Does anyone want to volunteer to lead the 2025 bookclub?? It will be a bit easier the second time around, as you can just copy what I've done and use the 'archive' links above. Basically your job is to make one post a week with regularity. I can provide full instructions to anyone interested.
Are you still looking for a volunteer?
According to @[email protected] there aren't any plans yet, do you want to do it? If not, I can do it.
I will let you do it, but I would volunteer to back you up in case there's a week when you're out of town or something. Just let me know and I can make a post whenever needed!
Gotcha, sounds good! Might make the first post tomorrow.
Awesome - I am looking forward to making a second attempt at reading this!
If you are looking for volunteers still, I will pitch my name into the hat, but I haven't read Capital previously so this will be a first. I want this to start up so I can read it myself, haha, so if I have to lead it I can do so.
i unfortunately don't think i can commit to leading the bookclub (work is driving me crazy rn rip), but i hope we're making this an annual thing because i'm reading to dive back into vol 1 again with my hexrads next year
I'm torn, I have really enjoyed this year but I have limited time to read, and all these Losurdo books sitting on my desk beckoning... Dang night shift.
Same. It’s too fast for me and I don’t want to read Capital at the expense of everything else.
It may make more sense to focus on just volume 1 as the core reading group that renews annually. If there is a large enough group that wants a separate thread for volume 2 and/or 3, they could do that separately.
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Thanks for running this for most of the year!
You're welcome!
last of vol 3 and the three vols read
[Here the manuscript breaks off.]
I really like Engels' supplement with bringing in history for value and rate of profit.
[Here the manuscript breaks off.]
We can only imagine what'd happen to him after that... anyways, Engel indeed is a saint for having to deal with Marx's unfinished manuscripts
Yea a saint with a lot of patience, have you saw this? https://hexbear.net/post/3920881 [Page from the original manuscript of The German Ideology]
Yeah... despite knowing his handwriting's reputation, I'm still so shocked... it's the visual version of trying to understand an English dialect... (nevermind his Deutsch idiosyncracies)
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
Congrats to everyone who finished or who participated this year!
There were some bangers, there were some snoozers. All in all it was a good experience, and I sure do have a sense of accomplishment.
Next time around instead of reading alll three cover to cover I think I might pop in with either some relevant modern examples, some data viz type stuff or some translation to modern algebra and spreadsheets, which I think was the hardest part particularly of volumes 2 and 3.
(excuse me if I use an alt)
A few notes from Engels' supplements
By the way Engels, if not Marx, talks about it, capital, for very long time, has existed and has been staying dormant in the medieval times, even up to the 18th century. But then once it did, its effects were swift (years where centuries happen, you could say)
The stock market seems like a good starting point to intro Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism
Yeah, I found this observation interesting indeed, tovarshi, as shown below:
And thus we find here that commodities are sold at their value, on the average, in the domestic retail trade of individual producers with one another, but, for the reasons given, not in international trade as a rule. Quite the opposite of the present-day world, where the production prices hold good in international and wholesale trade, while the formations of prices in urban retail trade is governed by quite other rates of profit.
of course, that's one thing and so forth
But the resulting profit-rate leveling down under industrial-dominated capitalism, and the supplement of stock market as well makes me see your point
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