Discussion on Engels' "Origin of the Family…" is now done. Our "Introduction to Marxism" reading list is now almost complete. This means that our next reading is Capital Volume One. So if you're thinking about joining the group, this would be the right moment, as we'll be busy reading Capital for quite a few weeks. We'll be starting with just Chapter 1 for now, as it is longer and denser than subsequent chapters. We will be tackling more chapters per week after this one.
As per recommendation from the people over at the Capital Reading Group (>>3745), we will be reading the Penguin Classics edition, translated by Ben Fowkes, with a preface/introduction by Ernest Mandel.
To accompany our reading of Capital, we have provided a few related resources on our site. These sum up to quite a lot, so there's no need to read everything. These are "optional" readings, as we won't be discussing them directly, but they might come in handy or get brought up during discussion of Capital. These resources are:
>Ernest Mandel's "Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory"This one gets recommended on this site pretty often. We have included it here for those who would like to brush up on their political economy before actually getting into Capital. We don't consider this to be necessary, though.
>Althusser's preface to CapitalAlthusser's preface includes a series of tips and suggestions to readers of Capital. He bases these on what he considers to be the three approaches people might have to the book, and gives each according recommendations. NOTE: We will not be following his recommendation of skipping Chapter 1.
>Carlo Cafiero's "Summary of Capital"An old summary of Capital by italian communist Carlo Cafiero. It's a fairly complete yet succint summmary, from what we know. Only about 50 pages long. This was recommended to us by our /GET/ comrades.
>Mita Sekisuke's "Method of Capital"We found this on marxists.org and thought it was pretty neat. It's a japanese marxist explaining Capital as a work of logic, and its underlying methodology. Fairly short read, recommended.
All of these can be found on
https://leftyread.neocities.org/library/marx/capital-vol-1.html