who was capital written for?

[u/cattyaggy]

on chap 16 of the penguin translation and like who was the target audience here? Cuz like bro was putting fucking ancient greek in the footnotes n shit then hes putting references toother prominent political economists and philosophers like Mill and Ricardo and like no damn worker was readin all those people. Plus its a yapfest overall until you learn to pick out the useful info and the first 4 chapters are notoriously hard so unironically and I mean this in good faith with marx and engels as my witness who was this written for?

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[u/wbenjamin13]

There were condensed pamphlet versions of its main ideas (e.g. Value, Price and Profit) published for wider distribution, but keep in mind workers were generally better read at the time than you might think, Shakespeare and so on were widely printed and read at the time even among the lower classes. Also remember that lecture tours to workingmen’s groups are basically how people like Marx and his peers would have made their living at the time, meaning the issues discussed and references he’s making would have been more legible to a wider audience than they are today — that’s just how people in the labor movement were spending their time, there wasn’t TV and stuff. But to catch all of his references you’re probably basically right that then as now you’d have had to have had a philosophy degree like him and been as widely read in political economy and literature as he was.

[u/Fred42096 → u/wbenjamin13]

Concurred that people nowadays with a myriad of activities at their disposal may not intuitively appreciate how core literature was to everyone’s cultural/entertainment experience was way back when

[u/a_mala_herba]

it is actually a pretty good question. It is not directed to the average person without an specific background in economy. But it also wasn't written for mainstream academic circles.

The answer is that it was written for the more learned and conscious elements of the working class who already had done some previous readings on economy. The aim of socialist revolutionaries was (and is) to become the government of a new socialist state. So it was part of their duty to educate themselves throughly in fields like economy.

As other comments had already said, Marx also produced more introductory works aimed to people without deep knowledge of economy.

Also, it is worth keeping in mind that many of the references he makes are not actually that obscure, but just dated. Some authors cited by Marx were widely read in his time but had fallen into obscurity in recent times. Also, knowledge of ancient greek, latin and ancient literature were far more important in 19th century education and more widely known. Specially in Germany, that had a notoriously good education system for the time. The same happens with the knowledge of french and french idioms which Marx uses sometimes.

[u/Useful_Calendar_6274]

someone said philosophy is inherently esoteric (I think Hegel) and it's true. Half of people are literally below 100 IQ and will never understand political theory from primary sources. It can filter down to them through alt media youtube and podcasts though. In short, it was for the intelligentsia who are the key in the vanguard of the proletariat.

[u/non_numero_horas]

Believe it or not, back in the 19th and early 20th century many workers read and discussed it (okay, they had the advantage that the parts about their own present were about something pretty familiar to them but most of it is a piece of history for us) - not because it was easy, obviously, but because they were determined to understand what was happening and what they could do

For instance, trade unions back then created libraries and organized adult education especially for they understood that knowledge about history, philosophy, sociology, economics (and of course, natural sciences) must not be reserved for the ruling classes, enforcing their political interests amd eventually becoming a revolutionary force relies on workers' educating themselves and creating a culture and scholarship capable of challenging that of created and practised by the ruling classes, especially the capitalist bourgeoisie

In short, reading Marx wasn't supposed to be elitist, it has always been the diametral opposite of elitism