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A Companion to Marx's Grundrisse
David Harvey tackles Marx's notebooks that have spawned wide-ranging and raging controversies
When leading scholar of Marx, Roman Rosdolsky, first encountered the virtually unknown text of Marx’s Grundrisse - his preparatory work for his masterpiece Das Capital - in the 1950s in New York Public Library, he recognized it as “a work of fundamental importance,” but declared “its unusual form” and “obscure manner of expression, made it far from suitable for reaching a wide circle of readers.”
David Harvey’s Companion to Marx’s Grundrisse builds upon his widely acclaimed companions to the first and second volumes of Capital in a way that will reach as wide an audience as possible. Marx’s stated ambition for this text - where he was thinking aloud about some of possible metamorphoses of capitalism - is to reveal “the exact development of the concept of capital as the fundamental concept of modern economics, just as capital itself is the foundation of bourgeois society.”
While respecting Marx’s desire to “bring out all the contradictions of bourgeois production, as well as the boundary where it drives beyond itself,” David Harvey also pithily illustrates the relevance of Marx’s text to understanding the troubled state of contemporary capitalism.
When leading scholar of Marx, Roman Rosdolsky, first encountered the virtually unknown text of Marx’s Grundrisse - his preparatory work for his masterpiece Das Capital - in the 1950s in New York Public Library, he recognized it as “a work of fundamental importance,” but declared “its unusual form” and “obscure manner of expression, made it far from suitable for reaching a wide circle of readers.”
David Harvey’s Companion to Marx’s Grundrisse builds upon his widely acclaimed companions to the first and second volumes of Capital in a way that will reach as wide an audience as possible. Marx’s stated ambition for this text - where he was thinking aloud about some of possible metamorphoses of capitalism - is to reveal “the exact development of the concept of capital as the fundamental concept of modern economics, just as capital itself is the foundation of bourgeois society.”
While respecting Marx’s desire to “bring out all the contradictions of bourgeois production, as well as the boundary where it drives beyond itself,” David Harvey also pithily illustrates the relevance of Marx’s text to understanding the troubled state of contemporary capitalism.
480 pages, Paperback
Published February 7, 2023
39 people are currently reading
371 people want to read
About the author
David Harvey
188 books1,620 followersLibrarian 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.
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 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 2, 2023
I've read a fair amount of Harvey's works on Marx, and his two volume "Companion" to Capital has been the key to my own understanding of Marx's most well known work. As such I was very much looking forward to the publication of Harvey's work on Grundrisse, the collection of notebooks kept by Marx during 1857-8 when he was researching political economy in the period leading up to completion of Capital, and not intended for publication.
I've read Grundrisse before, but it is a complicated book full of fascinating speculative fragments and without a coherent developed analysis. Having the sort of guide offered by Harvey feels like it could be a real help to getting to grips with it. I read the two books hand-in-hand working through each section of Grundrisse with the appropriate section from Harvey's Companion turn-by-turn.
Harvey offers a pretty close reading, with large sections of Marx's text quoted and commented on by Harvey. When this works, it really helps to make sense of things and guide you through what Marx is getting at. Just occasionally I felt that Harvey bordered on simply excerpting from the text and didn't add much to Marx's own writing. I suspect this is inevitable in a book of this type, on top of which I'm much more familiar with Marx's economic work now than I was a few years ago, and therefore perhaps felt the need for a close guide less than I might have done the first time I read Grundrisse.
In short this is surely the right book to guide you through getting to grips with one of Marx's most complex books written by one of the foremost experts on Marx in the English speaking world.
Harvey's own reading class on Grundrisse is available on Youtube and his website, where you can also find his well known class on Capital: http://davidharvey.org/2022/12/regist...
Reading Grundrisse set me onto reading about Marx's life and method which I've captured on my blog: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...
And this review is also on my blog here: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...
I've read Grundrisse before, but it is a complicated book full of fascinating speculative fragments and without a coherent developed analysis. Having the sort of guide offered by Harvey feels like it could be a real help to getting to grips with it. I read the two books hand-in-hand working through each section of Grundrisse with the appropriate section from Harvey's Companion turn-by-turn.
Harvey offers a pretty close reading, with large sections of Marx's text quoted and commented on by Harvey. When this works, it really helps to make sense of things and guide you through what Marx is getting at. Just occasionally I felt that Harvey bordered on simply excerpting from the text and didn't add much to Marx's own writing. I suspect this is inevitable in a book of this type, on top of which I'm much more familiar with Marx's economic work now than I was a few years ago, and therefore perhaps felt the need for a close guide less than I might have done the first time I read Grundrisse.
In short this is surely the right book to guide you through getting to grips with one of Marx's most complex books written by one of the foremost experts on Marx in the English speaking world.
Harvey's own reading class on Grundrisse is available on Youtube and his website, where you can also find his well known class on Capital: http://davidharvey.org/2022/12/regist...
Reading Grundrisse set me onto reading about Marx's life and method which I've captured on my blog: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...
And this review is also on my blog here: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...
June 19, 2023
Este libro de David Harvey es tanto una guía como una lectura propia de los Grundrisse de Karl Marx. Lo primero es que los Grundrisse son libretas de trabajo que Marx escribió abarcando un gran número de temas, muchos de los cuales son la base de la escritura de El Capital. Por lo que han sido muy importantes desde su aparición para conocer el pensamiento de Marx, así como abrir nuevas vetas y campos de trabajo desde la economía política.
Harvey en este libro describe el contenido de los Grundrisse, resumiendo los temas que toca en cada libreta y sus secciones identificables. Al mismo tiempo, los relaciona con otros desarrollos de Marx, anteriores y posteriores. Así como hace sus propias interpretaciones de algunas partes de los textos y lo relaciona con algunos fenómenos contemporáneos del capitalismo y con sus mismos desarrollos (como el desarrollo urbano dentro del capitalismo).
Esto hace que sea muy interesante y actual su lectura sobre los Grundrisse y abre muchas vetas de investigación en temas como el capital fijo, el crecimiento del sector financiero, la alienación, la relación con la naturaleza, entre otros.
El libro trata de ser accesible y con lenguaje didáctico, pero sí tiene lenguaje técnico y presupone cierto conocimiento de la obra de Marx. Un libro que revigoriza la necesidad de leer a Marx.
Harvey en este libro describe el contenido de los Grundrisse, resumiendo los temas que toca en cada libreta y sus secciones identificables. Al mismo tiempo, los relaciona con otros desarrollos de Marx, anteriores y posteriores. Así como hace sus propias interpretaciones de algunas partes de los textos y lo relaciona con algunos fenómenos contemporáneos del capitalismo y con sus mismos desarrollos (como el desarrollo urbano dentro del capitalismo).
Esto hace que sea muy interesante y actual su lectura sobre los Grundrisse y abre muchas vetas de investigación en temas como el capital fijo, el crecimiento del sector financiero, la alienación, la relación con la naturaleza, entre otros.
El libro trata de ser accesible y con lenguaje didáctico, pero sí tiene lenguaje técnico y presupone cierto conocimiento de la obra de Marx. Un libro que revigoriza la necesidad de leer a Marx.
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March 2, 2024It's difficult if not impossible to distill the value of Marx's Grundrisse, but David Harvey's close reading of the work goes along way toward that goal. Harvey sees in the Grundrisse Marx's first swing at an understanding of capitalist economy, conceived more or less like an ecosystem. There's the totality of the economy and its moments, which include commodity production, the realization of sales, the distribution of profits and costs to workers and to the state and back into commodity production. Harvey emphasizes how any blockage at any one of these moments can bring the economy to crisis. Consider the coronavirus. Growth slows because of a lack of consumer spending. Investments in fixed capital appear as waste since people are not going to the jobsites using the facilities. And so on. Marx saw clearly how capital accumulation depended on this constant motion and that's the point that Harvey brings to light.
August 18, 2025
Had beter gekund. De uitleg van wat Marx doet is grotendeels overbodig en in veel gevallen een serie quotes. Pogingen Marx’ theorieën aan hedendaagse voorbeelden te koppelen zijn waardevol maar vaak niet uitgewerkt. Veel historische secties en voorbeelden in de Grundrisse worden niet uitgelegd of besproken, terwijl er juist vandaag de dag hoogstwaarschijnlijk beter onderzoek naar is dan toen Marx dit schreef.
Al met al vooral waardevol en behulpzaam voor zover de Companion de belangrijkste punten herhaalt en samenvat, vooral gezien de Grundrisse zelf soms zover inzoomt dat de lezer het grote plaatje makkelijk kwijt kan raken.
Al met al vooral waardevol en behulpzaam voor zover de Companion de belangrijkste punten herhaalt en samenvat, vooral gezien de Grundrisse zelf soms zover inzoomt dat de lezer het grote plaatje makkelijk kwijt kan raken.
April 20, 2023
ok maybe i should re-read grundrisse
December 26, 2025
indispensable. in fact probably stands up fine on its own
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews