It's an amusing thing to run across a professor of philosophy who urges socialists...not to read. Trust me, you claim, there's nothing there. This from someone who has not read what I have, or understood it. Ok, that's kind of useless. Not a very convincing argument though...

Hey, if you've got all the answers, great! You are welcome to them! It must feel nice to have it all worked out in advance, by experts even!

Marx said that in order to change the world, you have to understand it. Trying to change it while not reasoning it through well is just blindly stepping forward with no clear idea.

read yes. But Marxists are required to DO something with the information, processing what is happening today. How does one DO what Marx is doing in Capital, with the information today? Common sense or basic reason won't cut it. Knowing how to reason it through is what dialectical training imparts.

I get the feeling my reading Hegel to understand Marx better is threatening to you. Interesting...

You can argue that too, sure. But you'll sound like a priest before the reformation who insisted the Bible could only be read by other priests, not the congregation.

Hegel reorganized philosophy so that people could actually use it, apply it to the sciences. Marx's Capital is filled with its applied hallmarks, from the structure, the relationship between individual examples and universal categories. Marx says as much in the text.

short reply: Marxists need dialectical training, or their socialism is just received dogma, like a religion. You have to be able to reason through what happens today in order to know what to do as a socialist. Trying to apply Marx's writings like metaphor to current history is poor reasoning.

Never take the word of secondary sources when you can read it directly. Even Marx and Lenin in this case are secondary. Marxism leaves little room for dogma.

Having actually read Hegel and understood what he's doing, I can't agree. Go read Houlgate to get the gist, he's the best guide in.

Knowing Hegel makes it plainer, but readers don't need to know Hegel to read Capital, where Marx says quite plainly the connection between the working class and capital's structure is key. He shows his work to prove it there; he doesn't just say 'Marxism is right'; he does the math.

How can one talk about capitalism AS a system w/o the necessary organization of the information? Without that, you couldn't logically draw the conclusion that the working class was the lever. You could assert it, many did previously. But scientifically show it? That requires more than mere assurance