Man, sorry I've been offline til Friday, I was told we would get power back much sooner. I hope you have all just been reading independently, sorry for not providing a good place to discuss.

The overall plan is to read 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. 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.


Just joining us? It'll take you about 20 hours to catch up to where the group is. Use the archives below to help you. There is another reading group on a different schedule at https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzhou (federated at !genzhou@lemmygrad.ml ) which may fit your schedule better.

Archives: Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6Week 7Week 8Week 9


Week 10, March 4-10, we are reading Chapter 15 sections 6,7, and 8, from Volume 1

In other words, aim to reach the heading 'The Health and Education Clauses of the Factory Acts. The General Extension of Factory legislation in England' by Sunday


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.

Audiobook of Ben Fowkes translation, American accent, male, links are to alternative invidious instances: 123456789


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/

  • Beaver [he/him]
    ·
    8 months ago

    It's dispiriting to hear what could be a modern-day account of how the community of any company town is destined to eventually be hollowed out and discarded whenever new innovations in process and automation transform the industry. This isn't just a treatise on the woes of 19th century weavers: Karl is describing the labor struggle of today.

    I think what's striking me most about my read-through is how much I don't care about the particular theoretical objections people have about specifics about LVT or the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. I feel like errors in the framework don't actually change most of the conclusions all that much.