A Companion to Marx's Capital
(A Companion to Marx's Capital #1)
by David Harvey
4.24 · Rating details · 1,688 ratings · 82 reviews
“My aim is to get you to read a book by Karl Marx called Capital, Volume 1, and to read it on Marx’s own terms…”
The biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression has generated a surge of interest in Marx’s work in the effort to understand the origins of our current predicament. For nearly forty years, David Harvey has written and lectured on Capital, becoming one of the world’s most foremost Marx scholars.
Based on his recent lectures, this current volume aims to bring this depth of learning to a broader audience, guiding first-time readers through a fascinating and deeply rewarding text. A Companion to Marx’s Capital offers fresh, original and sometimes critical interpretations of a book that changed the course of history and, as Harvey intimates, may do so again.
David Harvey’s video lecture course can be found here: davidharvey.org/reading-capital/ (less)
GET A COPY
KoboOnline Stores ▾Book Links ▾
Hardcover, 368 pages
Published March 1st 2010 by Verso (first published January 1st 2008)
Original TitleA Companion to Marx's Capital
ISBN1844673588 (ISBN13: 9781844673582)
Edition LanguageEnglish
SeriesA Companion to Marx's Capital #1
Other Editions (23)
A Companion to Marx's Capital
A Companion to Marx's Capital
Para entender O capital: Livro I
Companion To Marx's Capital (Vol 1 and 2), A: The Complete Edition: 1-2
Marx'ın Kapital'i İçin Kılavuz
All Editions | Add a New Edition | Combine
...Less DetailEdit Details
EditMY ACTIVITY
Review of ISBN 9781844673582
Rating
1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
Shelves to-read edit
( 1240th )
Format Hardcover edit
Status
December 3, 2021 – Shelved as: to-read
December 3, 2021 – Shelved
Review Write a review
comment
FRIEND REVIEWS
Recommend This Book None of your friends have reviewed this book yet.
READER Q&A
Ask the Goodreads community a question about A Companion to Marx's Capital
54355902. uy100 cr1,0,100,100
Ask anything about the book
Popular Answered Questions
I am certain that many of the reviews mention this, but I would appreciate anyone's thoughts on when an interested reader should read this. I have watched Harvey's lectures, relatively casually, but have not read this or "Capital" by Marx. Should I read this book before, while, or after picking up the first volume of Marx's work? Feel free to share your opinion. Thanks!
3 Likes · Like 2 Years Ago Add Your Answer
Friendzilla Capital is divided into parts, then chapters, then sections. I would read a section of Marx then the corresponding section of Harvey as a recap and explication of the former.(less)
flag
See 1 question about A Companion to Marx's Capital…
LISTS WITH THIS BOOK
The Communist Manifesto by Karl MarxDas Kapital by Karl MarxThe State and Revolution by Vladimir LeninReform or Revolution by Rosa LuxemburgThe Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Socialist Classics
364 books — 309 voters
Imagined Communities by Benedict AndersonThe Communist Manifesto by Karl MarxThe Origin of Capitalism by Ellen Meiksins WoodLeft Hemisphere by Razmig KeucheyanCritique of Everyday Life by Henri Lefebvre
The Essential Verso Undergraduate Reading List
28 books — 14 voters
More lists with this book...
COMMUNITY REVIEWS
Showing 1-30
Average rating4.24 · Rating details · 1,688 ratings · 82 reviews
Search review text
English (74)
More filters | Sort order
Sejin,
Sejin, start your review of A Companion to Marx's Capital
Write a review
Trevor (I sometimes get notified of comments)
Dec 04, 2015Trevor (I sometimes get notified of comments) rated it it was amazing
Recommended to Trevor (I sometimes get notified of comments) by: Hamidur
Shelves: reference, social-theory, economics
I was recommended to read this by a friend here on goodreads. There is an online video course thing that Harvey does too – he has been teaching his course on Capital for 40 years or something – and when he put the course online as a series of video lectures he was asked if he would also write a companion book (this book) to those lectures. The course is available here http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/
I’ve written my review of Capital https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... – but this book is obviously better than my review was ever likely to be. Not least since Harvey has read hundreds of times more about Capital than I’m ever likely to. And he has read all of the source material too, something else I would do if I had, you know, six or seven lifetimes ahead of me, rather than whatever meagre few years it is I have left of this one.
I’m not going to go into lots of detail. But I do need to mention some of the things I learnt from this. One of the things I tell people I would have put on my headstone, if it was up to me, which of course it isn't, is “He never was all that good with the obvious”. If there is one phrase that could more or less sum up my life, that would probably be it. So, when Harvey said that part of what Marx was trying to do in the first volume of Capital was to show even if you were to take the most pro-Capitalist assumptions as if they were gospel, that even then Capitalism would inevitably become trapped in its own contradictions. Nope, don't think I actually understood that was what he was doing when I read it. I got that Capitalism would become entrapped in its own contradictions from my reading, but didn’t notice that he was restricting himself so as not to challenge the kinds of assumptions that people like Adam Smith or Ricardo would have felt quite happy supporting. This is, I think, an incredibly interesting and important way to criticise something – that is, on its own terms. And as important as it is, it is also almost never actually done that way. People are all too happy to say ‘your’ ideas are rubbish on the basis that they are different from ‘their’ ideas – but while it is easy to point out such differences, it is much harder to show why your ideas ought to be given more weight than the other person's ideas. So, starting with ‘their’ ideas as if they were right and true, and then letting those ideas play out on their own terms and thus show their internal contradictions is a remarkably interesting and powerful thing to do.
This book also gives a really good introduction to what Marx called his ‘dialectical method’. This is very helpful, particularly if you are ever going to get over the first few chapters of Capital which even Marx said were ridiculously difficult to read and should perhaps be skipped over and read later. The point of his method is to show that you can’t approach a subject as if it was made up of a series of dead statues all standing in a row, but rather you can only understand a subject if you can observe it in its ‘life’, that is, as the interplay of relationships in lived experience.
One of the things the author repeatedly discusses is the relationship Marx poses between the apparent and the actual relationships that exist within Capitalism. He means that when you first see some feature of capitalism, it appears to be working in one way, but that Marx wasn’t content with describing this apparent something, but rather tried to look beyond appearances to what was going on underneath. Now, everyone says that they are doing something like that. However, this was effectively Marx’s method. He would talk about some apparent feature of capitalism (say, that prices are fixed by the laws of supply and demand) and then move away from this concrete appearance to see if he could find a more universal rule underlying it (the labour theory of value, say) and then come back to the concrete world to show how this new (and less apparent) underlying feature both made the first concrete view seem obvious, but also how this new understanding also gives a richer and deeper understanding of concrete phenomena. Look, I suspect that is all too hard to really understand – the point is that part of Marx’s method is to present an idea as if it is the whole truth – but then to show how this idea can’t really explain all of the things it set out to explain – so, then he has to propose a deeper, less obvious truth that underlies this apparent truth, and that both explains the old idea but also shows why it was limited, why the new idea isn't so limited and how the new truth leads to deeper insights as well, insights that the apparent truth simply could not explain. This process is followed throughout and Harvey points out when Marx is doing this repeatedly along the way.
The other thing Harvey does is to link Marx’s ideas back (or forward, I guess) to current problems of Capitalism, particularly post-2008 Capitalism and how Marx’s ideas predicted these problems. These, too, are very powerful sections of this book and useful as many of the examples Marx himself uses are so old to us now that we can struggle to see what is the point of his examples. Which is the other thing this book does very well, that is, provide some of the historical context to things that are incredibly important to Marx, but hardly register at all to us. Things like the changes of the Corn Laws or the impact the Chartists made. For this alone, I would recommend using this book as a companion if you are thinking of reading the first volume of Capital.
Harvey has also written a companion to the second volume of Capital – eventually I will get around to reading both that book and the second volume itself. But not for a while, I’m afraid.
Look, any book on economics is hard going – and Marx is hard work too, particularly since he wrote Capital ages ago which means that many of his references, literary allusions and historical context itself are often quite obscure to us all this time later. So, a book like this, one that does the work of explaining these in a readable style, really is damn helpful.
(less)
flag66 likes · Like · 10 comments · see review
Ian "Marvin" Graye
Apr 22, 2020Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it it was amazing
Shelves: marx-bros-and-karl, reviews-5-stars, cul-poli-phil-art, read-2020, reviews
The Value of Time and Capital
The down-time provided by the coronavirus lockdown has been a good opportunity for some reading that would otherwise have been time-consuming, challenging or intimidating. So I finally got around to reading this guide to Karl Marx' most important economic work, if not (yet) “Capital" itself.
This is a fairly thorough companion to a reading of volume I of “Capital". I haven't consciously tried to assess the extent to which it reflects Marx’s analysis accurately. To do that, I'd have to read the primary work (which I haven't yet).
However, my intuitive response is that it is based on a thorough reading and understanding of the primary work.
At the same time, it attempts to extrapolate Marx' analysis into the twenty-first century, as well as determine “what is to be done" to achieve a society and economy that remedies the flaws of capitalism (as Marx described them in the nineteenth century).
Marx' Theory of Value
My ultimate aim was to get a critical understanding of the role of labour in Marx' value theory (often called the labour theory of value). This theory is based on a critique of the theory of Adam Smith.
Marx believes that commodities are the material bearers of exchange-value (in contrast to use-value).
Use-value is subjective, personal or idiosyncratic. It's the driver of the consumer's desire to acquire commodities. In contrast, exchange-value is social or collective. It's a value imposed on commodities from the outside. It isn't intrinsic to the specific commodity.
Exchange-value is a measure of the relative value of commodities (their commensurability).
Commensurability requires a basis for comparison. Although Marx doesn't discuss money until later in the work, it is obviously a measure of value that allows people to compare and contrast the relative value of commodities.
Products of Human Labour
In the absence of money as a measure, Marx says, “if then we disregard the use-value of commodities, only one property remains - that being [that they are] products of [human] labour.”
Harvey extrapolates, “what commodities have in common is that they are all bearers of the human labour embodied in their production.”
Marx says that “what exclusively determines the magnitude of the value of any article is therefore the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour-time socially necessary for its production.”
Social Value Congealed in the Commodity
Human labour is a process of transformation of raw materials. Labour is transformative: “Human labour is a tangible process, but at the end of the process, you get this thing – a commodity – which ‘coagulates' or ‘congeals’ value.”
Exchange-value is not an objective property of the commodity itself. It represents the social value of the commodity, different from its physical or sensuous quality.
The system which allows the exchange of commodities at the market and the use of money to measure value disguise the real social relations between the traders (the seller and the buyer)(i.e., the people rather than the things).
This process of disguise is what Marx calls the fetishism of the commodity. The seller and the buyer who come into contact with each other are the bearers (or personification) of economic relations.
Socially Necessary Labour-Time
Human labour is not the actual subjective time taken to manufacture the commodity. It refers to “human labour in the abstract".
This measure of value refers to “socially necessary labour-time", which is “the labour-time required to produce any use-value under the conditions of production normal for a given society and with the average degree of skill and intensity of labour prevalent in that society.”
As an example, if a shirt took an average worker one day to make, whereas a pair of shoes took the same worker two days, then the pair of shoes is worth twice as much as the shirt.
This comparison of value is obviously easier once money is used. For example, the shirt might be worth $150, and the shoes $300. Money is a more precise measure than labour.
The Origin of Money
Marx uses the concept of exchange-value to explain the origin of the money-form. Money allows the trade or sale of a commodity to move beyond the barter of two types of commodity. Money is the “universal equivalent" of exchange-value. It also replaces precious metals like gold and silver.
Money appears in the “social relation between commodity and commodity". Money becomes a commodity that facilitates the exchange of other commodities. Money becomes a money-commodity. The money-commodity is “the measure of value as the social incarnation of human labour.”
Fluctuations in supply and demand achieve an equilibrium price, which is “a convergence on the average social labour necessary to produce a commodity".
Surplus-Value
The process of exchange or circulation results in an increase or increment in exchange-value: “the value originally advanced...not only remains intact while in circulation, but increases its magnitude, adds to itself a surplus-value, or is valorized...And this movement converts it into capital.”
Harvey explains that “Capital is not a thing, but a process – a process, specifically, of the circulation of values. These values are congealed in different things at various points in the process: in the first instance, as money, and then as commodity before turning back into the money-form...M-C-M.”
The aim of a capitalist is “the unceasing movement of profit-making.”
Harvey adds, “Capital is, therefore, value in motion...it’s valorization is self-valorization. It...lays golden eggs...Value therefore now becomes value in process, money in process, and, as such, capital.
“Money therefore forms the starting-point and the conclusion of every valorization process...
“Capital is a means of making still more money out of money.”
The Value of Labour-Power
Marx posits that, “in its pure form, the circulation process necessitates the exchange of equivalents.”
This gives rise to a problem for the creation of surplus-value:
“The formation of surplus-value [cannot] be explained by assuming that commodities are sold above their value...or are bought at less than their value.”
To solve the problem, Marx builds on the concept of labour-power (which he argues is the only commodity with the capacity to create value).
The capitalist buys the worker's labour-power for the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the worker.
What Workers Make and Get
Marx’s solution is therefore that “surplus-value originates from the difference between what labour gets for its labour-power as a commodity, and what the labourer produces in a labour process under the command of capital.”
Harvey concludes that capitalists milk “the gap between what labour gets and the value that labour makes.”
The most obvious example of this gap is where a worker is paid for eight hours per day, but works for ten hours (surplus labour) for no additional wages or overtime. In effect, the worker contributes two additional hours of value to the capitalist per day.
description
https://www.rimini-protokoll.de/websi...
Usurpation of the Worker's Time
Value is socially necessary labour-time, which means that the capitalist gets the value of the additional labour-time without having to pay for it.
“[Capital] usurps the time for [the worker's] growth, development and healthy maintenance of the body.”
In other words, the capitalist converts some or all of the worker's leisure time into unpaid labour-time, and therefore into surplus-value for the capitalist. The worker's life-time is transformed into working-time.
Multiple Contributors of Value
Despite Marx' views, it doesn't necessarily follow from this analysis that labour is the only contributor to value, surplus-value or profit.
The exchange value of a commodity might derive from a number of value contributors or inputs, e.g., labour, raw materials, land, power, intellectual property. This is a premise of modern cost accounting. Thus, profit derived from the sale of the commodity by an employer is not necessarily an expropriation of the labour value of an employee's contribution to the exchange value of the commodity.
Where there are other value contributors or inputs (e.g., raw materials), it doesn't seem to be appropriate to compare the exchange-value of two commodities solely on the basis of labour-time.
For example, a diamond ring will reflect the value of both the jeweller’s labour and skill, and the value of the underlying diamond (which partly reflects the scarcity of diamonds). Marx would say that at least part of the value of the diamond reflects the labour cost of mining it, as well as the value of the historical labour required to generate the profit to fund its purchase.
Multiple Contributors of Surplus-Value
Marx appears to have argued that only labour could generate surplus-value, that in effect none of the other inputs into the commodity were responsible for the surplus-value or profit.
This argument seems to be a scientific conclusion justified by a political bias or persuasion.
On the other hand, it could equally be reached by arguing that the other inputs are ultimately funded by historical, past or “dead labour" that is stored in capital (the capital that already exists and funds the acquisition of the other inputs as well as labour power).
Marx argues that “living labour" awakens or reanimates “dead labour" from the dead. Dead labour is “bathed in the fire of labour.” Labour transforms raw materials and past labour (“the lifeless constituents of a product") into a commodity, because it is a “form-giving fire":
"Capital is dead labour
Which, vampire-like,
Lives only by sucking
Living labour,
And lives the more,
The more labour it sucks."
However, if the capitalist paid the worker for all of the time worked, it could be argued that the historical surplus-value legitimately belonged to the capitalist.
Marx the Polemicist
Ultimately, Marx' conclusion promotes the political objectives of the working class, by suggesting that they have not been adequately remunerated for the labour they contribute to the process of creating a commodity.
On a best case basis, labour should be entitled to the whole of the surplus-value (which would deprive the capitalist of the commercial purpose of their enterprise - the desire to make a profit on their capital [capital accumulation], which would or could have been re-invested in the enterprise. This would also reduce the ability of the capitalist to pay interest on borrowed capital, as well as the ability to reward the assumption of enterprise risk with respect to their capital).
Alternatively, labour should at least be entitled to a proportionate share of the surplus-value, or a share after deduction of interest and/or a reasonable return on investment.
Another solution would be to increase wages proportionately to reflect the value of the additional time worked. This would allow the capitalist to retain ownership or property in the surplus-value.
Exploitation and Alienation of the Worker
Harvey explains these arguments by reference to the Lockean principle that "property rights accrue to those who create value by mixing their labour with the land. The workers are the ones who produced the surplus-value, and by rights it should belong to them.”
This would have the result that the golden eggs laid by the capitalist goose belong not to the goose, but to the worker.
If they belong to the capitalist, it means that “’the worker himself constantly produces objective wealth, in the form of capital’, and that objective wealth becomes an alien power that now dominates the worker. The worker creates the instrument of his or her own domination! Through their labour, workers reproduce both capital and the labourer...The worker continually transforms his own product into a means by which another man can purchase him.”
Marx elaborates that “property turns out to be the right, on the part of the capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labour of others or its product, and the impossibility, on the part of the worker, of appropriating his own product.”
In this way, the worker is alienated from his own labour and the product of his labour.
Harvey describes the result as that “bourgeois freedoms and rights mask exploitation and alienation.” The worker has been distorted into “a fragment of a man.”
Against Neoliberal Utopianism
Harvey draws a polemical, socio-economic conclusion that is highly relevant to contemporary politics:
“All the benefits from the pursuit of relative surplus-value have accrued to the capitalist class to produce immense concentrations of wealth and surging inequality.”
In Marx' words:
“Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery, ignorance, brutalisation and moral degradation at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital.”
If this sounds like an exaggeration, Harvey responds:
“What Marx has done in Volume I of Capital is to take the words and theories of the classical political economists seriously and ask what kind of world would emerge if they got to implement their utopian liberal vision of perfectly functioning markets, personal liberty, private property rights and free trade.”
Significant Diagnostic Power
To this extent, as Harvey says, “we can, I think, take insight though absolutely no comfort, and acquire significant diagnostic power, from a careful reading of Marx' text and a deep appreciation of his method.” In effect, Marx can help us to deconstruct neoliberal utopianism.
SOUNDTRACK:
(view spoiler) (less)
flag17 likes · Like · 2 comments · see review
Chelsea Szendi
May 04, 2010Chelsea Szendi rated it it was amazing
Shelves: theory
Rather than watching hours of the videos of David Harvey's class on Capital online, we can now pick up this book. Harvey is a great guide though Marx, especially through the very rough first sections. Reading this book without reading Capital itself is better than not reading either, but I endorse Harvey's request that you really do read Marx in his own words. Yes, that damned coat gets on the nerves, but Marx's writings are literature - just irreducible to any interpretation.
I love that Harvey has been devoting so much of his life to get people to read Marx, but hope that those who begin with Harvey also take Marx to new places and read Harvey's interpretations with a mind bent towards a ruthless criticism of everything existing. (less)
flag15 likes · Like · comment · see review
T
Apr 28, 2021T rated it liked it
“Thatcher famously remarked, ‘no alternative,’ which in a way is like saying that the social necessities that surround us are so implacably set that we have no choice but to conform to them?” (p.21)
+Helps to bring out many of the important themes in Marx that are understudied (e.g. the importance technology, time and temporality, deskilling etc).
+Pulls out useful quotes that the reader may have skipped over, due to confusion or unclear significance upon initial engagement.
+Provides a detailed conclusion and retrospective analysis which attempts to bring out key, relevant themes for out 'neoliberal' era.
+Makes bridges between Marx's original work and important themes in Marxian theory more broadly (e.g. imperialism, the global division of labour, neoliberalism, the 2008 financial crash, the Latin American debt crisis etc).
-Links to contemporary themes are often lacking and shallow in places, and occasionally appear forced, despite their apparent usefulness.
-Dry writing style often makes the book much less engaging.
-Harvey's opinions often stray from more popular or established conceptions found in mainstream Marxian economics/sociology/philosophy, without a full consideration of the implications arising from this deviation.
-Large concessions are made to Marx, and any disagreements are generously interpreted away with reference to other texts ("well Marx may be wrong in this quote, but look at the Grundrisse or Capital Volume 3!")
-References to alternative schools of thought seldom have the level of description or detail required for a lay reader. Harvey expects readers to know what the Autonomist School is when they haven't read Capital Volume 1!
I think folks should consider a smaller guide to Capital over this one (such as How to Read Marx's Capital, Marx's Capital, An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital) or maybe simply listening to Harvey's lectures, rather than reading them, may be a more useful way to spend your time understanding Marx's magnum opus. (less)
flag12 likes · Like · see review
Billie Pritchett
Aug 04, 2016Billie Pritchett rated it it was amazing
Shelves: economics
Before digging into David Harvey's Companion to Marx's Capital, I wondered what insight Marx might have into the functioning of the economy. I was pleasantly surprised to discover, at least on Harvey's account, what a seminal and important work Marx's Capital is, up there with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. And in many respects, Marx's work complements Smith's work, Marx having read Smith extensively. According to Harvey, the basic idea behind Marx's Capital, Volume I is that capitalist economies, either left to their own devices or regulated, are subject to a host of instabilities that make crises more or less inevitable.
Before getting into that claim, it's helpful to know what a capitalist economy is. When you do, it is more understandable why the crises occur. Also, it becomes evident that what people tend to think a capitalist economy is is not what it is.
Perhaps naively, I had the view that a capitalist economy was an economy that used some surrogate form of value, in our time paper money and debit/credit cards, to allow the exchange of goods and services. But in fact, that's not enough to call an economy capitalist. A capitalist economy is more about a particular way in which this money to goods process is oriented.
So here it is. The goal of the capitalist economy is to grow the amount of the initial investment into some business or work into more money. You can think about it this way, by way of comparison to probably how you and I think of money. You, I, and other ordinary people have a product (our labor) and we're willing to trade this labor for money so that we can buy goods and services for survival or leisure. So the orientation of the money process for us is Product to Money to Product (our work converted to money by our employers in order to obtain other products). But a business owner's orientation and the orientation of an entire capitalist economy is different. The money process is oriented like this: Money to Product to (more) Money. For the ownership, workers' labor and the product that comes from the labor of the workers is just the means to an end to produce more money.
But here's the problem. A fundamental law of capitalist economies is that the initial money invested must always grow. So every year, or in most cases every quarter, there must be more money flowing through the business than there was previously. But in actuality, growth isn't infinite. For an owner, after the market is glutted with his or her product, when everything is at overcapacity, there have to be new creative ways to make money. And all of those are used all the time.
Here are some of those creative ways. One creative way to allow for artificial growth is to cut workers' salaries or to lay them off. You do that, you don't have to pay them, and then your company makes more money. Another is that if you're an owner of a business and you have to compete with others who produce similar products, then you reduce your prices of your products to have a competitive advantage. But at some point, you just can't get the prices any lower and make a profit. So you produce the product at lower than the price that you can make money at, and then you borrow from big banks huge sums of money to offset the loss in the weakening of your product until you find some new way to increase your profits again, innovate your product, produce other products, and so on.
Most of the large companies have in fact glutted the market with their products and are underselling their products and not making a profit. But they declare the amount of money borrowed as profit. This is all artificial growth. Eventually, there's distrust in the market and then the owner has to pay back the loans but can't. Then a financial collapse occurs. And if enough companies are all operating in this way, then there could be a national or international crisis. (Look for another one soon.)
This is Harvey's explanation of the relevance of Capital, Volume I. It shows that when a capitalist economy is running according to the basic law of growing money, since it can't actually grow indefinitely, it creates artificial means to do so. Then when the economy collapses, we all suffer. And in our own time, our governments subsidize the failure of these major companies and we have to pay for that failure in taxes. Strange setup. (less)
flag7 likes · Like · comment · see review
Carlo
Jul 07, 2012Carlo rated it it was amazing
David Harvey's {Companion} is a great way to read Marx's {Capital} Vol. 1. The length of {Capital} may be intimidating, but if a reader travels book by book--Harvey to Marx, Harvey to Marx, ...--an appreciation of Marx's great critique will result. Harvey moves the reader along, pointing out complexities of interpretation but not bogging down when he differs from other writers. Harvey's goal is to read Marx with you, not to make a case for a perspective. Pick up Harvey's {Companion} with the Vintage edition of {Capital} Vol. 1. Post 2007: time to understand the world, time to change the world. Time is now, begin here. (less)
flag4 likes · Like · comment · see review
Quentin
Feb 17, 2014Quentin rated it it was amazing
You should read Marx's Capital--it's easier, funnier, and smarter than you think it will be, and you can gloss over some of the hard parts the first time through and still get the jist. Harvey's companion is another route to go--its based on his youtube-able lecture series, and it works hard to explain some of Marx's more arcane arguments, point out areas where he's unclear or incorrect, and tells you which parts you can skim if you just want to understand the arguments. Harvey's tone is conversational, and he gives pretty fair time to some of the vociferous debates in Marxist theory. (less)
flag4 likes · Like · comment · see review
Tyler
Feb 22, 2019Tyler rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Recommends it for: Anyone
Shelves: marx-and-friends
A great recapitulation of the first volume of Capital for modern readers, written by a professor who taught the book for thirty years and who has his own intriguing ideas to add.
flag3 likes · Like · comment · see review
Domhnall
Nov 08, 2017Domhnall rated it it was amazing
Shelves: economics
This book offers a "close reading" page by page guide to volume I of Marx's Capital. I not only followed both books in tandem but also listened to Harvey's 13 lectures on Youtube, which are very close to this text but not identical. In the end it has been a rich experience and well worth the investment of time and effort.
It would have been preferable to have used the same edition of Capital, by Penquin Classics, since Harvey relies on page references and these are entirely different to the edition I used. Mine also had a different translation. As it happens, I was able to keep track anyway, because I was following both books in tandem, but anything to make cross reference easier would be worthwhile.
Harvey not only explains Marx's meaning but also engages with it in active ways, providing more contemporary examples, commenting on disputes, explaining why he often disagrees with specific aspects of Marx's argument in the light of later history, suggesting ways in which Marx's ideas might be revised or extended. Most often though, Harvey defends Marx against all sorts of lines of attack, and demonstrates his continuing relevance and validity.
Something Harvey does especially well is to demonstrate the dialectical method used by Marx to build his explanation of free market capitalism. Indeed, for this his YouTube lectures are possibly more effective than his book, maybe because of the way he draws out the chains of reasoning on a large whiteboard as he speaks. It is not at all what I had expected and seems incredibly well justified once it is explained. Eventually, Harvey is able to depict the main arguments of Capital I in a great mindmap which is surprisingly memorable and very clearly structured. For all the seeming complexity and the sheer scale of the argument, Marx never loses sight of this skeleton plan. However, Marx does not always make it easy to spot the links in his chain and without Harvey's intervention they would often have passed me by. These really are excellent lectures and it is a wonder that they have been preserved and made so easily available. [If I were a character in Farenheit 451 I would be very happy to be assigned this book to memorise.]
Harvey has been teaching Capital for over thirty years and one insight he offers is that different groups of students, from different disciplines, read Capital in many different ways. The book is not self contained or dogmatic. It is filled with insights, speculation and openings that can lead in all sorts of directions. It is a book, in other words, to be engaged with, not just to be passively read. (less)
flag2 likes · Like · 2 comments · see review
Kumail Akbar
Sep 17, 2020Kumail Akbar rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: classics, financial-crises, social-science, history-of-ideas-philosophy, international-politics, economics-finance, leftist, must-read
I read the complete edition of David Harvey’s Companion to Marx’ Capital. Previous versions were companions just to the first Volume of Das Capital, whereas this one is a companion edition to all Three Volumes of Marx’ magisterial work. David Harvey has been teaching students how to read Marx for decades now, and his lectures on YouTube are available for anyone to take as they try to waddle through Marx’s writing. I tried doing the same but found the lectures to be slow and boring – so chose to pick up this book instead, and I must say I cannot say the same about this book.
Harvey tells us what he intends to do with this book in the introduction itself. He does not want this to be a stand-alone book, he wants to encourage readers to read Marx’s work on Marx’s own terms. However, Marx’s writing, even when its complete (Volume One) is arcane, dry, repetitive, and simply not laid out for the average twenty first century reader – not to say anything about the works that were left incomplete (Volumes Two and Three). Harvey says so himself in the introduction, ‘half the time you have no idea what he (Marx) is talking about.’ This is where this book comes in handy. To use an example which people who’ve been raised with cultural and religious traditions such as those of Islam can automatically relate, Harvey is providing here us with the exegeses (ta’ashreeh) of the entire scriptural corpus, chapter by chapter, argument by argument, idea by idea. He does this well because like the scholar of any scripture, not only is he well versed in the material found within its text, but also its source material, other supplementary and preceding texts (such as Marx’s Grundrisse) as well as other scholars readings and interpretations of the same ideas. Furthermore, he has supplemented the work with diagrams and modern-day examples as much as possible, making this an incredibly useful book. People say Engels should’ve edited more of Marx’s work (especially Volume One) but if ‘spatial temporal differences’ can be wished away in a future reincarnation of the universe, I would much prefer Harvey to be the editor Marx never had.
I would recommend anyone who wishes to read Das Capital to read this work side by side. Unless you are well acquainted with the dense monstrosity of 19th century philosophical writing, as well as Marx’s work and what it builds on, you are very likely to give up on the text a few chapters into Volume One. Even basic notions of argument and reasoning that many readers would likely take for granted in our day and age – that arguments that seek to show how empirical reality behaves are causal – do not hold true for Das Capital. Marx’s the method of reasoning is dialectical, not causal, and that is hard enough to wrap your head around, let alone the fact that Marx’s entire argument structure rests on the creation of diametrically opposed relations (this is how dialectics proceed) for every observed social relation. These creations already seem to get out of hand in Volume One – where Marx attempts to delineate the ‘creation of value’, and by the time you reach the second Two Volumes, Marx’s work suffers from what I’ve called a massive entropy of terms and constructions and which is easy to find Oneself drowning in. (Find my review of Das Capital here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...).
Harvey’s book is extremely useful here, as is he able to explain the method in terms anyone could understand – he describes the method as similar to the peeling of an onion to look at layers beneath the initial observed reality, etc. This works to understand how Marx wants to go about presenting his argument, but unfortunately there is not much even Harvey can do to reduce the entropy of constructions, although he has written another book which attempts to break down all of Marx’s ideas and write about them more linearly (in Limits to Capital). In this book however, he addresses Volume One in the first section, but then jumps between different sections of Volume Two and Volume Three, detailing Marx’s arguments and explaining his examples in an order that he thought made more sense than simply reading Volume One, Two, and Three successively. Marx tells us that ‘There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits’, too bad he left the modern reader without oxygen or basic climbing gear and asked him to climb the not particularly bright summit of Mount Olympus, but we have Harvey here to thank for giving us the Pegasus that might just help us do the job.
Harvey’s tone throughout the book is not that of a priest explaining a dense text, but a scholar who is fluidly engaging with the text himself as he tries to make it digestible for us. There are several instances where Harvey does not hesitate to question some of Marx’s claims or arguments (explicitly calling out Marx on at least One instance where Harvey thought he was wrong), and other instances where he presents other scholars reading of the same text and his own opinion on their interpretations. You can find instances where Harvey would even differentiate between the ‘logic of an argument’ as well as its ‘historical validity’ and even cases (such as in Volume Two) where accounting tautologies presented by Marx do not seem to be observable as calculable ratios in the real world. He even wrestles with our experience of socialist governments and their choices, drawing connections explicitly with what Marx had written – for e.g. when discusses the adoption of capitalist technological relations by a socialist state – even if he did not take these arguments to what seemed to be their logical conclusion then and there. This makes the intellectual engagement worth participating in, even if by the end of the book you are left feeling that Harvey never questioned some of the most fundamental questions with Das Capital – such as the labor theory of value itself, or whether or not the dialectical method which does away with causal arguments is a meaningful way to explain lived reality, whether some arguments presented by Marx necessarily flow into what is considered Marxist politics and what the point of such constructions is (such as capital being a social relation or a circulation of values or even some of the less critical ideas – such as the idea that ‘machines cannot produce value’. However, I real that that might just be beyond the scope of a book written to make you want to read Marx’s Capital.
Harvey cites Marx in the introduction with ‘Hic Rhodus, hic salta! Here is the ball, now run with it!’ to suggest what Marx would have wanted readers of his ideas to do with his work after they were done. What would Harvey want us to do, other than also read Das Capital – I do not know. But what I do know is, once you’re done with this book and Das Capital you would have a much thorough understanding of Marxist ideas on political economy, and would be much better positioned to engage with such, if you choose to.
Rating: 5 out 5 stars, unlike Das Capital which I rated much lower. Ironic, I know.
(less)
flag2 likes · Like · comment · see review
tom bomp
May 16, 2013tom bomp rated it really liked it
Shelves: politics, marxist, non-fiction, economics
Very useful book to help demystify some of the stuff in Capital Volume 1. I disagree with quite a bit of what he says when he goes beyond Capital (particularly the focus on neoliberalism) but he connects it to Marx's work and seeing someone explicitly draw from it and developing it is useful. Most helpful early on - at parts it's limited to reiterating what Marx has said; understandable because the first couple of parts are definitely the toughest so it's not too big a deal. I do think he sometimes misses chances to argue a bit further. The main example is the labour theory of value - Marx didn't feel the need to justify it because it was commonly accepted at the time and Harvey only spends about a page (I think) doing so. Given that it's such an important part of what follows, it would have been nice to have a bit more time spent on it.
Overall though, very handy guide and I recommend it as a guide to your own understanding and interpretation.
(Couple of things: David Harvey recommends the Penguin edition, which is probably the best available, if you're planning on following along, and it's the one he quotes from with page numbers. However, the Penguin version comes with an appendix which is another chapter Marx wrote but didn't publish yet Harvey doesn't mention it at all. It's no big deal, but it would have been nice just to say "I'm not covering the appendix" somewhere) (less)
flag2 likes · Like · comment · see review
Lori
Dec 05, 2015Lori rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: owned-ebook, read-political-economy, read-sociology, read-economics, read-history, read-nonfiction, read-politics
This book is absolutely brilliant. Written in a crystal clear way, with deep insights into Karl Marx' text, all the while letting the reader interpret Marx on his own terms. David Harvey has done a fantastic job, and I wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone who wants to read Capital, Vol 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production.
Not only does the author clarify, the sometimes, entangled arguments made by Marx, but also offers some relatable examples in contemporary times. All the while urging the reader to form their own opinions.
I gave this book five stars, while I gave Capital only 4. The reason, of course, is Harvey's superior clarity in argumentation. (less)
flag2 likes · Like · comment · see review
Jessica Zu
Feb 10, 2012Jessica Zu rated it liked it
Shelves: cmlit502, cmlit503
I'm just happy that I'm done with Marx for now. Please don't force me to engage with these two thinkers any more. (less)
flag2 likes · Like · 1 comment · see review
Max
Aug 05, 2021Max rated it it was amazing
Shelves: politics, economics, socialism-communism, marxism, companion-book, neoliberalism
An excellent companion to Volume I. I don't have much to say about it that hasn't already been said, so instead here are some recommendations for those tackling Capital, Vol. 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production:
- Before cracking open Capital, start with The Rate of Exploitation: The Case of the iPhone from the Tricontinental Institute. This is a 40-page free pdf, quick and easy to read, that will introduce you to a number of important concepts in a way that demonstrates their relevance. Much nicer than long discussions of coats and yarn.
- Use Stephen Shapiro's How to Read Marx's Capital if you want a simpler guide to Capital than Harvey's. My personal preference was to read Shapiro alongside Marx, then read Harvey after each section. Unlike Shapiro, Harvey spends time discussing potential issues with Marx's analysis and debates on interpretations, which is very helpful.
- If you prefer videos, Harvey's lectures on Volume I were the basis for this companion. Watching them instead won't leave you with any significant gaps from the book. There's a 2007 course and a 2019 one. I preferred the latter because it involves reflections on the 2007-8 financial crisis.
- Make sure you read beyond Harvey - at least once you're done with Volume I. The more perspectives the better! (less)
flag1 like · Like · comment · see review
Leo H
Oct 02, 2019Leo H rated it really liked it
Doing quite literally what it says on the tin, this was a very useful companion to have with me on my journey through reading Volume 1 on Marx's Capital.
There were a couple of points in Capital (OK, more than a couple) where I didn't really understand what Marx was saying, and I was relying on Harvey to help me out but he just said something like "and this bit's pretty straightforward so I won't go into it in any great depth." Come ON, David! Don't do me like this! Other than that and occasionally going off on an irrelevant tangent by starting "I think what Marx was say here was...", this was great. Highly recommended if you're reading Capital. Use it like a lecture series, because that's how it started out. (less)
flag1 like · Like · comment · see review
Seth
Nov 19, 2018Seth rated it it was amazing
wish I had gotten the complete edition with all three volumes
flag1 like · Like · 2 comments · see review
Anna
Jan 29, 2020Anna rated it it was amazing
Essential companion to Marx's Capital Vol 1. I am so pleased to have completed both books, and would say I was intellectually energized throughout! (Also outraged.) (less)
flag1 like · Like · comment · see review
Steven
Sep 07, 2020Steven rated it it was amazing
Instrumental in helping me, and others, pick up on some of Karl's subtleties in Vol. 1 of Capital. (less)
flag1 like · Like · comment · see review
Ed
Jun 27, 2020Ed rated it it was amazing
Easily the best companion to Capital that you can find.
flag1 like · Like · comment · see review
Spoust1
Sep 03, 2010Spoust1 rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
David Harvey says early in the book that his understanding of Marx's "Capital" has developed over the course of many years of teaching the book. He has taught it to economists, philosophers, English students, and even a group of Derrideans, who insisted on checking translations and examining Marx's language so much that the group barely got past the first chapter. "What came to fascinate me," Harvey says, "was that each group saw different things in 'Capital'... I found myself learning more and more about the text from working through it with people from different disciplines." His wealth of experience with the text shows.
As a good introduction to "Capital" should, Harvey's "Companion" deftly goes through some of Marx's more difficult arguments. Harvey has trod this path many times, and he is aware not only of where the path goes, but also of where readers are likely to stumble, and he is quick to lend a helping hand with short digressions into Marx's methodology, including one longer one on what it means that Marx is trying to think "dialectically." Harvey explains the reasons behind Marx's sometimes peculiar terminology, why Marx making certain arguments at certain points in the book rather than others; he also considers "Capital" within the context of Marx's entire corpus, and when necessary Harvey links what Marx says in "Capital" -- or, what is more important, what Marx is NOT saying in "Capital" -- to this context.
But that the "Companion" contains a basic outline of Marx's opus is not its most impressive feature. What is most impressive, and what will make the book of value not only to those just beginning to study Marx but also, perhaps, to more seasoned scholars, is Harvey's attention to the nitty-gritty of Marx's text. There are some passages every book on "Capital" should point out -- for instance, the beginning of the "Fetishism of Commodities" section -- and this Harvey does. Harvey goes beyond this and brings up passages that are easily missed: Harvey's attention to Marx's footnotes is extremely helpful. At times Harvey will only draw the reader's attention to a footnotes; at times he will show how Marx makes a key argument or answers a particular counter-argument in a footnote, and a considerable discussion of the footnote will ensue. About 30 pages of the "Companion" contain some level of discussion of Marx's footnotes. In addition, Harvey pays attention to the place of gender in Marx's text, emphasizing both where Marx is strong and where Marx is weak on the issue. Harvey's keen eye for the presence of gendered metaphors is much appreciated. Harvey also devotes considerable space elaborating some of Marx's ideas regarding the relationship between human society and nature -- a furtive area of Marx's thought that has only recently begun to be explored. And significantly, Harvey even notes the congruence between the work of Michel Foucault and the Marxist project, suggesting that Foucault be read as detailing the development of disciplinary apparatuses and ways of thought (regarding mental illness, sexuality, etc.) without which advanced capitalism would be impossible. In other words, he makes Foucualt out to be a Marxist. Too many have made the mistake of reading these two thinkers as being fundamentally opposed.
Marx's "Capital" is one of the, if not the, most relevant books for today. Harvey knows this, and he is at pains to show how "Capital" is very much a book for the present. We locked "Capital" up in the basement because we didn't want to hear what it had to say to us. It was too traumatic. But the trauma of present catastrophes risks being greater than the traumatic truth "Capital" can help us to see. This is why it's time to grow up, go into the basement, and unlock "Capital." It's time to dust it off. That is, it's time, as Harvey says, to read "Capital," and to read it on Marx's terms. Harvey can help us do this. (less)
flag1 like · Like · comment · see review
Anas Nor'Azim
Nov 09, 2019Anas Nor'Azim rated it really liked it
Provided me invaluable help on my second time re-reading Marx's Capital Vol.1. Very concise and clear. Would definitely recommend to anyone reading Capital, especially if its your first time doing so. Wish I'd done it sooner.
*edit*
I've grown to find quite a few things to disagree with Harvey regarding his readings of Marx after my most recent read through of Volume 1. But nonetheless, as a *companion* to Capital, I haven't yet found anything similiar that goes into the same depth and remains accessible to the average reader. Harvey follows you through chapter by chapter, even going as far as to dedicate and entire chapter to a footnote, and for that alone it still remains my go-to recommendation for beginners who find it difficult to grasp the contents of Capital on its own. It should more than suffice as a starting point.
Well atleast till the new Heinrich translation comes into print next year lol. (less)
flag1 like · Like · 1 comment · see review
Yonis Gure
Aug 01, 2014Yonis Gure rated it it was amazing
If you don't want to go through the altogether dreary and taxing task of reading 1000+ pages of Karl Marx all by yourself, then read this book in conjunction with Marx's Capital Vol. 1. If one switches from Marx to Harvey, Marx to Harvey, until both books are finished, then I think that person will develop a deeper appreciation for Harvey's brilliant pedagogical approach at explicating Marx's Capital.
Why can't I have a professor like him? (less)
flag1 like · Like · comment · see review
Ross Torres
Feb 08, 2016Ross Torres rated it it was amazing
David Harvey is my dude. His analysis of capitalism is rock hard and i luv it. Seriously he's an amazing person and really provides an in-depth reading to a very important text -Capital- which is not only important for its conclusions about the functioning of capitalistic society but also important for its his methodology and critical attitude. I don't see any reason not to read this book immediately if you haven't already, (less)
flag1 like · Like · comment · see review
Karlo Mikhail
Jul 05, 2019Karlo Mikhail rated it really liked it
Lucid and readable introduction to Vol.1 of Marx's Capital. Some claims, like the one where Harvey castigates Marx for having a lot of "boring material" (thereby relegating important theoretical apparatus applied on the exposition of the value-form as mere technicalities that mask Marx's essential arguments), are off the mark though. But very good and well-argued over all. (less)
flag1 like · Like · comment · see review
xDEAD ENDx
Dec 07, 2012xDEAD ENDx rated it it was amazing
Excellent book. I felt that it gave me much greater confidence when considering and using the concepts laid out in Capital. Additionally, there was a lot of insight into ideas I hadn't considered before. I look forward to the guides to Volumes 2 and 3, as 1 is the "easy" volume to read. (less)
flag1 like · Like · 2 comments · see review
Paul
Jul 01, 2013Paul rated it it was amazing
Extremely useful book. I'd tried and failed on numerous occasions to complete Capital until I read this gem.
Readable, clear and engaging. There is an accompanying you tube series of lectures.
Harvey is a very impressive thinker and teacher. (less)
flag1 like · Like · comment · see review
Laura McCafferty
Aug 11, 2020Laura McCafferty rated it it was amazing
really helped me to understand Capital, which is both long and confusing at times, especially chapters 1-3. Really appreciated the author reflecting on modern day events relevant to topics in the book and also quoting other relevant material from Marx.
flag1 like · Like · comment · see review
Slava Skobeloff
Nov 08, 2018Slava Skobeloff rated it really liked it
Shelves: philosophy
So, Marx's Capital is a book that I think doesn't, in all honesty, require a secondary source to read alongside. If you told an undergraduate student to read it on their own they probably could have. However, there are certain points when Harvey helps us understand the project Marx is undertaking.
First, a bit of the cons is that Harvey is not a Marxist philosopher, nor a Marxist economist, he is a Marxist geographer. It seems relatively weird to me that he focuses so much on the idea of dialectics and contradiction, which are Hegelian themes, in this book. Marx comments more directly on Hegel in other texts, such as the German Ideology--and while he does mention sometimes the idea of inversion, it doesn't play a hugely important role in his critique, I feel. But even then, Harvey's mention of dialectics is not a very nuanced notion as well, and it seems rather forceful to include it here.
However, that being said, Harvey draws on a huge amount of expertise in research in this area. Since most of us, I assume, do not have the time to go through and read all the political economists, whether that be Mill, Smith or Senior that Marx mentions, we have Harvey to tell us what exact viewpoints Marx is criticising. On top of that, Harvey works fascinatingly well in contextualising Marx's ideas into modern times to help us understand the importance of his critique. A section that I particularly actually enjoyed was the very last part (before the reflections), where Harvey brings out Luxemburg in talking about how, for them, capitalist primitive accumulation is still happening all around the world. Once again, contextualising how his critique may be of significant importance to us even in modern society.
Overall a highly helpful book for the readers of Marx. (less)
flagLike · comment · see review
David Goldman
May 13, 2020David Goldman rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: classics, history, philosophy
Are you concerned about income inequality, the exploration of natural resources, the consolation of capital into fewer hands, the seemingly permeant underclass, rapid consumerism spurred by ever more sophisticated marketing, bust/boom cycles where the rich end up being richer? So was Carl Marx and in Capital is his epoch critique about capitalism. Capital shows Marx as social critic, not as a sloganeering advocate for revolution. Starting with assuming that classic capitalism is working as described by Adam Smith, Marx shows the systems tendency to produce the outcomes that bother so many. If you are concerned with these problems, reading Capital is a must. Not because Marx was right, but because he provides a different take on why these outcomes arise tan traditional progressive, liberal, or conservative economists. You don’t need to be a Marxist, communists, or even socialist to find an alternative explanations useful and to help cut through explanations, left and right, that seem like standard talking points.
Harvey’s book, much to the author’s dismay, can be read on it’s own. Although you will provide from reading the original. The Companion is clear, and while written for a non-specialists, never dumbed down. That does make the Companion tough in parts, but the original material is tough. In fact, I don’t know how you get through the 800 of pages of capital without it. Yet, the book is more than just a reader’s guide. Harvey puts is years of study to good use, drawing in lessons from later books and drawing in examples from today’s society. (less)
flagLike · comment · see review
Matt
Jan 24, 2018Matt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Harvey provides invaluable assistance in reading Capital Vol. 1. It defeats the point to summarize his views in a review. He’s taken Marx’s 1000+ pages and deftly reduced it to a 350 page summary. There is no doubt that the casual reader of Marx will find Harvey’s summations enlightening. He has spent years revisiting and reframing Marx’s text. And he graciously lets us glom on to his results. His close reading reveals the layers and connections that you know are there, but hard to see. Some conclusions he presents as the text‘s revelations, and some conclusions as his own interpretation- and he openly highlights those differences.
By mapping Marx’s dialectic, Harvey shows how, instead of synthesis, Marx actually creates ever expanding contradictions. I had wanted to see a static systemic structure when I read Capital Vol. 1 and I thought I simply missed it. But what I really missed was the extraordinary breadth of Marx’s analysis. I really can’t recommend Harvey’s book enough. His writing is accessible, his interpretations are measured and his teaching is simply awesomesauce. (less)
flagLike · comment · see review
No comments:
Post a Comment