Format

  • 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. Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

  • Use any translation/edition you like.

Resources

(These are not expected reading, these are here to help you if you so choose)

  • Harvey's guide to reading it: https://www.davidharvey.org/media/Intro_A_Companion_to_Marxs_Capital.pdf

  • 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

  • Engels' Synopsis of Capital or PDF

  • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
    ·
    6 months ago

    And the final commodity that a capitalist sells - like a car - is an amalgamation of various commodities. In this case, the commodity steel and the commodity labor power.

    Remember that labor is treated as a commodity, but Marx also makes it clear that labor is a special commodity in that all other commodities require labor as an input.

    The steel in your example required labor and other fractional products, and those fractional products required labor and fractional products.

    Which means all commodities contain within them some amount of "dead labor" as Marx calls it, which is just that accumulated labor value from all fractional products.

    • star_wraith [he/him]
      ·
      6 months ago

      Remember that labor is treated as a commodity, but Marx also makes it clear that labor is a special commodity in that all other commodities require labor as an input.

      10000-com