Interview with Vijay Prashad on reading Marx's Capital

Having joined a reading group and finally started reading Capital Volume 1, Carlos Martinez interviews Vijay Prashad, a seasoned Capital-volume-1-ist, to get some insights and inspiration.

[@donthiebautable]

Thanks for doing the interview, and for joining the reading group! And thanks Vijay for the discussion and encouragement!

[@wenkeadam362]

Carlos, it's been eight months since this delightful conversation you had with Vijay, and it just appeared on my KZbin feed now. I hope that you went through with your plan to read Capital. And I hope that you profited at least half as much as I did with my similar endeavor of re-reading Capital during this pandemic. Some fifty years have passed since the first time I tried to read it. I have to confess that back then I never went past chapter four. This time I read the whole book 1 and parts of volumes 2 and 3. And I discovered to my dismay that back then I had really only understood a fraction of it! I believe that I'm understanding much more now. Thank you for this opportunity to see you two interact so well.

[@UnrecycleRubdish]

I can listen to Vijay speak all day long. He has a way of making any topic engaging and down to earth.

[@HxH2011DRA]

Best summary of Capital and its modern importance I've ever seen

[@digvijaynikam3169]

Please bring in more such interviews. It was wonderful!

[@therealartistproper]

Great video. Great summary of Capital by Vijay Prashad. Thank you

[@Gwynncore]

Thank you for doing this amazing interview! I'm a bit intimidated by Capital, but I am really looking forward to finally reading it too.

[@bengrimm622]

KZbin....listen easy

[@Windband1]

Wonderful conversation. Thank you for posting! Vijay is one of the greats.

[@georgesais8687]

P.s. yes, you can open at any section of the book. Vijay thank you. The 3 volumes of Capital are extraordinary. There are parts in there about India under the British rule and Ireland-the landlords and even Australia. It is scientific history. There is humour and wit.

[@EurekaRepublic89]

23:48 "I can't recommend David Harvey's book" Just for reference.

[@maximepirard6171]

Vijay critiqueing petit-bourgeois pseudo-marxists: woke Oriental despot doing it: one-sided provocations

[@myfavouritecolorisgreen]

18:38 "Capitalist production only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social forces of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth: the soil and the worker"

[@username19237]

8:07 is so fundamentally good

[@farhiyaa4880]

Vijay is great person to interview.

[@georgesais8687]

Thank you for this. I have vol. 3 Capital for economics and it is brilliant! However it needs concentration. Keynes is considered as the one that humanised capitalism. But greed again raised its ugly head.

[@ayohilary7744]

Thank you. Also have been intimidated by Capital but dying to read it. Thanks Vijay.

[@refoliation]

Hell yeah. Thank you.

[@davedavis9099]

Great stuff. I work in compooters n that, and have recently been part of setting up an employee owned consultancy. A big part is solving immediate problems but trying not to lose sight of the end game. No one seemed to talk about the National Investment Bank proposed by Corbyn. ☹️

[@blazersforever]

Excellent discussion! Carlos, may I suggest that your reading group read Zak Cope's The Wealth of (Some) Nations published by Pluto Press in 2019? I think it comes closest(of anything I've read) to a comprehensive theory of how Capital works globally today which is something you and Vijay hit on beginning at 15 minutes in your interview.

[@philgwellington6036]

This must be really good, there's only 11 comments! And no advertisements.. Looking forward to hearing it algo.

[@juliusaugustino8409]

I wish I was on that class that Vijay teaches on Capital :D I read the book a while back and definitely have to revisit again over and over

[@muangakklhue.neisnu989]

I would love to hear what Vijay has to say about Cedric J. Robinson's book: Black Marxism

[@emmetbergin6016]

Does that book go into Irish settler colonialism in America? I was looking at the contents the other day.

[@simonjlkoreshoff3426]

Vijay rightly says that work provides us with more than money. It provides us with time for leisure, etc. But surely work also provides us with satisfaction and enjoyment in itself. There’s not much of that on the modern work space. So something is lost here that needs to be taken into account. The separation of work and pleasure, I think, needs to be addressed. Maybe it has been. I don’t know.

[@abhinav5534]

Holyshit! I've had this book: Das Capital for a while - I was terrified to begin but now after watching this - I feel a bit more confident. It is indeed an academic task! :D

[@MichaelHolloway]

(Daunted) Beautifully written. Enjoyable read.

[@scotteagles4864]

David Harvey has a series of videos in which he leads a class through a detailed reading and discussion of Capital Vol.1. Check it out here: kzbin.info/aero/PL0A7FFF28B99C1303 (hope that link works!)

[@boyax7825]

thanks

[@kaushalparmar2118]

Thank you for this interview. I'm reading Capital vol.1 for the first time as well, on chapter 3 currently. Can I join the reading group? Is anybody else interested in starting one? Thanks.

[@aman_insaan]

You joined yet... ? I too want to join..

[@JamieDigitalArt]

37:41 Discussion about Yanis Varoufakis

[@brandonmiles8174]

Well there's something that I've talked with my wife about for a few years, and recently heard Zizek talking about, and it's this new form of digital, Bill Gates economy that's taking over, and I don't know if traditional surplus value forms can be applied or not, but I'd love to hear from someone who understands better. This economy where you for instance, Bill Gates is paying developers a wage, seemingly arbitrary, to develop code for software that has no tangible value, nothing that can say "this is how much wool was used to make it" because at the end of the day there is no tangible product that the consumer purchases that exchanges ownership, in fact you are almost always now paying a fee for renting a program. Used to, you would buy a disc that came with a special code that gave you license of ownership, or at least to use in any way you please, other than illegally of course. Now, every company is going to this massively profitable operation of instead of charging $140 for lifetime, the consumer pays $13 a month and never owns anything and never is done paying for the product. Of course, I somewhat understand the concept of abstract labor, but I just feel this is something entirely different in more than one way, and the whole economy is moving in this direction. Soon, you'll not go to Walmart ever again, you'll use Amazon, Grove, Misfits and grocery delivery to get what you need every single month. We have to figure this out soon because there will in the coming decade(s) be a huge decline in the power of labor, and we could have all the unions we want but if we can't stop the flow of consumption on a mass level, then we will be screwed forever, especially with the massive level of surveillance we are seeing on the horizon.

[@Diamat1917]

9:04 Read chapter 32

[@wankee888]

above every thing else is the environment. You cannot win if the environment is against you.

[@ujean56]

It may be that the fate of humanity is neither it's inability to realise the contradictions of capitalism nor the recognition of the logic of Marxism but rather the fundamental irrationality in human nature. Like morality, logic may be it's own reward.

[@tacocruiser4238]

Marxism has always been logical in theory but disastrous in practice. It never ends well for those that embrace it. China only became successful after abandoning Marxism.

[@mikemurray2027]

@@tacocruiser4238 Oh, go away you brainwashed drone.

[@ColtraneTaylor]

"Like morality, logic may be it's own reward." What do you mean?

[@adorno_gang37]

@@tacocruiser4238 I can never help but be curious how people who are at this level of strawmanning and misunderstanding of Marxism still end up in the comment section of a fairly obscure interview with an Indian Marxist?

[@jared5015]

I love Yanis and the fact that he's a proponent of MMT. Here, near the very end of the video he says that the system in which collectively produced value is privately appropriated is prone to crisis. As was said by Vijay, Marxists absolutely, at least in the U.S., are terrible at pulling their heads out of abstractions and talking about immediate, concrete solutions. This is why a synthesis of Marxism and MMT is on the horizon IMO. m.kzbin.info/www/bejne/fqGspI2Caqt9jNU

[@harryd5893]

"There is no human nature " - says Vijay Prasad quoting Marx. How he could come up with such a blindfolded statement! Anarchist principles of questioning any kind of power, hierarchy, or domination (that such power, or structure is never self-justifying) - the core principle of Classical Anarchism encapsulates Human Nature pretty well.

[@ben-dr3wf]

The problem with Marxists is they don't read the Classical economists. A lot of Marx's concepts are improved versions of Classicals. One would not correctly understand Marx if they have not read Smith and Ricardo.

[@ben-dr3wf]

Vijay doesn't seem to be a thorough scholar. His exposition is quite weak in my opinion. In 31:50 he says Marx doesn't believe in 'human essence'. It is incorrect. Quite surprised to see Vijay reduce human essence to 'social relations'.