We are reading Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year. This will repeat yearly until communism is achieved. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included, but comrades are welcome to set up other bookclubs.) This works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46 pages a week.
I’ll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested.
Week 1, Jan 1-7, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 1 ‘The Commodity’
Discuss the week’s reading in the comments.
Use any translation/edition you like. Marxists.org has the Moore and Aveling translation in various file formats including epub and PDF: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/
Ben Fowkes translation, PDF: http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=9C4A100BD61BB2DB9BE26773E4DBC5D
AernaLingus says: I noticed that the linked copy of the Fowkes translation doesn’t have bookmarks, so I took the liberty of adding them myself. You can either download my version with the bookmarks added, or if you’re a bit paranoid (can’t blame ya) and don’t mind some light command line work you can use the same simple script that I did with my formatted plaintext bookmarks to take the PDF from libgen and add the bookmarks yourself.
Resources
(These are not expected reading, these are here to help you if you so choose)
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Harvey’s guide to reading it: https://www.davidharvey.org/media/Intro_A_Companion_to_Marxs_Capital.pdf
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A University of Warwick guide to reading it: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/postgraduate/masters/modules/worldlitworldsystems/hotr.marxs_capital.untilp72.pdf
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Reading Capital with Comrades: A Liberation School podcast series - https://www.liberationschool.org/reading-capital-with-comrades-podcast/
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I read section 2 and like couldn’t make much sense of it that It feels like I forgot everything in section 2, like I didn’t read it at all, and it feels very embarrassing. I know I’m gonna have to reread it just like, got very abstract? At least for section 1 there are things that I could latch onto that like brings it all together? if that makes sense.
also in section 1, I really liked that Marx brought up diamonds in one of his examples since like that very relevant today, mainly with like artificial diamonds
Marx’s writing style is perfect for getting in that reading zone where you aren’t really internalizing anything but your brain is going over the words and telling you that you read them.
It’s helpful to stop just about every sentence and ask, “what does that mean?”
I have to make notes, particularly in my own words rather than just transcribing, while reading basically any book that isn’t fiction or I just enter that mode. Makes it considerably slower to get through, but I figure that the time I lose during is made up for not having to re-read it every few years to remember what’s being said.
This is a good strategy!
I’ll try doing that, I’m also thinking of just reading on and then coming back to that section as well and see if it makes any better sense