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.

Week 1, January 4 - January 11, Volume 1 Chapter 1 ‘The Commodity’

This is the very first bookclub post, so get to know each other, ask questions about the basic premise, just keep mostly on-topic. This didn’t start on January 1st because I want it to start and end on the weekend. @'ing everyone mid-Thursday probably wouldn’t have gotten very many readers.

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.

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)


2024 Archived Discussions

If you want to dig back into older discussions, this is an excellent way to do so.

Archives:

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2025 Archived Discussions

If you want to dig back into older discussions, this is an excellent way to do so.

Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6Week 7Week 8Week 9Week 10Week 11Week 12Week 13Week 14Week 15Week 16Week 17Week 18Week 19Week 20Week 21Week 22Week 23Week 24Week 25Week 26Week 27Week 28Week 29Week 30Week 31Week 32Week 33Week 34Week 35Week 36Week 37Week 38Week 39Week 40Week 41Week 42Week 43Week 44Week 45

2026 Archived Discussions

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.

N/A

  • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    13 days ago

    I wish there was a better tool for these clubs. Lemmy doesn’t have a proper Watch feature for new comments, so it is not motivating to add a comment on day 6 of a thread, because no one will see it, let alone commenting on a past week’s thread.

    Thanks oscardejarjayes for hosting this year!

    • oscardejarjayes [comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPM
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      13 days ago

      Yeah, Lemmy isn’t built for bookclubs. We could have a custom sorting algorithm to cater to bookclubs or something, and some kind of watch feature would be nice, but I think Lemmy is just not a very good place to hold bookclubs. In-person is book club king, and everything else is just a pale immitation. If we want to go one step further, moving off-platform might be a good decision. We might have to write it ourselves, but a Hexbear linked Bookclub virtual meeting space is very interesting.

      You’re welcome, I’m always happy to serve my community! Cowbee’s my Lemmy hero, so I love to follow in his footsteps, and help out continuing his work.

      • Cowbee [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netM
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        12 days ago

        Cowbee’s my Lemmy hero, so I love to follow in his footsteps, and help out continuing his work.

        You’re way too kind, comrade. Vampire led the 2024 reading group, so 2025 isn’t even original. Like you, I’m just trying to pay all the numerous people who helped me forward, and atone for my years of liberalism. shudders

        I agree that the Lemmy format isn’t great for longer book clubs, it works great with single articles or short books but Capital is a commitment. One thing I saw used by other book clubs is asking a question per week, and trying to get people to answer that. It ups engagement and fosters further discussion. Just an idea! And thanks again, comrade!

    • the rizzler@lemmygrad.ml
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      9 days ago

      maybe lemmy could add a feature to show both comments and posts in a community? like the chat button but per-community rather than per-post?

    • ea6927d8@lemmy.ml
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      8 days ago

      You can try saving the post of the week you’re trying to keep up with.

      Jerboa (android app) doesn’t mark new comments (not that I know), but the default Lemmy UI on the web does. It’s a bit of a chore, but it can work.