2006 Volume 42 Issue 4 Pages 6-19
In few years, the publication of four more volumes will complete Section Two of MEGA, so that it will become possible to read the entirety of Marx's manuscripts of Capital in a printed form. In this article, after a general overview of Section Two, the author emphasizes the importance of manuscript dating based on source research in the editorial work for MEGA. This article focuses on the manuscript dating for Books Two and Three, and provides an explanation of how the editors of MEGA estimated the dates of Marx's manuscripts, and what were the results of their research. For the publication of MEGA-Volume II/4, the editors painstakingly researched the dating of the manuscripts to be included in it. The important fruit of their efforts was the joint article by Vygotsky, Miskevich, Chernovsky and Chepurenko. The author of this article, however, criticized some aspects of their dating. Eventually, after examining the evidence, the four authors of the article came to the same conclusions as the author, and based of his conjecture the editors of Volume II/4.1 described how Manuscript I of Book II came into existence. Incidentally, following the publication of Volume II/4.2, which includes Manuscript I of Book III, discussions among researchers are still underway regarding whether the parts of this manuscript were written in the order in which they appear, or in some other order. There were some points of contention regarding the dating of the manuscripts to be included in Volume II/4.3. One question regarded the order in which Marx wrote the four fragments for the beginning of Book III. This question was raised by Japanese researchers and solved in accordance with their opinion. Another question, raised by Prof. Tanaka, concerned the general order of manuscripts in Volume II/4.3, and this led to the original editorial structure of L. Miskevich being thoroughly reinvestigated and fundamentally revised. In terms of the dating of Manuscripts II and VIII, to be included in Volume II/11, there were no promising leads, unlike the other texts which could rather easily be dated relying primarily on the indications of Marx himself. L. Vasina, the editor in charge of Manuscript II, investigated the genesis of the manuscript in the context of related materials from the period found in Marx's literary estate. She reconstructed the multiple aspects of the manuscript while referring to Marx's earlier sketches of Book II of Capital. She also demonstrated how his work on Manuscript II was based on later sources, which throws new light on the question of the manuscript's genesis and chronological context. Her detailed examination made it clear that Manuscript II was written some time between the beginning of December 1868 and the middle of 1870. In terms of the date for Manuscript VIII, Engels could only presume that it was the final manuscript, written after 1877. The author of this article, who was responsible for Manuscript VIII in Volume II/11, concentrated on the dating of the manuscript during a stay in Europe in 1997. As for the debate regarding when the manuscript was written-which had previously been rather vaguely identified as falling between October 1879 and 1881- the author came to the conclusion, on the basis of his research, that Marx sketched out the text between the end of 1880 and the middle of 1881. This indicates that Marx, far from being in a state of resignation, carried on his effort to finish Capital up to the end of his life.
