I’m basically center-left and a market socialist who supports multi-party politics and democracy, and I wish to broaden my horizons on Marx. Sometimes I tell myself “I gotta study Marx”, but I can’t.
I also need help internalizing what I’ve studied about Marxism and incorporate in my political views.
Any answer is appreciated. Thank you!
Find a vtuber reading it with Subway Surfers running on half the screen
what prevented you from reading the links you were given last time you came in with vague demands
not caring
lol I’m not going to care for you
An unfortunate problem with Marxism is that for some reason we expect people to read the original works of the 1800s. We don’t expect this for any other science.
The way people learn physics is not by reading Dirac’s and Newton’s and Einstein’s theories as they wrote them, but rather through a systematized breakdown of the curriculum developed over a century of increasing knowledge in the topic, in which you start with simplified building blocks which you can use to learn the more difficult parts. We also make an effort in designing physics problems which require a certain level of repetition to master and understand.
I don’t know any such resource for Marxism, other than possibly comrade Luna Oi’s translations to English of Marxist curriculum in the Vietnamese education system.
A YouTube channel called The Marxist Project has useful videos with nice animations explaining many different ideas of Marxism in simple terms, you may wanna check that out
I don’t know any such resource for Marxism
Does Richard Wolff count?
100% agree. We rightfully dunk on this bullshit, but our pedagogy towards Marxist works is a lot closer to this than we would like to admit. They think they should learn calculus by reading Principia Mathematica instead of reading a modern calculus textbook which is ultimately derived from Riemann’s works because Riemann and his generation of mathematicians felt that Newton’s proof of calculus was insufficiently rigorous. And of course, Riemann’s formulation of the integral was ultimately deemed insufficient as well which lead to the formation of the Lebesgue integral that is taught in higher math courses. Riemann integral is good enough for calculating the area under polynomials, which is why it is still taught in Calc 1 while Newton’s formulation is left behind because more rigorous formulations exist.
It’s a bit of an issue because anyone “simplifying” Marxist theory is also putting their own biases onto it, and it can lead to errors.
The best way to understand Marxist theory is to read it together and discuss it, and come to our own conclusions about things. But as atomized as people are today, that becomes extremely difficult.
We could do this collective effort beforehand, I didn’t try to imply that this “textbook Marxism” approach should be conceived by a single individual, of course it should also be a collective and critical effort with a lot of resources and time put into it. Arguably as problematic as that are for example the translations of Marx’s capital, many of them outdated, pompous and with translation errors because they were translated by one person, and in many cases translated twice removed (as in German -> French -> Spanish).
We read the original works because the underlaying systems and logic of capitalism haven’t changed since the 1800s, while in the intervening century and half we’ve had a concerted effort by literally every capitalist friendly org on the planet mystifying and distorting the science for political ends, leading to alot of inevitable backtracking and dead threads
Also if you’re looking for a modern distillation of Marxism, Anwar Shaikh’s Capital is the resource you’re looking for
Thanks for the source!! I’ll make sure to check that out.
While I agree that the underlying principles of capitalism haven’t changed over time, it’s definitely seen quantitative changes. Moreover, modern statistics and computing allow us to obtain, interpret and visualize data on scales incomprehensible back then. As an example, Paul Cockshott has published scientific articles numerically demonstrating the labor theory of value. That’s something Marx inferred logically and supported with limited evidence, but now we have actual statistical evidence applied to entire sectors of the economy proving that law of supply and demand is mostly shit at predicting prices, whereas labour theory of value consistently provides great estimations, and this should be mentioned to someone learning Marxism: “this isn’t true because Marx was very smart and you should believe it, Marx simply predicted it and further evidence has corroborated it beyond doubt”.
Paul Cockshott has published scientific articles numerically demonstrating the labor theory of value
it sounds like you need to make some posts to c/marxism
Paul Cockshott has a YouTube channel where he explains his findings in much more clarity and rigor than I can. He’s a bit of a queerphobe, probably due to him being ancient, and the format of the videos is a poor sound quality voiceover of a slideshow, but they’re there if you want a more accessible entrypoint. His papers are very readable though, he’s fortunately a good communicator in that sense who doesn’t abuse jargon and high register. But if you’re really interested, you can write a followup to this comment. It could be fun to summarize some of his videos in a series of posts to c/Marxism.
I am interested but wasn’t trying to give you a big job. I just meant maybe post the most relevant video or paper to the comm
But if you’re really interested, you can write a followup to this comment. It could be fun to summarize some of his videos in a series of posts to c/Marxism.
I for one would very much appreciate this!
An unfortunate problem with Marxism is that for some reason we expect people to read the original works of the 1800s. We don’t expect this for any other science.
There is a very good reason that we still read Marx directly: the long and unfortunate history of revisionism among Marxists.
Many important documents authored by Marx and Engels were not published until the mid- to late-twentieth century and these are causing some new interpretations, or at least proving wrong some of the prevailing ones.
Physics is an excellent example of a field in which students ought to read the original papers early on, because the popularization of topics like quantum mechanics and relativity causes no small amount of confusion. Much of the confusion is on the qualitative aspect, the part that requires philosophical rigor; but universities, being diploma mills, try to distill these ideas down to method to be applied. Hence the stereotype that STEM types are terrible at philosophy and “soft sciences” generally; they aren’t usually taught how to think beyond method.
The most important reason we still read Marx is that his explanations remain the best explanations we have to date.
Physics is an excellent example of a field in which students ought to read the original papers early on, because the popularization of topics like quantum mechanics and relativity causes no small amount of confusion.
Well, the papers on how to think about quantum mechanics are often even more confused than the popularization.
There is a very good reason that we still read Marx directly: the long and unfortunate history of revisionism among Marxists
Yet Trots consistently read OG Marx texts and end up rejecting the later revolutionary theory stemming from the past century of socialist praxis because they also swallow cold-war propaganda. The issue with revisionism as of 2026, with the scientific and historical evidence at our disposal, has a lot more to do with losing the propaganda war against the western empire regarding the last century of Actually Existing Socialism than against well-meaning communists who read the wrong revisionist summary of Marx’s texts.
students ought to read the original papers early on, because the popularization of topics like quantum mechanics and relativity causes no small amount of confusion
That’s almost impossible, a physicist who doesn’t spend several years specializing into either quantum mechanics or relativity doesn’t have the mathematical tools available to understand the early papers. It makes a LOT more sense starting with classical mechanics, then explaining electromagnetism, then the theoretical and experimental divergence between Galilean frames of reference and Maxwell’s equations, and finally bringing those up to explain why light-speed is a constant in all frames of reference and how this implies most of special relativity, and then proceed once you learned the hardcore maths required for general relativity
I have a lot of criticism against modern academia (not that it was ever great) and I left science myself because of my issues with it, but pedagogically designed incremental breakdowns that first lay the building blocks and then use them to advance more difficult concepts are a wonderful way of learning things that I don’t think we should disregard when it comes to the science of Marxism.
Revisionism question aside, I think Capital is still the best explanation of the fundamentals. It remains relevant as an intro text, being written and published for a lay audience, not academics. Certainly Marx did publish lots of esoteric stuff; one can wade into the weeds about Marx’s views on political economy in Theories of Surplus Value or Grundrisse or the 1844 Manuscripts. But Capital doesn’t occupy the same category.
I haven’t seen a summary of Capital that properly captures all of it including the dialectical aspect. Modern thinkers are primed to think analytically rather than dialectically. Therefore many presentations of the concepts have an analytical bent. If someone manages to capture it fully, I imagine it would be just as long as Capital, so one might as well just read the original.
About the physics thing, I think I was unclear. I don’t mean we should teach quantum to high schoolers or something. I mean rhe opposite: if a student cannot make sense of the original paper, they probably don’t have any business learning the “modern” version of the ideas either! But once it is decided to teach someone quantum mechanics, we should ground that in some level of interaction with the literature, not only summary.
Of course there are exceptions, but I have in mind those theories that have a concise original paper, like Einstein’s papers on relativity or on the photoelectric effect. Some other theories are of course built up over decades across many authors and cannot be localized to a single paper. In summary, I think physics students could be better trained to philosophize about physics, rather than being taught the popular interpretation so that they can be rushed into the next thing. Though… we’re kind of in a time where physics training is not valuable at all for getting a job, so maybe none of this matters in the real world…
A lot of utopian socialist tendencies, like ultraleftism, stem from people reading Capital and nothing else. They end up coming out of it critical of capitalism and having ideas as to what socialism should look like, but no historical or dialectical materialist analysis, so they don’t really get the point of Capital.
They still see things in static terms, don’t understand the relevance of analyzing capitalism’s development other than saying it’s bad, see socialism as just a list of policies you implement and anyone who doesn’t implement that list is a “revisionist” or “capitalist roader” etc.
They go into Capital with no understanding of dialectics and miss the whole point because they interpret it all under a metaphysical lens. Personally I think Critique of the German Ideology is the most important fundamental. Anti-Durhing is very good too. I’d implore people to read those before reading Capital.
I see where you’re coming from and I agree that many bad Marxists read only volume 1. Though, I don’t think the German Ideology is the right pedagogical starting point. In a sense it is the logical starting point, because it summarizes the basic principles of M&E against their peers. But it is an esoteric text nonetheless. The average communist need not read about the history of German Idealism. I say that, keeping in mind what you say about the importance of that text for Marxism as a whole; I agree with that. But there are different roles of communists. The majority are not intellectuals and are not interested in being intellectual Marxists. They need only the essentials for their practical circumstances. It’s only the party cadre who needs to understand Marxism thoroughly, to trace the history of socialist theory through the twists and dead-ends, to have a complete understanding of dialectics. There’s a reason that Marx did not directly mention dialectics in Capital despite “coquett[ing] here and there with modes of expression peculiar to him” (Hegel). It would have made the text inaccessible to the masses. Moreover he and Engels were more than happy to leave “to the gnawing criticism of the mice” the manuscript that we know as the German Ideology, so it’s hard to conceive of it being essential if they did not think so.
The problem of ultraleftists being poor Marxists is more like someone quitting piano lessons too early and developing poor habits as they continue. The problem is not the order of the lessons, nor the essentials as such, but the lack of guidance throughout the training.
Reading this back a little bit, I should say that I also agree strongly that dialectics cannot be sacrificed or diminished. They are essential to Marxism. But what I mean to say is that conscious study of dialectics is a bit too advanced for introduction.
I came here to say pretty much the same thing but you beat me to it. So I’ll just drop a link to the text you mentioned, Luna’s Oi’s translation of Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism v1.
This link is to a print edition which people should absolutely consider buying, if only to support Luna who frankly seems great, but it’s also released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, so pdfs are pretty easy to find, for example at the internet archive!
What’s your method of studying Marxism?
I read whatever book regarding the topic that interests me the most at one given time, and I follow Marxist agitators and educators on social media, mainly YouTube
How?
This bit account has run it’s course
Are you being a dick or is this a known bit account?
They have multiple accounts where they repeatedly post the same messages multiple times, ask for advice and then ignore all advice given, find a contentious issue and then double and triple down on the worst take possible (last time it was pro-Zionism) until they get banned and then immediately make posts on yptb about how authoritarian hexbear is.
How do we know it’s the same person though?
Because their username is always dylanmc but from a different instance
Thanks!!
Getting diagnosed with adhd and taking meds really helped for me but before that I had to listen to audiobooks and podcasts like marx madness and red menace and do so multiple times to retain anything
Controversial take:
Its okay to read a modernized distillation of authors like Marx and Lennin. What I’ve read of Lennin… is very “in the moment”. Dude makes constant references to shit going on like you’re already aware of it. So either you read past it hoping that later context will make things make sense or you stop and look up what some group/newsletter beef was going on before returning to the text I was wanting to read.
English translation of Marx’s Capital may not have gone through much editing and I spent so much time trying to parse sentence structure to weed out the “extra” stuff or reordering entire paragraphs to remove all the comma splices that I had to stop.
What’s your method of studying Marxism?
Don’t really have one myself. I’m terrible when it comes to self directed learning.
I’m stuck at a very juvenile “watch YouTube video made by somebody who calls themself as an ML or left Anarchist” until they post something off putting.
are you talking about the new translation that came out last year or two? or its predecessor that I think dates from around 1900
I wasn’t talking about anything in particular. (Didn’t know there was a translation that came out last year… but I’m not sure if another translation is what is needed. Maybe some editing/interpretation of something like Capital would be helpful… but I’m pretty sure there is a Cliff’s Notes or Spark Notes version of Capital already.)
Just voicing my weakly defended position that, it might not be necessary for everybody who wants to understand the concepts of Marx to only stick to direct readings of Marx’s work. If you can tackle those works, it will definitely help when defending Marx’s positions in a conversation/debate. I’m also fine eating from the trough of secondary sources who can describe the concepts of Socialism or the ideas/arguments of Marx, Lennin, Mao, etc with language and examples that are more contemporary to now.
more info on the 2024 translation https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190075/capital
Featuring extensive original commentary,
This right here is what is probably going to trip me up. I’m not sure I need extensive original commentary more than I need … possibly extraneous stuff removed, run on sentences stopped, a pages long paragraph broken up into several smaller more focused paragraphs, etc.
Maybe listen to some lectures on Marx?
There’s also tons of books with selected and annotated readings of Marx and dialectical materialism, which might make tackling the actual books easier. I remember a book that went over all of philosophy and history through a Marxist lens. It was being recommended a lot as an approachable first book because it doesn’t assume the reader is familiar with complicated language or other concepts. Don’t remember the author, but I remember it being an easy read.
Do you have any recs?
Dr Richard Wolff’s YouTube channel has a lot of lectures introducing Marx’s theory of value and surplus value, that could be a good start
What’s your method of studying?
Found the book I was thinking about: it’s Georges Politzer elementary principles of philosophy: https://c.encryptionin.space/epubs/elementary-principles-of-philosophy/
I would recommend Maurice Cornforth’s Materialism and the Dialectical Method instead. Politzer makes errors regarding dialectics, contradiction, and the negation of the negation. If you want to read/recommend Politzer’s work you should follow it up with On Contradiction.
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Oh, good to know. As I said, I started reading Politzer and it was treading ground I had already approached through other texts, so I didn’t go on, but it’s a shame he misses those points because the writing is very approachable (as far as philosophy goes)
What’s your method of studying Marxism?
