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)

  • 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

  • Reading Capital with Comrades: A Liberation School podcast series - https://www.liberationschool.org/reading-capital-with-comrades-podcast/

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  • quarrk [he/him]
    ·
    10 months ago

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts! It's really cool seeing other people also excited about the first chapter, as confusing and abstract as it can be.

    Labour, then, as the creator of use-values, as useful labour, is a condition of human existence which is independent of all forms of society; it is an external natural necessity which mediates the metabolism between man and nature, and therefore human life itself.

    Distinguishing the historical from the eternal is perhaps the most essential and pervasive point in all of Marx's writings. It appears in Grundrisse (chapter 1), The German Ideology (part 1A), 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, the Manifesto, Theories of Surplus Value (throughout, but especially in the chapter on Adam Smith and chapter 20 on David Ricardo), and probably in other writings too. I thought about bombarding with quotes on this point, but that probably belongs in a separate place as its own essay. As regards this chapter, I think footnote 33 is a good example.