Format
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Reading Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year. This will repeat yearly 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.
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I’ll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested. Discuss the week’s reading in the comments.
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Use any translation/edition you like.
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
Week 1, Jan 1-7, Volume 1, Chapter 1 ‘The Commodity’
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Let me know if you would like to be removed from the notification list or added to it.
Will each week be in this post under a parent comment like this? Or is this whole post Week 1, next week will have a Week 2 post, etc?
Discuss under the parent comment.
That’s the current plan. Is there a reason I haven’t thought of not to do it this way?
PS: See below. I’ll make threads for each chapter
I think it can work both ways. I haven’t done a bookclub through a forum like this before so idk what the norm would be. Weekly megathreads seem to usually have their own post, which to me makes sense firstly as a way to weekly advertise the club on the front page, secondly as a way to silo off the old threads if desired by locking them. As well, having everyone post under a parent comment seems prone to user error if people don’t follow the rule instinctively.
That said, it’s a small club and I don’t think it is a big deal which direction is chosen.
Oh shit oh god what have I commited to
maybe I’m just slow, but reading and comprehending an arbitrary six-page sequence of Capital in ten minutes sounds very optimistic
It is, but to the folks who may have trouble comprehending everything on the first pass (I expect to be one!), it may help to at least read it all so you have the basics in your head, then count on the discussions to help the rest fall into place. That’s been my experience with reading groups.
Is the plan to discuss here or will we open a discussion thread on the 7th or so?
Actually I have changed my mind. It will be cleaner and people will get less lost if I make a thread for each chunk.
marxists.org is an excellent place to read this for free. They even offer it in various formats including ePub, which you can read on your e-reader including Kindles. I much prefer using my e-reader so I can easily save highlights (lots of goodies in Capital).
There are occasional typos — I have had success getting these corrected by emailing this legend
Additional resource: List of ePub files of Marx & Engels authorship
