There’s a new translation of the first volume of Karl Marx’s Capital coming out this fall. “This magnificent new edition of Capital is a translation of Marx for the twenty-first century.” Filing this under foundational texts that I should probably read.
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It’s become one of those sites (and increasingly, Reddit) where, as a user, I actively avoid clicking on it as a search result for anything.
i read whatever edition that "great books of the western world" series used. the element that amazed me was how often marx used direct quotations from testimony before parliament. marx made the british museum's reading room a forensic tool of great utility.
that might be something i would get myself.
I love a lot of Marx’s writing, but Capital isn’t something I enjoyed at all. I big chunks of it maybe 20 years ago now, and the only thing that stuck with me is this feeling it might be the most boring book ever written. So boring Marx died writing it.
I stayed at an AirBnB last year and found a copy on the bookshelf and started reading it. It is foundational, but it's also very much of its time. Marx had no way of preducting the future impacts of labor unions, shareholder markets, globalism, etc. I wish colleges assigned the reading of Upton Sinclair's "Letters to Judd," a fairly detailed description of how capital actually works. Most of it is still applicable to the modern world.
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