this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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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 23, July 23 - July 29, Volume 2 Chapters 11-14

Enter the physiocrats, and Adam Smith!

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)


2024 Archived Discussions

If you want to dig back into older discussions, this is an excellent way to do so.

Archives: Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6Week 7Week 8Week 9Week 10Week 11Week 12Week 13Week 14Week 15Week 16Week 17Week 18Week 19Week 20Week 21Week 22Week 23Week 24Week 25Week 26Week 27Week 28Week 29Week 30Week 31Week 32Week 33Week 34Week 35Week 36Week 37Week 38Week 39Week 40Week 41Week 42Week 43Week 44Week 45Week 46Week 47Week 48Week 49Week 50Week 51Week 52


2025 Archived Discussions

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 ) (Note: Seems to be on hiatus for now) 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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[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 8 points 2 weeks ago
[–] Sasuke@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Just chiming in to say that I've found Harvey's lectures very helpful for understanding vol 2. Maybe something worth adding to our resource section?

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Good idea! I'll look at adding them.

[–] Sasuke@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Adding some resources that's audio and/or video based would probably be helpful in general. I did manage to finish my reading of vol 2 last year, but I struggled so much in certain parts that it left me discouraged to start vol 3. Watching Harvey breakdown some of the more difficult concepts has made it less daunting (+ I feel very validated when we've highlighted the same passages lol). Also, if you treat them like "real" lectures - as in, you do the reading and then watch them while taking notes - you'll be forced to work through the theory more actively and through different mediums (which is also supposed to be beneficial for learning).

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago

Yep, definitely taking that into consideration. Volume 2 is hitting me hard, especially when keeping up with real life obligations and taking notes along the way.

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago

Not much to say other than it's fun to explore other economists and watch Marx take them down, haha.