Welcome to baby Marxist rehabilitation camp.
We are reading Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included in this particular reading club, but comrades are encouraged to do other solo and collaborative reading.) This bookclub will repeat yearly until communism is achieved.
The three volumes in a year works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46⅔ 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.
We currently have 58 members!!! I expect a certain drop-off rate, but I'll be thrilled if a dozen or couple dozen read it.
If you've made it this far, you've already read ¹⁄₁₈ of Volume I. The first three weeks are the hardest, after that it'll be quite easy, and only requires 20 minutes a day (endurance is key).
Just joining us? It'll take you about 2-3 hours to catch up to where the group is. You can do that on one long bus ride.
Archives: Week 1
Week 2, Jan 8-14, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 2 'The Process of Exchange', PLUS Volume 1, Chapter 3, Section 1 'The Measure of Values' PLUS Volume 1, Chapter 3, Section 2 'The Means of Circulation'
In other words, aim to get up to the heading '3. Money' by Jan 14
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/
Sooooooo.... how's everyone doing? Where is everyone at in their reading? Any snags or difficulty getting through it? Chapter 3 is notoriously hard, so do not worry if you are averaging 0.1 pages per minute. At least, it takes me a long time. It feels like one of those chapters that you should take care to read each word, but also don't think too hard, because a lot of the stuff is more intuitive than chapter 1, because it is more relatable to our experience in modern capitalism in which we use money to pay for things.
I am currently just a handful of pages into chapter 3. One question in particular sticks out to me that hasn't in the past: why Marx considered money necessary, as opposed to convenient but dispensable. I will wait until I have finished this week's reading to post my thoughts on that when they have had a chance to ferment.
I made it all the way through three without realizing I was supposed to stop. I guess it just felt like I needed to finish getting the idea.
Now the extent to which I understood everything? Not sure about that, but also not sure how much of my confusion is bourgeois economics insisting something is wrong.
I also had a hard time getting the 'well this is fine and good for the 1800s but my money is fiat, how does this apply' idea out of my head while I was reading. But I think somewhere in the credit money part I started to be able to peer through at something that made more sense to me, even if I can't quite articulate it yet. At some point you just have to remind yourself that he's talking in the abstract about the economy as an aggregate, so your specific case objections are probably not the most useful way of trying to understand what's happening.
Thought it was really interesting reading money as an indication of the pace of social exchange of commodities, turned the common sense on its head. I think maybe I missed WHY the quantity of money in circulation is so important to him, he kept coming back to ways the supply could change which makes me think it matters a lot to him, but other than 'if the circulation gets disrupted we have the ingredients for a crisis' I didn't really get any foreshadowed point that all this emphasis would seem to merit.
Good yeah, just keep reading if that's what you want to do
I'm still only about 40% through and it's Thursday (though we had some unexpected problems at the farm and I'll have more free time at the weekend). It does seem harder than the first two chapters. Chapter 1 was easy, tbh almost felt patronising how he was explaining something simple over and over. This is briefer in presnting its points, so you've got to be careful not to miss the point.
I've been listening to an audio book version. It takes like an hour to get through the selected reading. So I have listened to it 5 times now and I think its sinking in.
I find that the way the first chapters are written are really simple ideas but because he is laying them out step by step they seem confusing and convoluted. By distracting part of my mind with a simple task like sorting cards (playing freecell) I can allow the book to get into my mind without my brain trying to pick each sentence apart or expound on the ideas before Marx gets there. Like people talking about Fiat money. Its interesting to think about and my brain wants to go there too but just hold the fuck up. We aren't there yet. Marx is cooking and talking about Fiat while he is explaining how a commodity becomes money is not helping anyone. Its like talking about wine pairings while someone is trying to show you how to catch a fish.
So I think I am going well. I like the discussion in here and it is good to have a group to hold me to really working to understand Kapital instead of just going through it and assuming I understand it.