Communist Study Group

Current 'Syllabus'/Schedule (Spring 2026):

• Week 1 (04/02): Heinrich - How to Read Marx’s Capital pp 13 - 47 

• Week 2 (04/09): Capital Ch 1 Sections 1-3 (Commodity)

• Week 3 (04/16): Capital Ch 1 Section 4 and Ch 2 Section 4 (Commodity Fetishism)

• Week 4 (04/23): Backhaus - On the Dialectics of the Value Form

• Week 5 (04/30): Capital Chs 4-6 (M-C-M’)

• Week 6 (05/07): Capital Chs 4-6 (M-C-M’)

• Week 7 (05/14): Marx - Fragment on Machines

• Week 8 (05/21): Capital Ch 7 (Labor/Valorization)

• Week 9 (05/28): Capital Ch 21 and Ch 23 Section 1-2 (Simple Reproduction)

• Week 10 (06/04): Critique of the Gotha Program (link) 

Note for the interested:

Communist political theory is not known for its ease of access, and "where to start" is probably the single question I've heard most frequently. The one piece of advice I'd give is to just start - it's easy to get overwhelmed and feel like you have to develop a strong background in history/philosophy/economics/whatever else before tackling Marx's tomes, but fighting that feeling and knowing that the texts are supposed to feel challenging because the ideas they contain are challenging is vital. Finally, I'd say to start with the primary sources themselves. People like to look for summaries or more easily accessible pop-theory texts, but in those instances what you're reading isn't really Marx (or Lenin/Engels/whoever the thinker in question is), but someone else's interpretation thereof, which can be problematic in those all-too-often cases where the writer has a specific agenda to push. Ironically, in many instances Marx's texts directly contradict (for the sake of non-partisanship maybe I should say "appear to contradict") their most common interpretations, and reckoning with said contradictions is necessary to developing an understanding of Marx that is both complete and completely your own.