Wow, look at us go. We have passed the halfway point of Vol.1, and are ⅕ of the way through the whole thing. You now have a better understanding of what Marx really said than most people.
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, March 11-17, we are finishing Chapter 15 (i.e. sections 9 and 10), and reading Chapter 16. This is all in Volume 1.
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/
Can any comrades help me out with the dichotomy at the end of C. 15 sec. 10?
From what we've read so far, it would seem that capitalist production is bad for both physical and intellectual health for urban workers, because the self-valorization requires long working hours especially for children, minimizing their time for education. I would think this criticism is true for children employed on farms as much as for children employed in facotries.
I think Marx here, as an "Urban Intellectual" falls into the trap of idealizing agricultural work. True, it has a certain seasonality that factory work doesn't have, and agricultural workers have more open space for excercise and fresh air. But specially after the advent of tractors and combines, modern agriculture is incredibly dangerous.
This is in the same section, I don't think he's idealizing rural life or work, he's observing that the concentration and exploitation of large numbers of laborers in cities is also in a dialectical relationship with the disposession and destruction of the peasantry. He's both/and-ing, it's both deeply unhealthy for city dwellers and complete ruination for the rural inhabitants who need to do less and less besides mind a machine, and in decreasing numbers at that.
I felt like it rhymed with the larger dynamic he describes of core/peripheral exploitation, wherein market forces remake everything outside of the industrial centers of the market into pure fodder for the mills.
The hours of agricultural work are also limited by daylight
:so-far: In Central California, where daytime temperatures can reach 110ºF, lots of produce is picked at night. Either a tractor with floodlights will follow workers or they use headlamps. In addition to maximizing the workday, this saves money on refrigeration. The fruit might be coming in at say 65 or 75 rather than 100 degrees.
Right but I was talking about Marx's era.