Reddit reviews Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy (Penguin Classics)

As /u/t8nlink has already suggested but what I think is worth reiterating is using /r/communism101, which will likely become the most important sub to you for learning about socialism and communism.

In my opinion, the best start to Marxian economics is Kapitalism101's Law of Value series on YouTube. These videos are highly accessible, easy to understand, and fun (at least compared to other resources of Marxist knowledge). /u/audiored has linked to Kapitalism101's WordPress blog, which is an essential supplement to the videos.

/u/Moontouch has linked to Richard Wolff's Introduction to Marxism series on YouTube - you should check it out.

You should probably also look over the Welcome to Socialism page on the /r/socialism wiki, as well as the Suggested Readings.

Eventually, you're going to want to read Das Kapital. If you want to read it as a .pdf, here's the link to the marxists.org file, but if you prefer a hard copy, I recommend the Penguin Classics edition. But don't feel at all pressured to read it just yet - it is a very dense work.

If you have any questions, please feel free to shoot me a PM anytime. I'm pretty busy most of the time, but I'll make sure to set some time aside.

In truth, pretty much all of them. Marx's criticisms of capitalism are generally seen by Economists as accurate. His predictions about where it would lead are where things tend to go astray. To belittle Marx because of what you think he said, and ignore all the incredible things he was bang on about, is to reveal yourself as pretty ignorant of his accomplishments and his legacy. Go read a good translation of Das Kapital vols. 1, 2, and 3, get some information from the source, think about it for yourself, then come back here and talk some shit.

SERIOUSLY YOU CAN BUY IT ON AMAZON! 😂😂😂 THIS IS SO FREAKING FUNNY! 😂😂😂 I'M ACTUALLY CRYING RIGHT NOW 😂😂😂

I recommend just jumping into the first volume of Das Kapital. It isn't that bad. In fact, it's quite an enjoyable read (for the most part). The first part of it (roughly 200 pages) is fairly difficult and technical, but after that it becomes much more manageable. In fact you could probably even skip the first part and then go back to it later. In any case, you're going to want to re-read that first part multiple times as time goes on and you see more material. You could even read 2) and 3) in /u/jakehmw's post alongside it, and with those I'd also recommend David Harvey's companion. My own approach was to jump right in to Capital, following Harvey's companion and online lectures, and further consulting the other two books (which I didn't finish until after I finished Capital). I have found this approach very rewarding and not that strenuous. It opened up a lot of different directions that I could choose from depending on my interests.

It took me a summer to get through the first volume and those supplementary books. You just need to make sure to not go down too many rabbit-holes as you read it. Just get it done and you'll get a better idea of where you want to go next, and you'll be better equipped when you go there.

Edit: I recommend this copy of the first volume of Capital and here are Harvey's lectures. You can organize a reading schedule in terms of those lectures: one lecture (and the corresponding reading material) per week, for example.

Good luck and have fun!

>Ah yes, the theory that profits belong to the worker

No, it's a theory that the ultimate source of profit lies in the asymmetry between the value that a worker adds to a product and the value of his wage. It's a descriptive, rather than normative, idea.

>financing, company good will, marketing, sales, product development, all of that just runs itself

Nobody here is claiming that those forms of labor "run themselves." Surplus value is extracted from all kinds of labor and laborers.

>shareholders decide its worth paying a CEO billions

Surplus value has nothing to do with CEOs in particular. It's the mechanism by which capital valorizes itself. Whether the management is being done by a petit-bourgeois owner, by a single manager, or by a team, is utterly irrelevant.

>wiki article that internet teenagers found fascinating

I'm not a teenager. And since Wikipedia is beneath you, here's the original, in HTML and print.

Look up the dictionary definition of something like Marxism and you get this: "The political and economic philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in which the concept of class struggle plays a central role in understanding society's allegedly inevitable development from bourgeois oppression under capitalism to a socialist and ultimately classless society." While obviously that definition contains some of the rudimentary elements of Marxism, by no means can it capture the entire philosophy. So it is too with faith. The dictionary definition contains rudimentary elements that are then expanded upon. I see no intellectual dishonesty here.

The most complete explanation of his ideas is probably Das Kapital, but it has a well-deserved reputation for being particularly difficult to get into. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy also has some good insights into his thoughts while the later Critique of the Gotha Progra has more detail concerning what a communist society might actually look like. If you're looking for a secondary source, Karl Marx's Theory of History is excellent.

There are a couple of good textbooks I am aware of:

The links to Gouverneur's textbook are here

You may also want to check out Wolff's own textbook authored with Stephen Resnick, entitled Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical. (If you want to have a look through it I'm pretty sure the pdf is on Scribd.com) Apparently he is a publishing an updated edition sometime this year, but I am yet to see any details of that happening.

Also, you've probably heard this many times before, but if you want to get into Marxian economics, I highly suggest you start out by purchasing a copy of Vol. 1 of Capital and going through it alongside David Harvey's lecture series which is also invaluable (everyone on /r/socialism probably knows Harvey but i'm not sure if they're all aware of his lectures). ALSO You would probably like to grab A Companion to Marx's Capital - It's probably the most recent and thorough introduction to capital you could ask for and goes great with the lectures if you want more detail.

While I'm on a role here, you would probably benefit from reading The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism, Harvey has a great interpretation of the "GFC" and goes through a great overview of how capital works.

Other than that I highly suggest you watch Kapitalism101's bibliography videos here. I've found his knowledge and extensive bibliography of recommendations of Marxian economics books extremely invaluable.

Yeah, I stopped using youtube videos for my political education a long time ago.

I recommend starting here, at Capital Volume 1.

[here](http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Marx/mrxCpA1.html#Part I, Chapter 1) is book one, and you can find book 2,3 on that site as well. there are also free audiobooks of Capital here. Happy reading and good luck!

Edit: you can find the hard copy on amazon but getting all 3 books are going to cost you around $40 + shipping, but you should be a good Marxist and read them online for free.

Reading the Manifesto of the Communist Party is highly recommended, but it glosses over things which at Marx's time were a living thing: The Paris Commune, for example. The memory was still fresh back then, that the French aristocracy denied Democracy with a bloodbath. There are subtleties a first reader cannot understand without a historical context.

The Defining moment for Marxism is Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx. You can also find it as PDF for free on Marxists Internet Archive.

If you are serious about reading Volume 1, you will need David Harvey's "A Companion to Marx's Capital". Also David Harvey has been teaching an introductory course on Marxism for the past 20 years at CUNY. He has released the videos of the lectures (playlist) . Harvey says so himself, by the way, but let me emphasize this myself: you have to stick with the book a bit. It is kinda typical British of its time: The problem is that the language is very, how do I describe it? Very late 19th Century, and even people back then had issues with it, cuz Marx basically invented the idea of critiquing economic systems.

If you want a small introduction to Marxism, Harvey's RSA talk on the "Crises of Capitalism" is very approachable, entertaining and very short (11 minutes long). Generally speaking anything by David Harvey is going to be extremely approachable, even to a reader with no previous engagement with Marxism or the Left.

Also, you can try Dr. Richard Wolff: Marxism 101: How Capitalism is Killing Itself . He is approachable, but he is definitely more academic. Nothing difficult, a term here and there; if you don't understand something write it down and look it up later. Also here is his talk on "Socialism For Dummies" (part1, part2)

By the way, Marx was one of the most prolific philosophers of the 19th century. You do not have to read everything he wrote.

If you want to see something more about modern Marxism thought, there is also the Slovenian Marxist philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek. You can give it a go with this one of his lectures. Here is his RSA lecture, very approachable and funny and serious at the same time.

Feel free to DM any questions!

PS: I suggest that you do not go to most of the Left subreddits with questions or hoping to learn anything. They are mostly identity politics and sectarian cancer. Props to Chapo Trap House: Bend those knees!

EditEdit: The Grundrisse is another seminal piece of work for Marx. I would recommend it after you have finished Volume I.

There are a couple of 'strands' of Marx's thought which you might investigate. I can't comment too much on shorter introductions to the philosophical side, as I'm more familiar with (and interested in, for the moment) works the economic side. For this, I can recommend the following:

• A Short History of Socialist Economic Thought by Gerd Hardack, Dieter Karras, Ben Fine. It's all in the title :)
  
• David Harvey's excellent A Companion to Marx's Capital. This certainly isn't a short book, but Harvey is a terrific writer, and so the time flies. I would also point to and highly recommend the series of lectures on which this book is based. Of course, the lectures are hardly an exercise in brevity, but they are very good and worthwhile.
  
• Ernest Mandel's An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory is good. Read it online here. Any Mandel is very good. He is an incredible clear author, and he really knows Marxist thought inside out. For instance, I would also recommend Ernest Mandel's introduction to the Penguin edition of Capital (the introduction is a bit shorter than the whole book of Mandels that I've mentioned above) very nicely summarises the context of his economic thought, and gives an overview thereof.
  
• Yannis Varoufakis (the former finance minister of Greece) wrote a fantastic, more general introduction to economics and economic theory called Foundations of Economics: A beginner’s companion. While Varoufakis deals with economics as a whole, and discusses, for instance, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, this serves to very well position Marx within the economic milieu of his time. This is a recurring theme for a reason: to understand Marx, I believe that it's imperative to understand what drove Marx to ruthlessly critique capitalism.
  
• Finally, I'm not trying to be glib or conceited by suggesting The Marx-Engles Reader (2nd ed.), edited by Robert C. Tucker. This is the book that I used to start studying seriously the thought of Marx and Engels, after reading Singer's introduction. I recommend the book because it has (again) a wonderful introduction, the works that are presented are quite short, and each work has a solid introduction. This is a very good volume for seeing the trajectory and evolution of Marx and Engels's economic thought without having to dive into the larger works. The book even has a very heavily reduced version of Capital vol. I. This book also deals with the philosophy of Marx more heavily than the other works I've recommended here, as it contains a number of earlier philosophical works (including the Grundisse, which is practically the philosophical sister to Capital).
  
  I hope these will be useful, even if they aren't necessarily the aspect of Marx that you are most interested in.
  
  Edit: I should state that I am a philosopher of language, and so one doesn't need any especial economics expertise to dive into the texts that I've recommended! I certainly knew very little about the field before I read these texts.

Capital, Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx

I recommend the Penguin Classics edition, since it's widely available and unabridged. Check the link above.

Also, for a general overview of the text, see the book's Wikipedia page.

i bought the penguin versions of volume 1, 2, and 3 on amazon. volume 1 is the ben fowkes translation and 2 and 3 we're translated by david fernbach. it looks like that review is for an old version of the book. this version on amazon should be the ben fowkes translation of volume 1. that review is a couple years old too and i think that most online retailers carry the ben fowkes version now.

https://www.amazon.com/Regulating-Poor-Functions-Public-Welfare/dp/0679745165

Still the most cogent and definitive answer to the question you raise. Well, that and maybe this one too.

https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Critique-Political-Economy-Classics/dp/0140445684

You said it. Perhaps the bourgeoisie scum that leverage monopolies over the means of production to steal surplus labor from the workers should be overthrown in a revolutionary struggle.