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user-inactivated  ·  2656 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Two Quick Reads I Wish I'd Read Before Jumping Into Capital

So, coming back to this, I've found a few barriers to entry on my attempt:

1) It is an older work. His writing style takes a lot of getting used to. The Moore translation compounds this.

2) His writing styles take a lot of getting used to. He flips around from playful prose to long winded and exacting accounts of commodity exchanges.

3) You can tell you're reading a translation. Neither the Moore or Fowkes translations are bad, but there are areas where you can tell they had... difficulties. Fowkes' version has the original words in brackets when you get to bits he felt couldn't fully be rendered in English.

4) Marx wrote for an audience that would have brought knowledge of ideas/thinkers that he was manipulating to the book. Meanwhile, world has iterated and moved on.

5) Material dialectics is fucking weird at the outset. I should probably follow bfv's advice and read Hegel.

6) When Penguin converted the work to an ebook, I'm guessing they didn't actually look at the resulting files.

From the preview on the google Play store:

    Use-values are only realized [ verwirklicht ] in use of in considered here they are also the material bearers [ Träger ] of… exchange-value.

The hard copy passage?

    Use-values are only realized [ verwirklicht ] in use or in consumption. They constitute the material content of wealth, whatever its social form may be. In the form of society to be considered here they are also the material bearers [ Träger ] of ... exchange-value.

The book is difficult enough without farther obfuscation.