Das Kapital

[Anonymous No.17408844]

Is it worth reading? It's quite a long book, are there any chapters which are regarded to be the main ones?

I admit that I have a lot of prejudice against communism, usually seeing them as lazy parasites, but I never actually read the fucking thing.

[Anonymous No.17408851]

>>17408844
>sees communists as lazy
>too lazy to read the fucking book

[Anonymous No.17408853]

Start with Adam Smith or it will be completely unintelligible.

[Anonymous No.17408872]

>>17408844
would you read newtons principia mathematica to learn newtonian physics?
of course it isn't worth reading stupid.

[Anonymous No.17408881]

>>17408844

Start with this instead.

[Anonymous No.17408885]

>>17408851
I doubt most communists actually read Marx.

[Anonymous No.17408887]

>>17408885
Most do.

[Anonymous No.17408892]

>>17408853
Is that really so?

[Anonymous No.17408899]

>>17408887
How'd you know?
I am willing to bet most modern communists base their dislike of capitalism on envy rather than political theory.

[Anonymous No.17408907]

>>17408872
tpbp

[Anonymous No.17408918]

>>17408899
From experience. I am not talking about college students that call themselves communists because it's the new (old) trend. They probably have never heard of the term "dialectical materialism".
I guess I'm talking about Marxists, but there's a lot of overlap.

[Anonymous No.17408951]

>>17408892
A lot of Capital is a direct response to the foundations laid down by Smith. In order to fully understand Marx, you need to understand the ideas of what he is trying to argue against. In order to understand the Marxist conception of a commodity, it helps massively to understand the mainstream contemporary definition of a commodity.

[Anonymous No.17409057]

>>17408951
I see. Thanks for the advice.

[Anonymous No.17409178]

>>17408844
1st chapter is pretty good, I would suggest only reading that and following the rest of this guide. Das Kapital is for commited marxists, read "Wage Labour and Capital" and "Value, Price and Profit" instead, way shorter works and easy to read.

[Anonymous No.17409212]

>>17408951
>>17409057
Meh, unless you aim to be an economist I wouldn't bother reading first thousands of pages of Smith to then read thousands of pages of Marx. Read Marx his shorter works.

[Anonymous No.17409578]

>>17408844
Don’t bother with Marx, just read pic related instead. And/or read The Worldly Philosophers if you want to understand the history of economic thought up until the 1950s, which includes Marx.

[Anonymous No.17409610]

i have the impression you dont know much of anything about communism, so starting with kapital would be a horrible idea.
start with some more basic literature, engels "the principles of communism" or the lenin book in that chart >>17409178 are good starting points.
if you decide to read the communist manifesto, dont expect much. its a pamphlet written so that every uneducated factory worker could easily understand it, not some fundamental text of theory.

[Anonymous No.17409635]

>>17409578
>read basic economics bro hahaha
looks like you took a wrong turn, reddit is down the other hall

[Anonymous No.17409946]

>>17409635
>accusing reddit of being anti Marx

Are you out of you mind?

[Anonymous No.17409967]

>>17409578
Imagine being so fucking retarded you seriously believe in loanable funds in 2021

[Anonymous No.17410005]

>>17409635
>>17409967
>noooooo don’t read the most mainstream and widely used economics textbook to understand economics, read this dead commie from the 1800s instead

[Anonymous No.17410020]

>>17409946
given their image i assumed that their userbase mostly consists of people who havent read him. maybe you could tell me more, you seem familiar with it?
>>17410005
>thinking people read marx to understand economics

[Anonymous No.17410091]

>>17410005
Sure. I'm saying Mankiw is a mega retard who insists on extremely stupid ideas

[Anonymous No.17410274]

>>17409946
Most of reddit is anti-marx, have you ever been there?
It's mostly liberals, even r/conservative has more subs than r/socialism.

[Anonymous No.17411006]

>>17408844
haven't tried yet, but Thomas More's Utopia is a fun, quick read and partially inspired communist thought.
reminds me of fantasy adventure novels when i was a kid.

[Anonymous No.17411046]

>>17410274
gaslighting.

[Anonymous No.17411051]

>>17410274
lmao of course it is after r/chapotraphouse and all its variants got banned.

[Anonymous No.17411153]

>>17411046
Saying reddit is filled with marxists is just plain wrong

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.17411191]

He couldn't write a decent manifesto, why bother with the rest?

[Anonymous No.17411238]

How does he own the chuds in his book?

[Anonymous No.17411689]

>>17410091
You clearly haven’t read Mankiw and are just spouting some random financial statistic as if it means anything. Why are you fags like this?

[Anonymous No.17412246]

>>17408844
Fortunately there absolutely ARE some chapter which are more important than others.

Basically 95% of the theoretical meat of the book are in the first 7 chapters (182 pages in the penguin edition). Of those the first three chapters covers maybe 75% of the theoretical part of the book (122 pages).

If you put the effort into reading the first 7 chapters and understand them you can more or less see the direction Marx plans to take the rest of the book.

The only other part of the book that is really theoretically interesting are chapters 26 and 27 in which Marx lays out his theory of ‘primitive accumulation’, but that’s extremely secondary compared to the first few sections.

That said, I still think the entire book is worth reading, much of the rest of it contains fascinating discussions on the conditions of historical capitalism and goes a long way to really getting a feel on the sorts of things he’s talking about, but it’s absolutely not necessary for getting his theoretical arguments.

>>17408853
>>17408892
This is completely wrong desu. Having a bit of background on Smith and Ricardo can help deepen your understanding of Marx, but you absolutely don’t need a deep understanding of Smith (much less actually reading all of Wealth of Nations) to get some grasp on what Marx is saying.

>>17409578
Ah yes, the most conservative economics textbook on the mainstream market..

[Anonymous No.17412397]

>>17408887
communist here, most dont.

[Anonymous No.17412426]

>>17408844
Ultimately it doesn't matter what the theory is when anyone that have ever tried to implement ultimately fucked it up. It will be the same if they tried it now, likely worse since the left is full of mentally ill people that see themselves fit to rule over others.