Study Guide to Capital Volume I
Below you will find, organized by Part and Chapter, my "study guide" to Volume I of
Capital. If you want a quick overview of the whole book, click on each Part,
sequentially, starting with Part VIII and then Parts I
through VII for brief summaries. For each chapter you will find an outline of Marx's
argument followed by my commentary on the text and on the subject matter.
Some of those commentaries provide explanations. Some provide a critique
of what I view as wrongheaded interpretations of his work. Some provide an
elaboration and extension to other places, times, or parallel phenomena.
You will find criticisms of Marx's own work, and suggestions of what needs
to be done to go beyond his work. To illuminate these commentaries you
will find a variety of songs (with lyrics), and excerpts from poems and literature,
some from popular culture, some from the classical "canon".
A guide to the songs is available for easy reference. The
links to YouTube versions of the songs generally open in a new tab. This
allows you to listen to the songs on the new tab but switch back to the study guide tab to
read the lyrics while listening. (Just in case you, like me, have a hard time
understanding some sung lyrics.)
You should read these commentaries critically and ask yourself how you might do
them differently.
Please Note: This study guide is undergoing revision. The revision involves the
integration into the guide of changes made during the process of distilling it
into a book for Pluto Press. That distillation involved both the deletion of
illustrations, images, song lyrics, course-related materials AND the creation of
a new treatment of Chapter 1 to replace the text of my book
Reading Capital
Politically originally provided here as commentary on that chapter.
Integration of new material from the Pluto Press book (titled
33 Lessons on CAPITAL: Reading Marx Politically involves both modification
of the text and making available (through hyperlinks) the footnotes contstructed
for the book. Once I have revised a chapter treatment to take into account the
new material from the new book, I'll so signal with NEW!