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 1, January 4 - January 11, Volume 1 Chapter 1 ‘The Commodity’

This is the very first bookclub post, so get to know each other, ask questions about the basic premise, just keep mostly on-topic. This didn’t start on January 1st because I want it to start and end on the weekend. @'ing everyone mid-Thursday probably wouldn’t have gotten very many readers.

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.

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)


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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 ) which may fit your schedule better. The idea is for the bookclub to repeat annually, so there’s always next year.

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  • Blockocheese [any]@hexbear.net
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    1 month ago

    Back at it again, still on chapter 1 lol

    Is the natural form a commodity just what it is when its not being considered in relation to another commodity? Like its use value

    Ans then the value form is what its worth in relation to another commodity?

    What is the bearer of value? Is it the physical representation of the value form of another object? Like the coat as the bearer of valye for the linen because for this part we were trying to find the value of linen

    @Cowbee@hexbear.net did I understand things this time scared

    • Cowbee [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netM
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      1 month ago

      The “natural form” is the physicsl commodity in particular, ie a football, while the “value form” is the commodity in context of all other commodities, ie the football as an exchange-value. So you got it right!

      As for the “bearer of value,” I’m not sure what you mean by this, it could be a difference in translation. All commodities bear their own value, but this value is made up of the labor to produce it, combined with the previous labor to create its raw materials, process them, and the amount of tool usage used up in the process.

      I think you’re talking about how 1 coat is equal to x yards of linen, just like a car is work x number of playstations. Money will become the universal exchanger soon, but Marx is trying to show that exchange-value is something that only exists in context with other commodities.