Ask Lemmygrad

is there some trick I can use to understand more?

start a book club lol

Serious take: be humble, honest, and treat this as the opportunity to learn more. Knowledge is dialectical. coming to an understanding through discussion with other people will do often speed up the learning process.

explain and see the club as a chance to learn about marx and marxism from the horse's mouth. the idea is to suspend your beliefs for long enough to know whether there is anything marx and company said that is worth listening to, and why. still be critical.

This is how I did my first one. I had no intention of being a marxist. I thought it was important enough to need to know. i didn't know that if you read marx or marxists this way, you inevitably become one.

if you only did book clubs of materials that you already had fully informed opinions about, the others might ask if this is a book club or a lecture series. don't worry about not knowing everything. You will understand something that the other members didn't understand and they will get something that you didn't. you learn together and by asking each other questions. don't forget to look at the passages again after the session. You will probably find that this is when things pop as you notice details that others highlighted

there are tricks for increasing understanding. Don't be afraid to re-read difficult passages. Don't be afraid to skip over incomprehensible passages - come back to them later and many of them will make more sense without much more effort because you know what's coming up. Ask questions as you read, like

• what is marx arguing?
• who is marx arguing with - what to they say?
• why is marx saying this - what is the main argument?
• what is marx just explaining - what is he adding to what people already knew?
• if you don't understand a word or concept, you can try five things - 1. keep reading to see if the context makes things clearer 2. search the whole text for the same word because usage in another sentence might make it clearer 3. search the internet or marxists.org or their glossary for a description 4. make a note and come back to it later, trying one of the above three things 5. forget about it - if it's important you will come across it again and the new context might make the meaning pop without effort.