Man, sorry I’ve been offline til Friday, I was told we would get power back much sooner. I hope you have all just been reading independently, sorry for not providing a good place to discuss.
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 20 hours to catch up to where the group is. Use the archives below to help you. There is another reading group on a different schedule at https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzhou (federated at [email protected] ) which may fit your schedule better.
Archives: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 – Week 4 – Week 5 – Week 6 – Week 7 – Week 8 – Week 9
Week 10, March 4-10, we are reading Chapter 15 sections 6,7, and 8, from Volume 1
In other words, aim to reach the heading ‘The Health and Education Clauses of the Factory Acts. The General Extension of Factory legislation in England’ 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/
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I over read a little, but anyways. This one part from sect 7 sounds like the beginning of imperialism. like not yet imperialism but like at least the foundations for it? But I think of it since this part makes me think of like the export of capitalism and the slow division of the world due to colonization.
spoiler
On the other hand, the cheapness of the articles produced by machinery, and the improved means of transport and communication furnish the weapons for conquering foreign markets. By ruining handicraft production in other countries, machinery forcibly converts them into fields for the supply of its raw material. In this way East India was compelled to produce cotton, wool, hemp, jute, and indigo for Great Britain. [152] By constantly making a part of the hands “supernumerary,” modern industry, in all countries where it has taken root, gives a spur to emigration and to the colonisation of foreign lands, which are thereby converted into settlements for growing the raw material of the mother country; just as Australia, for example, was converted into a colony for growing wool. [153] A new and international division of labour, a division suited to the requirements of the chief centres of modern industry springs up, and converts one part of the globe into a chiefly agricultural field of production, for supplying the other part which remains a chiefly industrial field. This revolution hangs together with radical changes in agriculture which we need not here further inquire into. [154]
- Mechanize production
- Fuck. What do I do with these out-of -work laborers.
- I’ll just build a bigger factory
- Fuck. I’m out of raw materials and my goods are now really cheap.
- Let’s go ruin a foreign economy.
Almost caught up, hoping to spend most of my day off tomorrow reading capital, hopefully I’ll be able to join back in on the discussion soon.
[A]t the same time, constant changes take place in the sex […] of the industrial conscripts. [Fowkes p. 583]
Damn, industrialized forced femming confirmed?
Aha! I guessed correctly! Welcome back comrade, I was getting worried for you.
Just popping in to say the Marx Madness series on Capital vol 1 is really good too.
It’s dispiriting to hear what could be a modern-day account of how the community of any company town is destined to eventually be hollowed out and discarded whenever new innovations in process and automation transform the industry. This isn’t just a treatise on the woes of 19th century weavers: Karl is describing the labor struggle of today.
I think what’s striking me most about my read-through is how much I don’t care about the particular theoretical objections people have about specifics about LVT or the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. I feel like errors in the framework don’t actually change most of the conclusions all that much.
