What to read next (Marx topic)

Read vol 1, 3 more times, you might be close to understanding it

I wouldn't bother with Grundrisse yet, as there are important differences in terminology and content between the two, which can be confusing (speaking from experience). I'd do a round-up of Volume 1 and start Volume 2. For example, Chapter 3 (the tedious one, on money) was pretty much useless throughout Volume 1, but will come in handy throughout Volume 2. A good thing to read right before you start Volume 2 is the so-called "unpublished sixth chapter", Results of the Direct Production Process. It was originally supposed to appear at the end of Vol. 1, and makes for a nice bridging. It's also useful for impressing people with talk of "real subsumption".

David Harvey in his classes on Volume 2 starts to suppliment it half way through with reading volume 3 simultaniously. That i think is some testimony as to what Harvey thinks as to its reading pleasure (volume 2 that is)!

In any case, im just about to finish volume 2 and its one of the most turgid books i have ever read, reading capital 1 (ive read various bits of it since) is a pleasure once you have tackled 2. So if you are going to do volume 2, read it alongside Harveys lectures, it makes it far more interesting and bearable IMO.

Apparently volume 3 is more readable.

Yeah Juras on the money there about chapter 3 on volume 1 alongside 2. For example, i read chapter 7 again (general theory of capital) and it was a joy to read and was very easy to understand alongside volume 2

Jura - i was thinking of rereading capital but sticking to the purely theory chapters and dropping the history chapters to seal the concepts on my head once ive done volume 2 - what do you think of that as a reading strategy?

Come on, Volume 2 isn't that bad! It's very repetitive and technical (quite unlike the poetry of most of Volume 1), but at least the concepts aren't difficult to grasp. Chapter 15, however, is crap. (I love how Engels disses it at the end.)

Yeah, I guess at some point everyone does that once they've read the book. Sometimes it's difficult to clearly distinguish between the theoretical and the historical parts, though – the chapter on primitive accumulation contains theoretical bits here and there, e.g. on the role of credit. But leaving out the historical parts of the working day and machinery chapters pretty much cuts the book to a half, so it's a useful thing to do.

Only regcently I've discovered that Raya Dunayevskaya wrote her own reading guide to Capital: Outline of Marx’s Capital Volume I (most marxists seem compelled to that at some point!). I haven't read it yet, but the good thing about it is that it's extremely short and contains review questions. It could be useful as a sort of a checklist when doing a quick review.

I think Volume 2 is a lot more interesting than people give it credit for. In my Volume 2 reading group we used some "guiding questions" for the first four chapters (the dense, apparently repetitive ones) like these:

http://readingcapital.tumblr.com/post/7615313761/a-reading-aid-for-the-first-four-chapters-of-capital

and read excerpts of those first four chapters (stripping out examples etc.)

I love volume 2. Not as much literary flair as in vol. 1 and the third part is pretty heavy on numbers, but if you want to be able to analyze how capital moves, figure out JIT, transportation and logistics, vol 2 is great. I actually find it very readable.

That's very good Klaus, I don't have anymore spare time to read long passages, but appreciate and can grasp essential concepts from concise renditions.