How many of you actually have read and understood Karl Marx works...

How many of you actually have read and understood Karl Marx works, and not popular "young Marx" but actually meaningful later works like "Capital" and "Fundamentals of Political Economy Criticism"?

This should be studied in this way:

But in reality is studied in this way:

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plos suggest book about french revolution and the following events that are covered in 18 brumaire.

post pdfs

First you must ask: Why do you want to learn these? That is crucial. Asking and stimulating this question, critically and incessantly will lead you to the knowledge you seek -so long as you don't cut it short. If you answer your own question with "Because I want freedom, because i want a just, moral world" then you are cutting the process of knowledge-acquisition short by reducing it to uncritically held premises.

To begin: Begin with the ruthless criticism of everything and anything and hold every single thing to questioning. Including yourself.

Now we must ask: What it is about them, drawing from the first question, that you would like to know? Neutral knowledge isn't possible. You must relate these ideas even to your life and yourself, spiritually - what they mean at that level. Continuing to do this will lead you to the knowledge you seek.

Introducing Communism today is difficult. The meaning of works in relation to their time do not automatically register the same meaning today when they are read. The true and essential meaning must be translated to make sense given our ideological, etc. predicimant.

I would say read and struggle to understand Zizek: I recommend as an intro 'In Defence of Lost Causes' or 'Living in the End Times', both are easy reads. You will not understand everything at first. Nor can you be expected to. But the key is to keep on moving. To keep struggling.

Do not EVER cease thinking critically. If you do not understand something, isolate what specifically about that something you do not understand and hold yourself to it: do not assume the author is confused like you are.

If I understood this when I first began reading Marx, I would have saved myself a lot of time.

I have been a Marxist for over five years. And the true, full meaning of Principles of Communism I have only recently grasped.

There is a key ingredient you're missing in your recommendations, and it's relavence. When those texts came out, the language they used in its full, substantive meaning, the 'spark' certain words had, were entirely different than today.

Diving head in to classical Marxism is a catastrophe. They can only be fully understood retrosprectively or they won't maie sense, and their relavency won't be grasped (and if it is, only superifically).

Sorry to say but there is no easy guide to the meaning of socialism today, because there exists no meaningful socialist discourse. When Engels wrote Principles of Communism, he and Marx had already gotten a lot of shit together. We haven't yet. I don't even think Zizek had completed this proceds: Until we start engaging cybernetics, do what Marx as a newtonian for a critique of political economy, with quantum mechanics, until we are able to in a materialist fashion fully critique the entire world as it is, Marxism will remain a perverse, outdated school that never completes itself and remains confined to a single layer of life (industrial capitalism) long subsumed. I just want to point out how naive it is to think there is some easy introduction to socialism. There isn't.

Finally, appealing to current levels of understanding will disallow individuals to learn, which includes huge epistemological shifts in the process. When I first read the two books in question, I didn't fully understand them. But I kept TRYING to understand and eventually I got it. Learning must be a struggle or there will be no learning. The two texts are very good introductions to the present.

So it’s a religion? You can’t understand God’s wisdom until you feel the spirit.

The fuck are you talking about?

Capital isn’t hard to read; I t’s just long and it’s a bit of a slog because it’s a dry scientific analysis. I read it with the same dispassionate interest that I read school textbooks. I actually quite like Marx because he’s a lot more straightforward in his economic theory than most of his descendants. His social theory certainly requires some context in order to be understood properly, but even then, it doesn’t take exceptionally long to uncover the meaning behind it. He’s also a delightful read because the more you take in from his influences and the history surrounding him, the more enlightening his material becomes. It’s like a detective hunt. Sure, it takes a while, but for patient people like myself, it’s certainly worth it.

I don't want a just, moral world, more I perceive justice or moral values as fiction. I see my live, employment and live goals, under this social organisation, are meningless, and only one way for me to consciously react to this social situation is to change it instead of submitting into it. It's just life: rejection of constraints appied to me when they're visible and evident, desire for development. understanding reality and being aware of it: how the world works, how to change it, instead of thinking and analyzing, how to start and finish a change process.

Dude, just read Capital lmao

I absolutely disagree.

Capital is a single work of Marx that is inadvisable to read. It contains, to a large degree, analysis of 19th century economic situation, that is both burdensome and completely obsolete, and the Labour theory of value, which is not the brightest part of his work. Thus, it would only discourage a first time reader from getting into Marx' works. Instead, there are several digests that allow to get important concepts of Capital, such as The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx by Karl Kautsky. marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/economic/index.htm

Projecting?


lol no just read capital, even if it is just chapter 1 of volume 1 it is a much better place to start than wl&c / vp&p or other early marx

also this

Precisely my point. I'm not saying you shouldn't read Capital. But it is a terrible place to start, and terrible to advise people to start.

...

Capital is the best, because:
1) it is most anti-Soviet book I even read
2) it clarifies most of problematic modern questions (like claims about bourgeois theory of value being better than marxist based on straw man argument) that are still being discussed pointlessly

You got it all wrong, OP. If your goal is to create good Marxists the order should really be:
After that the person will likely be able to tackle most of the tricky bits of Marx and they'll be able to see through a lot of the pseudo-Marxist bullshit out there. So called "orthodox Marxists" are easily the biggest stumbling block people who want to study Marx run into. "Orthodox Marxism" shuts down all independent thought in favor of a shallow, incoherent dogmatism. Avoid it like the plague.

I read capital volume 1 as well as all of those short phamplets like wage labor and capital and the communist manifesto. I'm working on the german ideology and the grundrisse.

No, I said it is the best place to start.

You ever met someone who actually started with Bordiga?!

Pannekoek, Debord, or Bordiga, who's better?

Bordiga. The other two aren't Marxists.

Where does one even start with Bataille? What are his most important works and where's a good entry point?

Visions of Excess is a good collection that has some of his writings from 1927-1939. I'd say that's a good place to start.

Chapter 1 of Capital 1 is a pretty good introductory piece. So is Chapter 9.

Capital 1 isn't that hard to read, honestly. It just needs an update to make it more easily accessible to the modern reader.

bump

Bordiga's main theoretical "contribution" was:

Haha. Ever noted how Zizek is only recommended by people who are basically illiterate and like penis jokes and don't stand for anything, like Muke? There is more serious science going on when Alex Jones shills for SuperMaleVitality(TM) pills than with the synthesis of Lacanian psycho babble and loltetas.

Thanks for the pointless shitpost, but maybe you should actually recommend some texts and reading/studying practices if actually want to help younger/less well read comrades.

One day…

Underrated post. Bataille and Althusser aren't discussed on this board enough.

kys