Translator work practices and the construction of the correct interpretation of Marxism in post-war Greece

Christina Delistathi
Abstract

In 1951, the Communist Party of Greece published a Greek translation of the Selected Works of Marx and Engels which included a statement on the work practices followed for its creation. This article considers work practices as processes of validated knowledge production. It investigates how they were enacted to create the ‘correct’ translation of Marxist texts, and advances our understanding of the relationship between social structures, power, and processes of validated knowledge production. It argues that the party’s collaborative, centralised, and professionalised organisational model alongside mechanisms of surveillance and discipline of agents in translation supported its claims of owning the ‘correct’ interpretation of Marxism. The statement on the work practices was intended to influence the publication’s reception: the reader was encouraged to accept the party’s translation as accurate. Adopting a Foucauldian perspective, the investigation draws on party publications and archival material to study translation work practices in novel ways.

Keywords:
Publication history
Table of contents

In 1951, the Communist Party of Greece published a Greek translation of the Selected Works of Marx and Engels (henceforth Selected Works), titled Μαρξ Ένγκελς Διαλεχτά Έργα Marx Engels Dialechta Erga. It was carried out by a group of agents involved at different stages of the translation process, such as translators and revisers, who were employed in the party’s Department of Classics for the purpose of translating theoretical Marxist texts. The publication included an explicit statement on the work practices followed for its creation. This article investigates how these practices were enacted to create the correct interpretation of Marxism as the party saw it. It aims at broadening our understanding of the relationship between social structures, power, and processes of validated knowledge production. It will be argued that these work practices supported both the party’s claims of owning the correct interpretation of Marxism and the continuation of its dominance on Marxist discourse. Adopting a Foucauldian perspective, the investigation, which is a work in progress and the first of its kind in the Greek context, draws on party publications as well as published and unpublished material from the archive of the Communist Party of Greece (Κομμουνιστικό Κόμμα Ελλάδας Kommounistiko Komma Elladas, henceforth KKE) located at the Contemporary Social History Archives (ASKI, Αρχεία Σύγχρονης Κοινωνικής Ιστορίας Archeia Syngchronis Koinonikis Istorias) in Athens and available to the public.

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