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A Companion to Marx's Capital #1-2

A Companion To Marx's Capital: The Complete Edition

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In recent years, we have witnessed 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 - finally bringing together his guides to Volumes I, II and much of III of Das Kapital - 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 davidharvey.org/reading-capital/

986 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 6, 2018

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About the author

David Harvey

190 books1,635 followers
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.

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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
Profile Image for Alex.
72 reviews11 followers
August 6, 2021
I have some problems with Harvey's exegesis, particularly as my own knowledge of marxist scholarship deepened throughout my reading of Capital - I found myself raising an eyebrow more and more often while plunging into this Companion. I'm not even sure a book like this is strictly necessary, as Harvey often just repeats or rephrases what Marx writes. However its nice in some of the slower parts of Capital to have a Virgil by your side to echo your own observations and supplement them with some of their own, and it is a good exercise to effectively read twice all the key arguments in Marx's trilogy. Though I say "key arguments" but Harvey completely disregards the first half and the land rent part of Volume 3, which I found to be some of the most engaging and critical parts of Capital. All in all I am glad I read this alongside Capital but I'm sure there are better options out there. If somebody only read this as their first and only introduction to marx scholarship they might leave with some confused and contested notions.
Profile Image for Greg.
96 reviews3 followers
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May 26, 2020
Reading this along with Volume 1 was amazing. Paired with a reading group, Harvey clarified so many of Marx’s points by relating them to the modern day or giving his statements context. It was a book that absolutely changed my entire perspective on the world.

For Volume 2 and 3 I found Harvey a lot less helpful. He should literally just rename this half of the book “why I think Marx should have discussed credit”. And, like, yeah. I also wish he discussed credit, but he didn’t, and hundreds of pages of that point didn’t pay off. He also conspicuously skips the whole first half of volume 3 which I found to be really important in regards to ideas like the general rate of profit and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. A friend of mine basically says Harvey gets it all wrong in these volumes, focuses on effective demand and consumption when production is really where our focus should be. And in that blind spot some tragically off-the-mark conclusions are drawn. In that regard, what do I know? I only just finished. But I’d have been happier (and will be happy to eventually) to read some alternative takes on the main disagreements of interpretations of Marx (in crisis theory, on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, etc). Don’t know if I’d suggest Harvey as a necessary read along for volumes 2 and 3, but definitely for 1!
Profile Image for Chowder 3108.
55 reviews
April 19, 2024
Excellent book, extremely comprehensive but also very thoughtful and well considered. I learned so much reading this, and am proud of myself for finishing it. At the same time, I definitely struggled to understand much of the second half, particularly Volume II, so I look forward to an eventual re-read.
Profile Image for Elliot.
170 reviews5 followers
July 2, 2022
Unquestionably the most helpful book for reading alongside Vol. 1 of Capital. Not all of Vol 2/3 are included which is definitely the major downside of the book. But this book continued to help me through a Masters level course on Vol. 2 of Capital.

Really an invaluable companion, readable through and through.
17 reviews1 follower
September 1, 2021

The beginning contents of the book show Volume I and II but II contains Volume III inserted between volume II which was very frustrating to find out half way into Volume II.

This review will focus on Volume II of the book but in Volume I commentaries Harvey noted one way to get money out of hiding after the crisis of 1930s was to go to war which was featured in parentheses (p.340). Couple pages later he notes in parentheses, “which does not preclude some seemingly external disruptive event like a catastrophic pandemic” (p.343) when discussing disruptions to capitalism. I found this extremely eery in compared to what was presented as a solution to the crisis of 1930s. Which I was left as a reader wondering was the pandemic used in similar fashion to resolve the crisis stemming from 2008?

Harveys Chapter 10 is labeled chapter 18-20 of Volume II but is really only 18-19. Chapter 10 mentions his refraining from commentary of Destutt (arguably the most interesting part of chapter 20) but then in Chapter 11 goes to mention Chapter 20 of Volume II is on chapter eleven.

Harvey throughout the text talks of how boring and difficult Volume II is. I found this very frustrating because I found Volume II significantly easier to grasp than Volume I thanks largely to a lack of extensive footnotes. It flowed better for me as a result of what Harvey notes as “redundant or trivial” with “complex languages of critique and counter-critique” mixed with “accounting trivia” and “tortuous arithmetic examples” (p. 673). I very much question Harvey’s understanding of Volume II compared to his understanding of Volume I, which I thought was excellent. This isn’t to say Harvey does not make superb connections with the present and interesting histories of his life and interests in geography.

Harvey really wanted to get to the topic of credit and finance and I do not blame him I wanted to get there too but he keeps begging to get there throughout his commentaries in Volume II before he breaks and finally jumps to Volume III and leaves us with Volume III commentaries situated between Volume II. I had the patience to wait until Volume III and decided to skip his commentaries and then return to them when I arrived there. I think this is perfectly fine because in the subsequent chapters of Volume II after the Volume III detour Harvey rarely visits ideas from Volume III and what he does visits is not something you will not understand from my perspective.

This is my review of A Compaion to Marx’s Capital The Complete Edition published by Verso in 2018.


Profile Image for Billie Pritchett.
1,217 reviews122 followers
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February 25, 2024
In Capital, Marx lays out his theory of capitalist production and realization. He defines value as the average labor-time that goes into commodity production. Without a circulating commodity, no capitalist economy.

Marx distinguishes two different kinds of capital. Constant capital (c) is operating costs minus the money paid out to the workers. Variable capital (v) is the amount of money paid out to the worker.

Next, Marx differentiates between the two different ways in which owners and workers relate to capital flow. Workers contract their labor as a commodity (C) in order to receive money (M) in order to buy commodities (C) to eat and live. Call this circuit Commodity to Money to Commodity, C-M-C.

Owners relate to capital flow differently. They invest money in buying labor-power and technologies in order to produce commodities in order to make more money. Call this circuit Money to Commodity to Money, M-C-M.

There's something curious about the second circuit as opposed to the first and that is the question of how owners make more money than is initially invested to produce the commodities. To be precise, the owner does not want the circuit to be M-C-M, because that means the exact same amount of money returned to that invested. What the owner is looking for is more money (M') than invested. The real nature of the capitalist circuit, then, is M-C-M'. But again, where does the extra money come from? According to Marx, the extra money comes from the average amount of added value (s) the workers produce and are not compensated for. In small-business situations, where there is very little difference between the money paid out to the average worker compared to the gross profit returned to the owner, this doesn't matter much. Consider a real-life case.

In 2021, an Ohio pizza shop owner decided to pay his workers the day's profits. With 220 orders, the profit amounted to $6,300 in sales and $1,200 in tips, a total of $7,500. According to the owner, that would be as if his employees received $78 an hour.

There are some ambiguities about this situation, so in the absence of details, let's make some generous assumptions. Assuming the workers worked an 8-hr day at $78/hr and grossed $7,500 collectively, we've got $7,500 split across 12 workers. Assuming this is an average day and the owner is already paying for food costs, mortgage/rent costs, and other upkeep to the tune of 70% (not a bad assumption), the owner has lost $2,250 in gross profit.

Now let's run the same day at the workers' ordinary wages. Minimum wage in Ohio is $7.25/hr as of 2024, but assume the owner is generous and pays $10/hr. Spread across 12 workers, that means, if the big payout day is a typical day, the workers collectively gross $960. That translates to $1,290 gross for the owner, about 15% of overall profits. The average workers' share of gross profit would be about 13%. According to Marx, in a condition of absolute equality, what you would expect to find is that the profits of the average worker compared to the profits of the owner would be one to one. Here, it's not one-to-one, but .13/.15, so there's not a big discrepancy. That is to say, the worker is not being taken for much of a ride where profits are concerned. However, in businesses in which there is a huge discrepancy between the pay to the average worker versus the return to the owner, we can, according to Marx, see that there's a high rate of exploitation of the worker. That is to say, the worker is not rightly being compensated for all his or her hard work.

Marx's major contributions to a study of capitalist economy are the differentiation between profit rate s/(c + v), the exploitation rate s/v, labor productivity c/v, and total commodity value c + v + s. And we shouldn't slight the man for distinguishing between the two different conceptions of capital flow, the workers' C-M-C and the owner's M-C-M'.

But now what of David Harvey's contribution with his book, A Companion to Marx's Capital? Harvey's good at his detailed explication of Marx's Capital, which is extremely difficult to read and not very interesting beyond the first volume. Secondly, Harvey does an excellent job highlighting the fact that despite Marx's reputation, Marx is decidedly not a determinist in his understanding of capitalist economy. Marx writes of laws and tendencies but he's quick to emphasize countervailing tendencies. Another thing Harvey does well is highlight the fact that Marx is constructing models, and models are ideal and necessarily leave out a bunch of stuff regarding the real world. Therefore, often when the work is criticized, it's leaving aside specific assumptions he declares he's making. Finally, Harvey is great at laying out where he thinks Marx clearly goes wrong in his conceptions.

Harvey rightly emphasizes how banks play a crucial role in capital flow. Indeed, without debt and the power of national banks to inject money into the economy, a number of crises, including the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis in the United States, which rippled out to the world, would not have been ameliorated. Harvey painstakingly scours Capital volumes 2 and 3 for trajectories Marx started related to finance capital but abandoned. Harvey thinks good economics ought to pick up that ball and run with it.
Profile Image for Roberto Yoed.
824 reviews
October 19, 2021
Amazing synthesis of this titanic book.

Vol. 1 is clarified absolutely.
Vol. 2 is somewhat scrambled (but it isn't Harvey's error).
Vol. 3 is also elucidated.

After reading Das Kapital, this helped to articulate the entire thing all around.
Profile Image for Devin Stevenson.
221 reviews7 followers
February 8, 2025
A dense exploration of Marx's incomplete Capital. Highlights both the brilliance and the need for further and ongoing analysis to understand the complex system of capitalism for all its movements and consequences. Marx is largely misunderstood as a a complete theory to be assailed and refuted. While Marx contributed sizeable volumes of analysis, and even greater contribution is laying out a new scientific methodology for analyzing both economies but other large systems. Understanding the progress of his analysis is, I think, a necessary starting point of this new (and still relatively young) scientific approach. Capital does not emphasize the "call to action" that a work like Communist Manifesto imparts. It has an ambition to sketch out a full picture of capitalism. Marx was not able to lay out all the volumes he had hopes that outline the complexities of market and currency structures. After his death, his collaborator and funder, Engels was left to attempt to complete the work from Marx's own notes and his own analysis. While this attempt is itself invaluable, unfortunately, fully grasping Capital, requires grasping its incompleteness and the questions left open.
Harvey does an admirably thorough job of relating an understanding of complex work. However, he also hands the work back to both scholars and the masses to invite further analysis and questioning where ideas were not fully freshed out or areas not explored at all. An important work for understanding the complexity of the economic super structure we live within.
Profile Image for Salvador Ramírez.
Author 2 books12 followers
June 27, 2024
Este es un gran libro (tanto en extensión como en contenido) sobre El Capital de Karl Marx. Es una lectura que hace David Harvey de los tres tomos de ésta obra, basada en su experiencia dando clases sobre esta obra, así como de lecciones que ha dado en redes sociales.

Originalmente se publicó en dos libros separados y que aquí se conjuntan en uno solo (The Complete Edition). La primera parte trata sobre El Capital (Tomo I), donde lo recorre capitulo a capitulo (la La mercancía, dualidad del trabajo, la forma del valor, etc.). Describe el contenido de cada sección, además de que hace su interpretación y da comentarios contemporáneos que muestran la relevancia de la obra de Marx. Lo cual, a su vez, contiene una crítica al modelo capitalista neoliberal actual.

La sección segunda trata sobre el Tomo II del El Capital, pero también incluye capítulos del Tomo III, muchas veces conjuntando capítulos o saltándose algunos.Laa razón de ello, es la manera en qué liga Harvey la estructura de explicación del contenido de El Capital, pues estos tomos no tienen una explicación tan obvia como el primero. Esto debido a que tanto el Tomo II y el III no los completo en vida Marx, sino Engels fue quien los finalizó dejando muchos detalles por completar. En esta parte, Harvey además de tener explicar con mayor detalle el papel del crédito y las crisis financieras, también se puede extraer una discusión política sobre lo que implicaría el comunismo.

Del mismo modo, a lo largo del libro, Harvey va mostrando el método de exposición de Marx y desmitificando muchos prejuicios que se tienen sobre El Capital. Su estilo de escritura es didáctico y accesible, lo cual tiene el objetivo de acercar a un publico nuevo la obra de Marx. En este sentido, no pretende ser su última interpretación, por el contrario, David Harvey resalta que se trata de su lectura y anima al lector a continuar con la gran tarea inacabada de Marx en el estudio de las dinámicas del capitalismo y la construcción del comunismo.

Sin duda un libro para los interesados en el estudio del marxismo. la teoría crítica y la política anti capitalista.
Profile Image for Luke.
42 reviews3 followers
August 17, 2024
I cannot understate my admiration for David Harvey and his craft. One of the main concerns I've had for a long time is that every theory, analysis and idea is based upon a time and a certain world system.

Karl Marx, while excellent and one of the greatest thinkers in history, also falls victim to the endlessly changing face of time and space. Many critics of Marx sadly don't understand how Marx's ideas are based on an analysis of capitalism as it functioned in his era and will denounce all his analyses that do not hold up in modern capitalism. Similarly many fans and readers of Marx do the same mistake and take his writings as timeless facts of capitalism that are universally applicable irrelevant of how capitalism has changed and evolved. This does a huge disservice to historical materialism and the dialectical thinking which is supposed to change and evolve with the evolving times we live in.

David Harvey unlike many readers of Marx, does Marx's ideas a huge service in many ways. First of all he explains them with immense skill without removing them of their immense detail and complexity. While doing this he puts his theories into a modern context and applies the historical materialist framework onto Marx's Capital so it is as applicable to modern capitalism today as it can be. In doing so he critiques his ideas that haven't aged well, while also putting Capital into the modern age and demonstrating why Marx's Capital remains one of the most detailed critiques and analyses of capitalism ever written.

9.8/10 - only wish some sections got more detail than was given.
26 reviews
November 4, 2022
Took over a year to get through this monster of a companion as I read alongside Marx's Capital volume 1 and 2. I was initially annoyed about the interruption in the middle of Volume 2 in this companion where Harvey jumps to Volume 3 of capital for a few chapters, but once accepting the pause and submitting to this book in itself, it all began to make more sense in understanding the broader picture and I began to appreciate David Harvey's personal incites and comments based on the decades he has been analyzing and teaching the works of Marx. Great book by a great author and would recommend to anybody intimidated by reading Marx alone. 5/5
Profile Image for Derek.
222 reviews17 followers
October 22, 2022
I rated this 3 stars because Harvey's second volume, which covers Capital II and III, skips over significant aspects of each respective book. The commentary on volume I, while I have my quibbles, is much better than volumes II and III.

That said, there are better guides to Capital, imo. For Volume I, I'd recommend Harry Cleaver's guide instead -- though I disagree with some of Cleaver's politics. Harvey's guide does help summarize the general ideas of Capital, however, and it is worth a read if you're working through Marx's tome.

Profile Image for Clara.
273 reviews21 followers
November 9, 2021
Harvey's primer on Hegelian dialectic and Marx's specific uses of it is a lifesaver - don't know how I would've made it through the early chapters of volume 1 without it. I also appreciated reading Harvey's analysis of Marx in the later sections.
Profile Image for k..
211 reviews7 followers
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March 31, 2024
truly invaluable.
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