Template:Did you know nominations/An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by BorgQueen (talk) 13:32, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

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An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital

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  • ... that in Marxist scholar Michael Heinrich's book An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital, he insists that all three volumes of Das Kapital need to be read to understand Marx? Source: "Heinrich insists throughout the text that a reading of Capital that does not include volumes 2 and 3 will lead necessarily to misinterpretation: 'What we believe to be understood after reading only the first volume is not only incomplete, but in fact distorted' (9)." https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2013.795263
    • ALT1: ... that when Michael Heinrich's book An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital was published, Paul Cockshott claimed Heinrich removed the scientific method from Marx? "In a nutshell, my objection to Heinrich's interpretation is that, if we follow it, we end up with something that is no longer a scientific theory of capitalism, whereas a slightly different interpretation gives a strong and testable scientific theory." https://doi.org/10.1080/03017605.2013.805004 (posting the doi for proof of peer review-- non-paywalled link available here: https://marxismocritico.com/2016/05/24/new-age-marxism/)
    • ALT2:... that in Michael Heinrich's book An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital, he argues that Marx rejected economics? Within world view Marxism, Marx had taken over key categories, if not the whole, of the labour theory of value from classical political economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and added to that an explanation of exploitation and the crisis-prone nature of capitalism. Thus, according to this view, 'there are no fundamental categorical differences between Marxist political economy and classical political economy, only differences concerning the conclusions of both theories' (p 33). According to the 'new reading of Marx' that Heinrich subscribes to, this is a faulty understanding of what Marx was attempting to do in Capital. This is highlighted by the subtitle of the book: 'A Critique of Political Economy.' Marx was not trying to provide an alternative political economy, but wanted to 'criticize the categorical presuppositions' of political economy. This is the key difference and can be emphasised by noting that Marx was not 'predominantly criticizing the conclusions of political economy, but rather the manner in which it poses questions' (p 34)" pages 26-7 of https://www.jstor.org/stable/24482457
    • ALT3:... that in Marxist scholar Michael Heinrich's book An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital, he claims to solve the transformation problem? "Heinrich's claim is ultimately that Marx's labour theory of value is a monetary theory of value: 'without the value form, commodities cannot be related to one another as values, and only with the money form does an adequate form of value exist' (63–4). It is a compelling reading, and one with which Heinrich can also sidestep the infamous 'Transformation Problem' that plagued Capital's reception since its first printing. He essentially calls the entire problem a category error: he insists there is no point trying to derive production prices from values, because value and price are 'different levels of description' (149), mediated by different forms of exchange."
    • ALT4:... that according to Michael Heinrich's book An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital, Marx opposed the labor theory of value? Source is same quote as ALT2 and supplemented directly from Heinrich: "Marx's value theory is a monetary theory of value...However, within traditional Marxism, a non-monetary theory of value was dominant..." (page 165 of the book)
    • ALT5: ... that Michael Heinrich's book An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital was widely adopted in German universities? "Backhaus’s ideas of the special logical character of Marx’s analysis have been preserved and further developed in Germany, especially in the work of Michael Heinrich. His interpretation of Capital is quite influential, since the standard work used by the German Capital reading groups is his Kritik der politischen Ökonomie Eine Einführung. The book is now into its tenth printing, and is also used widely in the German universities." from https://brill.com/display/title/21786
    • ALT6: ... that Marxist scholar Michael Heinrich's book An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital was praised for discussing all three volumes of Das Kapital? "In addition to depth and clarity, what I find most noteworthy about the book is that it offers a systematic introduction to all the three volumes of Capital. Many commentary pieces—both articles and books—on Marx's critique of political economy refer to Volume I. References to Volumes II and III are, if at all, unsystematic and fragmentary...By engaging with all the three volumes of Capital in a systematic manner, Heinrich presents a comprehensive account of Marx's work on political economy." from https://www.jstor.org/stable/24482457
    • Reviewed:

Created by Freedom4U (talk). Self-nominated at 08:08, 20 February 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

  • I will be reviewing this. WJ94 (talk) 11:37, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
General: Article is new enough and long enough

Policy compliance:

Hook eligibility:

  • Cited: Yes - Offline/paywalled citation accepted in good faith
  • Interesting: No - I'm not sure the hook is catchy - I don't think its surprising to a general reader that someone would think that you need to read an entire work in order to understand it (even acknowledging that this is not often done for Capital).
QPQ: None required.

Overall: Article is long enough, new enough, neutral, and well sourced - I think you've done a good job with this article. If you could find a more interesting hook (does Heinrich have an unusual take on Marx, or an intriguing comment from one of the book's reviewers?) that'd really help. WJ94 (talk) 12:06, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

  • @WJ94: You just challenged an unchallenged view I've had which was that most people who read Capital Volume 1 don't read Volumes 2 or 3, and maybe it doesn't have as much basis as I thought. I've added an alternative DYK which talks about Cockshott claiming Heinrich's interpretation made Marx unscientific. Also made it so that the citations pointed out exactly what belonged to what. Freedom4U (talk) 12:25, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
  • @Freedom4U: Thanks for that. My point was not so much that most people do read volumes 2 and 3, but more than for a general audience who might be unfamiliar with Marx, it is perhaps not surprising that a commentator on Marx advocates reading all three volumes. I have some reservations with ALT1 - specifically, I'm a little nervous about using a negative comment about the work where the source is the person who made that comment. I think we'd be on safer ground with a hook based on one of Heinrich's claims in the book. There might be something in the critique of worldview Marxism, or the idea of critiquing both Marxism and bourgeois readings of Marx? WJ94 (talk) 12:41, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
  • @WJ94: Thanks for your critique. Your comment about it being for a "general audience" got me thinking and I've added three more alternatives. Yeah, was iffy about the Cockshott one too-- what he's trying to say is that Heinrich's interpretation of Marx can't be "empirically proven" or something along those lines. Freedom4U (talk) 13:09, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
  • @Freedom4U: Great, thanks for those alternatives. I think ALT3 probably requires too much contextual knowledge for the general reader, but I like the other two. I have slightly modified ALT2 to remove the final clause (which I think reduces the clarity of an otherwise good hook) - I hope you don't mind. But I am happy to approve ALT2 and ALT4. WJ94 (talk) 13:26, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
@Freedom4U: Ambitious. Nice work so far, but I'm afraid your hooks don't really link up enough to the article text – you're still assuming too much knowledge on the part of the reader to be able to draw the same conclusions you are drawing in the (approved) hooks. (Quite frankly, to me it feels like there's quite a jump in logic as well – in both hooks.) Could you please take a look again at the article itself – and try to make it a bit more accessible to someone who isn't necessarily that familiar with Marx or with basic concepts in political economy? And then sync up the hooks and/or propose new ones as well? Cc: WJ94 Cielquiparle (talk) 13:23, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
@Cielquiparle: Revisiting this after taking a step back, I can see your point. I've altered the article slightly so that hook 2 is clearly mentioned in the article, and I've struck down hook 4 as I think it may be difficult for it to have integrity with the article without being WP:OR. :3 F4U (they/it) 13:51, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
@Freedom4U: Thanks for updating. The connection between the remaining hook and the article is clearer...but now it seems clear that the hook is misleading! Is the author really saying Marx was not an economist? At all? Like the hook seems to say? Cielquiparle (talk) 13:56, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
@Cielquiparle: I've updated the hook to match— also expanded the article quite a bit. I've also added an uncontroversial but plain hook 5, and hook 6 which is a rewording of the original hook to make it more interesting. :3 F4U (they/it) 00:45, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for taking a second look at this, Cielquiparle. I have updated the section in the article on Marx's relation to economics to more closely match the source. Might I suggest the following hook which I think is interesting and more closely matches the article (and the underlying source):

WJ94 (talk) 11:39, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

  • @WJ94 and Freedom4U: Thanks both. I'm liking ALT7. How about another word for "providing", like "building" or "constructing" ...? You could also use "argues" rather than "claims". Cielquiparle (talk) 14:17, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
  • @Cielquiparle and WJ94: Hmmm, not a fan of ALT7 as that isn't what the article states/what is stated in the sources. Marx is providing his own theory, but the distinction is that his theory is not a political economy. Suggesting the following alternative:
lmk what you think! :3 F4U (they/it) 14:34, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Could we resolve that by adding a "just" to the hook? For example:
WJ94 (talk) 14:39, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
  • @WJ94: I'm really sorry that this is dragging on so long, but that reads awkwardly and isn't completely accurate. What Heinrich is bringing up is that Marx's critique of political economy was the basis of his work. He's not criticizing those before him and separately bringing up a new theory, but rather his critiques of those before him is his theory (or at least plays a fundamental role in it). Consider:
  • ALT10 ... Michael Heinrich's book An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital argues that Marx was interested in critiquing the fundamentals of political economy?
or potentially could use the word 'contested'
lmk how you feel about this! :3 F4U (they/it) 19:51, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
How about:
Cielquiparle (talk) 00:20, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
@Cielquiparle: Works for me! :3 F4U (they/it) 01:00, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
Actually, I was thinking about this and I want to suggest that
might be a better hook. It's basically a rephrased version of my original hook, but unlike the original, phrasing it this way makes it interesting to a common audience. I think the idea that a book was praised for discussing something that's in its title raises more questions and interest than ALT10a and its derivatives would. It's also more concise. :3 F4U (they/it) 03:15, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
@Freedom4U: I think I see what you mean now (and it is an important point, like in the Adam Smith universe telling people to read the part about "fellow feeling"). ALT6a is better than ALT0, but it still needs more work, because it's too pat – I think a lot of people would read it and shrug, rather than feeling compelled to find out why and click. There may even be room to be extra clever here and write a quirky hook (the closing hook in the DYK set that is often offbeat or humorous). So if you really want to go down this route, it may be worth getting out the crayons to try out some creative alternatives until we hit on the right one. Just to get things rolling, here are some variations (none of which seem particularly funny but are shorter the way hooks generally are)...
Cielquiparle (talk) 06:42, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
(FYI, you used ALT6d twice so I've edited your comment to remove that mistake, I hope that's alright with you) @Cielquiparle: I think ALT6c, coincidentally the shortest, is the most interesting among those hooks with ALT6b being second place. ALT6f-g don't read well and are hard to understand on first read. I feel ALT6d-e make it more difficult to realize what the tension being created is. Here are some variations of ALT6c I've made to keep it going:
:3 F4U (they/it) 07:09, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
OK so ALT6i and ALT6j don't work because it sounds awkward in wikivoice (i.e., why would Wikipedia express an opinion on what was strange or unexpected)? Also struck ALTh because "abnormal" sounds odd. I am liking the past tense that you introduced in ALT6k and ALT6l (especially given that Heinrich is now widely adopted in Germany and somewhat old hat). So below is an update to ALT6c which you liked in past tense, one with the word "engaging" from Basu, plus a few more using a different approach:
Over to you. (Not sure if you saw the review in Contemporary Sociology via JSTOR, but that review has some interesting quotables as well. But tabling that for now to keep it simple.) Cielquiparle (talk) 08:20, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
(It's already in the article (Sica 2012)-- I would state that German and English-language Marx literature is different, and the book had already become a staple in Germany when it was first translated into English. Basu is speaking of the English context, and shouldn't be considered an authority on Marx literature in other languages) @Cielquiparle: ALT13 and its derivatives don't feel interesting... A hook that amounts to stating that a book exists I feel isn't hook-y. What about quoting Basu, to state:
or could "considered" be removed for:
or potentially:
All of the ALT6s could work better if "discuss"/"engage"/etc were replaced with "introduces"/"introducing" as that makes it more absurd. Off-topic, but just realized and found it funny that the premise of this joke is only possible in English since the German title is Critique of Political Economy: An Introduction :3 F4U (they/it) 09:01, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
Point taken re: ALT13 derivatives, but I would point you to the February 2023 DYK stats page – do a search for "Encyclopedia" or "Encyclopedia (novel)" and see the hook there. Oddly simple and tempting to dismiss, but I would argue that the number of pageviews is much higher than one might expect for what it is. (Anyway one thing that jumped out in the review from Contemporary Sociology was the comment about Heinrich's use of simple arithmetic to make Marx more accessible to novices.)
I am liking ALT15 more and more but I confess I had to read it several times before I got the "joke". Re: ALT14 and derivatives, for all of our splitting hairs over this, in the end, the proofreaders may end up removing the quotation marks around "noteworthy" and in general the pendulum is swinging against putting things in scare quotes without some additional contextualization, unless it's the quirky hook (i.e., not sure if ALT14a would survive, but I am leaving it). Anyway if you click around the DYK stats pages section in general, it may give you more ideas for what people have done with book titles and other rather wordy article titles. Or, if you think we're done and want a reviewer to review the ALT hooks, that's fine too. Just make sure you add the word "noteworthy" to the right place in the actual article ASAP before you forget. Cielquiparle (talk) 09:47, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
@Cielquiparle: On second thought, I don't think there's an appropriate way to fit "noteworthy" into the article, so I've struck those out. I've stretched out the hyperlink and I think that puts extra emphasis on the fact that words are being repeated.
  • ALT15a ... that An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital was considered unusual for introducing the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital? "Heinrich insists throughout the text that a reading of Capital that does not include volumes 2 and 3 will lead necessarily to misinterpretation: 'What we believe to be understood after reading only the first volume is not only incomplete, but in fact distorted' (9). This is one way in which the text stands out from the field of recent offerings." in https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2013.795263 and "In addition to depth and clarity, what I find most noteworthy about the book under review is that it offers a systematic introduction to all the three volumes of Capital. Many commentary pieces--both articles and books--on Marx's critique of political economy refer to Volume I. References to Volumes II and III are, if at all, unsystematic and fragmentary. As a result, they offer only an incomplete picture of Marx's work." https://www.jstor.org/stable/24482457
Regarding Encyclopedia, I think there were some obvious reasons it did quite well (A novel being an encyclopedia is quite strange, and then you realize that it's a novel that's titled Encyclopedia, but no wait, its a novel that's titled Encyclopedia that is an encyclopedia! All while being hosted on an encyclopedia... Like the article was just interesting on its own so it didn't need much more than a plain hook) :3 F4U (they/it) 10:24, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
OHHHHHHHH I've just figured out what you were trying to do in ALT13, I didn't realize you were trying to do the double meaning of introduce and introduce (publish). Given it took me this long to realize by myself, I still don't think its that engaging. :3 F4U (they/it) 11:13, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
ALT15a could work. Here's one last try from me, I'm happy to call it quits soon:
("Wait, when was the introduction first published in Germany then?" [CLICK.]) Cielquiparle (talk) 11:21, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
That sounds like another mild hook, I'd be fine with any of the ones that haven't been striked through, though I would prefer 15a for the quirkiness. Pleasure working with you @Cielquiparle: :3 F4U (they/it) 12:32, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
@Cielquiparle: Would you be so kind as to approve the hook for me? Cheers! :3 F4U (they/it) 13:40, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
Approving remaining hooks, would recommend choosing between ALT15a, ALT15, ALT6m, or ALT6l. Cielquiparle (talk) 18:40, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
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