/edu/ - Education

>>14247
I'm braindead for showing you how consciousness comes from class conflict, not how well drawn the manga of capital is?

>>14248
well where is it already? how much longer until some of that "consciousness" sparks something? not until every single diner in america has been unionized, eh?

>>14249
Considering the fact that this year has seen some of the biggest labour organising in recent memory across the board i'd say you should just look at the news
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/06/06/west-coast-ports-labor/

>>14135
What does capital help if you're arguing with someone

>>15425
It's a thick and heavy book, good for hitting people in the head.

>>15425
Don't argue with morons. Very helpful life advice

>>14227
So you've apparently read Capital yourself, but you don't want other people to educate themselves with it? Is this supposed to make you look good?

>>14206
> why would it be "modernised"
A rewrite of capital with modern examples would actually be interesting and useful. One of the most common dismissals I hear of Marx from liberals and social democrats, and so forth, is that Marx's analysis of Capital was accurate to the time/place in which he was writing, but not now. They basically try to pretend it's all just Victorian England and that things have reformed to be better. Obviously that's not true but it would be helpful to draw on contemporary data to make Marx's points again. Marx obviously draws on a lot of data.

I remember long sections of Volume 1 drawing from English factory data from the 1840s and 1850s, talking about the devastating conditions that factory workers in England experienced, especially children. But lately I see conditions in the USA for example declining to that level. Children in slaughterhouses and so forth. Also Marx's language is often erudite and literary and very of its time. It can be confusing or alienating to modern readers who aren't used to reading things from the 1800s. The English language has changed a lot since then.

>Capitalism has not fundamentally changed

fundamentally, no, it is still about workers selling their labor power as a commodity to a capitalist who buys that labor power for less than it is worth, and pockets and/or reinvests the surplus. The circuits of capital Marx identified are still the same. But the particulars have changed. The geopolitics have changed. The tricks the bourgeoisie use to prevent class consciousness from emerging and to mask class antagonism. have gotten more elaborate. I think a re-write of Capital would highlight these changes to the particulars, or at the very least mention them in a foreword or afterword. Marx himself while he was still alive released a second edition of Capital volume 1 that was different in its particulars than the 1st edition.

As Marx notes in the afterword to the second German edition of Capital, Marx's different editions of Capital reflect his reworking of published material especially in the presentation of the work particularly on the theory of value.

And then of course there is the matter that Capital is an unfinished work. Kautsky obviously released Volume 4, but that is controversial for obvious reasons. Perhaps we need a Marx in our age to finish what he died doing?

>>17986
>you don't want other people to educate themselves with it
[citation needed]

ITT: people so horrified at the prospect of reading that they have to hide behind imaginary illiterate workers (because all workers are retarded, apparently) to justify getting their info from sixth-hand sources, and retards who think socialism is something that happens when you get enough people to believe in socialism (I think that's what Marx and Lenin said idk I can't read)
Anyone that has time to post on this site has enough time for a book, zero excuses

>>18022
Damn, I wish I could read, because that's probably a good post.

>>18022
>people so horrified at the prospect of reading that they have to hide behind imaginary illiterate workers (because all workers are retarded, apparently

everyone you have accused of this ITT has denied that they are saying this over and over again and yet you keep bringing this assertion to the table because the possibility of the conversation being about anything else is an affront to your perception.

>>17981
Lmao

>>18028
You denying it means nothing, the very existence of this thread and all others like it is proof. What was this thread meant to achieve? The people that did the reading already can explain things in plain english (and if they can't, further study is required) and the things people here think needs to be "explained" to workers are either common sense or grasped intuitively – the only explanation for threads such as this is people looking for an excuse not to read and consume the simplest information possible and still call themselves communists, and thus discover that hiding behind the illiterate, retarded image of workers they have in their head is the way to go. I've seen this plenty of times with anarchists in particular, I got told "read Marx" is ableist because not everyone has time for that, as if their schedule of browsing reddit and playing videogames would be severely affected by 30min of reading every day. That is already beside the fact that people here think there is anything that needs explaining in the first place, as if the working class needs to be "convinced" of socialism, which would go against literally everything Marx and Engels stood for (not that anyone in this thread could tell, nobody reads, especially not Marx). Workers don't need to spend their ever second reading Marx, and the ones that choose to do so don't need much help, Marx is not a complicated read (unless you've had your brain turned into paste by the internet, not naming any names). Dumbing things down serves no purpose and is every bit detrimental, that's how you get "literacy is fascist" anarchoids and Richard "Co-ops = Communism" Wolff and people that think Marx just thought the gubbmint needed to invest in healthcare some more. Good work for the dude at >>14199 but he made the mistake of thinking he was talking to likeminded people rather than hobbyists that might as well have the mental capacity of a concrete wall
TL;DR fuck modernizers fuck falsifiers read a fucking book

>>18030
>you are guilty of what i accuse you of because i have decided to interpret anything you say in the least charitable way possible

two can play at that game

>>18030
>TL;DR fuck modernizers fuck falsifiers read a fucking book
so TRVE bestie. I trust you read Capital in the original German and not one of those filthy translations?

>>14169
>The US has 80% estimated literacy, and that's low as far western countries go
to be fair even though most americans have basic literacy (can sign their name, can read and write the most common words in their language's vocabulary), the majority of Americans struggle with reading comprehension beyond a middle school (13 year old) level and in fact, literacy is on the decline if you consider reading comprehension and critical thinking skills.

>>14156
Is this bait? Most of the things in OP are actually said in Capital, albeit with significantly more nuance and specificity and elaboration.

Engels in 1868 extolled Marx to write a shorter edition of Capital for workers. I think this proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the work was a highly technical work of Political Economy, not intended for working class people who lack the time and energy (not lack the intelligence!!!!) to dedicate to it.

This is aimed at everyone ITT who mocked the idea of simplifying things and suggested that OP is suggesting that workers are "stupid."

>>18605
Your quote has nothing to do with anything the other guy said, unless your point is "a-ha, proles ARE retarded!"
Frankly, the quote goes against your own point since Marx clearly states workers acquire consciousness through their own actions, and thus dumbing down theory in order to preach to them is useless

>>18246
There's a world of a difference between a shortened version of Capital written by Marx himself and a "Marx summary" written by someone who themselves probably gets their info from youtube or some shit. Literally in the pic your posted:
>If it is not written, some Moses or other will come along and do it and botch it up.
Lmao
The Cafiero one is the best and got Marx's seal of approval, but even that one gets some things wrong vis-a-vis Marx.

>>19013
nobody ITT has suggested
> a "Marx summary" written by someone who themselves probably gets their info from youtube or some shit.
so there is a "world of difference" between what this thread is suggesting, and what you're pretending the thread is suggesting.

>>19013
>The Cafiero one is the best
the cafiero one was the earliest

>>19012
>unless your point is "a-ha, proles ARE retarded!"
no the point is anon was simultaneously putting the proles on a pedestal and accusing anyone trying to make their lives easier of "thinking proles are stupid"

>>19022
These are all shit

>>19022
… Which of these were even meant to be summaries? Did you just post FOUR books without having read a single one of them?

>>14131
sorry if i'm crashing ur thread
may i ask you OP when this was useful, like do people appreciate this or is this just a way they can comprehend what you're saying….

because honestly i think most people get like 95% of this, but it doesnt actually give actionable knowledge, it just tells how the situation is messed up, unfair, and contradicted (and contradictions are difficult to understand - its difficult for people who read marx even… actually it was difficult for marx as well! reproduction schemas are needed in order to understand how something so contradicted functions most of the time… so the big picture stuff is gonna be more confusing than anything even in a simple format)

I know there's the basically ubiquitous conception that communism develops out of the labor movement specifically, but history has proved this to not be the only way communism becomes relevant. It's imo an outdated conception from the 1800s labor movement, kept alive by dogmatic (no shade) leninism just owing to the fact that this is part of Lenin's apparent model of communism and its relation to the working class. In a democracy, politics already exists for the people (even if there's suppression and widespread disdain and distrust of politics), there's no need to move from the economic to the political. The political is directly relevant in so many ways (i think everyone gets this so i wont even mention specific issues, but i can if it's not clear what i mean; i'm talking about all the various progressive issues that impact people's lives profoundly). There's much more room to activate someone into the wider movement by explaining the situation around some of these issues, and maybe directing them towards an organization, or resources, or just providing some roadmap… but idk this is how i feel, i wonder if anyone else sees it like this

The "you're exploited!" and "capitalism can't go on forever!" always rubbed me the wrong way; theyre correct but what bearing does this have on someone's life? "you could be getting more money if you unionized and fought the boss for it!" everyone knows that, but a problem in this era is that oftentimes they'll just close a workplace down or wait you out and give extremely minor concessions (that amount to keeping your pay the same, rather than a decrease). There's also retribution and blackballing that happens to organizers, in modern times (where finance takes a majority of the profits, and you take a personality quiz before getting hired, and employers can all easily share databases of problem candidates, and a felony bars you from most work…) companies don't need to deal with problem workers. There's chronic joblessness and instability that's maintained by the government and Fed. The workplace struggle isn't what it once was. (still important …. i just wanted to epmhasize how its not the only vector arriving at socialist politics. The varied progressive movements, of which the economic struggles are one part, as well as the communities and cultures of oppressed groups, whose oppression is just as necessary today in the imperialist stage of capitalism as it was in the colonial era. (if u dont buy that look at nazi economics, how the economy can be stabilized (for some) by dispossessing people of othered identities))

>>19022
You know there's a modern rewrite somewhere in >>>/edu/

>>14214
>and google exists so anything a person doesn't get they can easily look up
wow what a fucking retarded thing to say, anon

>>14135
> German workers read the first edition of Capital voraciously.
It took me over a month of occasionally looking into this to finally find sales details for the first edition of capital in germany.

It took 5 years, 1867-1872 for Capital to sell only 1000 copies in Germany. I stand by my point. It was not "voraciously" consumed by working class people, it was purchased by political economists and intellectuals of the 1st international in a limited circulation. Perhaps later on in the East German Republic it was consumed voraciously by workers because it was prescribed as part of a standard school curriculum, but in Marx's life time the book actually received the best sales in Russia. But still, those "best sales" were merely 3000 copies. This was not a widely circulated book outside of explicitly political circles until the 20th century, and it certainly wasn't read widely by non-partisan workers until actually existing socialist states made it part of an educational curriculum.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/DD7A28DA6B069F8E794696759DF72C41/S0037677900144924a.pdf/div-class-title-span-class-italic-das-kapital-span-comes-to-russia-div.pdf

>>19046
1. we're in /edu/
2. where is it?

>>19885
Noooo my memes about the heckin German factory worker gigachads reading Capital during their breaks!

>>19887
well it's frustrating because so many anons were trying to bad jacket my suggestions about making capital more accessible to workers by saying I think the workers are stupid, workers have always been buying and reading this book like it was nothing, crushing it in a weekend, yada yada, and that was not only bad faith, but there was contrary evidence.

>>19885
This is only talking about the first German edition. The second German edition was a major overhaul, too, and the 3rd and 4th are the ones which most people have read and which almost all translations are based off of.

>>19886
In the pinned thread on Capital I think

>>19889
>This is only talking about the first German edition

Yes. I was responding to someone who said that the German working class read the first edition of capital voraciously as soon as it was released. That's simply not true. It is a dense text on political economy with a ton of specialized philosophical background and I'm tired of larpers pretending it's easy and the average downtrodden and education-deprived person working at mcdonalds or some shit can just pick it up and know what marx is talking about when he goes off about hegel or ricardo or malthus or mill.

>>19896
Meanwhile in reality the simple fact of the matter is that they can.

Anybody have that screencap saved of the bartender pulling out Capital when a social reading group turned up?

>>19901
That's not a good example, most bartenders have college degrees.

>>19902
Fair enough
In that case I reference this example from
>>>/siberia/428887
>I dropped out at 17 and I could read it. It is of course still a complicated work and influences almost all social/political criticism onwards, but getting through it on its own is very much achievable. The thing you have to realize is that it has almost a literary quality to it, and isn't just dry theory. There's a very specific kind of didactic method throughout it.
The historical records show that workers can and did read things like; Capital, and The Origin of Species.

Assuming literacy, so we're disregarding the USA here a downtrodden worker can pick up Capital volume 1 and understand it.

Marx wrote it with that intention.

This is a simple fact.

>>19901
The goalposts keep moving. The original claim was, and I repeat, the German working class "voraciously" read the first edition of capital, as soon as it was released in 1867. The fact that only 1000 copies were purchased of the 1st edition in Germany shows that this is not true. It had limited circulation among political economists and gentlemen of the first international. I have that image saved btw. A bartender reading Capital today makes perfect sense because it is an easy job to read at. If you work in a factory 12 hours a day in the 1800s for a paltry wage barely above your means of subsistence, and come home to your seven crying children, you are not going to have time to read Capital. And yes, I'm aware the German workers were unusually literate for the time.

>>19885
You're ignoring unofficial copies being spread. Abridged versions of Marx's and Engel's texts were very popular in Russia.

>>20050
> Abridged versions of Marx's and Engel's texts were very popular in Russia.
Wow. the very kind of text people mad at OP were arguing are "useless"

Some of you should go tabling sometime.

Nice thread OP. I've been becoming a leftist only very recently mostly because of youtube videos and truth be told I rarely if ever feel like reading nonfiction. To me reading ten bazillion pages of theory just feels beyond fucking boring, so stuff like this is what I live for. Thanks.

>>21590
if you don't want to read capital, then just read "Wage Labour and Capital" which was specifically made for working people to have a brief idea

>>21590
I've been on this board for like 6 years and never read anything but the manifesto, you'll be fine :^)