this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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Hop in, comrades, we are reading Capital Volumes I-III this year, and we will every year until Communism is achieved. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included, but comrades are welcome to set up other bookclubs.) This works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46 pages a week.

I'll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested. Let me know if you want to be added or removed.

We are diving into surplus value extraction now. Follow Mr. Moneybags with Marx as our guide as we see where the real heart of exploitation lies.

Week 5, Jan 29-Feb 5, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 Sections 1-3

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

Use any translation/edition you like. Marxists.org has the Moore and Aveling translation in various file formats including epub and PDF: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

Ben Fowkes translation, PDF: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=AA342398FDEC44DFA0E732357783FD48

(Unsure about the quality of the Reitter translation, I'd love to see some input on it as it's the newest one)

AernaLingus says: I noticed that the linked copy of the Fowkes translation doesn't have bookmarks, so I took the liberty of adding them myself. You can either download my version with the bookmarks added or if you're a bit paranoid (can't blame ya) and don't mind some light command line work you can use the same simple script that I did with my formatted plaintext bookmarks to take the PDF from libgen and add the bookmarks yourself. Also, please let me know if you spot any errors with the bookmarks so I can fix them!


Resources

(These are not expected reading, these are here to help you if you so choose)


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Just joining us? You can use the archives below to help you reading up to where the group is. There is another reading group on a different schedule at https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzhou (federated at !genzhou@lemmygrad.ml ) which may fit your schedule better. The idea is for the bookclub to repeat annually, so there's always next year.

Week 1 - Week 2 - Week 3 - Week 4

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[–] qcop@hexbear.net 1 points 1 day ago

Ok I almost caught up. Just finished reading Chapter 9. I’ll try to do Chapter 10 first sections with next weeks reading.

I had to reread a lot the Senior argument and Marx's answer regarding the last hour. At first I thought Marx was doing exactly the same as Senior in its argument (ie arbitrarily deciding the first hours pay the wage), but then I understood that whereas Marx was using it as a pedagogical tool to show more clearly that there is unpaid labor creating surplus value while still saying that actually every hour of labor actually is actually always fragments of c,v and p. Senior was actually fraudulently trying to assert that profit only actually occurs in the "last hour", thus removing this last hour would remove all the profit.

This is such a diabolical thing from Senior and I actually encounter this kind of argument frequently by capitalists and right wing politicians when arguing against lowering the work day or having a minimum wage, although now they usually present it in a bit of a different form.

When hearing this without thinking too much about it, I can see how you can easily start nodding along even though when prodding it, the argument disintegrates.

[–] oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] SteamedHamberder@hexbear.net 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ooh I’m falling behind. Might have to do some skimming

[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 4 points 5 days ago

Don't skim! Better to take your time with the text and take it at your own pace than to misunderstand due to reading too quickly.

[–] into_highest_invite@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

i noticed that the chapters are different in the aveling translation than in the reitter translation. that is, either reitter or marx in 1867 combines all of part 2 into a single chapter, and so aveling's chapter 7 becomes reitter's chapter 5. chapter 9 in aveling is chapter 7 in reitter.

[–] oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net 2 points 5 days ago

Huh, how interesting.

why doesn't he call necessary labor variable labor instead, as an analogy to surplus labor? is there some etymological reason outside the context that can be gleaned from the book? i ask because of the footnote on the definitions. it seems like an easy terminological problem to solve, easier than most.

[–] Ath3ro@hexbear.net 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I almost caught up but fell behind last week, hope i can participate in the next one!

[–] oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net 4 points 5 days ago

If you're trying, that's still awesome. Better than many others on Hexbear.

[–] SevenSkalls@hexbear.net 3 points 5 days ago

Still trying to catch up, too, but the posts are motivational to keep reading lol