "authoritarian") dictatorships, specially in south america, political persecusions and killings. Not to mention that capitalism has triumphed over Soviet Communism and the world is clearly NOT in a better shape. People in most of the third world countrys are poorer than thirty years ago (and i'm talking from a first hand experience).

Das Kapital, the anti-Bible

If you happen to believe the values in the Bible represent the ultimate good, then surely Das Kapital is your anti-Bible. You could also call it the anti-Torah, anti-Quran (well maybe not) etc, because no other book has been used so successfully to promote evil and ignorance throughout the world. The arguments presented by Marx are infantile, easily discarded with basic math and the axiom of free will, and bastardizations of both economics and philosophy. Sadly, continuing dominance of Marx in academia is tantamount to a modern day Flat-Earth church.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.140.5.249 (talk • contribs) 19:56, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Its rather odd that you would compare it with the bible, wich has been the target of more than one philosopher as a book that requires and demands ignorance from their readers (Nietzche, for example made a huge case against christians). For example if we speak of times of great ignorance, we talk about the middle ages, when it was all about the bible or plato and aristotle, in wich people were not allowed to put in trial anything that appeared in the bible itself (and that age lasted around a thousand years, and even more). Today we live in times of practical atheism, even you are an atheist my son, a person can believe in god, but will still buy things like life insurances (wont god protect me and my loving family?, maybe not). As i read most of what you have sayd, i believe you are confussing yourself a little, and i have the striking impression that you must be a conservative america (just a guess there).—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.215.171.8 (talk • contribs) 16:13, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

The bible has been used to promote violence and evil. Marx stated that revolution would come as the proleteriat rose up to take the means of production, whereas, Soviet communism and its ilk, was communism from above. I find it funny that communism is still so frightening, anything can be perverted so that it barely resembles the idea that it was founded upon. Yes, there is no doubt that Stalin's communism was very scary. In the same vein, the bible as also been distorted. If anyone actually read it they would see that there are many morally and ethically questionable things in there where we pick the good stuff and leave out the rest. On another note, why was anti-Quran not considered by the guy a couple of posting above? Millions of Musilms live peacefully using the Quran. I agree with the person above that the poster was most likely a conservative religious American.

the first written book promoted communism way before marx ever did, except the people who read the bible put their own flawed thinking upon it, just like marx's work.

marx made his own bible to tell Europe they should be working together instead of futilely fighting each other over resources and old ideals.

religions are flawed if they don't communicate that all of mankind should stick together no matter what's wrong or right about others and their personal choices, religions are also flawed when they force others to think in 1 single monotonous way. Markthemac (talk) 02:56, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Why is this considered a "harmful" book?

As far i'm concerned, this book ironically brought way more benefits to capitalism rather than the opposite.

soviet banner

This is my first time posting a comment on Wikipedia, and frankly it might not belong here. This is in regards to the image under the communism banner; I believe it to be a derisive and inappropriate banner for articles based on this school of thought for the following reasons. First, the image of the hammer and cycle, while the banner of the (arguably) most famous Marxist nation in history, also represents, in the minds of may people, authoritarianism and oppression, thusly it becomes a negative communicative act, in that the image characterizes the whole of Marxism, as supportive of the policies of the Soviet Union (the aforementioned country). However the Soviet paradigm was drastically different from Marx’s vision, in that firstly that nation was perpetually mired in the dictatorship of the proletariat stage, never making an effort to abolish the state or indeed class. Secondly it is my contention that there are many other images which could, and should be used, (a photo of Marx?) which are not as derisive and do not encourage a, frankly, incorrect view of communism as a school of thought. Thusly because the current image represents a negative communicative act, which inherently goes against the “NPOV” ideal of Wikipedia, and since there are many images which comply with NPOV, in that they do not conjure biased thoughts/images, I believe that the image should be changed. I will also post this on the main communism page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 143.88.202.107 (talk) 20:22, 2 April 2007 (UTC).

You might wish to check out/add to the discussion here: [2] -- Doctormatt 20:49, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

No Volume IV

Removed statement that Kautsky's work Theory of Surplus Value is volume IV of Marx's Das Kapital, which is patently false. I see that the Kautsky article states the same thing. However it is clear that Kautsky was NOT in the same relation to Marx as Engels, so even if he did have access to notes Marx and Engels had for such a volume, it could not be considered part of the original work (unless they were published verbatim as notes). Further, as Engels notes the process of producing a publishable work from Marx's notes became increasing difficult from Volume II to III; any fragmentary notes (if any) used by Kautsky would make that his work. Lycurgus 15:42, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Apparently it's worse than that. The work linked in it's full text from marxists.org appears actually to have been published before volumes I-III, doesn't mention Kautsky at all, and seems to be a sort of prequel to Kapital. Lycurgus 16:08, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Finally, this matter is the clearest substantiation of what Chomsky was referring to when he said something to the effect that "any philosophy which bears a persons name is probably <<negative judgement I don't remember>>" or the famous statement by Marx to the effect that if that was Marxism he was not a Marxist. If these collected notes had been composed by Engels as a Volume IV or by the epigones as a prolegomena to the whole work that would be fine. The assertion that it is a final and culminating volume of the work is just ... sad. 72.228.150.44 (talk) 15:04, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Full title in the lead

The lead should include the subtitle: Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy). 86.205.27.137 (talk) 15:44, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

External links

The first external link is rather useless. Some "articlemyriad"-site. Contents: close to nothing to my humble opinion. Dick Bos (talk) 19:43, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Popularization

In December 2008 a manga popularization of Volume I hit Japanese bookstores. The fictionalized Vol. 1 of "Das Kapital" chronicles a cheese factory run by protagonist Robin, who rebels against his father's socialist principles and becomes a slave driver after teaming up with a cold-blooded capitalist investor. But Robin struggles between his capitalist ambitions and his sense of guilt over the exploitation of his workers. Meanwhile, exploited salary-men are seen slowly coming to terms with the central analysis: that they are the sole source of capitalism's wealth.

The book is being translated into English, Korean and Chinese for its upcoming manga debut in the U.S., Asia and Europe. Comic editions of the subsequent volumes are also under way.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jIVYxy6UnhtQ7VjkmmeCSGjt1V5gD957MCKG1 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2008/1121/1227137525860.html

Kjk2.1 (talk) 02:55, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Removed per WP:TRIVIA. Information about Das Kapital would probably be important for an article on the described manga series, but information about the manga series in an article on Das Kapital can only be described as trivia in my opinion. CES (talk) 16:10, 3 January 2009 (UTC)