We are 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.

I’ll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested.

Week 1, Jan 1-7, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 1 ‘The Commodity’

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.

Resources

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

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  • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4·
    11 months ago

    So in Capital, use value is more properly understood as the qualitative description of a commodity, like “red” or “nutritious”.

    Yes, I agree with this. I think one of the reasons Marx separates Use Value and Exchange Value is to examine the basic “atom” of the economy - the commodity - through two different lenses, the qualitative and quantitative lenses. Use Value is a qualitative way of looking at a commodity, and Exchange Value is a quantitative way of looking at it. And Marx is asking us, as readers, to consider the Use Value, Exchange Value, and the actual price we pay for the commodities we use in our everyday lives, to try to get us to examine the world around us in a more critical way.