Sorry I didn't post this on Sunday or Monday I just forgot.
Explain the bookclub: We are reading Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year and discussing it in weekly threads. (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? 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 ) which may fit your schedule better. The idea is for the bookclub to repeat annually, so there's always next year.
Archives: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 – Week 4 – Week 5 – Week 6 – Week 7 – Week 8 – Week 9 – Week 10 – Week 11 – Week 12 – Week 13
Week 14, April 1-7. We are reading Vol.1.Ch.24 parts 4 and 5, and Vol.1.Ch.25 parts 1,2, and 3
In other words, aim to get up to the heading 'Section 4 - Different Forms of the Relative surplus population. The General Law of Capitalistic Accumulation' 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: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9
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/
I think there are multiple reasons: 1) in most developed western nations, the unemployment rate is usually between 2% and 8%, which is a small part of the population. In fact, the entire purpose of Federal Reserve Banks is to keep unemployment low, or more specifically to keep unemployment at around 5% while also keeping inflation at a low rate. 2) because of neoliberal ideology (and maybe even Calvinist ideology) unemployed people are usually looked down upon. They are seen as a burden on those who work, who support them through taxes. Ronald Reagan basically got elected by running advertisements against "welfare queens," who were always depicted as lazy, greedy people (even though in real life many people on unemployment have physical disabilities, are old, have to take care of dying family members, etc.). 3) in a lot of countries, unemployed people already do get benefits, which was largely the result of socialist organizing in the early 1900s. In the USA, unemployment benefits last for a few months, and Obama even extended that to around 2 years during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. 4) There actually is a movement for "unemployed rights," and it's called "universal basic income," which is based on the idea that people should not have to work anymore. It's a very fringe movement and even most leftists have some sort of problem with it. Moreover, these are people who WANT to be unemployed, as opposed to what Marx had in mind - people who want to have a job but are unemployed because the economy sucks.
In my experience, unemployment is not really a big problem for most people. What is a huge problem is UNDER-employment. For example, there are people who graduate from college and still have to resort to driving for Uber because there are no jobs available in their field. In America, a lot of teachers have to work second jobs to pay the bills because they can't pay rent and groceries on a teacher's salary. So, unemployment numbers can be deceptive. Yeah, maybe 97% of working-age Americans have a job, but is it a good job that pays a decent wage? Has the wage kept pace with increasing productivity? Those are more of the questions that Marx's successors are thinking about today.
That makes a lot of sense, esp. with the part on under employment. Since like you said, that is a really big problem.