David Harvey's invitation is probably the single best choice. Michael Perelman
----------- Definitely. Just about any of Harvey's longer presentations (about an hour) helps a lot. His Capital 1, is on line and so is Capital vol 2 (& 3) combo. But there is no doubt this is an academic class and you have to do the reading, which he will go over the next lecture. I would also recommend The Eighteenth Brumaire. But you need some french political or literary history to go with it. For a quick intro to that read anything about Hausmann's remodeling of Paris, or a 19thC art history book, or read some of the famous novels, or just look at the paintings, or do all of the above. The combination creats a sense of life to fill in the mostly political polemic of 18th B. The central point is to capture the struggle between the pseudo social reforms that leave the fundamental relationship of oppression in place while pretending to be (or being) liberal, moderate, and socially concerned. Trotsky HRR is a good suggestion but he is already too big. I really didn't quite get it until I faced the straight stuff from whiskers. You form your own interpretation and or impression. Personally I was not that impressed with others interpretations except Trotsky and Lenin. Mike Davis is good and so is Hugo Chavez. The other thing is to get a bad job. You may become a Marxist like I did without knowing it. Something that requires skills that are completely unacknowledged and revolve around the time clock. Then you read Marx and say, yeah, like that... You see it. Those fat sons of bitches took it all. CG _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
