I’m planning on starting a Marxist book club at my university, but I’m kind of dumb and have trouble understanding stuff, is there some trick I can use to understand more?
I’m planning on starting a Marxist book club at my university, but I’m kind of dumb and have trouble understanding stuff, is there some trick I can use to understand more?
if you’re reading something as big as capital you can also read someone like Cleaver or Harvey, etc, at the same time. They don’t always go in the same chunks or pages as you want to but there are a few guidebooks that match the main chapters and sections
main thing to watch out for is the anti-marxist intros like Singer. they can be useful but you can’t let their criticisms put you off because the criticisms are weak
Who are Cleaver and Harvey, never heard of them before
the first is harry cleaver. he calls himself an Autonomous Marxist. He’s not an ML (Marxist-Leninist). See his website - https://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/
Cleaver wrote a book called 33 Lessons. each lesson explains the corresponding chapter in capital, volume I and what we can learn from it. He wrote the book based on his teaching. he published an updated version in 2019 with Pluto. I’m new to Cleaver so I can tell you he wrote this book but I can’t recommend it as such as I’ve not finished it yet .
The second is david Harvey. he’s also an academic marxist. Not an ML. He also taught capital for years. his lecture series is available on YouTube. he published a written version of his lectures with Verso. There’s a volume one and volume two, corresponding to capital, volume I and II. the one that kind of corresponds more to Capital, volume III is different - it’s called The Limits to Capital.
His website is https://davidharvey.org/about/ . I can recommend Harvey. his work really helped me to learn about marx .
these aren’t the only two who have written guidebooks to Capital but they’ll give you a flavour of what is available