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)
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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/
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I’m wondering if it would be better next time to split chapter 1, but then again, if we dwell too long on this abstract value-form stuff, people are gonna get bored. So overall I think the pace is fine, but I’m curious what others think.
What are you thinking for next week? Just chapter 2 for a breather and some time to ponder chapter 1? Or maybe get a head start on chapter 3? I think 3 will need to be split in any case.
I was thinking Chapter 2 but assigning it for Mon-Wed rather than for the week. Then posting the next reading on Thursday.
What do you think? We can't take breathers all the time.
Hmmm idk! I think a consistent weekly cadence would be the best, since people have different schedules IRL and probably don’t linearly read the same amount each day of the week. For example some people might not get much time to read on weekdays. Announcing the planned reading for the next week’s thread, in addition to the current week’s reading, could be good for the same reason. So if you go with that, then maybe we end up dipping into chapter 3 a little too, to even out the pages.
If we do it that way, the stopping-point for Week 2 would be the heading 'Section 3: Money': https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch03.htm#S3
That keeps the steady pace of 46-47 pages (of the Penguin edition) per week.
Having it turn over on the weekends is likely the best idea so people who were too busy to read during the week can catch up and discuss.
For next week, chapter two is pretty short so adding in the first two sections of chapter 3 like you suggest could keep up the pace while still giving people the weekend to discuss.
Anyone else want to chime in?
I'm doing fine (finished reading the chapter) but as quarrk mentioned the readings be announced more in advance would be helpful.
Ok well next week is chap2 and the first two sections of chap3 :)
Ty