Finished!

Hey gang,

I finished Volume One today, so it will now be possible for me to go back and "blog out" the remaining 700 pages. I should say, reading Capital was one of the most exhilarating intellectual tasks I have ever undertaken, and the 7 months of reading were--and I say this without embarrassment--transformative. I recommend the effort, without reserve, to anyone. Although no book could have a higher reputation, I have been endlessly impressed and persuaded while reading--if the gist and general aim are well known to everyone, the mass of evidence and clarity of argument Marx lends his argument are invaluable. Unlike, say, reading Nietzsche, an experience of finding an entirely-new person behind the familiar characterizations, reading Marx indeed finds the Marx we "already know"--his concerns are those we suspected, his insights are still active, etc.--but with the difference that this "set of concerns" and array of "Marxist" insights no longer seem like a knowledge to be filed under the heading, Philosophers; German; 19th Century; Marx & Engels, but insist on being taken up as our own, and still as deeply *his*. What can I say? I loved it.

"He is a necessary and integral part of our human spirit."- Gramsci, Our Marx