You can find the book I'm talking about here!
I've been obsessed with the prospect of reading this book for a number of months and I'd like to present this interest of mine to you. For the longest time, I've had my copy of this book split into two volumes that I acquired from a press that no longer exists. My first volume consists of the initial 11 chapters that offer a detailed (and highly readable) summary of the lessons of political economy expounded by Marx in his 3 volumes of Capital, as well as those of Lenin from his work, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, ending with a critique of what the authors describe as Soviet Social Imperialism,
which constitutes their theory of capitalist reversal after the political ascendence of Nikita Khruschev. It is this volume in which I was initially scared off of this work by the 6th chapter, a summation of Capital Vol. 2, which is easily the most math heavy of all three. I went to public school, I do not have a very high constitution for math.
The second volume, beginning with the 12th chapter, commences 12 additional chapters that all expound their own theoretical understanding of the political economy of socialism. I consider this volume in particular dizzyingly valuable. 103 years after the Paris Commune and finally, we have a coherent snapshot of a functioning socialist system suspended in time, all captured in these pages, from the years of what many, like myself, consider to be highest development of the socialist mode of production in human history. You might not care, but I will raise myself to the summits of this text. As a progressive leaning person, I can always relate to the difficult position of being asked to offer a coherent alternative to our ordinary state of affairs, and finally I'll have something I can point to. Although, I will try my best to not treat this work as a blunt conversation ender, but an open conversation starter.
As a preliminary remark, the reason I can recommend this work to anyone, despite having not yet finished it, is due to my own experience attempting to read the first chapters of the first volume of Capital and getting absolutely filtered. Yet, through elegantly simple writing, this book can elucidate its essential points for a general audience, and I greatly appreciate that. It remains a radically open text. This page is likely to be a slow burn since I'll allow myself all the time I need to come to terms with this work, and I will present my findings on the chapters I consider the most interesting or the most pertinent, as well as my own personal thoughts on the subject of Marxist political economy more generally. Feel free to check in on my progress a few weeks from now. As an aside, I hope to pair this work with the complete edition of Reading Capital that I received in the mail.