An interesting document (1977)

From the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Swedish correspondent has sent a facsimile of one of the most unknown editions of The Communist Manifesto — the first Swedish one.

This edition is in fact the first translation ever made of The Communist Manifesto. It was published already in 1848 in Stockholm. The first “known” translation, the French one, was not published until 1849.

It looks as if Marx and Engels never knew about this Swedish edition. It is not mentioned in any of their prefaces to the CM. And probably they would have been a bit shocked to see the slogan “Workers in all countries, Unite!” replaced with “The voice of the people is the voice of God”. This was probably to avoid censorship. As a whole this translation is very similar to the original — one paragraph is cut out from the text once and one sentence is reworded.

The origin of the Swedish translation is not known. But it was probably translated by a Swedish tailor, a certain Carl Rudolf Lowstadt, who had been in contact with Albert Anders, an agitator sent to Sweden by the old Communist League.