The New Translation of Capital and the "Robbery" of Nature.

In a recent talk given at the Critical Theory Workshop, John Bellamy Foster highlighted a problem with the new translation of Capital by Paul Reitter when it comes to Marx’s discussion of the “robbery of the soil,” a theme that resonates with the title of Foster’s book The Robbery of Nature: Capitalism and the Ecological Rift. I have not read the new translation of Capital in its entirety yet, but I wanted to examine the translation of this passage in particular, given its importance for Foster’s ecological Marxism.

In the new translation by Paul Reitter, the passage in question reads:

Moreover, every advance made by capitalist agriculture is an advance not only in the art of stealing from workers, but also in the art of stealing from the soil. Every time the earth’s fertility is successfully increased for a given period, this ruins some part of the earth’s sources of long-lasting fertility.¹

The translation by Ben Fowkes, by contrast, reads:

Moreover, all progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more longlasting sources of that fertility.

I will now quote the German:

Und jeder Fortschritt der kapitalistischen Agrikultur ist nicht nur ein Fortschritt in der Kunst, den Arbeiter, sondern zugleich in der Kunst, den Boden zu berauben, jeder Fortschritt in Steigerung seiner Fruchtbarkeit für eine gegebne Zeitfrist zugleich ein Fortschritt im Ruin der dauernden Quellen dieser Fruchtbarkeit.

Foster complains about the new translation replacing the word “robbery” with “stealing,” a completely justified objection, given that the German verb is berauben [to rob], not stehlen [to steal]. The difference in tone is quite clear, as robbery involves theft by force.

The translation of berauben as “stealing” does not change the theoretical meaning of Marx’s text, but it does reduce the rhetorical impact of Marx’s statement. Marx is an excellent writer known for using dramatic imagery.

Some other changes in this passage are perhaps noteworthy.

Reitter renders Fortschritt as “advance” rather than “progress,” yet German has a single word for both. This choice avoids the political connotation of “progressive,” and is thus helpful. Reitter also follows Marx’s German construction by repeating the word “art,” making the first sentence more literal, but perhaps slightly more clunky.

In the second sentence, however, Reitter uses the word “earth,” yet the word Erde does not appear in Marx’s text. Instead, Marx simply refers back to soil [Boden]. Fowkes renders Marx’s second clause more or less literally, only adding the phrase “fertility of the soil” instead of Marx’s “its fertility” for clarity.

The symmetry in Marx’s first sentence between Kunst, den Arbeiter and Kunst, den Boden is difficult to capture in English. Both Reitter and Fowkes adopt different strategies. I personally prefer the concision of Fowkes’ construction here, yet both translators make at least some effort to preserve Marx’s style in terms of form, although the translation of berauben as “stealing” alters the meaning of the text, not only by changing a possible connotation of a word, but also by making it slightly clunkier. In the second sentence, Reitter eschews Marx’s own symmetry to instead convey the same general idea as Marx. If someone where, however, trying to track Marx’s use of the concept of capitalist “advancements” or “progress,” this less than literal translation would pose problems.

I have not examined the entirety of the new translation, but from what I have seen regarding earlier passages, I believe that these choices are somewhat indicative of the tendency of Reitter’s translation, generally speaking.

1. Paul Reitter (translator), Capital, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024).