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. However, we're a bit ahead of the curve right now, and can slow down to about 41 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 [email protected] ) 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 – Week 12 – Week 13 – Week 14 – Week 15 – Week 16 – Week 17 – Week 18 – Week 19 – Week 20 – Week 21 – Week 22 – Week 23 – Week 24 – Week 25 – Week 26 – Week 27 – Week 28 – Week 29 – Week 30 – Week 31 – Week 32 – Week 33 – Week 34 – Week 35 – Week 36

Week 37, Sept 9-15 – Chapters 17, 18, and 19 of Volume III.

Chapter 17 is called Commercial Profit

Chapter 18 is called The Turnover of Merchant's Capital

Chapter 19 is called Money-Dealing Capital

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

i think this is an interesting perspective, as state role do be underdeveloped

I remember reading it and using it as a comparison against how the west talks about china today but i cant find it

What would you say are some of the best or most critical posts on Red Sails? The must read list if you will?

• Concessions
• Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing”

Come to mind. What else would you add to this list?

Edit: Compiled from the comments below:

• Why Marxism?
• China Has Billionaires
• "Tankies"
• The Swerve
• The Lost Horse from 139 BC
• “Black Ribbon Day” and “Double Genocide” in Canada
• A Critical Read of Animal Farm
• On Orwell
• On Chomsky
• On Anthony Bourdain
• Democracy is Not an Ornament
• Water Droplets Drilling Through Rock
• Another View of Tiananmen
• The Xinjiang Atrocity Propaganda Blitz
• Ads Don't Work That Way
• "Brainwashing" as long as Masses, Elites, and Rebels is presented alongside it
• Concessions
• False Witnesses
• Really Existing Fascism
• The Tyranny of Structurelessness
• On the sex trade

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. However, we're a bit ahead of the curve right now, and can slow down to about 41 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 [email protected] ) 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 – Week 12 – Week 13 – Week 14 – Week 15 – Week 16 – Week 17 – Week 18 – Week 19 – Week 20 – Week 21 – Week 22 – Week 23 – Week 24 – Week 25 – Week 26 – Week 27 – Week 28 – Week 29 – Week 30 – Week 31 – Week 32 – Week 33 – Week 34 – Week 35

Week 36, Sept 2-8 – Chapters 15 and 16 of Volume III.

Chapter 15 is the last one of Part III, the part about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and is titled Exposition of the Internal Contradictions of the Law

Chapter 16 is the first one of Part IV, and is titled Commercial Capital

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

tl;dr fortress evropa will be the name of the game

but rather interesting piece, seeking to find common ground between class-based fascism and racist-based fascism (don't think it (the book in question) succeeds tbh)

Getting into some good stuff here. This week's reading is a few pages shorter than normal.

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. However, we're a bit ahead of the curve right now, and can slow down to about 41 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 [email protected] ) 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 – Week 12 – Week 13 – Week 14 – Week 15 – Week 16 – Week 17 – Week 18 – Week 19 – Week 20 – Week 21 – Week 22 – Week 23 – Week 24 – Week 25 – Week 26 – Week 27 – Week 28 – Week 29 – Week 30 – Week 31 – Week 32 – Week 33 – Week 34

Week 35, Aug 26-Sept 1 – From Part III of Volume III we are reading Chapter 13 (The Law as Such) and Chapter 14 (Counteracting Influences). This is the part about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

Sorry I'm late posting this.

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. However, we're a bit ahead of the curve right now, and can slow down to about 41 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 [email protected] ) 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 – Week 12 – Week 13 – Week 14 – Week 15 – Week 16 – Week 17 – Week 18 – Week 19 – Week 20 – Week 21 – Week 22 – Week 23 – Week 24 – Week 25 – Week 26 – Week 27 – Week 28 – Week 29 – Week 30 – Week 31 – Week 32 – Week 33

Week 34, Aug 19-25 – We are finishing Part Two of Volume III (Part Two is called Conversion of Profit into Average Profit) we are reading Chapter 10 (Equalisation of the General Rate of Profit Through Competition. Market-Prices and Market-Values. Surplus-Profit.) and Chapter 11 (Effects of General Wage Fluctuations on Prices of Production) and Chapter 12 (Supplementary Remarks)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

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. However, we're a bit ahead of the curve right now, and can slow down to about 41 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 [email protected] ) 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 – Week 12 – Week 13 – Week 14 – Week 15 – Week 16 – Week 17 – Week 18 – Week 19 – Week 20 – Week 21 – Week 22 – Week 23 – Week 24 – Week 25 – Week 26 – Week 27 – Week 28 – Week 29 – Week 30 – Week 31 – Week 32

Week 33, Aug 12-18 – From Part Two of Volume III (Part Two is called Conversion of Profit into Average Profit) we are reading Chapters 8 (Different Compositions of Capitals in Different Branches of Production and Resulting Differences in Rates of Profit) and Chapter 9 (Formation of a General Rate of Profit (Average Rate of Profit) and Transformation of the Values of Commodities into Prices of Production)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm

This week's reading is a bit shorter than most weeks. Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3182889

So I've had this idea floating around in my head for some time now, but, I finally was able to get the tools required to run on my PC.

Piper is a Text To Speech utility that uses deep learning voice models to read text aloud. This utility is primarily utilized in Home Assistant to allow for a self-hosted voice assistant experience. However, I think it has revolutionary potential.

This idea hit me a while back as a result of my use of the Read Aloud extension for Firefox. This extension supports Piper voice models, and over time I have settled on the use of a model that, I think, is very nice to listen too and gets about 90% of pronunciations correct.

I spent a portion of my day today pulling some text from various Marxist thinkers and creating a few samples. I think there would be a lot of work involved in cleaning up the output produced by these models, but only so far as to ensure the model is pausing appropriately in some situations. This usually centers around the use of punctuation such as [] () - and various date formats 1885, 1993.

For the symbols, they are basically ignored, which can create a kind of run-on sentence where it feels like the voice model should be winded due to the lack of pauses. Replacing these symbols with a comma seems to help, but it varies case by case. For dates, often the model reads the date as though it is a number, so for example, 1917 becomes one-thousand nine-hundred and seventeen, instead of a more natural nineteen seventeen.

Tools could be built to detect these patterns in the text and replace them with the appropriate written equivalents.

Another issue would be, how and when to read aloud end notes. My goal would be to utilize these audio files in something like AudioBookShelf. AudioBookShelf likes having the audio files broken down by chapter and section, so end notes likely would be read at the end of a section or chapter, making them easily skiable, as opposed to reading them inline.

Anyway, here are some samples I created today.

• Caliban and the Witch Preface
  • Text Used - Sourced from an ebook file, converted to text using Calibre.
• State and Revolution Preface
  • Text Used - Sourced from marxists.org.
• Combat Liberalism
  • Text Used - Sourced from marxists.org.

The bulk of the labor involved in generating these files is finding those areas where the flow of reading seems off. As noted above, they can be easy to spot. But also, every author will have their own stylistic quirks that you'll need to work around. From there, chop the text up into files for each chapter and subsection, as well as end notes. Then run Piper against each text file, and finally convert the output wav file into a more digestible MP3, and then apply some metadata to those files.

This is still just a proof of concept. I'm sure there is a way in which we can collaborate to build the text-scripts needed for a clean recording, maybe a Git repository of texts. That part of this process is still not fleshed out.

I think as a goal, I'd like to create a kind of "Intro to Marxism" audio collection. A selection of books to onboard people, perhaps based on prolewiki's Absolute Beginner's List.

Then eventually I can tackle the bigger fish.

Thoughts?

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. However, we're a bit ahead of the curve right now, and can slow down to about 41 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 [email protected] ) 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 – Week 12 – Week 13 – Week 14 – Week 15 – Week 16 – Week 17 – Week 18 – Week 19 – Week 20 – Week 21 – Week 22 – Week 23 – Week 24 – Week 25 – Week 26 – Week 27 – Week 28 – Week 29 – Week 30 – Week 31

Week 32, Aug 5-11. From Part One of Volume III (Part One is called The Conversion of Surplus-Value into Profit and of the Rate of Surplus-Value into the Rate of Profit), we are reading Chapter 6 (The Effect of Price Fluctuations), and Chapter 7 (Supplementary Remarks)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

What is Bitcoin and what is it's value under a Marxist economic lens? I've been trying to read capital recently and I've had a few questions I've been trying to work out. So, as capital states, each object has a use value, exchange value and value. Bitcoin clearly has a high exchange value where it can be traded for traditional commodities created with labor (drugs) and have stable, knowable values and can be traditionally analyzed. However, Bitcoin's exchange value regularly exceeds it's value abd both exceed it's use value. Bitcoin is a commodity and in buying it you are buying the labor of the engineers, technicians, project managers and other workers who made the computer hardware the miner uses as well as similar people who created the power consumed. In this lens the miner would be petit bourgeoisie and stealing the surplus labor of the aforementioned groups. However, it's exchange value is incredibly unstable and it's use value is (presumably) low. My main questions are:

1. Am I right in considering Bitcoin a commodity
2. Does Bitcoin have use value and how would it be calculated
3. What is the value of Bitcoin
4. What's the Marxist explanation of bubbles
5. Am I right in labeling miners as bourgeoisie

Thanks for the help, this book is confusing and I prefer theory in a Twitter sippy cup for baby leftists and not the barrel of vodka that is Capital

The first tendency is the counterculture left. Its affect tends to be joyful and collective, its focus is libertine, it is concerned with furthering the project of micropolitics and counterculture. It construes politics as an act that itself is liberating, it relies on a theory of the commune as a site where experimental forms of living should be furthered. Its advocates tend to be highly ensconced in bourgeois institutions in part because much of its praxis entails a radicalization of welfare for the poor and the marginal. It maintains a relationship to bourgeois institutions that will often support forms of paternalism as long as that paternalism is giving cover to marginal groups. It maintains the view that the subject of revolution is fully contingent, and that there is no transitive relation of any particular class to the social structure or to labor. If anything, they follow the liberal and progressive liberal view that within American society it is black populations that remain the only viable revolutionary subject.

Rather, this tendency of the left conceives of the left as needing to remain in fidelity to the working class as possessing a transitive relation to the social structure. It will tend to maintain that the task of the left is to independently organize the working class for emancipation. Its affect risks falling sway to frustration due to the resistance it experiences with liberal institutions as well as with the counterculture left. The forces of liberalism and leftism insist that any determined or transitive theory of class emancipation will risk fomenting an impending fascism, to which the counterculture left and the liberal left claim is imminent. It is to this Leninist expression of the left that we must center the reinvention of leftwing practice, but only by carefully resolving the basis of rivalry it has with the counterculture left

Competitive bourgeois individualism not only reproduces a fetishism that conceals the true basis of class-based exploitation that retains existing class hierarchies, it adheres us to a form of doing politics that is illusory.

What anchors the left is not merely an idea of the left; the left is defined by the organization of social and class forces capable of revolutionizing the existing class forces that perpetuate exploitation. This means that the left is defined both by its utopian impulse to remain committed to the ending of exploitation and oppression, combined with a rational and materialist strategy for achieving emancipation.

What post-Marxists who insist that the left need only rely on a contingent series of social groups and not the wide scale organization of the working class get wrong about the meaning of the ‘abolition of the existing order’ is that they fail to see that Marx and Engels formulated a political vision from the class standpoint of the working class.

Marx at one point says that communists should help to remind existing struggles why they struggle, which is a statement that requires some parsing out to fully understand. Because if you have rejected the necessity of the cultivation of a political organization that is grounded in the standpoint of the working class and you read this statement, you could quite easily find yourself complicit with the post-Marxist view that all struggles are contingent. But the notion that there is a contingency of struggles only negates Marx and Engels’s core insight into the independent organization of the working class.

The vision of bourgeois politics is a reflection of the logic of the market, and the logic of the market molds the wider field of politics as a web of fetishism, i.e., bourgeois politics covers over class-based forces, it conceals the real basis and therefore the true function of class power and domination. Marx and Engels also realized that this fetishism is so entrenched that it is necessary for the working class to develop a distinct worldview and thus to subtract from bourgeois institutions.

some struggles (like tenant unions) are easily reducible to marxist conceptions, while others (like medicare for all) are more involved (people don't often say "you can leave your shit job without fear", rather its "wouldnt it be nice to not pay bills"), one is marxist-ish, the other is liberation-ish, while talking same policy. but obviously not all struggles are easily reducced to class interests tbh

Race as such, as a category. Been pondering about whether it is something to be abolished in the same sense as one might speak of gender abolition or class abolition. Looking for refinement on this thought if possible. Thanks!

linky to natcom 😮 article

twitter thread

interesting guest

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 [email protected] ) 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 – Week 12 – Week 13 – Week 14 – Week 15 – Week 16 – Week 17 – Week 18 – Week 19 – Week 20 – Week 21 – Week 22 – Week 23 – Week 24 – Week 25 – Week 26 – Week 27 – Week 28 – Week 29 – Week 30

Week 31, July 29-Aug 4. We started Volume III last week. From Part One (called The Conversion of Surplus-Value into Profit and of the Rate of Surplus-Value into the Rate of Profit), we are reading Chapter 4 (The Effect of the Turnover on the Rate of Profit), and Chapter 5 (Economy in the Employment of Constant Capital).

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

In France the development of the effects of the economic crisis appeared at first more slowly. But in the latest period the situation has gone forward with extreme rapidity, and the question of Fascism has become a burning issue. The events of February 6-12, 1934, and the fall of the Daladier Government, leading to the formation of the transitional Doumergue Government of National Concentration, have brought to the front the whole question of Fascism and the increasing signs of advance to a direct armed struggle. These events are of vital importance for the Western “democratic” countries, because in these events are set out with crystal clearness the two alternative paths, the path of the “left bloc” or bourgeois- liberal democracy, leading in fact to Fascism, or the path of the united working-class front of struggle, which can alone defeat Fascism.

What was the situation on the eve of the events of February 6-12? The national-chauvinist, Fascist and Royalist forces in France-at all times active beneath the democratic-republican exterior--developed extreme activity in the gathering crisis, and especially since the advent of Hitlerism, with the open alliance and assistance of the police authorities in Paris and of the big press, that is, of the State and finance-capital. At the same time the governmental forms were showing the same increase of executive powers and repression of the workers common to all capitalist governments in the present period. Even The Times on February 5, that is, before the decisive events, was compelled to note: “A contrast has been drawn between the severe repression of Communist manifestations and the comparative immunity from punishment of Royalist demonstrators and the Royalist newspaper which directly incites its readers to riot in the streets.”

This was under a “Left” bourgeois Government, maintained in office in practice by the support of the Socialist Party. The majority in Parliament was a “Left Cartel” majority, consisting of the Socialist Party and of the “Left” bourgeois groupings. This “Left” bourgeois Government (previously under Chautemps, then under Daladier) was heavily discredited by one of the typical recurrent financial and police scandals, the Stavisky scandal, which was being utilised by the reactionary forces to raise agitation against the parliamentary regime and to prepare a Government of National Concentration, just as the crisis of the franc was similarly used in 1926. After the dismissal of the police chief, Chiappe, who was notoriously hand-in-glove with the Royalist and Fascist elements, preparations were openly made – without interference – and proclaimed in the big press for a jingo riot on February 6, which was to serve as a preliminary trial of strength and spear-head for the Fascist advance. What was the line of the Daladier Government and of “left democracy” in the face of this challenge? The Socialist Party voted its confidence in the Daladier Government, in the “Left” bourgeois Government, as the defender of “democracy” against Fascism. On the basis of their support the Daladier Government received a substantial parliamentary majority of 360 to 220 on the critical evening of February 6. As against this line the Communist Party, which had approached the Socialist Party for the united front against Fascism in March 1933, and been refused, called for the united front from below, called the workers to the streets against the Fascist attack, and through the unions began to make agitation for a general strike against the Fascist menace. The two lines were now to receive their practical demonstration in the events that followed.

The Daladier Government massed heavy military forces in Paris in the days preceding February 6. But did it act against Fascism? The leaders of the Fascists and Royalists were allowed to carry on their preparations in complete freedom. Previously, on the eve of a Communist May Day demonstration, three thousand Communist leaders had been arrested in Paris in order to cripple the organisation of the demonstration. On the eve of this reactionary demonstration not a single Fascist or Royalist leader was touched. The organisers of the reaction were given freedom of the streets to burn, destroy, set fire to Government buildings, and advance on the Chamber of Deputies; no adequate forces were placed against them; the police were inactive; the “Gardes Republicaines” and “Gardes Mobiles” were steadily commanded to retreat and give way before the bourgeois mob; only at the last moment, when the Chamber was nearly reached and the bourgeois demonstrators began to fire with their revolvers, the “Gardes Mobiles,” not on the order of their officers, but in instinctive self-defence, fired back, and about a dozen of the dupes of the reaction and onlookers were killed.

The subsequent Commission of Enquiry established that the shooting was begun by the Fascist demonstrators and maintained for half an hour before any answering fire took place on the side of the Government forces; and that even so no order to fire was given by any officer, but that the rank and file of the “Gardes, Mobiles” began spontaneously to fire in self-defence and were immediately ordered to stop by their officers. The sequel to this incident is instructive for the whole future of parliamentary democracy. Immediately following this incident, on the very next day, on February 7, the Daladier Government, which bad just received an overwhelming parliamentary majority, resigned; and there was installed, amid the plaudits of the millionaire press, the Doumergue Government of National Concentration, with the semi-fascist-Tardieu in a strategic position in its midst.

How did this happen? Why this sudden surrender of the legal Government with a parliamentary majority before the first Fascist street-offensive? This question is of crucial importance for all the Western “democratic” countries, where confidence in “democratic institutions” as the defence against Fascism is still preached. Why did Daladier, “champion of democracy” and chosen representative of French Socialism, immediately resign before the Fascist extra-parliamentary offensive? Where, then, was the “sovereignty of Parliament,” “law and order,” the “will of the electors,” and all the paper paraphernalia of bourgeois democracy? Flown to the winds, as soon as finance-capital gave the order in the opposite direction. The parliamentary majority might vote one thing; but finance- capital ordered another, and finance-capital was obeyed, including by the representatives of that parliamentary majority.

The Daladier Government issued an explanation that it resigned “to avoid further bloodshed”: “The Government, while responsible for the maintenance of order, declined to ensure it by the employment of exceptional means, which might result in severer repressive action and further bloodshed. The Government bad no wish to use soldiers against the demonstrators, and for that reason bad laid down office.” The transparent hypocrisy of this “explanation” is manifest. As if any French bourgeois Government had ever hesitated to use the utmost violence against working-class demonstrators, not merely using soldiers against them, but organising complete military operations against them, as was done on the night of the far more serious fighting of February 9, amid the applause of the entire bourgeois press. Daladier resigned, not because be was a pacifist, but because he was a puppet of finance- capital and could do no other.

-FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION A Study of the economics and Politics of the Extreme Stages of Capitalism in Decay by R. PALME DUTT Ch. 11

Another jason hickel drop

twitter thread in compressed form

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 [email protected] ) 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 – Week 12 – Week 13 – Week 14 – Week 15 – Week 16 – Week 17 – Week 18 – Week 19 – Week 20 – Week 21 – Week 22 – Week 23 – Week 24 – Week 25 – Week 26 – Week 27 – Week 28 – Week 29

Week 30, July 22-28. We are starting Volume III. From Part One (called The Conversion of Surplus-Value into Profit and of the Rate of Surplus-Value into the Rate of Profit), we are reading Chapter 1 (Cost-Price and Profit), Chapter 2 (The Rate of Profit), and Chapter 3 (The Relation of the Rate of Profit to the Rate of Surplus-Value).

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.