Derek > Recent Status Updates

Another book I've been periodically reading through. I've read most of these excerpts, but it's good to have one volume where they're all located together.

That said, some the selections in this anthology are redundant and could have been cut.

I've been slowly reading this book, prioritizing others over it. But now that we're reading and discussing the Manuscripts of 1844 in the Early Writings of Karl Marx reading group, I'll be focusing more intently on this book.

This book isn't as long as it appears, as a good third of it is front-matter, added introductory sections to each biography, and copious end-notes, all of which I skip and focus exclusively on the individual biographies, else I'd be bogged down on this book and perhaps be discouraged from reading the main content. That said, these biographies are an entertaining way to wind down in the bed at the end of the day.

After almost a year of focused study on Vol. 2, we're finally turning the corner toward its conclusion. I'm excited begin volume 3 at the conclusion of this group.

This is one of the two Marx study groups I'm currently involved in. It's interesting returning to young Marx's writings after becoming more immersed in Capital.

Giving up on Gibbon. I understand its importance and can even appreciate moments of it, but it's not enjoyable prose and its marred by an 18th century Tory sensibility -- at least his analysis comes off as highly aristocratic, conservative, even in the context of when it was written. I'm going to stick the ancient historians and the more contemporary ones.

Started this last year, and I intermittently pick it up and read from it. There's still much to learn from Lenin in 2022.

After months of studying the part II, the rate of turnover of capital, and a few weeks of holiday break, our study group is finally up to ch. 17.

The last few hundred pages have been a slog. The closer to contemporary times, the more pronounced these two historians bourgois biases have become. Britain and the US are presented sympathetically while communism and fascism are treated as the same. Not to mention, these historians continuously peddle Malthusian talking points and speak of the free market system mostly in glowing terms.