#181 overall
Marx's Capital (David Harvey lectures)
YouTube
3 recommenders · 3 threads · recommended in 3 years, 2013–2022 · score 2.4
David Harvey's video lectures walk through Karl Marx's Capital, the 1867 critique of political economy, covering its core concepts such as labor value, use value, exchange value, and the dynamics of capital. They are meant to be watched alongside the book.
Commenters suggest pairing Harvey's lectures with Capital because the opening chapters are dense, and the lectures help make the dialectical argument and basic definitions easier to follow.
Business, Finance & Economicsintermediatefreevideo lectures#marx#political economy#labor theory of value#harvey#capital
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Note: Capital is available to read for free here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/
The beginning of Capital is quite dense (establishing the basic definitions of a study often is, and Marx's dialectical approach takes some getting used to if, like me, you never could understand Hegel) so I would recommend reading it along with David Harvey's lectures available on Youtube. However, the book does open up from there and becomes very much more concrete: working day lengths in the factory, increasing automation of industry, transition from feudalism by expropriation of land from farmers, ...
It is of course important to understand the works that Marx was critiquing or building on. Smith's Wealth of Nations, for example, is available for free from Standard Ebooks (https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/adam-smith/the-wealth-of-n...). This translation is very readable so I encourage you to take a look.
Exactly, which is why Marx uses the concept of a labor value, use value, and exchange value.
Labor is what's gone in, use is the inherent/intrinsic value in the object, and exchange value is what people will trade in exchange for it. That's a bad summary, and there's a lot more to the dialectic examination of them.
Reading Capital (along with David Harvey's lectures) is worth it if you find these things interesting, it's a deep analysis of markets and capital.
First, read http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm . It's only a few pages so it doesn't even count!
If you only want one book, that book is Capital I. I suggest David Harvey's lectures along with it, they'll help out quite a bit. If you have read Smith and Ricardo, that'll make it much easier, too. For bonus points, read the short "Wages, price, and profit" by Marx, it's a bit easier of an intro than the book's.
If you can fit in a second, I'd suggest "the State and Revolution" by Lenin.
Marx identifies a problem and a crude solution, and Lenin provides a good solution. Those two will give you the most of it. Wikipedia, especially on the historical/dialectical materialism stuff, is helpful.
A more full list is here: http://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/wisiw/basic_marxi...
Also, /r/communism101 is very good and there to answer questions, if you Reddit.