Monday, November 28, 2005
Two down, one to go
Today I finished reading Capital Volume One. I feel a little giddy. I never thought I'd accomplish it - particularly not after three false starts. But thanks to some excellent teaching and persistence, I read the entire thing. Well, OK, not the prefaces; not Ernest Mandel's introduction; not the hundreds of pages of appendices. Nor Volumes 2 & 3. But the 800 pages in between that make up Capital - I read those.
I absorbed bits and pieces; it's not an easy book, as this blog has recorded before. Many times I was delighted just to understand what Marx was saying, and this got easier or harder, depending on whether he was describing the hatmakers dying of asphyxiation in their crowded workshops, or using calculus. To be fair to Marx, he didn't draw a strict line between them: Capital is a work where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. His calculus details the same thing as the railway workers living in holes in the ground, just at different levels of abstraction. It all relates.
If someone wanted to buy this for me, I'd be eternally grateful
The experience gives me new respect for Marxist scholars. The Marxist tradition has not just assimilated his work, but updated, expanded and debated it ferociously. Marxists have applied it to innumerable struggles around the world. I haven't even fully understood it yet, let alone the debates that came out of it. This is a good thing - I came to school to discover what I need to learn, and I've found concepts and debates I could spend the rest of my life exploring. That's tremendously exciting.
The title refers to three books I promised myself I'd read before I die: War & Peace, Ulysses, and Capital. I read Ulysses a couple of years ago - I loved it, even though I had to suffer a short 'I can write like this!' stage afterwards (stream of consciousness is way harder to write than it looks.) I've got through 50 pages of War & Peace - I enjoyed it, but one really has to be in the mood to read giant Russian novels. Or perhaps convalescing. Anyhow, finishing Capital is a life goal, much like sky-diving but without the windburn and possible death afterwards.
I absorbed bits and pieces; it's not an easy book, as this blog has recorded before. Many times I was delighted just to understand what Marx was saying, and this got easier or harder, depending on whether he was describing the hatmakers dying of asphyxiation in their crowded workshops, or using calculus. To be fair to Marx, he didn't draw a strict line between them: Capital is a work where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. His calculus details the same thing as the railway workers living in holes in the ground, just at different levels of abstraction. It all relates.
If someone wanted to buy this for me, I'd be eternally gratefulThe experience gives me new respect for Marxist scholars. The Marxist tradition has not just assimilated his work, but updated, expanded and debated it ferociously. Marxists have applied it to innumerable struggles around the world. I haven't even fully understood it yet, let alone the debates that came out of it. This is a good thing - I came to school to discover what I need to learn, and I've found concepts and debates I could spend the rest of my life exploring. That's tremendously exciting.
The title refers to three books I promised myself I'd read before I die: War & Peace, Ulysses, and Capital. I read Ulysses a couple of years ago - I loved it, even though I had to suffer a short 'I can write like this!' stage afterwards (stream of consciousness is way harder to write than it looks.) I've got through 50 pages of War & Peace - I enjoyed it, but one really has to be in the mood to read giant Russian novels. Or perhaps convalescing. Anyhow, finishing Capital is a life goal, much like sky-diving but without the windburn and possible death afterwards.
