It's as good a place as any to look for some

hello Oppo. Have a good week!

the first is harry cleaver. he calls himself an Autonomous Marxist. He's not an ML (Marxist-Leninist). See his website - https://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/

Cleaver wrote a book called 33 Lessons. each lesson explains the corresponding chapter in capital, volume I and what we can learn from it. He wrote the book based on his teaching. he published an updated version in 2019 with Pluto. I'm new to Cleaver so I can tell you he wrote this book but I can't recommend it as such as I've not finished it yet .

The second is david Harvey. he's also an academic marxist. Not an ML. He also taught capital for years. his lecture series is available on YouTube. he published a written version of his lectures with Verso. There's a volume one and volume two, corresponding to capital, volume I and II. the one that kind of corresponds more to Capital, volume III is different - it's called The Limits to Capital.

His website is https://davidharvey.org/about/ . I can recommend Harvey. his work really helped me to learn about marx .

these aren't the only two who have written guidebooks to Capital but they'll give you a flavour of what is available

when you read sci fi and fantasy they say you have to suspend your disbelief, pretending that the world is real so the speculative elements don't put you off. otherwise the character gets to the other planet and you turn off the show because humans haven't visited other planets yet

I was thinking about how that idea might apply to marx .

Marxists imo have the most accurate explanation for reality. but most people come to marx with very different ideas, based on a bourgeois framework

to get the most out of Marx, we have to make sure of two things. 1. that we don't let our previous knowledge put us off or send us down too many dead ends. 2. that we do not turn off our critical thinking

To achieve this, we have to suspend our pre-reading-marx beliefs, for example about how the economy works and what it means to say something is 'good for the economy'. let the new knowledge in with an open mind. and suspend our beliefs about what is wrong with marx - marx made mistakes and his work has some holes that others had to fill in . We each need to think of our own criticisms - the ruthless criticism of all that exists is part of the marxist method. we need to apply that method to marx etc themselves. to achieve that, we need to kind of 'start again' by forgetting some of what we know (or think we know).

later on it could be a good idea to quickly look through For Marx by Althusser. this will give a good idea about how much someone can get out of Theses on Feuerbach if they study it carefully and research around the topics.

if you're reading something as big as capital you can also read someone like Cleaver or Harvey, etc, at the same time. They don't always go in the same chunks or pages as you want to but there are a few guidebooks that match the main chapters and sections

main thing to watch out for is the anti-marxist intros like Singer. they can be useful but you can't let their criticisms put you off because the criticisms are weak

this seems true if others are looking to op for the answers. there's still value in encouraging people to read marx even if people are a little bit wrong. correct understanding will come later. It takes time. i did my first book club with an established marxist and their 'correct' explanations often went over my head. I think the key thing is setting everyone's expectations.

if it's a party and the person in charge of educating the recruits doesn't know their stuff, that might be different

is there some trick I can use to understand more?

start a book club lol

Serious take: be humble, honest, and treat this as the opportunity to learn more. Knowledge is dialectical. coming to an understanding through discussion with other people will do often speed up the learning process.

explain and see the club as a chance to learn about marx and marxism from the horse's mouth. the idea is to suspend your beliefs for long enough to know whether there is anything marx and company said that is worth listening to, and why. still be critical.

This is how I did my first one. I had no intention of being a marxist. I thought it was important enough to need to know. i didn't know that if you read marx or marxists this way, you inevitably become one.

if you only did book clubs of materials that you already had fully informed opinions about, the others might ask if this is a book club or a lecture series. don't worry about not knowing everything. You will understand something that the other members didn't understand and they will get something that you didn't. you learn together and by asking each other questions. don't forget to look at the passages again after the session. You will probably find that this is when things pop as you notice details that others highlighted

there are tricks for increasing understanding. Don't be afraid to re-read difficult passages. Don't be afraid to skip over incomprehensible passages - come back to them later and many of them will make more sense without much more effort because you know what's coming up. Ask questions as you read, like

• what is marx arguing?
• who is marx arguing with - what to they say?
• why is marx saying this - what is the main argument?
• what is marx just explaining - what is he adding to what people already knew?
• if you don't understand a word or concept, you can try five things - 1. keep reading to see if the context makes things clearer 2. search the whole text for the same word because usage in another sentence might make it clearer 3. search the internet or marxists.org or their glossary for a description 4. make a note and come back to it later, trying one of the above three things 5. forget about it - if it's important you will come across it again and the new context might make the meaning pop without effort.

hello everyone, nice to meet you all

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