this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
22 points (100.0% liked)

theory

720 readers
1 users here now

A community for in-depth discussion of books, posts that are better suited for !literature@www.hexbear.net will be removed.

The hexbear rules against sectarian posts or comments will be strictly enforced here.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Hop in, comrades, we are reading Capital Volumes I-III this year, and we will every year 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.

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.

Week 9, Apr 16 - Apr 22, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 15 Sections 2-5

About a third of the way through Volume 1. If yoi've stuck this far, it should be relatively easy going from now on.

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: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=AA342398FDEC44DFA0E732357783FD48

(Unsure about the quality of the Reitter translation, I'd love to see some input on it as it's the newest one)

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. Also, please let me know if you spot any errors with the bookmarks so I can fix them!


Resources

(These are not expected reading, these are here to help you if you so choose)


2024 Archived Discussions

If you want to dig back into older discussions, this is an excellent way to do so.

Archives: Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6Week 7Week 8Week 9Week 10Week 11Week 12Week 13Week 14Week 15Week 16Week 17Week 18Week 19Week 20Week 21Week 22Week 23Week 24Week 25Week 26Week 27Week 28Week 29Week 30Week 31Week 32Week 33Week 34Week 35Week 36Week 37Week 38Week 39Week 40Week 41Week 42Week 43Week 44Week 45Week 46Week 47Week 48Week 49Week 50Week 51Week 52


2025 Archived Discussions

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 !genzhou@lemmygrad.ml ) (Note: Seems to be on hiatus for now) which may fit your schedule better. The idea is for the bookclub to repeat annually, so there's always next year.

Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6Week 7Week 8

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] roux@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago (15 children)

Hey odd question incoming.

I started a pet project for my local friend group of leftists where I am trying to take all the major theory texts and sort of ELI5 it for those that wanna learn but do t do well with dry reading. Basically it's geared towards ADHD and other ND leftists.

I did a test run with The Wretched of the Earth but decided to make the inaugural conversion be Das Kapital. Would you be willing to go over it and see if it all checks out once I have it done? I'm using AI to convert it and it's been a few years since I did Das Kapital so an extra set of eyes on it to see if it makes sense would be great.

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Sure, I can check it! Maybe compare it to Nia Frome's An Extremely Condensed Summary of Capital too.

[–] roux@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Of course it's already been done before lol. If this one is better I might just use it instead.

But mine's called "The Very Fucking Short Version" and I love that lol.

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fuck yea, go deeper! Shorter! More condensed!

I'm not even being sarcastic, continuous iterative improvement is critical to the success of Communism. If the ideas reach a new audience by the advancement in Marxist educational tools, you will have played a very valuable role!

[–] roux@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I actually am planning on doing this AI shortened version thing to a lot of what you have in your mega reading list. If it actually gets somewhere I can share them with you.

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That would be great! Would be a nice inclusion, assuming it was hand-edited and affirmed afterwards.

[–] roux@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I just finished Das Kapital but don't have the energy to go through it manually right now lol.

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago
load more comments (8 replies)
load more comments (12 replies)