A close reading of the text of Karl Marx’s Capital Volume I in 13 video lectures by David Harvey.

David Harvey is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), Director of The Center for Place, Culture and Politics, and author of numerous books. He has been teaching Karl Marx’s Capital for nearly 40 years.:

http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/

I have heard of Erich and I know he has published one of the more popular “cliff’s notes” on Marx.

I think how difficult Marx is to read of course is based upon one’s past reading experiences, orientation, education, etc. If you would like to comment on some of the things you thought were most interesting, I would love to have you list your top 5 list. I like Michael Hudson’s observation that Marx was correct on the constant subjugation of workers by industry, but missed the subjugation of industry by financial institutions.

i haven’t read all the posts but in the past several months I have gotten into Marx. I do not find his writing overwhelmingly difficult, though I have not read Capital yet. I have never read somebody so disrespected and defamed by media and propoganda.

His writing presents him as nearly the exact opposite of every allegation by the US (right and democrat — so i guess right and center-right)

Anyway, I highly reccomend as an introduction to his ideas the book Marx Concept of Man by Erich Fromm… he writes a terrific 90 p introduction about Marx’s humanism and then has the philosophical and economic transcripts as well as excerpts from the critique of the Gotha programme

I think the most important thing for people that actually favor standards in society (labor, environmental, legal, etc..) is to point out how the “free market” philosophies proposed by corporations and their heralds, are really not based in anything, and that cherry picking from books that never supported this ideology is false. Progressives need to be trained to do this because once you begin to question a corporate herald’s knowledge, they will have a harder time debating based upon facts. So I always ask, “What part of a Wealth of Nations are your referring to?” “When did you last read Das Kapital?” “What parts did you like?” Once the knowledge posing is punctured, the progressive can the go forward to comparing what has worked in different economies vs. what has not worked. Those in favor of a highly concentrated form of unequal and unjust capitalism are hiding behind Adam Smith because they can not argue their policies on the basis of the actual merits.

This is a very pertinent point, which is often overlooked.

And reading an author like Marx or Smith requires the reader to know or have read several other works on the history (political and economic) at their times. Appreciating/criticising an author can only be done in context; reading them out of context is likely to lead to misunderstandings. Often, we try to locate an author by going through his/her entire corpus of work.

Now, Smith is read in two diametrically opposed ways. The first argument does not mean that we cannot have an sort of reasoned or rational opinion about a ‘work’.
1) Smith promoted ‘laissez faire’
Reason: presence of ‘invisible hand’ once in his Wealth of Nations
99% of economics textbooks cite this one paragraph.

2) Smith did not want ‘free markets’ as we understand it today.
Reason: Mercantilism was monopolistic in nature and Smith championed the rights of small and individual business. He wanted freer markets. And, in fact, we know now that Wealth of Nations was supposed to be published together with Moral Sentiments.

I find that many Marx experts disagree on Marx, and so I think its more than being brainwashed by “free market” ideas, as I think those that are brainwashed probably simply dismiss Marx out of hand. (Its should be recognized that a lot of things that Marx wrote came true.) But some of us are open to counter-neo-classical ideas, its just that there are few outlets. Michael Hudson speaks clearly on real world economics, so does Ha-Joon Chang also does well. It is not difficult to understand either, even though they are proposing ideas counter to mainstream Freidman-esque economics.

Anyone who would be interested in writing a few areas about Marx that are often misunderstood as a comment on this post would be greatly appreciated. I think a lot of people would like to hear differing interpretations of Marx.

But when you really start to get it you realize you have been blind to so much you live with in your daily life.