This workshop explores how the movement and circulation of Marxist theory and practice, from its beginnings in the writings of Marx himself to the present day, has necessarily and consequentially involved a continuous process of translation.
We address “translation” under three broad conceptualizations, with the additional goal of relating these to one another in a concluding roundtable discussion.
Translation across socio-cultural realities
Drawing inspiration from Sudipta Kaviraj’s influential essay, this idea of “translation” invites us to consider the use of Marx’s conceptual categories in the analysis of socio-cultural and political realities quite different from those to which they were originally applied. As Kaviraj writes, such a “conversion has to negotiate many layers of complexity – of two conceptual languages, two cultures, different historical trajectories. To call the process a ‘translation’ is a preliminary notice of the difficulties, not an entirely clear programme.” Such a practice, moreover, was germane to the mode of Marx’s thinking in Capital, which itself can be appropriately situated as a translation of the concepts of political economy and German philosophy qua the "critique of political economy."
Translation across linguistic registers
A second way translation is implicated in Marxist theory and practice is in terms of movement across registers. In so far as class consciousness presupposes a recognition by the proletariat of itself as a collective subject and agent of history, a translation of Marxist analysis — originally formulated within technical registers of political economy, sociology, anthropology and history and drawing on a vocabulary derived from European, especially German, philosophy — is required. Of course, the most famous example of such “translation” is the writing of the Communist Manifesto itself. Outside of 19th century Europe, in places where a large portion of the population was functionally illiterate, Marxist ideas had to be translated from written to oral genres (poetry that could be memorized, for instance), or stageable dramatic performance.
Translation across languages
Finally, communists across history and geographies were committed to translating Marxist theory into different languages because, ultimately, their project was an internationalist one. Marx himself was to some extent involved in this process of translation. He contributed prefaces to the translated editions of his work, thereby implicitly endorsing them, and also adjusted the texts in the course of their translations, undermining any absolute distinction between translation and original. In many such cases of “interlingual” translation (Jakobson 1959), words had to be found and sometimes invented to convey the ideas of Marxist theory. Within another frame, interlingual translation of this kind speaks to the problem of contemporary political praxis, and particularly to decolonial theory. Here we point to contemporary efforts to renew critical Marxist theory and practice through the translation and dissemination of Marxist writings that originally appeared in languages other than English or German (Ho Chi Minh, Tan Malaka, José Carlos Mariátegui, Mahdi Amel etc.) and outside of Europe (some writing in English, e.g., Walter Rodney, CLR James etc.).
This emphasis on translation, in all three senses of the term, highlights Marxism as a living tradition. It is a movement of ideas (conceptions, frameworks, classifications, interpretive practices) across signs, something more like a wave or ocean tide than a building of bricks and mortar. On this view, the terms and techniques of Marxist critique, like kula valuables, gain power and significance as they travel. This continual renewal of Marxism – its translation across different contexts, registers and languages – may represent not so much a “stretching” of Marxism (to paraphrase Frantz Fanon) than the work of a tradition, understood as inherently living and open. To explore Marxist translations and Marxism in translation, as our workshop will do, is to put these claims to test. It is to ask whether Marxism is indeed a body of living theory, one that can offer concepts and strategies for liberation across space and time.