Para entender O Capital, Livro II e III

A Companion to Marx's Capital #2

by David Harvey, Rubens Enderle (Tradutor)

A atual crise econômica, sem precedentes desde a Grande Depressão, não mostra sinais de resolução e a obra de Marx permanece incontornável para compreender a natureza e a dinâmica das economias capitalistas. Por quase quarenta anos, David Harvey escreveu e lecionou sobre O capital, consolidando-se com uma das maiores autoridades acadêmicas no assunto. Condensando essa experiência e dando continuidade ao sucesso de seu Para entender O capital, Livro I, Harvey volta sua atenção agora ao famigerado Livro II – o livro, aliás, foi finalizado durante sua estadia no Brasil para o projeto Marx: a criação destruidora, onde lançou seu volume I.

Buscando tornar sua profundidade analítica acessível a um público maior, Harvey guia leitores com pouca ou nenhuma familiaridade com o pensamento de Marx por esta obra difícil e muito pouco lida. Enquanto o livro I foca na produção e o III, em crises, o Livro II examina de maneira mais abstrata a forma pela qual a noção de valor se dá a partir da compra e venda de mercadorias – a circulação. Conhecidamente mais complicado que o livro I, o volume II d’O capital é tratado de forma analítica por Harvey, que usa de sua experiência como professor para dissecá-lo. O autor ainda aborda diferentes questões presentes no original, como a forma de organização de uma sociedade verdadeiramente comunista e os estudos de Marx sobre Adam Smith. Da recente crise econômica pela qual passou o capitalismo até sua resposta neoliberal, Harvey provê, neste livro, exemplos concretos para a teoria de Marx.

Harvey introduz ainda elementos do Livro III sobre crédito e finança para elucidar certos aspectos da crise contemporânea. Leitura obrigatória para quem deseja uma compreensão mais completa do pensamento econômico de Marx através de sua obra central: O capital. Com o estilo provocador marcante do geógrafo, este volume do livro mostra insights de Harvey sobre a teoria de Marx e dá assistência a quem deseja entender as contradições e crises do sistema vigente por meio de teorias escritas há mais de 150 anos.

Crítica

"Sem dúvida, são de Harvey os melhores guias para entender O capital de Marx."
– Joshua Clover, The Nation

"Nenhum comentário breve pode fazer justiça a este livro excepcional."
– Michael Perelman, Choice

“Harvey é um radical erudito; sua escrita é desprovida de clichês jornalísticos, repleta de fatos e de ideias bem pensadas.”
– Richard Sennett

Genres: Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Theory, History, Sociology

392 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

David Harvey (born 1935) is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). A leading social theorist of international standing, he graduated from University of Cambridge with a PhD in Geography in 1961.

He is the world's most cited academic geographer (according to Andrew Bodman, see Transactions of the IBG, 1991,1992), and the author of many books and essays that have been prominent in the development of modern geography as a discipline.

His work has contributed greatly to broad social and political debate, most recently he has been credited with helping to bring back social class and Marxist methods as serious methodological tools in the critique of global capitalism, particularly in its neoliberal form.

Reviews

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have written a review for volume one of Harvey's excellent Companion to Capital. Here I will cut and past some direct quotes to give an impression - only an impresssion - of his style and arguments.

Confining himself so tightly within the level of generality permitted Marx to construct an understanding of capital that transcended the historical particulars of his own time. This is why we can still read him today—even Volume II—and make sense of so much of what he has to say. On the other hand, this framework makes for difficulties of any immediate application to actually existing circumstances. This is the work we are left to do. We can better appreciate the nature of that work, however, when we understand the self-imposed limits of Marx’s general theory and what, within its limitations, that theory can do for us [p50]

In each state the organism exhibits different capacities and powers: as an egg or as a chrysalis, it is immobile but growing; as a caterpillar it crawls around in search of food; and as a butterfly it can flit around at will. And so it is with capital. In its money state, capital can flit around butterfly-like pretty much at will. In its commodity form, capital, like the caterpillar, wanders the earth in search of someone who wants, needs or desires it, and has the money to pay for it and ultimately consume it. As a labor process, capital is for the most part rooted in the “hidden abode of production” (as Marx calls it in Volume I), in the place of the material activity of transforming natural elements through the production of commodities. [p54]

The differential empowerment of the different factions of capital has huge consequences for how capital operates on the world stage. To empower finance capital relative to other forms of capital (such as production and merchant capital) is to invite the sort of hypermobility and “flitting around” of capital that has characterized capitalism over the last few decades. Marx does not take up such topics, but there is no reason why we cannot.[p55]

Marx’s scathing attack upon Say’s law in Volume I. Say held that purchases and sales are always in equilibrium, and therefore that there can never be any general crisis of overproduction (a proposition that Ricardo also accepted). But the holding of money (hoarding), as Keynes was later also to point out, is a permanent temptation, given that money is a universal form of social power appropriable by private persons. Hoarding is also, Marx shows, socially necessary [p56]

“What is characteristic is not that the commodity labour-power can be bought, but the fact that labour-power appears as a commodity.”[p60]

So here, then, is the first major precondition for the circulation of capital to occur: “ The class relation between capitalist and wage-labourer is … already present ”[p61]

The second major precondition for the circulation of capital to occur is this: general commodity production for the market must already exist . Only then will the capitalist find means of production available in the marketplace, and only then will wage laborers find the consumption goods required to reproduce themselves. [p61]... It makes the sale of the product the main interest, at first apparently without attacking the mode of production itself; this was, for example, the first effect of capitalist world trade on such peoples as the Chinese, Indians, Arabs, etc. Once it has taken root, however, it destroys all forms of commodity production that are based either on the producers’ own labour, or simply on the sale of the excess product as a commodity.[p62] ... capitalist production produces not only commodities and surplus-value; it reproduces, and on an ever-extended scale, the class of wage labourers and transforms the vast majority of the direct producers into wage labourers. [p62]

There are those, like Kevin Phillips, who believe we have been through a phase of mercantilism these last few decades, with the US playing the role of the most stupid nation (engaging in debt-fuelled consumerism) while the Chinese and the Germans save and accumulate huge trade surpluses at the expense of the US consumer. [p71]

Industrial capitals in competition with each other promote revolutions in technologies and organizational forms that in turn produce value revolutions. This is the supposedly mysterious force (appearing like a force of nature, and therefore supposedly outside of human control) that deindustrializes whole industrial regions.[p93] But instead of raging against capitalism—the system—they rage against the foreign producers, the immigrants, the speculators, and the others who are in fact merely the secret and hidden agents of capital’s inner laws of motion. [p94]


Many people reading Marx have a problem with the concept of value as an abstraction, a social relation that is immaterial but objective in its consequences. But “value” is no more abstract and mysterious than the popularly accepted force called “globalization.” What is odd is that so many people easily accept the latter (because we became habituated to it?), while often balking at the former as far too abstract. But the virtue of Marx’s superior concept is that we see more clearly how this abstraction is created, and how the forces that it assembles work—how we become, as Marx puts it elsewhere, a victim of capital’s abstractions [p94] Instead of some mysterious force called “globalization” that seems to descend from the ether with such destructive and irresistible power, we here have a theory which internalizes the self-destructive dynamic through which capitalists produce the very conditions of their own demise. To accept this theory, all we have to do is to recognize “the independence which value acquires as capital, and which is maintained and intensified through its movement.” Why is that harder to accept than some vacuous term like “globalization”? [p95]

The continuity of flow that is so essential to the circulation process of capital demands that supplies of commodities from noncapitalist social formations and producers be assured on a steady rather than an episodic and insecure basis... This is most assuredly one of the reasons for the establishment of some power relation, most conspicuously that of colonialism and imperialist domination, along with agreements with foreign potentates (such as the Saudis), through which the cooperation of the noncapitalist suppliers of key commodities involved in the reproduction of capital circulation is assured on a continuous basis. [p99]

While it is true that money, commodities, and the exchange of labor services logically and historically preceded the rise of capital as a class relation, these exchanges at that time functioned under radically different social conditions. When most individuals either exercised some control over their own means of production or were (as under slavery and serfdom) assured of a permanent (albeit tightly circumscribed) position in the social order, the direct producers were always in a position to reproduce themselves wholly or partly outside of market exchange.[p112]... The transition to socialism or communism entails not only a fierce combat to eradicate the class relation between capital and labor in production. It also requires the rolling back, or perhaps the reconstruction, of these other circuits in order to show how monetization, commodification and the trading of labor services might be transformed to support associated laborers in production. [p114]

This conclusion finds support in the long and often vainglorious history of attempts to reorganize capitalist production on noncapitalist lines, particularly under the rubric of associated labor. Attempts at workers’ control, self-management, autogestión , and factory cooperatives (of the sort that sprung up in Europe in the 1970s or in Argentina after the crisis of 2001) have invariably suffered, and in some instances been destroyed, from having to deal with the controlling powers of hostile merchants’ and finance capital. The dream of autogestión and workers’ control has often crashed on the rocks of the powers of money and commodity capital and the laws of exchange-value to discipline them. The driving force to valorize value and thereby extract surplus-value is hard to ward off. And it is perhaps significant that the longest-lasting workers’ cooperative that has survived—Mondragon, which was founded in Spain’s fascist period, in the Basque country, in 1956—did so in part because it set up its own credit institutions and marketing functions, thus casting its political strategy across all three circuits. It continues to survive and flourish, and in most of the 200 enterprises it now controls the differentials in rewards to participants are still held for the most part at 3-to-1 (compared to 400-to-1 or more in US corporations). [p114]

If you ask the most vociferous opponents of socialism, including those in the Tea Party, whether they agree or not with worker rather than state or government control, they will almost certainly reply affirmatively. Many people are, it turns out, in favor of at least this version of the communist hypothesis. What emerges from these chapters, therefore, is not only a clearer definition of capital, but a conception of a communist alternative that even many Americans might willingly endorse.[p117]

I often think how much richer and more appealing Volume II would have appeared if Marx had inserted even a brief chapter, like that on the working day in Volume I, which described the history of technological and organizational shifts designed to reduce the gap between production time and working time as well as circulation times. We would then have understood why it is that capital has so fiercely pursued the speeding up of the temporality of everything. The less the time spent in any of these phases, the faster capital recuperates surplus-value.[p128]

Money capital flits away, leaving fixed capital high and dry and subject to savage devaluation. I put the contradiction this way: capital builds a whole landscape adequate to its needs at one point in time, only to have to revolutionize that landscape, to destroy it and build another one at a later point in time in order to accommodate the perpetually expansive forces of further capital accumulation. What gets left behind are desolate, devalued landscapes of deindustrialization and abandonment, while capital builds another landscape of fixed capital either elsewhere or on the ruins of the old.[p143]

I find Marx’s relational way of treating fixed-capital formation extremely helpful in interpreting the history of capital. His account opens up all manner of theoretical possibilities. A lot can be hung upon Marx’s seemingly casual observation that an ox can either be used for consumption or function as fixed capital in production, because there are all sorts of things all around us that have that character—from pencils to houses, streets, and even whole cities. The fluidity of definition is as important as it is functionally creative. This is the sort of thing that is hard, if not impossible, to incorporate into conventional bourgeois economic theory, which cannot handle flexible definitions of categories. Fixed capital, obviously, must, in the view of conventional economists, have a fixed definition... Unfortunately, not all Marxist economists, as we shall see, understand how the relationality of Marx’s definition works either. As a result, they repeat the mistakes of bourgeois theory. [p166]

Tax breaks for accelerated depreciation are another form of public policy incentive affecting renewal of and reinvestment in fixed capital. This occurred under Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s. It was a public subsidy to permit the accelerated write-off of the value of much existing and new fixed capital. It actually subsidized the movement of capital to the South and West and the deindustrialization of the Northeast and Midwest of the United States.[p175]

it will be completely self-evident that in the heads of the agents of capitalist production and circulation, ideas must necessarily form about the laws of production that diverge completely from these laws and are merely the expression in consciousness of the apparent movement. The ideas of a merchant, a stock jobber or a banker are necessarily quite upside-down. [p183]... Marx’s view on all this has immense contemporary significance. Not only do we now have to hand innumerable accounts of what happens on Wall Street (including Congressional Enquiries) that we are supposed to consider trustworthy, but we are overwhelmed with a rhetoric that says that banking is so complicated that only the expert bankers understand what it is they do. We therefore have to rely upon their expertise, we are told, to deal with the problems they created. But if Marx is correct, then we should not believe these bankers’ accounts... The bankers and financiers are, in some ways, the very last people to trust, not because they are all fraudsters and liars (even though some of them patently are), but because they are likely to be prisoners of their own mystifications and fetishistic understandings. What Marx would have said of Lloyd Blankfein when he claimed, when pressed before a Congressional Committee, that his bank, Goldman Sachs, had merely been doing God’s work, is not hard to imagine.[p185]

... The significant clue in these chapters is Marx’s explicit resurrection of the concept of fetishism, which has a vital place in the very first chapter of Volume I. The real foundations of capital (i.e. surplus-value production), he argued there, lie buried under surface appearances that are real but misleading. We really do go into a marketplace and use money to buy commodities (including labor-power). The problem is that these market relations mask the sociality and sensuality of the labor congealed in the production of commodities... [p217]

... there was a definite teleological thrust in which Marx seemed to assume that mixed and hybrid labor systems of the Tower Hamlets sort were transitional toward a factory system that would dominate over all else. In a purely capitalist mode of production the factory would be all there was. I challenged that teleological presumption in the Companion to Volume I. In my own studies of industrial organization in Second Empire Paris, I had found that the Tower Hamlets kind of organization was proliferating and not shrinking.... where Marx was right was in remarking the vicious exploitation entailed in such forms of labor organization. Zola, in his novel l’Assomoire , has a devastating description of the oppressive conditions... there is a good deal of evidence in the contemporary world that super-exploitation characterizes many of the subcontracting networks mobilized and organized by merchant capital (hence the scandals that burst into the mainstream press regarding Liz Claiborne clothing, Nike shoes, children making carpets and soccer balls—to be kicked around by soccer players earning millions—and harvesting cacao) [pp195-196]

Generally speaking, Marx opines, “the commercial worker proper belongs to the better paid class of wage-labourer; he is one of those whose labour is skilled labour above average labour. His wage, however, has a tendency to fall … Firstly, because the division of labour within the commercial office means that only a one-sided development of ability need be produced” and, “Secondly, because basic skills, knowledge of commerce and languages, etc., are produced ever more quickly, easily, generally and cheaply, the more the capitalist mode of production adapts teaching methods, etc., to practical purposes. The general extension of popular education permits this variety of labour to be recruited from classes which were formerly excluded from it and were accustomed to a lower standard of living.… With few exceptions, therefore, the labour-power of these people is devalued with the advance of capitalist production.” (C3, 415) [p208]

There are also some themes gently inserted into the analysis that have consequences for understanding Marx’s so-called “deterministic” and “teleological” bent. For example, the phrase “autonomous and independent” crops up at various key points in the text and warrants some commentary, since much of the hostile and ill-informed criticism of Marx dwells on how he supposedly gives no credit to the importance and power of individual initiative, and depicts everyone as automata blindly obeying abstract forces over which they have no control. This criticism is very strange, given that it was the much-admired and frequently cited Adam Smith who came up with the idea that it was the power of the hidden hand of the market over which no one individual had control, and that determined aggregate outcomes. Marx merely adopts Smith’s position in chapter 2 of Volume I, sticking with its utopian pretensions pretty much throughout.... That the libertarian right continues to embrace Smith’s utopian pretensions while excoriating Marx seems mighty odd—except of course when it is realized that Marx’s purpose in embracing the Smithian model is to show how it cannot possibly work for the benefit of all. It exacerbates and deepens class inequalities,... The point here, of course, is not to deny individual independence and autonomy, but to recognize (a) the particular socioeconomic conditions under which such individual initiative might flourish, and (b) how the aggregate consequences might be very different from individual intentions when mediated through the coercive laws of competition and market exchange, where the law of value ultimately holds sway. [p480]

To the degree that some arrangements and regimes are more successful than others, so competitive pressures would likely force adaptations over time toward the more successful model of accumulation. We have seen this sort of thing going on historically. In the 1980s, it was West Germany and Japan that were leading the way. Then it was the so-called Washington Consensus; and now it is the East Asian model. But, as the history of shifts in global hegemony illustrates, the independent and autonomous elements never go away. Uneven geographical development keeps the question of what is the most successful model of accumulation for different times and places very much on the boil. It is, in my view, a crucial means of capital’s successful reproduction. The same is also true for the independent and autonomous forms of circulation, and the crises they regularly foment. Without such independence and autonomy, capital could not adapt, reproduce and grow. [p481]

I believe deeply that Marx makes more and more sense as his abstract analysis is brought to earth, and that if the theory is incapable of illuminating not only the abstract processes through which capital moves but also daily life as it is lived by all ..., then the theory is wanting as an emancipatory tool in the search to construct an alternative, more egalitarian and less violence-prone mode of production. [p484]

[Peter Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first volume of David Harvey's Companion to Capital is a wonderful achievement, akin to reading Capital with a university lecturer sat by your side the whole way through providing guidance and prompting you to think around Marx's analysis. This second volume repeats that success. Volume 2 of Capital is a much drier affair and makes for harder reading. But Harvey's insight and thinking make following Marx's thought much easier. And the result is eye-opening. Where Marx is often considered to focus on production, Volume 2 and the parts of Volume 3 covered cover circulation, the impact of finance and money capital. The analysis feels very relevant to modern western capitalism and Harvey brings out what the analysis may be driving at, where it is incomplete, how to make it relevant to the modern world. Read in tandem with Volumes 2 and 3 it is an indispensable guide.

June 2022: not much to add on second reading. I read this separately to my reading of volumes 2 and 3 of Capital this time around. Harvey's insight is always invaluable though, in particular for the parts of volume 3 he covers, which as published by Engels is quite disorganised and messy. Harvey draws key insights, and shows in particular how volumes 2 and 3 fit into the overall schema. Essential reading.

[Differengenera · Rating 3 out of 5]

i found this very helpful right up until a friend pointed out to me that harvey's work aren't so much companions to capital so much as riffs or tangents off capital, and once i had heard that, i found it difficult to find this much more than frustrating. certainly if you remove the lengthy quotations from das kapital, as well as harvey rendering the material relevant to his own interests, i.e. reaganomics, urban space, you would have excised about 70% of the book. i think if i ever re-read capital i will probably try to find a different companion

[Berend Vendel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful

[Zoonanism · Rating 1 out of 5]

'Accumulation by dispossession', over and over, of all the banalities of 'Capital' and Harvey's companion, this term alone comes to one's mind. You truly feel dispossessed after wasting countless waking hours on this shallow book. Just like the Tube lectures it fails to approach anything one can call an explanation.

There are plenty of assertions of the following sort: "Now in this chapter, (and this is very important) because as you saw in volume X chapter Y, how all of A relates to the flow of B, which was significant in explaining the movement on the level of particularity, which Marx does not concern himself with, because it is fundamental for him to consider C, WHICH ALONE explains the way A FUNCTIONS as A' and (now all of this really BECOMES even more important later and you will see it in volume E) it is necessary that we SEE how he understands this as functioning as A' which unfortunately Marx doesn't discuss in much detail"

..but it is important that you keep faith, this gibberish at some point will transcend its own confusion and approach something other than a promise.

This work does not question any of the faulty premises of Marxian theory, it takes LTV as an article of faith and assumes interest rate and the chaos of banking systems can all be explained by extraction of surplus form labor.

None of the assumptions are qualified, but there are are plenty of statements as with the YouTube lectures where Harvey goes : ..and we see this more and more in $#@

All very well for a convert to see the lord's finger move in mysterious ways through $#@ . A sad religion, give it a miss.

[Tom Emanuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

If David Harvey's A Companion to Marx's Capital was a brilliant guide to the first volume of Marx's masterwork, then his Companion to Vol. 2 is positively indispensable. The arguments Marx advances in Vol. 2 are absolutely critical to constructing a Marxist theory of macroeconomics and especially a Marxist theory of crisis formation. However, the manuscripts that make up Vol. 2 were left in a state of disarray a the time of Marx's death and reconstructed posthumously in its barest bones by Friedrich Engels, resulting in a tome that might be charitably described as "dry." By importing materials on finance capital and the credit system into his discussion of Vol. 2 and illustrating Marx's theoretical constructs with contemporary and historical examples, Harvey situates Vol. 2 in the context of Marx's greater project and helps his reader immensely in navigating the desert. Highly recommended for anyone looking to read Marx for themselves or interested in an alternative political economy.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely indispensable book. I honestly have doubts that I could have gone through Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Vol 2 without it. Not only does David Harvey have a knack at sifting through Marx's rough (unedited), and obtuse writing, but he also provides many external references and incorporates some insight from Marx's Capital: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole, and Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy.

Not only will this book greatly shorten the time it takes to read Capital, but it will also help you understand it.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s comfortably reaffirming to hear Harvey discuss his struggles with volumes 2 and 3 of Marx’s Capital. Engels struggled as well. Which all seems to suggest that, despite his brilliance, Marx really wasn’t that great of a writer. In part, this has to do with the vast topic he attempted to tackle and, in part, his ever expanding concentric variations on each stage of his circulation circuit. Not only does Marx consistently lose the forest for the trees, but he chops down each tree he passes, sketches its leaves, examines its rings, and digs up its roots.

Thankfully, Harvey is there to guide us through Marx’s hacked and deforested path. He is able to point to what Marx was trying to do, where he failed or just gave up, and redirect the reader’s attention back to the majesty of the woods. Among other things, Marx strives to show the corrupting effect of the idea of money capital circulating throughout the commodity/production circuits. By reducing concepts to their core, he attempts “strict adherence to reconstructing the dynamics of accumulation and realization at the level of generality without appeal to universalities, particularities and singularities.” Pg. 385. He is creating concrete terms to analyze capitalism. This ultimately leads to a broad analysis that fails to take into account the myriad complexities that muddle each concept. Marx ambitiously drafts a theoretical foundation which never quite gets firmly set in the details.

But this criticism applies to all broad theoretical works. Adam Smith was no more precise in his economic analysis. However, what distinguishes Marx is his attempt to tackle the spiraling complexities. One gets the impression that he knew he would never find his way through the forest, but he was going to make it easier for those who followed to get out.

Harvey gets 5 stars for taking one of the most intimidating works I’ve ever read and trying to make it accessible. I can’t thank Harvey enough for allowing us to gain an appreciation for Marx that I would never have had the patience, or quite frankly, intellectual discipline, to gain otherwise.

[An · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tota companyia al llibre segon és benvinguda i aquesta guia de David Harvey ajuda a recórrer el camí. Tanmateix, les parts més complexes del llibre no les comenta i habitualment salta directament a les conclusions. També s'ha de dir que dedica moooltes pàgines a comentar el llibre tercer! Harvey està obsessionadíssim amb el crèdit i cada cop que Marx abstrau el crèdit i el deixa "per més endavant" Harvey es posa dels nervis. A més, dedica moltes pàgines a temes totalment secundaris, però que han estat influents en la seva obra (com el tema de l'espai en el capitalisme).

Sigui com sigui, si trobeu una guia de lectura del llibre segon diferent d'aquesta potser escolliu-la a no ser que us interessi molt el projecte teòric de Harvey.

ale un kiss.

[Ravi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harvey is obviously a highly competent commentator on Marx. His examples are illuminating and add colour to interpreting an otherwise dry book (this is an understatement). Nonetheless two things struck me about this book: how much time Harvey spends basically apologizing for the various gaps and weaknesses in the text, which makes me wonder how worthwhile spending the energy I devoted to reading it was, and the fact that there are several chapters featuring commentary on Vol 3 of Capital. This may well make sense for organizational or pedagogical purposes but I think many readers, like me, have not yet (and may never) read Vol 3 and so this digression was off putting.

[Herrmoekl · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s not a bad companion but neither a great one. It’s more of a comment as in Harvey spending a lot of time on elaborations that are of personal interest to himself. This being a companion he should’ve however put a greater pedagogical effort into trying to introduce Marx’s texts to an audience that reads his book based on a motivation to understand it. IMO Michael Heinrich is much better at introducing Marx. Sadly there is not vol. 2/3 companion from him.

[Tomasz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dalszy ciąg analizy i rozważań nad 'Kapitałem' Marksa. W tym tomie wywody robią się nieco bardziej zawiłe, ale wynika to - jak zauważa sam Harvey - z mętności niektórych analiz samego Marksa. Przewodnik zachowuje jednak mimo to przejrzystość i stanowi wartościowe kompendium, uzupełniające narzędzia analityczne dla nowych i tych już doświadczonych badaczy krytycznych.

[Leah Montange · Rating 5 out of 5]

really helpful

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought the first volume of David Harvey's Companion to Marx's Capital was pretty helpful in understanding Karl Marx's theory of economics. This book, however, read like a bunch of gobbledygook to me. I admit it could be my failing. Or it could be the fact that the book that it's about, Capital, Volume 2 was a mess of a book, apparently, and dry as dirt.

Anyway, I don't recommend this book. And for the readers out there who read it and liked it, I would be interested in hearing what I was missing. I would be happy to go back and give it a look eventually if someone could justify it.

[Augusto Delgado · Rating 4 out of 5]

Capital SZN2.

This book is very helpful to get you to the most arid, scientific, technical tome of Karl Marx's capital. But has its own drawbacks; Harvey's persistence on the apparent lack of in depth mentions of the credit system in Volume 2, or his dismissal of some unknown "Marxists" outrageous arguments, for instance.
In order to establish the conceptual continuity of Marx frame of mind, he even takes a detour to Volume 3 to expand on the merchants capital and fictitious money capital.
You might as well complement the reading with YouTube videos on the subject.

Very good effort, nonetheless.

[Aris Setyawan]

After finishing volume 1, I think it's time to move on to second volume.