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Welcome again to everybody. Make yourselves at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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reading things out of order of very regimented reading guides sometimes throws me for a loop. i went back to reading from a guide and picking only those sources after reading external works, and i have difficulty identifying is this something i'm getting right? is it just rephrased? is this a simplification that is confusing me because it's reducing something i already otherwise know?
i find that i skipped the basic of diamat and contradiction itself, (save for cowbee's post that they themselves called oversimplified) so i still am due to read something more whole. i didn't think thiswould be as large of a problem as it seems to be for me, since i figured if i knew the basics (avoid idealism and the conception that there are solid immutable "ideas" separate from the material world, imagine all matter and existence as dynamic(? also wrong i'm pretty sure)) it would minimize error to a passable degree. this is because i thought a vulgar understanding of philosophy was preferable to a vulgar understanding of economy, which i should prioritize, and also because, rather sorrily, i felt weary of rereading a lot of the summaries to what felt like little to no benefit. (i'll pick up mao's on contradiction soon when i regain motivation)
since i'm now so out of order, i'm attempting once MORE to read "Wage Labour and Capital". i've tried multiple times since it comes recommended i feel almost everywhere, and yet i've never been able to progress well or ever feel like i'm fostering an understanding.
to add, over the last few days i had a renewed energy and was propelled mostly through organic interest in one off posts to read Marx on Capital as a Real God and then lenin's "Marx's Economic Doctrine", and yet now that i'm back at wage labour and capital i find myself lost, unsure if it's repeating concepts that were sufficiently explained in other works i already read. i feel frustrated by this text almost always, which is odd because i really don't know why that is. maybe marx's style of writing in specific? i'm disappointed in myself and wish i could just go into my brain and rotate gears until i feel i'm fine
Comrade, I'll state that understanding dialectical materialism is critical for understanding Marxist economics. There's good reason I put diamat so early on, and it's because philosophy is the way we think about and view the world. Without a proper understanding of how to view the world, learning economics allows is to let our bourgeois preconceptions cloud our judgement. If you're frustrated, I suggest going through the guide I wrote in the order it was intended. You can also wait for Edie to do the weekly reading list for it over on Hexbear.
went back to very start of reading plan, including the dearly cherished krupskaya principles for self-study
got to this part i forgot and gulped… i was making a fool of myself for no damn reason
Nah, you're learning through experience! Seeing theory affirm your own suspicions and provide new clarity and insight helps the points actually stick!
thank you :) the encouragement is much dearer than you can imagine :)
No problem!
sigh, i figured TT /nay
i really hoped my rudimentary and probably vulgar mental simplification (admittedly probably fed almost exclusively on sloganeering or posts like your crash course that self-profess to NOT being comprehensive and encourage further reading) would suffice as a basis, really praying that i knew somewhat enough not to completely poison my understanding, but… you would never know if it was poisoning your knowledge unless you knew the extent of your ignorance, which you only know by knowing…
i’ll revisit those segments of the reading guide once more TT i really have been getting in my own way
edit
must remember always
It's an easy mistake! Don't beat yourself up!
Read Carlo Cafiero's summarized capital, george politzer's "elementary principles of philosophy" and "introducing marx:a graphic guide" by Rius before you read Marx, Engels, Lenin and all that. Otherwise you wont really understand what theyre saying at all. Those 3 books are a good little pre-Marx reading list.
i will note those recommendations down :3 thank you
People tend to recommend comrades to read Lenin first because he is easier to read. Don't worry, you aren't the first to struggle with Marx's writing style.
One of the main things you'll notice -- especially on technical works like The Capital -- is that Marx writes with "lenses", then he takes a "lens" and expands it even more with other "lenses".
He takes an object and it can be a natural-form or a value-form. Then he expands value-forms into use-values and exchange-values. Then he combines the two into the commodity-form. Then he takes the exchange-value, finds the common thing shared by all commodities -- namely labour-time -- then he discovers the Value. So on, and so forth.
Marx doesn't let any concept stay "static" so to speak. They play with each other, contradict, expand etc.
It's how he applies dialectics. It's accurate, but it's a pain in the ass to read.
It's gets easier though. Especially when you get used to dialectics.