Working my way through theory and wondering if Kapital is worth what seems to be a monumental effort. I kind of just look at it now like, "I already agree ideologically, and a complex economic argument will probably be lost on me."
So is there an upside to reading (at least parts of) the text that I'm missing out on?
You should read it at some point, it underpins the bulk of theory. Maybe it was the specific translation that I had, but in my experience it wasn’t a difficult, academic process to get through. Also you really only need to read volume 1. Anyone who says they have read 2 & 3 are weasely little liars
Do you happen to remember the translation or the version you read?
I’ll actually go ahead and say just get the Penguin version.
The reason is not because it’s the best or anything, but that it’s the most widely used. If you want to read some introductions along with it, or read some commentary of Capital, or watch some lectures or anything, they will always use the Penguin version for translation, page numbers etc.
You can read other translations afterwords if you want. But the Penguin one has the largest amount of “support” material and basically every academic who cites Capital in their own work used it too.
I recommend listening to the podcast Reading Kapital with Comrades, really helped me grasp some of the harder-to-grok parts of Marx, especially the first 3 or so chapters. That's mostly the hard part, anyways, the beginning. Made the whole thing much more digestible, at least for a dipshit like me :3
Have you read Value, Price and Profit?
It's very short and is a great introduction to Marx's economic theories and style
I haven't read it but I've heard it's not nearly as bad as it's made out to be, and that Marx actually does a good job of laying out understandable examples to explain the concepts he's discussing. I do need to pick it up, though.
I have done this and I was recommending it unironically, it really helped me to understand Kapital and I was able to get through Vol 1 and Vol 2 in an evening
The .cbz files are floating around on some forum somewhere pretty high in the search results btw 🏴☠️
I found it transformational to my thinking, and worthwhile to read. But it's definitely Homework, and you should expect to re-read a couple of sections and really think through the examples. You can definitely skip around a bit, as it is necessarily longwinded because it's a foundational text.
Just read anti durhing it sums up the ghist of capital I hope that helps
Alternately, I know Engels made a synopsis of capital, is that a good substitute, or are there any other good synopses (?? synopsises? synopsizes?) of capital out there?
