Overall, I’d say yes. It has some of his most important insights that really build on the basic analyses in Vol 2 to show how capitalism is a historically transitory mode of production that contains within itself the seeds of its own abolishment. If anything I’d say if you’ve already gotten through Vol 2, which can be pretty dry at times, you might as well.

On the other hand, it also has some difficult parts. The stuff about ground rent is kinda and some parts that are fragmentary (like Vol 2)

Oh god, that’s bad. Surely you can think of something better.

I have no idea what people do to the spines of their books to where they’re all fucked up when they finish with them. All the wear on these is just from toting them around with me everywhere

The thicknesses are very important

Now I start working on my backlog of books, which has been accumulating. I already started Some Desperate Glory the other day, which is the diary of a WWI British officer. Probably the next commie thing will be Hammer and Hoe, which I already have. After that maybe some Gramsci

Really hard to say, but you could probably cut out like 20%. Except that 20% is mostly review and summary that’s really helpful to the reader. There’s certainly stuff I just skimmed, particularly the detailed critiques of other economists like Adam Smith. But it’s not like that that stuff is unimportant per se

Those are some fun stickers I put on there to celebrate my favorite OS

Sigh, on the list it goes

ive read it

most of it is REALLY dry and boring economic stuff

so id say pace yourself and dont be ashamed to skim a little over the super indepth parts about specific economic shit. marx actually makes a few mathematical errors himself in those parts anyways (it doesnt alter his arguments) but if you arent studying it academically then just getting the main concepts is good enough (it was for me)

I’d say that they teach you how to read them in terms of content. Vol 1 prepares you for Vol 2 and so on. I don’t have an economics background at all, but I do have a background in literary theory, and it is helpful to have personal strategies for parsing dense texts. Personally I highlight and annotate to force myself to slow down and parse the text and think about what the key points being made are

There’s a lot in there. Marx’ brain was filled to the brim. He’s not like a modern academic with one specialty. A background in economics might prepare you for the economics parts. But it’s a critique of political economy and he’s a great storyteller so there are loads of literary references and historical parts.

These aspects might be lost on a ‘mathematical economist’. The book will challenge a lot of what an economist thinks they know; that presents it’s own difficulties of cognitive dissonance.

A background in literature or history will prepare someone well for those broader narrative elements but perhaps not the equations. (I’m not a mathematician but Marx holds your hand through the equations so I understood his argument and my maths ability has shot up to the extent that I can now read and understand other economic and political economic texts.)

A background in liberal theory made Capital a fairly straightforward work for me. I started with some chapters in Part Eight on Primitive Accumulation. These are really juicy. Then I read the chapter on the working day. Equally juicy. Then I wanted/needed to know how it all fit together and how someone could have such insights. That’s when I started from the beginning (including the prefaces, etc) and read to the back cover.

David Harvey talks of teaching Capital as an elective to CUNY students from all different disciplines. He was surprised to find how differently it was read by people with different expertise. The literature/creative writing students got loads out of Marx’ metaphors of vampires, for example.

I guess what I’m saying is that there’s something in there for everyone. Really it’s a text for the whole family.

One thing that a reader will need to get accustomed to is the historical materialist method. As it sees everything as interconnected, historical materialists can sometimes flood you with information that doesn’t seem to be connected. It’s necessary because himat is a ‘many-sided’ approach.

You don’t always see how all the sides connect together until the end of a chapter/book. It’s frustrating at first but some writers are better at building the connections as they go and, in any event, you get used to it and then wonder why everyone doesn’t do it this way. For this reason, I’d suggest reading the ‘Eighteenth Brumaire’ first. Because it’s shorter and will demonstrate the himat structure.

Otherwise, Capital was written for the working class to get stuck into. It’s far more accessible and interesting than many people think. I honestly couldn’t put it down. Give it a go, you and your friend, and discuss your different perspectives and what stands out to each of you.

If I was planning to write on it or teach it I would have definitely done tags