666PeaceKeepaGirl [any, she/her]

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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: July 26th, 2020

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  • Finished with about 8 hours in the year to spare!

    I definitely got a lot out of this. I'd previously read excerpts from Vol. I for a class, and while that was definitely a good first taste, I think it's really important for actual understanding to have the broader perspective of Marx's argument that requires actually going and reading all the way through rather than trying to pick out isolated and decontextualized bits of understanding.

    I'm a little sad I wasn't able to participate in the group more, I was constantly a few weeks behind pretty much the entire year - whenever I was just about caught up I'd either get really busy, or Marx would start talking about some particular misunderstanding of Adam Smith's for 50 pages causing my eyes to glaze over. I'm hoping I can maybe skim back over it along with next year's group so that I can contribute some to discussion.

    The occasional dry Adam Smith passage aside, Marx is actually a really engaging and (mostly) surprisingly clear writer. I could only manage maybe 10 pages an hour most of the time, but despite the pace it never really feels like just a textbook. What Marx does especially well (and what I think doesn't come through unless you read him on his own terms) is that he encourages the process of critical thinking in his readers. It's a testament I think to his strength as a writer that I often found myself getting lost in thought digesting the implications of a particular development and at times anticipating the direction of the argument pages or even chapters ahead.

    Overall, 10/10 great book great experience would recommend