Capital Vol. 1

[Caj]

I was wondering what works by Marx I should read before attempting to read Capital. I've heard some suggest reading Grundrisse first. Is that advisable? Also, how familiar must I be with the works of classical economists to comprehend Capital? I've read The Wealth of Nations, but do I need to be familiar with the works of Ricardo, Mill, Say, etc. as well?

[Zanthorus]

If you don't understand Marx's Capital then you're not going to understand the Grundrisse. It's a series of Notebooks which Marx wrote for clarification and the writing is often disjointed and lacking in continuous readable narrative. The language used is occasionally saturated with Hegelian terminology (Marx was re-reading Hegel's Science of Logic while writing it).

My reccomendation is to begin with Marx's earlier 'A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy' which has appendixes which deal with the history of debates surrounding the nature of value and money. That combined with the extensive documentation in Capital itself should give you enough grasp of the history of political economy without having to read any prior political economists. Others will probably reccomend you read one of Marx's shorter works like 'Value, Price and Profit' or 'Wage Labour and Capital'. Those are good options too, particularly the latter in the 1891 edition covers some of the main points established by Marx in Capital. Another good one which is book length but nowhere near as long as Capital itself is Marx's 'The Poverty of Philosophy'. It's his first published work on political economy, written as a polemic against Proudhon's 'System of Economic Contradictions'. It's not as developed as the other mentioned works in some respects, for example Marx still speaks in the Ricardian fashion about the 'value of labour', but the later edition has footnotes by Engels which point out most of the major slips. The work is of particular interest because it's a published work by Marx which explicitly covers issues of methodology.

[pluckedflowers]

I'm reading Capital now and it's my first serious engagement with Marx's writings. It's really not as hard as I had thought it would be, especially with the help of David Harvey's lectures. (http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/)

[Zanthorus]

If there's one thing I would strongly advise above all else, it's not to use second-hand explanations of Marx's work. The debates surrounding it are so numerous that almost anyone's interpretation is bound to be controversial in certain respects (Which definitely includes Harvey's by the way).

[graymouser]

Honestly, having read The Wealth of Nations, you are actually coming at it from an advantage; you understand at least a chunk of the political economy that Marx was critiquing in Capital.

Zanthorus has it right. Read:
Wage-Labour and Capital
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Capital, Volume 1

in that order. The first will get you the basics, while the second will give you a much clearer exposition of Marx's ideas on money than the relevant sections of Capital, which will now be more or less review.

The biggest thing with Capital, in my experience, was to go back over concepts that were problematic on the first reading. The way Marx builds up his concepts piece by piece means that an incomplete grasp of one idea will hurt you later down the road.

[Caj]

Thank you for the tips! :D


The language used is occasionally saturated with Hegelian terminology

Is there any way that I can become more familiar with Hegelian terminology?

[pluckedflowers]

If there's one thing I would strongly advise above all else, it's not to use second-hand explanations of Marx's work. The debates surrounding it are so numerous that almost anyone's interpretation is bound to be controversial in certain respects (Which definitely includes Harvey's by the way).

Sure, but that's not really a reason to avoid commentary. Differences of interpretation surround pretty much any specific subject or text. But you learn through those different interpretations and their criticisms. That's how it works with regard to pretty much any other academic subject. I don't know why Marx would be any different.