I thought about starting with the Encyclopedia, but since reading James’ Notes on Dialectics I think that since that came way later and Hegel’s all about building up to things that I’d start with the Phenomonology which he called the basis to his overall system, so that’s where I’m at. But I feel you, light reading it is not, every sentence is so chock full that it can be difficult to digest, but man when you get it, it makes you feel like a genius.

Rob, where are you at in the Phenomenology? I think I have that out of the library right now, but maybe I took it back I can’t remember. I’ve been wanting to go back over Hegel. I’ve read the Encyclopedia Logic (fucked if I understood it, though, and I can’t remember it at all), and little bits of the Science of Logic and the Phenomenology (same thing, except I do remember stuff about 3 paragraphs early on in the Science of Logic that I think I did understand).

take care,
Nate

Yeah, I love reading economicsy stuff but find philosophy hard-going… Negri for example I find dull and difficult, though a lot of people make good stuff out of it. I guess I’ve always found the more I learn about something the more I enjoy it. I had to go back to maths when I moved over from sociology to economics… but I think maths looks much harder than it actually is once you learn the language.

I actually think reading some secondary texts on Capital can be more fruitful than the original if you have limited time to spend, especially one that gives a sense of marxian political economy after Marx, the interpretations and developments. Capital in the original is not that well organised, and not complete - as Engels complains hilariously in the Preface to v3, all he could do with some large chunks was copy out Marx’s own copies of parliamentary report with Marx’s marginal notes - mostly “sarcastic comments”.

This year I’ve been running a reading group in Sydney on David Harvey’s ‘Limits to Capital’, which in my opinion is an excellent ‘textbook’ version of Capital. It’s just been re-released by Verso. It is very maths-lite.

If you have lots of time I also recommend Anwar Shaikh’s New School course prospectus for “Historical Foundations of Political Economy I”: http://homepage.newschool.edu/~AShaikh/ec10401.doc

Todd,
I see where you’re going a little bit more clearly now. I’ll try to peruse some Popper to get better acquainted. I would argue, however that social sciences are a bit hard to pin down to begin with, and may take years, generations, or even centuries to be worked out, proven or disproven, and are pliable enough that they may never be proven or disproven. A good argument for jettisoning them altogther or a good argument for rolling with one that accepts that it will never have all the material it needs to be a complete closed system, which is what I get from the dialectics of Marx, Lenin, James, and even Hegel when he’s not being hampered by his overriding idealism. Anyway thanks again for the reading tip and the exchange, it’s a pleasure.

Peace

However, when I don’t read the theoretical/philosophical stuff regularly I find that it’s hard to return to, I almost feel too dumb to read it, if that makes any sense. That is why I appreciate this dialogue, it’s been well over a year since I finished Vol. I of Capital and I put Vol. II aside to read James and then moved on to where I am now so it’s nice to return to these things once in awhile to brush up and to remember what I forgot and forget some of the erroneous things that I remember.

Thanks again,
Peace

I agree but I have to say, that stuff is _hard_ to read! I mean, I read obtuse and opaque shit, as you probly noticed from this little blog of mine, but like … all the, you know, numbers and whatnot… it saps my will to keep reading. I imagine it gets easier the more you do it though.

Rob, I’d be into reading something on dialectics or from the dialectical tradition. Have you ever read this book Change The World Without Taking Power by John Holloway? (I’m not suggesting that for a reading.) I think it’s good, though the language is a bit rough sometimes, and his dialectics sounds to me a lot like Todd’s perspective.

take care,
Nate

Oh right, CLR James… I was thinking Henry for some reason and so confused. I have heard a lot about CLR but never read anything by him need to get around to reading Selma.

As for Harry Cleaver… yes, I have read that book and I think it’s great. Actually I used Cleaver’s Capital reading guide (also on the website) when I had my first go at reading Capital a few years ago. It’s good to come back to it (thanks for the link) - it is a much-needed corrective to the political economy tradition I come from. Though I think a lot of marxist PE today has learned some of these lessons. You still see the tendency in PE of trying to predict a crisis, which becomes basically just waiting for crisis. (The Canadians Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin have written some good stuff on this lately in debate with Monthly Review, who always see a crisis around the corner.)

That said, I do think understanding how capitalism works on all its levels to be essential for fighting it politically. Especially since working class power in and out of the workplace is affected so drastically by macro phenomena like unemployment. As I see it, the great value of the marxist tradition is its ability to understand these levels of capitalism as political, not as a separate area of inquiry.

I for one don’t find anything at all in Hegelian/Marxian/Jamesian dialectics that is hostile or antagonistic to any of the descriptives you’ve used. In fact I think complex and adaptive is the cornerstone of my dialectical thought, never rigid and deterministic, though it’s a fair assessment of those who’ve claimed dialectics in the past.

But I’m the first to admit I’ve been wrong before and I’ll probably be wrong again before all is said and done. However it’s usually been thinking dialectically that has helped me to see that I was thinking rigidly and categorically.

Thanks again for the short exchange.