Ok girls, this is a milestone week. Good job to everybody who is reading.
I know some of you need some time to catch up: this is that time. Those of you on the Penguin Edition read Appendices III and IV. Otherwise/alternatively, spend the week wrapping up loose ends, reading prologues if you like.
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 – Week 15 – Week 16 – Week 17
Week 18, April 29-May 5. From Vol. 1, we are reading Appendices III (Capitalist Production is the Production and Reproduction of the Specifically Capitalist Relations of Production) and IV (Isolated Fragments)
Or if you are reading a different edition, wrap up Volume 1 and/or start Volume 2 in whatever way you see fit
Discuss the week's reading, and Volume 1 as a whole, 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/
Some thoughts on vol 1 overall:
Capital vol 1 doesn't talk about how to build communism. This is a very obvious point, but I just wanted to get it out there.
It was an interesting but impactful choice to intersperse chapters that mainly talked about how fucking outrageous and unjust the treatment of workers in 19th century England was. This is important to the overall goal of criticism of the economic system in England, and the similar ones emerging on the continent. It's so easy to just talk about systems abstractly and scientifically, that it's essential to rub our noses in the outcomes. I think if there's one takeaway that I had from reading this it's the importance of making the connection between the worker's actual, lived conditions, and the way that capitalists make choices specifically to impose those conditions on the workers.
I was surprised by how different the Samuel Moore and Ben Fowkes translations were. When I would quote stuff in comments here, I would look up the Samuel Moore version online, and find that the text was quite different than my printed version.
One of the major themes, and contradictions explored is the idea of Capitalism as an emergent property of free, un-coerced people engaged in commerce with equals... but also, that people in Britain absolutely did not want to engage in capitalism, and had to be violently coerced into the system during the enclosure period. That's kind of the big fundamental lie that capitalist evangelists still preach, that this is all voluntary.
Forreal I thought it was astonishing how long these same talking points have apparently been around. Karl just owning economists 150 years ago for saying how great capitalism has been to workers while they're living in literal squalor. Like okay I guess now we have to talk about toddlers hauling hundreds of pounds of clay uphill now.