Talk:Das Kapital

Requested move 22 November 2019

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: No consensus. (non-admin closure) Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:38, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Das Kapital → Capital (book) – WP:CONSISTENT with Capital, Volume I; Capital, Volume II; Capital, Volume III; and the Capital, Volume IV redirect. It's completely bizarre that we're using conflicting titles for multiple articles about the same work. I'm suggesting the English titles per WP:USEENGLISH, but don't feel strongly about it; I suppose it's possible the WP:COMMONNAME is actually Das Kapital, and the other three articles should move instead. However, it seems to me that we might actually consider a merge, or at least selective merging and some cleanup; the Vol. I–III articles are looking more and more like WP:CONTENTFORKs rather than WP:SPINOFFs. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:15, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: There was an RM in 2018, in which I supported the current name on the basis of WP:CONCISE and accepting at face value the COMMONNAME vs. USEENGLISH claim made by the nominator, but without knowing we had a whole series of articles with conflicting, and entirely English, titles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:18, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose. In all my life, English-speakers here in England have known this book mostly as Das Kapital. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 13:43, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose Per Anthony Appleyard. Obvious WP:COMMONNAME of an incredibly famous book.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 05:15, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose per above comments and support moving the articles on the Volumes to the CommonName form. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:16, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Oh come on! One of the most famous books ever written and known overwhelmingly by its German name. WP:UE doesn't mandate slavish translation of everything. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:04, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Support Regardless of the anecdotal evidence of the above commenters, Capital is the most common name for the work in English, as is shown by this google ngram search. Standard google searches yield similar results. Furthermore, while it may have been publish in English under Das Kapital at some point in the past, all standard modern editions of the work (e.g. Oxford World's Classics, Penguin Classics, Wordsworth Classics) are published under Capital. Scholarly discussion of the work also overwhelmingly uses Capital (for confirmation of this, see the "Further reading" and "External links" section of this very article). ThessalonianR (talk) 13:15, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Try this one instead, given "Das Kapital" in English sources will almost invariably refer to this work. -- Necrothesp (talk) 17:02, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
 * The problem with comparing the frequency of the strings "Das Kapital" and "Marx's Capital" (which is done in your link) is that in only one of them is the name of the book preceeded by "Marx's". You are not comparing like for like. The reason why I prefixed "Marx's" is to control for the fact that "Capital" alone (which it would be reasonable to compare to "Das Kapital") refers to many other things besides the book. Other words can also be prefixed to ensure that only uses related to the book are counted. With "first volume of" prefixed we obtain much the same result. ThessalonianR (talk) 17:58, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
 * As I quite clearly said, "Das Kapital" in English sources will almost invariably refer to this work. -- Necrothesp (talk) 22:12, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I understand what you're saying, and I don't dispute it. The problem is that the same is not the case with "Capital". We want to compare the use of these two terms only when they are used to refer to Marx's work. Google ngram is a good way of comparing these things (it searches very large corpora of books and its use is recommended in RM); however, in situations in which one or both of the terms has other referents we must control for this. This graph would not be a very good argument, would it? That is why, as I previously explained, it is necessary to prefix some words to form a phrase that can only be used to refer to the work in question. I have already provided two such searches, one that uses the phrase "Marx's Capital" and "Marx's Das Kapital", the other "first volume of Capital" and "first volume of Das Kapital". Both of those only show a subset of the use of each term, but they show comparable subsets. The problem with the search that you linked to is that it compares the entire set of uses of "Das Kapital" with a mere subset of the uses of "Capital" to refer to the work -- just those that are prefixed by "Marx's". As I said, this does not compare like for like. Does this really strike you as a fair comparison? If so, please give your reasons. I apologize if my previous comments have not been clear enough and hopefully this will help. ThessalonianR (talk) 08:04, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * One problem is that the resulting data is not consistent enough to show which is more common in other contexts. For example, see this ngram in which "Das Capital by Karl Marx" consistently outpaces "Capital by Karl Marx". Dekimasu よ! 15:34, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Given that the frequency of the strings you have compared are a whole order of magnitude less frequent than the ones I linked to earlier, I'm not sure how significant this is. Incidentally, removing "Karl" yields the opposite result, and both pairs of strings put into a regular google search give more results when including "Capital". In any case, this argument was only one of those I made in my original comment. What do people have to say about the fact that in English it is published under Capital? Or that in nigh on all academic discussion of the work it is known as Capital?
 * To step back for a moment, if consensus cannot be arrived at on what the common name is (although I believe the evidence is very much in Capital's favour) then other criteria such as the use of the English and consistency should surely take precedence, in which case the page should be moved to Capital anyway. As the opener of this discussion made clear, consistency is his main concern. And to insist on the use of German when it is not clearly the common name seems perverse to me. ThessalonianR (talk) 19:15, 29 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Oppose - While I've never heard it called "Capital", it seems that this is a common form of the title in English. However, the English form is not the primary topic for the word "capital" and would need a disambiguation. Given this situation, I would think that "Das Kapital" would fall under the directive to use natural disambiguation instead of parenthetical disambiguation wherever practical. --Khajidha (talk) 13:01, 30 November 2019 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.


 * Followup note: I will RM the other articles, then, to match this one's title. I didn't really care which title we used as long as it's consistently used.  That said, I think ThessalonianR has a good point, and I also have to observe that how famous a work is has jack to do with what title our article should have.  No one questioned whether Capital / Das Kapital is "an incredibly famous book" or "One of the most famous books ever written".  This sort of emotional venting is not helpful at RM or any other consensus discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:34, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Footnote 3 should also link to volume 3, part 2
Footnotes 1, 2, and 3 link to the German editions of volumes 1 to 3, at www.e-rara.ch. Footnote 3 links to the third volume, part one, but there is no link (on that page or elsewhere) to the third volume, part two. However, it appears this (volume 3 part 2) can be downloaded from here:. Should Footnote 3 be amended to reflect that volume 3 is in two parts with a link to each part?

Mgchristensen (talk) 04:27, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Supposed Bakunin's translation
"The foreign editions of Capital. Critique of Political Economy (1867) by Karl Marx include a Russian translation by the revolutionary socialist Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)."

That is not the case. Bakunin did start the translation to Russian, but according to Resis quoting Marx and James Guillaume, he never went far. Bakunin praised Das Kapital and wished for it to be translated to French, but he was not its translator to Russian. OliveiraCris (talk) 21:51, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 20 April 2023

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) – Material  Works  21:09, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

– Previous move discussions Special:Permalink/1146764052, Special:Permalink/1146764052, and Special:Permalink/1071069187 generally relied on anecdotal evidence that "Das Kapital" is the WP:COMMONNAME which I contest here. While I agree that parenthetical disambiguation isn't beautiful, neither is the fact that "Das Kapital" is used for Das Kapital, Volume I when that name is used at a ratio of one to fifty per Google scholar.
 * Das Kapital → Capital (book)
 * Das Kapital, Volume I → Capital, Volume I
 * Das Kapital, Volume II → Capital, Volume II
 * Das Kapital, Volume III → Capital, Volume III

Google ngram shows that "Marx's Capital" is used more often than "Marx's Das Kapital" at a ratio of three to one. As does Google scholar at a ratio of six to one. ("Marx's Capital" vs "Marx's Das Kapital") Google search hits finds usage at a ratio of seventeen to one. ("Marx's Capital" vs "Marx's Das Kapital")

Per Google scholar: And Google ngram finds no results at all for "Das Kapital Volume I/II/III", as opposed to "Capital Volume I/II/III". I've edited this section slightly to make it more clear. : 3 F4U (they/it) 19:30, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) "Capital Volume I" is used over "Das Kapital Volume I" at a ratio of seventeen to one. ( vs )
 * 2) "Capital Volume II" is used over "Das Kapital Volume II" at a ratio of . ( vs )
 * 3) "Capital Volume III" is used over "Das Kapital Volume III" at a ratio of thirty-three to one. ( vs )

It was noted previously that Encyclopedia Britannica uses "Das Kapital", however I'd like to point out that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy uses "Capital". : 3 F4U (they/it) 18:20, 20 April 2023 (UTC) Pinging those who have previously contributed to these discussions : 3 F4U (they/it) 18:45, 20 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Not sure why I have been pinged here, but I would tend to oppose this per WP:NATURAL. BD2412  T 18:54, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Guessing I might regret pinging people regarding their comments in a discussion from three years ago... oops and sorry in advance to anyone else who forgot about this discussion. My opposition to the applicability of WP:NATURAL here is that "Das Kapital, Volume I/II/III" isn't a common name and is barely used at all (No Google ngram data and far outnumbered (by factors of tens) by Capital in Google scholar hits). : 3 F4U (they/it) 19:24, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:USEENGLISH and the nom's WP:COMMONNAME argument.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:09, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Both Das Kapital and Capital are commonly used in English. The former is more unambiguous without extra context. Capital (book) is less ideal because it does not disambiguate from Capital (novel) or any other book of the same title (even though Marx's is the most prominent). In the context of Marx scholarship (etc.), it may well be customary to simply say Capital, but that is because of the context. And the comparison of Ngrams between "Marx's Capital" and "Marx's Das Kapital" is inapt, because only the former requires any inclusion of "Marx's" to be unambiguous. I would support the alternative Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. SilverLocust (talk) 23:49, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The more I think about it, the more I wouldn't be against the original titles from four years ago (Das Kapital, Capital, Volume I, Capital, Volume II, and Capital, Volume III). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy doesn't sound bad either (though Capital (book) should continue to redirect here). : 3 F4U (they/it) 01:04, 21 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Comment from nominator I've figured out how to get Google ngram to examine usage of Capital/Das Kapital! :D See this comparison of Volume one of Capital vs Das Kapital (6:1 in favor of Capital), Volume two of Capital vs Das Kapital (7:1 in favor of Capital), and Volume three of Capital vs Das Kapital (16:1 in favor of Capital). : 3 F4U (they/it) 00:05, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, but Capital Volume I (for example) is more unambiguous than simply Capital. (Compare The Federalist Papers as a popular name for The Federalist, in contrast to Federalist No. 1.) And if a book is sufficiently in the weeds to be discussing particular volumes, it would have already clarified that the topic of discussion is Marx's Capital. My basic point is that on first impression Das Kapital is clearer than Capital (book). SilverLocust (talk) 00:56, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose: per SilverLocust. As far as I'm aware, and I'm willing to be proven wrong, Das Kapital is still the most commonly recognizable name of the book in English-language sources (which is exactly what WP:USEENGLISH is about, instead of using an English name). Of the high-profile online English sources, one is Encyclopædia Britannica. The specific volumes seem to vary in favor of Capital though (consistency-wise, if Das Kapital stays where it is, it would make sense for the volumes to stay too). –Vipz (talk) 06:41, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose Das Kapital is the common name and natural dab. In ictu oculi (talk) 13:58, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose and WP:SNOW close due to multiple past consensuses. --112.204.202.125 (talk) 06:00, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I disagree with the above suggestion. WP:CCC. –Vipz (talk) 11:43, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose- I don't see it proved that Capital is more used than Das Kapital. I was able to generate an ngram on the English corpus that shows "Das Kapital" is used more often than "Marx's Capital" which would be consistent with those writing and reading those texts knowing that Marx and Engels wrote it so prefacing the bookname with the authors is redundant. GraemeLeggett (talk) 14:00, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
 * But if you prefix "Marx's" to both, which seems like the obvious thing to do, then the opposite is true. ThessalonianR (talk) 19:06, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Support I made similar arguments to the nom last time. I think this hinges on a few things. The first is the idea that Capital is the "common name". The ngrams, title of the book in publication (Penguin, Oxford, Wordsworth), the overwhelming use of Capital in secondary literature, etc. seem like very strong evidence for this, but once again we're in a situation of people asserting that Das Kapital is the common name. I'm not exactly sure what kind of evidence the supporters Das Kapital need. The second issue is the "natural disambiguation" one. This makes some sense to me, even if I think using the common name trumps it. I like the compromise idea of using the full title Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. The third issue is consistency between the article titles. It clearly makes no sense for the articles on the individual volumes to use Das Kapital if no such works have ever been published (and I suspect it goes against WP:NOTNEO). If that is granted, from the point of view of consistency the main article should also use Capital. ThessalonianR (talk) 19:02, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose per NATURAL.--Ortizesp (talk) 06:36, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Das Kapital is the very clear common name. Who on earth calls it Capital? WP:UE is vastly overused and does not mandate slavish translation of absolutely everything into English. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:12, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I do and practically everyone I know does? Anecdotal evidence like this is unhelpful in the face of clear overwhelming support for Capital evidenced by Google ngram. : 3 F4U (they/it) 14:20, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
 * And yet I don't think I've ever heard anyone do so! -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:40, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
 * As to your ngram, try this one! Given Das Kapital is so famous that it doesn't need Marx to disambiguate it and will almost always refer to the work when seen in English. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:45, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
 * How does that explain the discrepancy between "[Number] volume of Das Kapital" vs "[Number] volume of Capital"? (Volume one, volume two, & volume three) You can refer to Capital without calling it "Marx's Capital" as well, so any good comparation needs to compare usage on fair terms. : 3 F4U (they/it) 15:19, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd point out the fact that a solid majority of the references for the article use Capital over Das Kapital...
 * In particular, I think Capital is less awkward to use when discussing the book in more than a mere passing mention.
 * : 3 F4U (they/it) 15:59, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Here are some JSTOR searches and figures for alternative comparisons:
 * "Das Kapital" = 5,608 results (English-only) // "Capital: A Critique of Political Economy" = 2,139 results
 * "Marx's Das Kapital" = 474 results // "Marx's Capital" = 2,633 results
 * "first volume of Das Kapital" = 182 results // "first volume of Capital" = 1,070 results
 * "second volume of Das Kapital" = 33 results // "second volume of Capital" = 140 results
 * "third volume of Das Kapital" = 68 results // "third volume of Capital" = 498 results
 * "Das Kapital, Vol. I" = 74 results // "Capital, Vol. I" = 1,517 results
 * "Das Kapital, Vol. II" = 17 results // "Capital, Vol. II" = 262 results
 * "Das Kapital, Vol. III" = 24 results // "Capital, Vol. III" = 425 results
 * "Das Kapital, Volume I" = 14 results // "Capital, Volume I" = 629 results
 * "Das Kapital, Volume II" = 1 result // "Capital, Volume II" = 98 results
 * "Das Kapital, Volume III" = 4 results // "Capital, Volume III" = 262 results
 * Could go further, but I think that it can already be said Capital indeed is prevalent, though Das Kapital is a contender for the primary, 'volume-less' topic, which goes in line with my reason for opposing the move. –Vipz (talk) 17:15, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Well to me that shows Das Kapital is prevalent and specific references to individual volumes are sparing by comparison. You might also consider that English sentence may also use "Volume I of Das Kapital" or "first volume of " as a phrase in text while "Das Kapital, Volume II" is as likely to be a citation as it is to be text referring to the book itself. If anything the methodology of searching JSTOR should be improved, and that would still be ignoring usage in other areas of life. GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:27, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Oppose per common name and perennial nomination (can't Wikipedia stop perennials with a limit of two or three nominations?). Randy Kryn (talk) 10:58, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Legacy / Influence Section
Seems crazy to me that this article doesn't touch on the impact of one of the most socially impactful works in recorded history. The article for Harry Potter has a "Legacy" subheader overviewing all the fanfiction those books inspired, but nothing for a book that inspired social movements, political parties, economic reconfiguration, societal revolutions, assassinations, or civil wars in nearly every country on the face of the earth over two centuries?

Imagine if the article for the 95 Theses didn't mention the development of Protestantism. Bit of a head-scratcher. Jhodders (talk) 22:09, 3 May 2023 (UTC)


 * There is a legacy section at Karl Marx. What information distinctly related to this work, rather than Marx's writings as a whole, do you propose ought to be added here? SilverLocust (talk) 06:09, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Opening - in contrast to
The opening has the sentence "Marx aimed to reveal the economic patterns underpinning the capitalist mode of production in contrast to classical political economists such as Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill."

I don't think Marx was in contrast to them, any more than any of them were to each other. In fact, Marx was in many ways a faithful follower to Ricardo in many matters, particularly value, and our modern neoclassical economists are the ones who are in contrast to David Ricardo on many things (although not free trade, where they tend to agree with Ricardo).

I am changing those "in contrast to" words. I am not sure what the exact wording should be, but saying Marx is in contrast to Ricardo makes no sense, as he was a more faithful follower to Ricardo than modern economists are. I don't know what the exact words should be, but they should not be in contrast to, against and so forth.

I am also changing a repeat of this language further down the page.

In Book 1 of Capital, Chapter 1, Marx says "Since Robinson Crusoe’s experiences are a favourite theme with political economists..." with a footnote referencing Ricardo, and Marx goes on to use Robin Crusoe as a metaphor and quotes Ricardo's use of Crusoe in a footnote. This is just the beginning of Marx's references to Ricardo, who he often followed, although he sometimes diverged from him.

Describing Marx's relationship to his predecessors is complex, as he is, in his mind, sometimes following them, sometimes clarifying and adding to them, and sometimes contrasting them. To use terms Marx and Engels use, this is not an anti-thesis to the theses of previous economists, but a synthesis of them. Minimax Regret (talk) 15:42, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Regarding the Complexity of "Volume IV"
I was doing some reading and happened upon the CPSU's introduction to their version of Volume IV/Theories of Surplus Value by karl Marx. It claims that the version by Kautsky, mentioned in this article on the Works, bastardized the original manuscripts and left out a lot of details, which their publication corrects. I have not read either version of Volume IV, so I cannot confirm whether or not the accusations in the preface are true (I suspect though that they likely are,) but in any case, it seemed like important information to include in the article, given this is essentially the only place on English Wikipedia which mentions anything about Volume IV, and a separate publication of it which is extremely different seems like it would be necessary to include. Thus I made an edit adding that the CPSU's publication exists and that it claims to be "more correct."

If anyone who has worked on this article has any further knowledge of the topic of what "Volume IV" precisely is, and how accurate a term that even is given that it seems only Lenin and Engels reference it that way even if it was intended to be a finishing work to Volumes I-III, I would appreciate a review of my edit and of the CPSU's preface to their version for accuracy's sake. Thanks AquaticOnWiki (talk) 02:04, 15 May 2024 (UTC)