MARX, Karl.

£4,250 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

El Capital. First edition in Spanish of Deville's summary of Capital, with his introduction, first published in French in 1883 by Flammarion in Paris.The French socialist Gabriel Deville (1854-1940) "is less known than either Guesde or Lafargue, but the role he played in the early diffusion of Marxism in France should not be underestimated" (Llobera, p. 221). In August 1882 he began discussions with Marx about a popularized abridgement of Capital - in his introduction Deville states that Marx himself proposed the idea to him. By August 1883 Engels had received a manuscript, of which he was highly critical. He felt that it had serious defects and argued that Deville's main fault was that "he poses Marx's propositions as absolute, whereas in Marx they hold only under conditions which Deville omits, and hence come out false" (Draper Chronology 84:11). However, Engels's suggested modifications were never implemented. By January 1887 Kautsky was already requesting to oversee a German version of Deville's abridgment, a concept towards which Engels was not supportive. Nevertheless, Deville's summary was translated into many languages, and widely read until very recently. It did much to quicken interest in Marx's works, both in France, its first country of publication, but also across Europe, as evidenced by the present Spanish translation.

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.