Reading Marx

[Lyev]

At the moment I'm trying to read The German Ideology but (call me a philistine or whatever) it's quite boring. If I I'm honest, it's not a very exciting read and I sometimes wonder if I am missing really key points. It feels as though I am reading it out of context, you know? I was wondering, how did everyone else first cope with reading works likes this? Would it be recommendable to maybe read some Feuerbach, Hegel or Stirner first? Although, if I read guys like these to try and make more sense of Marx's philosophical works, I'll probably find them just as complex as Marx himself. It probably doesn't help that all these texts are translated from German. Any pointers or tips? And perhaps any rough outlines of what Marx is trying to get across in The German Ideology? Thanks folks.

[bailey_187]

Dont bother reading it if its too hard, read about it first

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Why not read an abridged version? For example this one:

Marx and Engels, (1970), The German Ideology, Students Edition, edited by Chris Arthur (Lawrence & Wishart).

[scarletghoul]

At the moment I'm trying to read The German Ideology but (call me a philistine or whatever) it's quite boring.

....

Would it be recommendable to maybe read some Feuerbach, Hegel or Stirner first?
Haha. If you find Marx boring, whatever you do don't try to read Hegel. He's ten times worse than Marx in terms of writing style. (though i did eventually get quite into marx after a bit..)

Anyway the German Ideology is basically where Marx lays out his historical materialism and owns all his contemporaries.

Because large parts of it are devoted to countering the arguments of his contemporaries, a lot of it is not relevent to the modern reader and will seem very boring and pointless. I'm sure theres an abridged version or something where someone cut out all that.

If you want an easier-to-read intro to marx's materialism then Stalin's Dialectical and Historical Materialism is a goodun http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm

[which doctor]

The German Ideology is best read, and thus best understood, if you have knowledge of German Idealism, specifically Hegel. If you aren't that familiar with German Idealism, then don't read it because you won't get much out of it.

Marx has lots of other, more accessible works. I would suggest The Civil War in France, Wages, Price, and Profit, Critique of the Gotha Programme, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, and, of course, The Communist Manifesto.

[which doctor]

If you want an easier-to-read intro to marx's materialism then Stalin's Dialectical and Historical Materialism is a goodun http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm
If you want to better understand the dialectic and Marx's materialism, then don't read this members suggestion. Marx's dialectic became increasingly skewed after he died, via Engels, Kautsky, Lenin, and finally Stalin, who's diamat is probably the most perverse of them all and eventually degenerated into a tool to justify the policies of the Stalinist Soviet Union.

A good and short introduction to Marx is Peter Osborne's How to Read Marx which provides a philosophical reading of Marx, as opposed to a crudely deterministic and economist approach. I have a .pdf file of this book if you're interested.

[mo7amEd]

If you want to better understand the dialectic and Marx's materialism, then don't read this members suggestion. Marx's dialectic became increasingly skewed after he died, via Engels, Kautsky, Lenin, and finally Stalin, who's diamat is probably the most perverse of them all and eventually degenerated into a tool to justify the policies of the Stalinist Soviet Union.

A good and short introduction to Marx is Peter Osborne's How to Read Marx which provides a philosophical reading of Marx, as opposed to a crudely deterministic and economist approach. I have a .pdf file of this book if you're interested.

I am really interetested... if you could send it to me in some way it would be awesome.... or maybe share it in a sharing site like megaupload or rapidshare

[Hit The North]

The German Ideology wasn't published and needs a damn good editing. But bailey 187 is right about reading secondary accounts and Rosa's idea of reading an abridged version is also good.

I started reading The German Ideology last year, after being acquainted with its most important passages for over two decades, from various commentaries on Marx.

An excellent one, and cheap because it's on-line, is The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx by Alex Callinicos of the British SWP. You can find it here: http://www.istendency.net/pdf/revideas.pdf

Of course, The German Ideology is notable for being the text where Marx really begins to work out his materialist conception of history. It is explained again in a much sharper prose style in part one of The Communist Manifesto here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

I also love Antonio Labriola's popularisation in his Essays on the Materialist Conception of History, from 1896. You find them here: http: http://www.marxists.org/archive/labriola/index.htm

[RotStern]

I am really interetested... if you could send it to me in some way it would be awesome.... or maybe share it in a sharing site like megaupload or rapidshare

Have you heard of Teamviewer?
It's a great way to share files between 2 comps.
http://www.teamviewer.com/index.aspx

[Lyev]

Thanks for all the replies. Has anyone ever read any Gramsci at all? How easy is his work to read (eg. the Prison Notebooks)? I've heard quite a bit about cultural hegemony, which as I understand it, just means that the ruling class of a said society control the mainstream ideas of that society, as well as controlling the means of production. Is that right? Also how relevant are his works today?

[mo7amEd]

Have you heard of Teamviewer?
It's a great way to share files between 2 comps.
http://www.teamviewer.com/index.aspx

No I havent...

[which doctor]

Another book recommendation on this subject is Sidney Hook's From Hegel to Marx. It's a rather lucid book chronicling Marx's relation with German Idealism and the left Hegelians and it doesn't presuppose a huge knowledge of philosophy.

[ZeroNowhere]

To be honest, I found The German Ideology to be pretty easy to read, mainly by virtue of being interesting. Still, I think reading Lucio Colletti's 'Marxism and Hegel' and, to a somewhat lesser extent (though it's certainly a pretty great work), Sayer's 'The Violence of Abstraction', could help one get a sense of context and avoid some common traps in reading it.

Incidentally, 'The Poverty of Philosophy' was a pretty fun book, though a small section of it is somewhat technical (but interesting, again). Not that you'll learn much more than you would from 'Capital', but it is quite entertaining.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Except Sayer commits all the (traditional) errors I have exposed here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2003_01.htm

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2003_02.htm

[Lyev]

Thanks for all the reading recommendations. I'll definitely have a look at From Hegel to Marx.

It's not that I find the German Ideology boring per se, it's just that I find it hard to put a lot of it into context, and some of it seems largely irrelevant. Maybe if I read up on German Idealism that would help.

Any thoughts on the Prison Notebooks by Gramsci, by the way?

[Belisarius]

Any thoughts on the Prison Notebooks by Gramsci, by the way?

i want to read that book too:D only i can't find it. (but as far as i've understood it, it's best to read a selection from the notebooks, since the entire text is comprised of 29 books!)