a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brain workers nor heart-sick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully [sic], and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all—the realization at last of the meaning of the word COMMONWEALTH.The "scientific" or theoretical part of socialism, according to Morris, was hard to grasp for those unfamiliar with classical political economy, a cumbersome reality that could be avoided without much consequence. The hard work of trudging through a tome like Capital could be substituted by intense political conversation and involvement in the daily activities of the socialist movement in England. Morris described himself as "careless of metaphysics and religion, as well as scientific analysis, but with a deep love of the earth and the life on it, and a passion for the history of the past of mankind." His concern was with the degradation of beauty and art that was the result of industrial civilization. Consequently, Morris' apologetic piece, "How I Became A Socialist", doesn't even contain the word "capitalism". His main influences before becoming a socialist were the works of Carlyle and Ruskin, peppered with a little bit of Mill he read in a newspaper he couldn't recall. For someone like Morris, you could be a socialist without throwing around phrases like "commodity fetishism" or "surplus value". As he saw it, "all I had to do then in order to become a Socialist [sic] was to hook myself on to the practical movement" toward its realization in England. And he did. Morris was integral in establishing the Socialist League, along with its newspaper, Commonweal, before it was taken over by anarchists in the 1890's. If you're interested in his work, Penguin published a sleek-looking and affordable collection of a few of his essays for its "Great Ideas" series entitled Useless Work Vs. Useless Toil.
The reason that I chose to open with Morris is that he seems to embody a lot of the apprehension, which even those that agree with the "idea" of socialism or communism appear to have, surrounding the prospect of reading Capital. I mean, it's long. The first volume alone is over 1, 000 pages, factoring in the appendix. And it's old. Marx first published it in 1867, so there might be a bit of a language barrier even before he introduces notions like "constant" versus "variable" capital. On top of that, the "method of presentation," as Marx phrased it, is cryptic and appears to be almost a priori in its marshaling of theoretical concepts that seem to come out of nowhere. The first three chapters read like Spinoza's Ethics or Euclid's Elements—a kind of geometric proof, reliant on axioms. This can potentially be boring for those that want to dive into sexier topics like class struggle, something Marx doesn't even get to until you've slogged through the first 300 or so pages.
It's been said that the argument of Capital is the "whole book," a result of Marx's dialectical approach, which starts, simply enough, with the existence of the commodity and proceeds through layers of conceptual abstraction before peeling them away to get back to a fuller view of certain basic concepts, instead of building an argument brick by brick. The reason for this has to due with Marx's emphasis on relations and processes, something Marx felt compelled to do, since his dialectical approach is in direct opposition to the way in which the political economists of his day viewed everything in isolation. Capital is something that's in motion, inevitably bouncing off contradictory elements of its composition, according to "laws of motion" historically specific to the capitalist mode of production, which propel it toward crisis. In order to understand capitalism you have to see how all of these twists and turns in Marx's analysis fit together and relate to everything else, so it's important to read all of Capital. But more on that later.
It's been said that the argument of Capital is the "whole book," a result of Marx's dialectical approach, which starts, simply enough, with the existence of the commodity and proceeds through layers of conceptual abstraction before peeling them away to get back to a fuller view of certain basic concepts, instead of building an argument brick by brick. The reason for this has to due with Marx's emphasis on relations and processes, something Marx felt compelled to do, since his dialectical approach is in direct opposition to the way in which the political economists of his day viewed everything in isolation. Capital is something that's in motion, inevitably bouncing off contradictory elements of its composition, according to "laws of motion" historically specific to the capitalist mode of production, which propel it toward crisis. In order to understand capitalism you have to see how all of these twists and turns in Marx's analysis fit together and relate to everything else, so it's important to read all of Capital. But more on that later.