Hop in, comrades, we are reading Capital Volumes I-III this year, and we will every year 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. Let me know if you want to be added or removed.
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: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=AA342398FDEC44DFA0E732357783FD48
(Unsure about the quality of the Reitter translation, I’d love to see some input on it as it’s the newest one)
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. Also, please let me know if you spot any errors with the bookmarks so I can fix them!
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/
2024 Archived Discussions
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2025 Archived Discussions
Just joining us? You can use the archives below to help you reading up to where the group is. There is another reading group on a different schedule at https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzhou (federated at !genzhou@lemmygrad.ml ) (Note: Seems to be on hiatus for now) which may fit your schedule better. The idea is for the bookclub to repeat annually, so there’s always next year.
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I would like to be added. I will likely end up reading this in a different pace, but the discussion last year was so valuable in helping my understanding that I’d like to at least follow it weekly.
I’ll be reading a Finnish translation that is based on the work of O.V. Louhivuori and was made official in Petroskoi in 1957. It has been revised in 1974 and in the print version they state it would need a new translation.
My plan is to read this side by side with one of the online English translations so I can discuss it better, but have to see how taxing that makes this.
Bonus picture from the book, a letter to Engels from Marx in 1867 and the man himself.
Edit. Just got the notification that you added me already, thanks so much. Let’s go!
A bit nerdy to admit this, but that is one of the books I have read in order to practice my Finnish, since I know the first three-ish chapters in English very well.
Is this what you’re doing?
I am Finnish so it’t kind of the other way around for me.
And kudos for the effort. The Finnish in this is definitely on the trickier side and many words aren’t necessarily in everyday use. Lots of words are sort of “made up” for this book to describe what Marx is saying.
Ah got it! Have you picked an English translation yet? I have always read the Aveling & Moore translation in English, the one on marxists.org. Most people recommend the Fowkes translation due to supposed clarity, but in my opinion it loses precision for more common phrasing. I would rather read an uncommon word that is extremely precise in meaning, instead of a more “modern” word with ambiguous meaning. That said, Fowkes is probably easier for English practice.
I’ve read the same one you are reading in the past and reading it now too. It’s fairly easy to understand imo, but having one in my own language on the side definitely helps. I’m almost done with chapter 1.
Added! And that’s a super cool copy, would love to see if you can share any input as we move along with respect to the Finnish version, that sounds very interesting to me.