Hop in, comrades, we are reading Capital Volumes I-III this year, and we will every year 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. Let me know if you want to be added or removed.
Congratulations to those who've made it this far! We are almost finished the first three chapters, which are said to be the hardest. If you made it through with us now, it's extremely likely that you'll stick the rest out. Let's keep it up! Proud of y'all!
Week 3, Jan 15-21, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 3 Section 3, Chapter 4, and Chapter 5.
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: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=AA342398FDEC44DFA0E732357783FD48
(Unsure about the quality of the Reitter translation, I'd love to see some input on it as it's the newest one)
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. Also, please let me know if you spot any errors with the bookmarks so I can fix them!
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/
2024 Archived Discussions
If you want to dig back into older discussions, this is an excellent way to do so.
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2025 Archived Discussions
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 ) (Note: Seems to be on hiatus for now) which may fit your schedule better. The idea is for the bookclub to repeat annually, so there's always next year.
How is everyone doing with their reading?
I felt like this weeks material was fairly straightforward to understand and that we are still in the stages of "setting the argument and the reasonings behind it", if that makes sense.
Clearly we are advancing to the critique more already as well. But still feels like Marx is laying a foundation for what is to follow.
I am finding the discussions of the previous year fruitfull, but also wonder if they are why these ongoing threads are at least so far relatively silent?
Some of the commenting is also dauntingly sophisticated and I hope we can also casually chat about how a weeks material felt or just come in and state that it's done. Might be just me, but I wanted to voice this anyway.
So yeah, looking forward to next week. How goes it comrades?
Yea, I might have come in too hot with the esoteric debates in the previous threads. I’m gonna try to keep closer to what’s strictly in the weekly reading. I very much also want to just discuss the reading casually; it doesn’t need to be high stakes.
I think this week’s reading is tough, so I wouldn’t be surprised if others are struggling and that is slowing some progress.
Never stop because I and I assume others are here partially for the esoteric debates and broader understanding. It typically helps understanding a lot more then just trying to apply this alone too, but not often is it easy to build or comment on if new to Capital or book clubs (I am personally a book club first timer). Which is imo fine too.
Just making sure the casual is also ok, but not looking to discourage deep discussion either.
Finished Chapter 3 so far, and it's dense! But 4 and 5 seem easier. Regarding fewer people commenting, I hope that picks back up, but I do think it has to do with last year capturing more people. We will see if others spring back up, but I've loved the much higher level discussion too!
I love the higher level stuff as well, gives you a lot to chew on. But just wanted to also make sure that I or others don't feel like they need to come in with a full analysis of the weekly reading in order to comment.
Oh and loved the part about Moneybags this week. It is very entertaining that Marx has created this actual character in the book whose capitalist adventures we get to follow:
"Our friend, Moneybags, who as yet is only an embryo capitalist, must buy his commodities at their value, must sell them at their value, and yet at the end of the process must withdraw more value from circulation than he threw into it at starting. His development into a full-grown capitalist must take place, both within the sphere of circulation and without it. These are the conditions of the problem."
It's like: SO IT BEGINS!
Thanks for saying that, as this is exactly what I was feeling haha. I guess I'll start posting my silly observations and doubts, maybe other people are having the same experience as me but feel kind of intimidated to post them (I do)
Nice to hear, I relate to feeling intimidated so it's nice to hear you say this. I also felt this to be important to voice, because a deeper analysis takes time and spoons that not all can have, at least not weekly.
It's great to just hear others are also doing the reading and that we are reading this together.
I also am hoping others comment too. I am the process of writing up notes for my own understanding. But they are not yet complete (are notes ever complete), and so I'm stuck in this liminal space where I feel like I'm stuck between posting small thoughts or interesting tidbits that spring to mind, and wanting to post something more "polished"
Yes I already found the notes to be tricty this week as it is evolving more into argumentation. So I didn't post them this week.
I suppose I am still waiting for some sort of lighbulb moments that do come when I am doing the reading, but then don't feel so important later on. I don't want to make many assumptions yet either, because it seems to still be in the build up-phase.
I had many thoughts about the petro dollar and the chapters this week for example that I can't quite articulate yet.
I'd love to look forward to any notes of yours, especially on the petrodollar.
I know that someone on hexbear made a thread a while back asking for essays on the petrodollar, but it didn't get much traction. The only response was about how the petrodollar is overblown is a concept and doesn't really exist? Idk enough to say one way or the other... but the thread got me to do some searchong and I did find an article from the Historical Materialism journal that discusses the dollar and it's relation to the oil commodity. This stuff is beyond my level, though, so it'd take a lot of time for me to go through it and actually get something out of it. I think I just read the abstract and placed it on my to do list.
So any notes to aid in understanding or get the gears going would be welcomed if youd like to post them later!
Yea Marx is a funny guy to be honest, I fear a bit of that gets lost in the Fowkes version I'm reading but overall, super happy to be working through this.