The reception of The Capital in Brazil, 50 years of its complete edition (1968-2018)

Abstract

In 1968, the publishing house Civilização Brasileira released the first complete edition of The Capital in Brazil, translated directly from the German by Reginaldo Sant’Anna. Before this project became real, Marx’s ideas circulated in the working and intellectual circles of the country for many decades, facing the difficulties of reading and translating the texts, as well as of their circulation, constrained by the political obstacles posed by
the recurrent mechanisms of repression and social control of the Brazilian State. To the local particularities are added the different moments of articulation of communism on a world level and of the institutions forged specifically for the circulation of the works of Marx and Engels. Thus, this article aims to recover the history of the reception of The Capital in Brazil, going through the various editions until we reach the first full edition, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2018 along with the bicentennial of Karl Marx’s birth.