Good work so far, crew. We are approaching being ⅓ of the way through Vol.1 and ⅛ of the way through the 3-volume work; we'll cross those marks this week.
Last week we looked at the political struggle between labour and capital, how it played out in real life. We saw how abstract principles of economics lead to lung problems in children.
Don't forget that this is a club: it is a shared activity, it's not only reading, it's something we do together to also build camaraderie. So engage in the comments.
The overall plan is to read Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year. (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? It'll take you about 13 hours to catch up to where the group is. Use the archives below to help you.
Archives: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 – Week 4 – Week 5 – Week 6
Week 7, Feb 12-18, we are reading from Volume 1: all of Chapters 11, 12, and 13, and then the first 2 sections of Chapter 14
In other words, aim to reach the heading 'The Two Fundamental Forms of Manufacture: Heterogeneous Manufacture, Serial Manufacture' by Sunday
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: http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=9C4A100BD61BB2DB9BE26773E4DBC5D
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.
Audiobook of Ben Fowkes translation, American accent, male, links are to alternative invidious instances: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9
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/
Yeah, and Marx was also following the American Civil War while it was happening, and was a big supporter of the Union over the Confederacy (obviously). Marx even wrote a letter to Lincoln, although Lincoln left him on read: https://jacobin.com/2012/08/lincoln-and-marx
Also, here's a good video on Darwinism, Marxism, and their contradictions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfYvLlbXj_8
Marx and Darwin are also known to have exchanged at least one pair of letters when Marx sent Darwin a copy of Capital volume 1.
Marx thought highly of Darwin's theory although wasn't entirely uncritical. Darwin was, truth be told, a bourgeois scientist with his own limitations. It is not known whether Darwin ever opened Capital, but it's unlikely.
Engels, for his part, had some interesting thoughts on Darwin.
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Those were really interesting to read, thanks! I really like that letter to Lavrov from Engels. I really liked Engels fourth point/observations in that letter. and going to that entire letter. It kind of reminds me of like that base/superstructure stuff? and the like "struggle for existence" is kind of like that manifestation of the base of capitalism into the superstructure?
I'm glad you found that Engels letter interesting too! I discovered it while looking up the Darwin letter for that comment. It gave me a lot to think about too. Especially since my background is in the natural sciences, I never heard that kind of critique of Darwin.
#4 in the letter echos a lot of what Marx wrote. For example Marx's 10th thesis on Feuerbach: "The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity." (By civil society, Marx means bourgeois or capitalist society.) The common thread of all of Marx's work is the scientific study of humanity. This means grasping the "differentia specifica" (to quote footnote 33 in chapter 1 of Capital) of the major epochs of human history, as differentiated by the actual mode of existence of each epoch — mode of existence, for humans, being determined by mode of production, like Engels says. In addition to understanding the historical specificity of social laws e.g. the law of value, it is important also to understand those things which differentiate humans from animals. In all, this letter is great for summarizing a lot of these ideas of Marx and Engels and later socialists.
Kind of similar to this letter is Marx's July 1868 letter to Dr. Kugelmann, which I have posted in the past. It also discusses human history in this sort of abstract materialist way.
A small note on Engels' point #1: the term "one-sided" is a term also used by Marx in various places, having roots in the Hegelian dialectic and its attempt to eliminate one-sidedness in thought, by contemplating concepts from many sides based on their immanent characteristics. That is what Marx does in Capital, and since it is a general attitude of thinking (much like science is also an attitude) it is no wonder that Engels catches this one-sidedness in the early apprehension of Darwin's theory in Malthusian, Hobbesian, generally bourgeois interpretations of Darwin's work.
Finally, if you liked this letter, then you would probably like Marx's The German Ideology (for which the Theses on Feuerbach were preparatory notes) or Engels' Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
That vid was pretty interesting, and the bookclub has read more than Darwin. Also doesn’t Marx dunk a lot on Malthus?
In a way like, besides colonialism, it seems like I dunno “proto fascism” can also be seen around like that time? Besides like Malthus, social darwinists, eugenicists, there was also like nietzsche to who gets describe as a proto fascist as well? Who was also alive at that time, except a little later I think?
Also that vid reminded me of like the tragedy of commons being taught in like biology classes, but meanwhile like it is a myth and debunked a lot.
Marx did not live long enough to see the rise of fascism, but he did see and speak out against colonialism. And as the Aimé Césaire quote goes, "fascism is colonialism turned inward." There was a great article recently about Marx and colonialism, "Karl Marx Supported Arab Liberation," about how Marx lived in French Algeria and sympathized with the Arab resistance against French oppression: https://jacobin.com/2024/01/karl-marx-colonialism-algeria-egypt
Thanks and that was a really interesting read. I never knew of Marx visiting French Algeria.
Both Kropotkin and Marx took inspiration from, and had ruthless critique of, Darwin and especially social Darwinism. Marx having also drawn on some of Kropotkin's writing on evolution and human nature.
Marx drawn on some of Kropotkin stuff? and doesn't Kropotkin like really critique Darwin and those social darwinist in his Mutual Aid book along with like, the idea of the struggle for survival?
yes and that was the part of Kropotkin's critique that Marx drew on. Kropotkin was a prince and a curious boy and later a curious man. He had the privilege of studying many subjects from evolution and zoology to social sciences, and came to the conclusion that this practice of enslavement of our fellow man by chattel or by wage labour and coercion was an aberration.
Marx came along and altered this hypothesis, adding the dialectical approach to this work and incorporating his analysis of many other works like Wealth of Nations, to say that this was not an aberration, but in fact, a natural product of prior material conditions.
It is from here that people like Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, begin to develop Marxism as a science that can not only be used to examine the past and determine what is to be done in the present, but advances to become an an actual science that can be used to make broad assumptions about the probability of future events.
thanks! and I never knew much of that with like Kropotkin and Marx.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: