Compendium of Capital: New ACG Book

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Battlescarred

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Joined: 27-02-06

Jul 19 2020 06:09

The ACG is pleased to be publishing the first English language print edition of Cafiero’s summary of Marx’s Capital.

Capital, Marx’s epic work, describes in detail the capitalist system and how it functions. The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin saw the importance of Marx’s Capital, to the extent that he put any rivalries with Marx aside and immediately embarked on the first Russian translation.

But Capital is a notoriously hard read…

The anarchist communist Carlo Cafiero, rather than translate it, wanted to popularise Marx’s work in order to make it easier to read and be better understood by those who didn’t have a university education or weren’t so well versed in economics. In other words, his Compendium was aimed at ordinary working people.

Cafiero’s Compendium is a gateway to understanding the contents of Marx’s Capital.

This edition, translated by Paul M. Perrone, contains an ACG introduction and a biography of Carlo Cafiero.

Compendium of Capital is available direct from from the ACG.

108 pages
Price £7 + £1.40 postage

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2020/07/18/compendium-of-marxs-capita...

adri

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Joined: 25-11-16

Jul 19 2020 19:52

Neat, seems like the 2018 translation (strange that it took 139 years for a translation to appear) is up on MIA as well:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/cafiero/1879/summary-of-capital.htm

Also from wiki:

"During his imprisonment his contacts with the International never ceased and Cafiero wrote his best-known work: A Compendium of Das Kapital, published in 1879 in Milan by the publishers of La Plebe. The work was appreciated and praised by Karl Marx, the author of the original book, who found it superior to other similar works. The Compendium was written in order to bring the theory of Das Kapital to students, educated workmen and small proprietors"

would be interested in the source for "appreciated and praised by Karl Marx".

edit: here i'm guessing

https://www.marxists.org/archive/cafiero/1879/summary-of-capital.htm#app...

Serge Forward

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Joined: 14-01-04

Jul 19 2020 18:37

You guess right, the appreciation is in Marx's own words.

We were originally going to translate it ourselves, but then we discovered someone had recently translated it. So, we've used the same version with the permission of the translator, and made a few minor edits here and there. Then we slotted in an intro and wrote a biographical chapter on Cafiero. The Compendium really needs to be in printed book form because not everyone can read 108 pages of text on a computer screen - I know I couldn't! So that's what we've done. And we're flogging it at an affordable price - to get it out there.

Here's the cover:

Lucky Black Cat

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Joined: 11-02-18

Aug 3 2020 23:11

Hey, good luck with your book! Just want to say other good places to spread the word are facebook groups and reddit. If you use the search bar on facebook you can find tons of leftist and Marxist groups to post in. There are also a bunch of leftist subs (forums) on reddit.

Just be careful not to post on too many facebook groups or subreddits on the same day or you could get shadow-banned.

Battlescarred

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Joined: 27-02-06

Aug 4 2020 06:52

If you want 'em get'em quick as we're almost out and are having to do reprint!

R Totale

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Joined: 15-02-18

Aug 4 2020 18:31

For the second run, will you be looking at international distribution? If you want to go down that road, could see if Black Mosquito in Germany would help, and for North America there's a list of distributors and stockists for Certain Days that might be relevant. Or I suppose you could just ask if AK or PM would want to do it?