K. Marx. Preface to the French Edition

To Citizen Maurice Lachâtre

Dear Citizen,

I applaud your idea of publishing the translation of Das Kapital in periodic instalments. In this form the work will be more accessible to the working class and for me that consideration outweighs any other.

That is the bright side of your medal, but here is the reverse. The method of analysis I have used, a method not previously applied to economic subjects, makes for somewhat arduous reading in the early chapters, and it is to be feared that the French public, ever impatient to arrive at conclusions and eager to know how the general principles relate to the immediate questions that excite them, may become dis-couraged because they will not have been able to carry straight on.

That is a disadvantage about which I can do nothing other than constantly caution and forewarn those readers concerned with the truth. There is no royal road to learning, and the only people with any chance of scaling its sunlit peaks are those who have no fear of weariness when ascending the precipitous paths that lead up to them.

I remain, dear Citizen,

Yours very sincerely,

Karl Marx

London, March 18, 1872 AFTERWORD TO THE FRENCH EDITION

To the Reader

Mr. J. Roy set himself the task of producing a version that would be as exact and even literal as possible, and has scrupulously fulfilled it. But his very scrupulosity has compelled me to modify his text, with a view to rendering it more intelligible to the reader. These alterations, introduced from day to day, as the book was published in parts, were not made with equal care and were bound to result in a lack of harmony in style.