Results of first meeting.

The first meeting was held yesterday from 2-4 pm at the Empress Ale House. We discussed people's previous contact with Marx's writings and what we hoped to get out of a close reading of volume 1 of Capital. A few other housekeeping decisions were made:

• We plan to meet every week (Saturdays) unless this becomes unworkable. 
• Each week we will read one chapter of Capital (unless chapters are too short or too long, in which case a decision will be made to aggregate or split up a chapter).
• One or two of us will volunteer to pull out points of interest to the group from each weekly chapter. 

So for next week (Saturday, February 2) the plan is to read Chapter One, "The Commodity" (pp. 125-178 in the Penguin Classics edition). 

We also had some interesting discussion around the initial readings (Part 2 of the Communist Manifesto and the Preface to a Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy). The discussion touched on the validity of the Base/Superstructure model of society, the materialist conception of history, and the place of women in Marx's political theory. Next week we will get into the nitty-gritty foundations of capitalist society, starting with an analysis of the commodity.

Next Meeting: February 2, 2013, 4-6 pm. Location TBA.

First meeting

I realize it's short notice, but the first meeting of the Das Kapital Reading group will take place tomorrow, January 26 at 2:00pm at the Empress Ale House, 9912 82 Avenue. Hopefully we'll come up with a schedule tomorrow and that information will be posted here in due course.

Welcome to the blog for "Reading Das Kapital", a reading group organized in conjunction with the Edmonton Free School to read through Volume 1 of Marx's Capital. Published in 1867 after years of research, Capital offers us a thorough critique of the system of capitalist production and exchange, in other words, the system of capitalist alienation and exploitation. Marx's Capital became, for generations of left-wing radicals and revolutionaries, the foundation of their understanding of the capitalist system, exposing the ways in which capitalism of necessity exploits labor for profits and, in doing so, creates a culture of alienation, greed, and selfishness which is the world we know today.

After having been consigned to the "dustbin of history" following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Marxism is more and more relevant today as modern capitalism proves incapable of dealing with the crises of its own creation. The 2008 financial crisis is only the latest and so far most acute crisis, but there have been others and there will be more. The resurgence of interest in Marx's writings is due in no small part to a recognition that capitalism has lied in its promise of an increased standard of living for all and a world free of war and want.

Time and place of the reading group have yet to be decided. Watch this space for updates on the reading group, and hopefully notes and discussion following on from discussion the group has in person.

Sam.