How would you recommend to read Capital, Volume I?

I'm thinking of reading it with a couple friends. Should we get David Harvey's companion? How about starting at Part 8, then reading from the beginning? etc. Thank you.

Official response from submitted

Capital - and indeed, all three volumes - is an important book to read because (1) it remains a foundational work in how and why to criticize the capitalist system, (2) it is thus a good balancing companion to the works of Adam Smith and David Ricardo whose foundational works in economics were both highly celebratory of the capitalist system, (3) it can enable you to pursue the vast accumulated literature of Marxian economics. There are several books that can help you work through Marx's Capital and David Harvey's is certainly one of those. Please excuse my immodesty but let me also recommend the chapter devoted to Marx's economics in the following book: R.D. Wolff and S. A. Resnick, Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian and Marxian (Cambridge: MIT Press 2012). This book also clarifies systematically how Marxian economics differs from the mainstream neoclassical economics and also from Keynesian economics.

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  • Richard Wolff
    responded with submitted 2017-02-04 14:02:31 -0500
  • Zach Campbell
    published this page in Ask Prof. Wolff 2017-02-03 15:27:21 -0500

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