Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
and
Value, Price and Profit, from which I've quoted most of the preface below:
- In a partial sense the present volume is an epitome of the first volume of Capital. More than one of us have attempted to analyze and simplify that volume, with not too much success perhaps. In fact, a witty friend and commentator has suggested that what is now required is an explanation by Marx of our explanations of him. I am often asked what is the best succession of books for the student to acquire the fundamental principles of Socialism. The question is a difficult one to answer. But, by way of suggestion, one might say, first, Engels' Socialism, Scientific And Utopian, then the present work, the first volume of Capital, and the Student's Marx.
Edward Aveling
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific does a decent job of introducing you to how Marx is going to make his argument, and Value, Price and Profit does similar with showing what that argument will be.
Read Adam Smith's On the Wealth of Nations Marx cites his reading of Smith's philosophy as an influence. Among other things, Smith advocates for a progressive taxation system, national primary education, national health care and worker rights. There are things in Nations that are down right socialist. But just like the Bible, everyone knows the books but nobody reads the damn thing.
fuckin' amen.But just like the Bible, everyone knows the books but nobody reads the damn thing.
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: The hard copy passage? The book is difficult enough without farther obfuscation.Use-values are only realized [ verwirklicht ] in use of in considered here they are also the material bearers [ Träger ] of… exchange-value.
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 critique I'm most familiar with is Richard Pipes, a Reagan-era Cold War hawk suggested to me by b_b. Pipes' academic career was made arguing that communism is a failure in the middle of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan so to call him biased is like calling Duterte corrupt. That said: Pipes argues that the writing style is incoherent, not old-fashioned. Das Kapital isn't that old a book - Wealth of Nations is a hundred years older economists can quote that one like it was Richard Lewis. Pipes goes further and argues that the work is so incoherent that people took what they wanted from it and ignored the rest on the assumption that since Lenin and Stalin got something out of it, it must be good. But Pipes doesn't even refer to Soviet-style communism as communism - he calls it Marxism/Leninism. That probably doesn't help the translation. It'd be one thing if you could follow a narrative thread and pick translation words that buttress that thread. What I've read of Das Kapital whipsaws back and forth worse than the Unibomber Manifesto. Compare and contrast: vs. those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced" countries. There are books that are famous because they are good. And there are books that are famous because of what they did. Das Kapital and Mein Kampff (and, I would argue, Nietzsche's ouvre) are the latter.The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”[1] its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity. A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference. Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production.
The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster
for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."There are books that are famous because they are good. And there are books that are famous because of what they did. Das Kapital and Mein Kampff (and, I would argue, Nietzsche's ouvre) are the latter.
Yeah. Three times I've tried Nietszche. Three times I've grabbed the overhead handles like two chapters in. He is probably the philosopher I would least like to have a beer with. It's like you can see the flecks of spittle starting to fly as you get past the intro and then when you flip to the back it's the stone cold ravings of a madman.
I've read Das Capital, two translations, one UK and one US English. Yea they are slightly different. I've also read Dianetics. I also studied the bible in a Jesuit school. (The Jesuits also made us read Das Capital, where I first read it, to pull the Christian themes out of the work.) Capital has a few nuggets of good info around justifications and sidesteps into the weeds. It is almost like reading Atlas Shrugged; there is a good point in there somewhere wrapped around nuttery and literary masterbation.