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Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
My reading has picked up quite a bit recently, having ended a long-term binge on computer gaming, namely, the World of Warcraft. (With much relief, I must say.)
I've recently decided that I'd rather have read Smith's Wealth of Nations before delving into Capital, as I understand that Marx based his work in large part on Smith's ideas.
That said, I'm currently waiting for a copy of Wealth of Nations to be available from the library, and Capital is in the queue.
I should get the Smith text fairly quickly. Would you (or anyone else) be interested in starting a reading circle type thread on the Smith text as a precursor to one on the Marx text?
I should note too that the copy of Capital I'm obtaining is the abridged Oxford edition, which contains pretty much all of Volume 1, an excerpt of Volume 2, and select chapters of Volume 3. You can get a table of contents here through Amazon's Search Inside: Capital: An Abridged Edition: Amazon.ca: Karl Marx, David McLellan: Books
I hope that will suffice. If not, I suppose I could spring for my own copy of the unabridged text.
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Baraka,
Most, if not all, of these texts are available online. Im not sure if reading online is something you'd do, but it's just something I thought I'd point out.
Regarding Das Kapital, while there are references to Smith there, the main political economist that influenced Marx is David Ricardo. "Principles of Political Economy and Taxation" played a much bigger role in Marx's writings on the economy than Wealth of the Nations.
EDIT: and for a conservative take on Marx, much better than the current nonsense spewed by pop libertarians, there is Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, bu Schumpeter. Not perfect, but consistent and interesting.