…by a reading group member

From November 2024 to March 2025, Madison Area DSA embarked on an ambitious political education project. A reading group formed to tackle Paul Reitter’s 2024 translation of Capital. The challenges of this book were clear and immense from the beginning. Marx’s words measure to a total of 710 pages with over 100 more pages of introductions and endnotes. It tackles a vast array of topics starting with a theoretical analysis of value, a mathematical assessment of the working day, and a historic review of the working class’s conditions across Great Britain. To call this work a magnum opus feels like an understatement. 

How did MADSA respond to the challenge? There are different measures of success that should be considered. Over a dozen members signed up in December to attend the weekly meetings. Attendance dwindled rapidly to a core four members who finished the text earlier this year. We held a majority of meetings in-person at the Social Justice Center, though occasionally some were converted to Zoom due to scheduling conflicts. By the end, a transition from Thursday nights to Saturday mornings was made to facilitate reading group members taking on other active organizing projects on weekday nights. 

The drop in attendance was likely multifactorial. For some members, the scheduled in-person weeknight meetings were inaccessible. For others, missed meetings due to other end-of-year holiday obligations made it difficult to catch up. Because each chapter of Capital references previously introduced concepts, falling behind often meant being left behind. In response, reading group members employed a combination of audiobooks, physical books, and digital ebooks to read the material. This allowed time-strapped members to maximize opportunities to read between sessions. Basically, whenever I had free time this winter, I needed to crack open Capital to stay ahead. 

Sessions originally consisted of facilitated meetings with a self-nominated leader agreeing to summarize key concepts and key vocabulary each week. The decline in membership led to a decline in formal structure. At the conclusion, the four remaining members brought an equal share of questions and key passages to the table for others to review and discuss. This second model reduced scheduling anxiety and remained effective because as members grew to understand and build off of each other’s strengths. In general, a key source of success was having a member already familiar with the text, this member provided valuable context at the beginning of each session and prepared us with signposts to pay attention to when we read the into the next section.

In summary, I believe MADSA should form a Capital reading group every two years to maintain institutional knowledge of the key socialist theories among chapter members. Future reading groups will benefit most from regularly scheduled meetings that do not interfere with the end-of-year holidays. They should also seek to have members who are already familiar with the text to help draw attention to key ideas for new readers. It is worth considering the use of supplemental material, such as David Harvey’s chapter by chapter lecture series, which could reduce entry barriers or help members stay up to date despite occasionally missing a section. However, I believe there is significant benefit to engaging in the written metaphors and analogies Marx uses to explain his concepts. Members relying only on summarized material will miss the humor and jokes very much needed in the socialist vernacular to call out the contradictory monstrosity of capitalism. 

The question of in-person versus video meetings remains up in the air. I invite current MADSA attendees of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism reading group to contribute a follow-up report to Red Madison to help direct the chapter’s burgeoning political education committee on the best practices for maximizing access to important member education. 

Finally, what other key theory should enter the MADSA reading group roster? In addition to reading European socialists like Marx and Lenin, MADSA should make dedicated space for non-European theory exploring the mechanisms of capitalist oppression. Given we organize within occupied Ho-Chunk land in the shadow of a massive land grant university, members would benefit from critical theories of settler colonialism. Reading groups for Fayez Sayegh’s 1965 thesis, Zionist Colonialism in Palestine and La Paperson’s A Third University is Possible represent exciting ways to build the membership’s capacity for material analysis and historical critique.