Can you recommend a good revision of Das Capital that is not so tedious?
- This topic has 6 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 10 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
If it’s the first three chapters where Marx explains the labour theory of value that you find tedious (and parts are difficult), read this guide on this site to his 1865 talk to English trade unionists later published as the pamphlet Value, Price and Profit where he explains this is more simple terms. Then return to chapter fIV rom when on Capital is more descriptive and historical as well as theoretical.
Good shortened versions are:
The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx by Karl Kautsky (which sticks closely to the arrangement of Capital.
Economics for Beginners by John Keracher.
Marx’s Capital by Ben Fine, a more modern one, reviewed here.
As an introduction, these short Youtube videos could be worth a watch, along with the other written articles on the website:
https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/law-of-value-the-series/
Goes into more than “Das Kapital” territory, and probably can’t be described as concise, but I found this series of lectures on Marx useful:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh1_dJaBHMMaceTU6V-cvoQ/videos
It is much better to read the original source. Das Capital is a scientific research and it is going to be a little difficult at the beginning, but then, after the first chapters it becomes easier. Like Hegel said: We must go thru the pain and the suffering in order to obtain knowledge
The best easily readable resume of the opening chapters of das capital in my opinion was in the opening chapters the Paul Sweezy book.
The Theory of Capitalist Development.
Where he just lays the groundwork before expanding on the ‘subject’.
Irrespective of where he goes with it later.
I thought the Kautsky thing was OK as well.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/economic/ch01.htm
There was also the first das capital for dummies by Deville which I transcribed from the French to English translation.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/deville/1883/peoples-marx/index.htm
although that maybe isn’t the easiest of reads either.
there are several difficulties.
The major one is that people think the opening chapter is about capitalism when it is not.
It starts with, private labour or the “self employed”, something later on referred to as simple commodity production
Eg artisans and small peasant farmers etc
eg from Kautsky.
…..until commodity production became production carried on by private individuals working independently of each other, and owning the means of production and the products of their labour as private property. What we design to make clear is that commodity…..
https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/economic/ch01.htm
and from Engels.
……….This makes clear, of course, why in the beginning of his first book Marx proceeds from the simple production of commodities as the historical premise, ultimately to arrive from this basis to capital — why he proceeds from the simple commodity instead of a logically and historically secondary form — from an already capitalistically modified commodity. To be sure, Fireman positively fails to see this…..
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/pref.htm
in fact wages are mentioned once in the opening chapter thus!
<ol start=”15″> - The reader must note that we are not speaking here of the wages or value that the labourer gets for a given labour time, but of the value of the commodity in which that labour time is materialised. Wages is a category that, as yet, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm