Reading marx and any writing from that day and age is a fucking headache. It's so far removed from modern english and with all the references to Marx's contemporary events you need like 2948392 footnotes to fucking understand anything. But nooooo we cant have a simplified version because that would warp his vision blah bluh bleh
Reading economic theory published today is a fucking slog, let alone economic theory from 150 years ago. I don’t think anyone is going “Well I was gonna spend my evening reading this economics textbook, but I think a more efficient use of my time would be to watch a twitch stream!”
You should read Marx, but don’t act like it’s filling the same need as watching silly people play video games on the internet
This is a very thoughtful post. I just want to add that not all twitch streams are playing videos games. There are a lot of twitch streams that are just a person talking to their camera and/or the twitch chat. For example, Matt Christman of chapo regularly goes to twitch to yell about Marxism for about an hour and then logs off. I have found that there are around 40-50 decent sized channels with people who just talk to their camera about leftism.
That's really not it, 19th century philosophy (and beyond really) is quite impenetrable without either reading the entirety of the context or a very good companion book. Like reading Frege's foundation of arithmetic was a struggle for me as a mathematician with some philosophy background, because a large chunk of it was him sorting out beefs with contemporaries. And I really don't think that the Anglo publishing history really cares what you think about his conception of a number.
If twitch pogs approached it the same way they approach Star Wars and 40K lore it wouldn't be all that impenetrable
Motherfuckers will literally be like "I spent 100 hours learning the economic system of Eurpoa Universalis 4, and now I'll spend another 100 hours beating the tutorial" but figuring out the context of Marx's 18th of Brumaire apparently requires one to be at the height of academic excellence
I'm gonna be real, the only real difficult work of Marx is Capital vol 1 and maybe parts of Vol 3, other than that it's pretty easy to get the gist of what's going on
honestly, yeah. i'm not sure why a lot of people here are acting like Marx is incredibly tough, it's really not. the english isn't too archaic either, Shakespeare is way, way harder to read. some more recent academics like Teubner or Luhmann are much, much harder to read than Marx. they are a lot more of a slog to get through too.
Yeah the beefs really piss me off. Lenin is like that too - like you need to go look up some shithead who was relegated to the dustbin of history 90 years ago to get necessary context if you wanna understand the basic thrust of the essay. At the very least, modern editors should include an appendix with a summary so you're not totally lost.
I've found some of Lenin to be impenetrable. Like. if you read What is to Be Done without expert knowledge of 1920s Russian newspapers you're going to have a bad time. But State and Revolution is excellent and actually fun to read. Quotations from Mao is pretty digestible too. I've read a few works of Stalin and I don't remember it being boring but that's mostly because I don't remember it.
reading anything from someone with a radically different cultural context than a 21st century anglophone is going to be difficult. and if you want to access ideas from outside of total neoliberal hegemony, you are going to have to read such writing. there is no way around it. you're a pacified subject of the last evil empire, and you can do nothing before you form yourself into a weapon against it.
I found the audiobooks a lot more understandable and approachable. Maybe it's just how my brain works, but I was able to follow along a lot easier that way. The wording didn't seem so difficult to listen to, where I was otherwise getting lost.
dunno, i forced myself to read through capital v1 because of org educational requirements and still got a ton out of it. admittedly i'd already read a bunch of capital illustrated, capital abridged books before that, which made it easier imo and of course there is a ton that i didn't get and ill have to re-read w/ footnotes, patience etc, but i was actually surprised that a quick read of capital is a) possible b) worth it. now hegel on the other hand...
Reading marx and any writing from that day and age is a fucking headache. It's so far removed from modern english and with all the references to Marx's contemporary events you need like 2948392 footnotes to fucking understand anything. But nooooo we cant have a simplified version because that would warp his vision blah bluh bleh
Reading economic theory published today is a fucking slog, let alone economic theory from 150 years ago. I don’t think anyone is going “Well I was gonna spend my evening reading this economics textbook, but I think a more efficient use of my time would be to watch a twitch stream!”
You should read Marx, but don’t act like it’s filling the same need as watching silly people play video games on the internet
This is a very thoughtful post. I just want to add that not all twitch streams are playing videos games. There are a lot of twitch streams that are just a person talking to their camera and/or the twitch chat. For example, Matt Christman of chapo regularly goes to twitch to yell about Marxism for about an hour and then logs off. I have found that there are around 40-50 decent sized channels with people who just talk to their camera about leftism.
English translations of Marx are universally dogshit (I believe it's intentional, Anglo publishing industry is reactionary as hell)
But that's what Mao's for :mao-aggro-shining:
That's really not it, 19th century philosophy (and beyond really) is quite impenetrable without either reading the entirety of the context or a very good companion book. Like reading Frege's foundation of arithmetic was a struggle for me as a mathematician with some philosophy background, because a large chunk of it was him sorting out beefs with contemporaries. And I really don't think that the Anglo publishing history really cares what you think about his conception of a number.
If twitch pogs approached it the same way they approach Star Wars and 40K lore it wouldn't be all that impenetrable
Motherfuckers will literally be like "I spent 100 hours learning the economic system of Eurpoa Universalis 4, and now I'll spend another 100 hours beating the tutorial" but figuring out the context of Marx's 18th of Brumaire apparently requires one to be at the height of academic excellence
I'm gonna be real, the only real difficult work of Marx is Capital vol 1 and maybe parts of Vol 3, other than that it's pretty easy to get the gist of what's going on
honestly, yeah. i'm not sure why a lot of people here are acting like Marx is incredibly tough, it's really not. the english isn't too archaic either, Shakespeare is way, way harder to read. some more recent academics like Teubner or Luhmann are much, much harder to read than Marx. they are a lot more of a slog to get through too.
:cri: 18th of brumaire is hard to read with the context :cri:
Yeah the beefs really piss me off. Lenin is like that too - like you need to go look up some shithead who was relegated to the dustbin of history 90 years ago to get necessary context if you wanna understand the basic thrust of the essay. At the very least, modern editors should include an appendix with a summary so you're not totally lost.
I've found some of Lenin to be impenetrable. Like. if you read What is to Be Done without expert knowledge of 1920s Russian newspapers you're going to have a bad time. But State and Revolution is excellent and actually fun to read. Quotations from Mao is pretty digestible too. I've read a few works of Stalin and I don't remember it being boring but that's mostly because I don't remember it.
What is to be Done is fun because it's an early 20th century reaction video equivalent
and you call yourself a leftist
reading anything from someone with a radically different cultural context than a 21st century anglophone is going to be difficult. and if you want to access ideas from outside of total neoliberal hegemony, you are going to have to read such writing. there is no way around it. you're a pacified subject of the last evil empire, and you can do nothing before you form yourself into a weapon against it.
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I found the audiobooks a lot more understandable and approachable. Maybe it's just how my brain works, but I was able to follow along a lot easier that way. The wording didn't seem so difficult to listen to, where I was otherwise getting lost.
dunno, i forced myself to read through capital v1 because of org educational requirements and still got a ton out of it. admittedly i'd already read a bunch of capital illustrated, capital abridged books before that, which made it easier imo and of course there is a ton that i didn't get and ill have to re-read w/ footnotes, patience etc, but i was actually surprised that a quick read of capital is a) possible b) worth it. now hegel on the other hand...