A Companion to Marx's Capital

A Companion to Marx's Capital #1

by David Harvey

The radical geographer guides us through the classic text of political economy.

“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.

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

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2010

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

[The Conspiracy is Capitalism · Rating 5 out of 5]

Applying Marx’s Capital to our existential ecological crisis?

“Après moi le déluge! [after me, the flood!] is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation.” –Marx, Capital Vol. 1, Ch.10 section 5.

Preamble:
--When I first started learning about Marx/Marxism, my priority was always (1) learning insights on how to diagnose capitalism and build alternatives, rather than (2) becoming a Marxologist to learn the “truth” about exactly what Marx the individual was thinking at every moment of his life.
--Before this review, I unpacked Marx’s infamous Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 (see link).
…Harvey’s Companion was a key guide in providing accessible context, in particular unpacking Marx’s methodology and thus the assumptions he made specifically for (most of) this book (1,000+ pages is merely Volume 1 of Book 1; Marx planned 5-6 books). These Volume 1 methodological assumptions will come as a shock to newcomers who assume Marx = The Communist Manifesto (a political pamphlet he co-wrote at age 29 during the Revolutions of 1848):
(i) Perfect market (every commodity sold at their “value”, abstracting away arbitrage/violence etc.).
(ii) Profits as a whole (abstract away distribution of profits between industrial capitalists, financiers, landlords, merchants, etc.; since the focus is on Industrial capital, this abstracts away merchant/usurers capital, i.e. trade/finance)
(iii) Closed system (abstract away trade, thus much of geopolitics/imperialism).
--I actually prefer Harvey’s online Vol. 1 Companion lectures (2007 + 2019) over Harvey's book (Harvey has a dry writing style), which I listened to numerous times on 1.4x speed; find them here: https://www.youtube.com/c/readingcapi...

--Now let’s apply Capital’s insights on capitalism's:
(i) Abstractions (hiding social relations so the status quo appears inevitable, crucial for social consent) and
(ii) Contradictions (potential sources for crises)
...to the 21st century. The major life events that have influenced my studies are immigration (global inequities/imperialism), the War on Terror (geopolitics/imperialism), and the 2008 Financial crisis (capitalist volatility).
…However, it is existential ecological crisis that has shot up my list, with the new normal of wild-fires/heat waves in the Pacific Northwest as well as the abstract appreciation that exponential (rather than linear) change is utterly unintuitive to us humans (thus, we underestimate at our peril). Indeed, global capitalism expects ~3% growth in GDP each year in perpetuity on our finite planet, which is not linear but exponential growth (growth compounds on prior growth; doubling time of entire economy = only 23.45 years!). The COVID-19 virus is trivial compared to the virus of capitalism that is infecting our planet and social imaginations (Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century)…

Capitalism vs. Ecology:

1) Capitalist Value system, Capitalist Markets:
--Like Capital Vol. 1, let’s start with Marx’s analysis of the “commodity” and build up to capitalism’s value system. Under capitalism, commodities are produced to be sold on the market for profit. This logic spreads in peculiar manners when we move outside everyday goods and into the land market, labour market, financial markets, essential services/utilities, infrastructure, etc.
--Even within everyday goods, non-capitalist societies have alternative social relations such as producing for self/local community, mutual aid, social obligations, etc. Capitalist market exchange is instantaneous exchange between strangers (thus no further social obligations, so each side seeks to maximize their gain as they briefly “confront” each other in the market); when you stop to reflect, this is curiously both cosmopolitan and anti-social.
--Markets predate “capitalism”, especially on the edges of communities where trade between neighboring strangers takes place. The “Great Transformation” changed “societies with markets” (markets on the edges) to a “market society” (capitalism), where land became privatized/commodified (land market) as land area now had a price (production for the growing global market, which became dominated by colonialism with its own colonial market commodification), and the serfs kicked off (the “Enclosures”) are now forced to sell their labour to survive (labour market).
--The capitalist State has always provided the violence for these peculiar capitalist markets, and this intensified with its entanglement with private banks (financial markets) and rising scale of production. Violence is essential in establishing + maintaining capitalist market relations, from European “House of Terror” workhouses to modern Prison Industrial Complex, from markets for colonial drain (including slave trade, opium trade) to modern cash crops exports/intellectual property trade regime (The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions).
--Returning to the commodity, it holds the contradicting nature of both (i) use-value (satisfies human wants/needs; a quality) vs. (ii) exchange-value (economic gain from selling on the market, represented by price; a quantity). As producers (or rather capitalist owners of production, as the workers do the work) produce to sell on the market for profit, we can see how (market) exchange-value is prioritized. The capitalist at its core has zero desire (use-value) for a factory, a mountain of shoes, or hiring labour (it’s not a charity); these are all just means-to-an-end, the end being profit (exchange-value); competition weeds out the morals of individual capitalists. Anwar Shaikh (https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS...) stresses how market competition is war-like survivalism rather than some dance leading to harmonious equilibrium of supply/demand.
--Producing for strangers means private labour (ex. producing for oneself) becomes social labour (producing for society), but this socialization is stunted by abstraction given the lack of direct social relations. The brief interaction between seller/buyer is the stranger-vs-stranger market confrontation (we will discuss alienated production later). This exchange is mediated via the commodity, thus “commodity fetishism” where social labour is concealed/objectified in the commodity itself. This has pervasive social consequences, as all our attention is on the commodity/its price while oblivious to the labour + environmental relations/conditions behind it.

--Market exchange and its continuation is a process, thus Harvey’s constant emphasis that capital = “value in motion”, which counters (1) mainstream status quo framing as static and (2) stereotypes of Marx as rigid structures. As exchange-value is expressed in price, money becomes an ultimate fetish; social power becomes private power with the accumulation of money. This accumulation of money/exchange-value (quantity) is endless (Michael Hudson: “wealth addiction”, “hubris”), compared with the limitations of accumulating use-value (a quality; how many shoes can you really need?).
--To visualize this, consider:
(i) C-M-C: Commodity exchanged for Commodity, facilitated by Money. This generalizes non-capitalist exchange: “selling in order to buy” where the end goal is consumption of the Commodity (consuming its use-value). This ends the process and has inherent limits. This also applies to the worker purchasing goods for subsistence.
(ii) M-C-M’: Money invested into Commodity production, sold for more Money (profit). This is Marx’s “General Formula of Capital”: “buying in order to sell” (speculation!) where the end goal is more Money (exchange-value). For capitalism to survive/reproduce itself, the M’ (more Money) is re-invested (money becomes capital), starting another expansionary process. Thus, capitalism’s inherent logic = perpetual growth.
…Any disruption of this perpetual growth process leads to capitalist crisis and thus social crisis in a capitalist society, since production is predicated on profit-seeking growth (exchange-value) rather than social needs (use-value). Thus, the long and utterly irrational (for social needs) history of capitalism’s boom-bust cycles (accepted by the mainstream as “business cycles”):
(i) Booms: speculative euphoria spreads; every speculator wants in and optimism builds optimism… until the bubble bursts.
(ii) Busts: the downward spiral of pessimism, where the boom frenzy’s irrationality is mirrored in bust despair; factories are kept idle/crops hoarded and even destroyed while the masses are unemployed/starve because capitalist owners (speculators) are too pessimistic to anticipate profits. In a sense, a “capitalist strike”, preventing the restarting of the economy….
--Speculation and self-destructive capitalists (“Après moi le déluge!”): Marx focuses on Industrial capital in Vol. 1, thus mostly abstracts away finance/trade. However, Marx does introduce M-M’ (Money for more Money, ex. credit/debt with interest, with its automatic compound growth):

Our capitalist, who is at home in vulgar economics, may perhaps say that he advanced his money with the intention of making more money out of it. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and he might just as well have intended to make money without producing at all. He makes threats. He will not be caught napping again. In future he will buy the commodities in the market, instead of manufacturing them himself. But if all his brother capitalists were to do the same, where would he find his commodities on the market? [Vol. 1, Ch.7, section 2]

--M-M’ and the Environment: Michael Hudson (The Bubble and Beyond) focuses on M-M’ Finance Capitalism (“economic rent”). He makes the point that much of today’s market economic activity is financial speculation, thus fictitious, rather than industrial production. This may strangely seem beneficial environmentally. However, Jason Hickel shows how tightly GDP continues to be tied to material use in the must-read Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. When profits trump morality, industrial production and its cascading supporting services still bloat our economy, from the useless (Bullshit Jobs: A Theory) to the annihilationist (US Military Industrial Complex, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner)… not to mention the additional services required to keep the lights on (food/cleaning/maintenance). Lastly, Fossil Capitalism is hoarding its wealth and bribing politicians to prevent a green transition.
--Short-term: individualist profit-seeking and competition survivalism leads to increasing speed-up and short-termism, so capitalist development of technology (databases/satellites/container shipping) to move vast financial sums digitally in milliseconds for financial speculation + shipping goods regardless of environmental costs should not be a surprise. Harvey, as a geographer (space + time), notes that this speed-up is covered in Vol. 2, with some foreshadowing in Vol.1 (but we can immediately see how capitalist speedup contradicts with nature’s self-renewal time-frames): “[…] the velocity of circulation of money is merely a reflection of the rapidity with which commodities change their forms, the continuous interlocking of the series of metamorphoses, the hurried nature of society’s metabolic process, the quick disappearance of commodities from the sphere of circulation, and their equally quick replacement by fresh commodities.” [Vol. 1, Ch.3 section 2]

...see Comments below for the rest of review (Capitalist Production + Fragments + Reversing Capitalism!)...

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[امیر لطیفی]

اینجا صالح نجفی چند ترجمه‌‌ی مترجم این کتاب را مورد نقد و بررسی قرار داده. مشخصاً «عارف اقوامی مقدم» در این زمینه کم‌سواد است و در حق خواننده -سهواً یا عمداً- خیانت می‌کند.

این ترجمه را از لیست خواندنی‌هایم حذف کردم.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.



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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:

The Rolling Stones - "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"

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The Saints - "Know Your Product"

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Gang of Four - "Damaged Goods"

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Lou Reed - "Set the Twilight Reeling" (Live on Sessions on West 54th)

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[Chelsea Szendi · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

“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.

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 4 out of 5]

UPDATED REVIEW: October 10, 2022 (four stars)

David Harvey's Companion to Marx's Capital, Volume 1 is in fact a really good companion to Marx's first volume of Capital. Its strengths lies in the way it divides the discussion of the text as well as the contextualization of the passages and the application of these passages to the contemporary world.

Harvey is not beyond disagreeing with Marx's analysis, and yet he often defends Marx, emphasizing two points. One of those points is that much of Marx's discussion of capitalism in the first volume relies on an idealized model of the production process, where everything else is running smoothly, namely capital circulation and realization. Marx frequently reminds readers of as much himself. Therefore, in passages where he seems "wrong," it must be remembered that all other things being equal, a smooth circulation process, smooth capital-realization, such-and-such would be the result.

Second, when Marx is off in predicting trends, Harvey wants to emphasize Marx's limitations given the time of the writing. Marx's text was produced when industrial capitalism was on the rise. Indeed, it looked as though industrialization through ever more refined machine technologies was going to become the predominant form of capitalism. In fact, it did.

And yet the fact can't be overlooked that in the 1970s, with the decline of manufacturing, with the drying up of several world markets, capital needed to find new means of circulation, which really meant injecting life into the old means, and this was mainly through finance capitalism, where compounded interest on debts and credits became the main source of growth.

If there is any shortcoming to Harvey's work, I would say that it is his tendency to belabor certain obvious points and give short shrift to more complicated concepts that really need clear explication. Also it would be nice if Harvey were to just give the summary of each chapter, give hints to wear he sees the error, and then return in a wrap-up with what he sees as right and wrong. Sometimes the chapters read as muddling or first-draftish, chapters which I wish would have been better revised and outlined on subsequent drafts.

These criticisms aside, you won't be sorry you read this text alongside Capital, Volume 1. But after you read it, you can probably dispense with it on the next go-round and just read Capital yourself. I think David Harvey would be very proud if he accomplished that result.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: August 4, 2016 (five stars)

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.

[Carlo · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Gabriel Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes when I read Marx idk what he’s yapping about so thank god for David harvey that sexy Aussie!

edit: not Aussie :( british-american :(

[Pablo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una excelente guía para leer El Capital. Si bien El Capital no es indescifrable, como todo libro está escrito en un determinado contexto, tanto material como intelectual. Harvey nos ayuda a entender muchas veces esos contextos.
Hay dos elementos que hace recomendable leer El Capital con esta guía, en primer lugar, el conocimiento profundo que tiene Harvey sobre la obra de Marx, lo que permite enlazar lo dicho en el texto con otros escritos de Marx, y sobre todo, con los tomos II y III. De lo contrario, leído por si mismo, El Capital nos resultaría un poco arbitrario e incompleto. En segundo lugar, son los comentarios de Harvey sobre la aplicación a la realidad contemporánea de lo escrito por Marx. En este sentido ya no hay una guía, sino que es el pensamiento del mismo Harvey, sus interpretaciones, por lo general críticas, de algunas cuestiones tratadas por Marx. Este autor ingles no es un marxista ortodoxo, y no tiene escrúpulos en contradecir o señalar que Marx se equivoca. Esto puede molestar a algunos, pero para mi, al conflictuar a Marx y abrirlo a la interpretación, lo convierte en un pensador más vivo y dinámico. Lejos de ese marxismo de mausoleo de aquellas dictaduras burocráticas del siglo XX mal llamadas "socialismos reales".

[Yumeko (blushes) · Rating 3 out of 5]

UGH.
Ok.
It's not a bad guide, it's just..not what I expected. Though I was asking for too much I guess.
Harvey discusses, I think, almost all the important ideas. That's great, it's just not what I wanted. This is the type of stuff that would give you a "oh so that's what I read", and not a "when in section 3 page 5 of chapter 14, Marx said xyz. Here is what he meant:"
That's what I needed.
Moreover, the reason he can tell you all the important points that all come together in his book is because he isn't looking at individual chapters, other than for Chapter 1 (which makes sense). But if he's not looking at individual chapters, the guide loses the way it could've helped. Like, my plan was to see what it is about specific chapters I didn't understand from a guide that's spelled it out. Sigh.
I suppose it's a nice feeling though for Harvey to say what I seemed to understand from the book anyway.

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ow my brain

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Kumail Akbar · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Slava Skobeloff · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[tara bomp · Rating 4 out of 5]

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)

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Peter Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this side by side and chapter by chapter with volume 1 of Capital. Having studied Marx a little, it was revelatory to read the whole text, and with Harvey as an amiable, logical, insightful guide. Harvey truly achieves his aim of helping you to read and appreciate Marx on his own terms. This book is a wonderful accompaniment for the reader of Marx.

26/2/2022: on second reading this still remains /the/ invaluable guide to reading Capital Volume 1. this time I read it in one go having read Volume 1, rather than section by section. Harvey remains insightful and interesting, challenging you to really think about what Marx is saying. Remains invaluable.

My own notes on volume 1 are here: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...

[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 it 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, mondragon 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

[Ebi]

اینجا
صالح نجفی چند ترجمه‌‌ی مترجم این کتاب را مورد نقد و بررسی قرار داده. مشخصاً «عارف اقوامی مقدم» در این زمینه کم‌سواد است و در حق خواننده -سهواً یا عمداً- خیانت می‌کند.

این ترجمه را از لیست خواندنی‌هایم حذف کردم

این متن را عاریه گرفتم از یکی از کاربران فخیم که اطلاع‌رسانی کرده بود

[Jessica Zu · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

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!

[Leo H · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not all it's cracked up to be. Harvey's politics are left-liberal and he clings fast to classical crisis theory. Dismisses the chapters on wages very out-of-hand. Good on his critique of the Analytical "Marxist" school and his defense of dialectical logic. Perhaps best read not even as a book, but something to keep one honest and up on their reading of Capital. Found it much easier to go through a long chapter with Marx so I could get in a short chapter with Harvey and then be refreshed to go back to note-taking with Marx.

[Seth · Rating 5 out of 5]

wish I had gotten the complete edition with all three volumes

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.)

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily the best companion to Capital that you can find.

[Spoust1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[First name Last name (optional) · Rating 5 out of 5]

p12，教育系统的问题

p14，appear一词与is区别，呈现出某种表象

p41，appear as what they are

p46，劳动价值理论是资本主义生产方式下的价值理论，左派需要一个适用于社会主义的新的价值理论

p52，为了证明古典政治经济学家在他们自己的术语里也是错误的，马克思暂时接纳了自由主义乌托邦关于完美市场和看不见的手的想象，尽管它们从来不可能实现，市场也从来都被政治力量扭曲

p53，要区分马克思对自由主义乌托邦的讨论和批判以及对事实上存在的资本主义的剖析

p61，我们需要劳动价值论来突破拜物教，以及无论是否认为劳动价值论的正确性，为了用马克思自己的术语来理解《资本论》，要至少在读完这本书前接受这个理论

p62，马克思这里的辩证法没有合题，矛盾从未被解决，只是在一个持续不断运动的系统中或者更大的尺度上重现它自身

p66-68，say定律被马克思激烈批判，尽管该定律被李嘉图等人接受，并直到大萧条时代都占据统治地位；1933年凯恩斯《通论》出版，他完全放弃了say定律（尽管凯恩斯出于政治原因只赞扬马尔萨斯而非马克思），凯恩斯主义经济学统治世界经济学直到1970年代；随后货币主义和新自由主义理论占据统治地位直到今天，接近于接受say定律

p76，货币作为商品交换中介而流通，和货币作为资本而使用，他们之间有很大的区别

p77-78，如果马克思认为他所说的商品流通增加导致的货币形式出现，而货币形式的内在矛盾导致资本主义流通形式出现，是历史性的论述，即认为资本主义是人类的必然发展道路，那么大卫哈维认为马克思错了，他认为商品流通增加和货币形式的内在矛盾只是为资本主义流通形式的崛起提供了可能性。他提出，传统社会阻碍资本主义发展，导致周期性的饥荒，但像帝国时代的中国这样的地方用自己的方式而非让资本主义主导的方式排除了这个矛盾

p82，现在，一种货币的价值由整个经济体生产的全部商品的价值决定（当代马克思主义政治经济学对信用货币与劳动价值论的矛盾的解释？）

p88，资本是价值流通的过程

p97，商业资本和生息资本/高利贷资本在16-17世纪主导，工业资本在19世纪主导，工业资本是资本主义流通方式在纯粹状态下的资本形式。作者认为今天，特别是1970年代开始，金融资本重新占据领导地位

p112，马克思的自然观，人不能改变自己除非改变周围的世界，人不能改变周围的世界除非改变自己，人类社会也如此，人类历史既是完全自然的也是完全人类的，无法分割

p113-115，劳动并非浪漫的，人总能在脑海中构建图景，这里它很自由，但当要将它付诸实践时，总是要服从于规律。意识来自于自然，但却可以被用来有意识地激进地改造自然，这个过程中人们自己也将被改造

p117，劳动是一个过程，产品是一个结果。教育也是如此，但我们需要用产出——如论文——来衡量一个过程，这是困难的，甚至不可能的。一个人可以学到很多，尽管他产出糟糕的论文

p127，从奴隶制的情况，哈维指出了马克思的劳动价值理论仅限于资本主义生产模式下的受薪劳动，那当然包括家务劳动等情况也不适用

p141-142，资本家国家之所以能颁布限制工作时长的法律以及积极调查工厂的情况，是出于经济和军事考量（防止劳动力退化），以及社会文明程度（资产阶级改良主义运动）p150-，还有土地贵族的影响

p157，资本家因为个人目光短浅和自私自利倾向于毁坏它们的阶级前景（耗干劳动力、使劳动力退化），集体行动的工人阶级可以迫使资本家控制他们的自毁倾向，让他们意识到自己的阶级利益

p169，机器不能创造价值但能创造剩余价值

p170，劳动生产力的提升可以使工人的生活水平提升的同时受剥削率上升

p189-201，并非生产力或者经济基础简单地决定了生产关系、社会关系等，而是与自然的关系、生产模式、日常再生产、对世界的精神观念、社会关系、科学技术等共同演化

p214，高劳动力价值会促进技术创新（所以为什么技术创新主要发生在美国这样的在发达国家中欠缺劳动保障的国家以及中国这样的廉价劳动力国家？），国家整体可以借助技术领先从落后国家获取剩余价值，但会出现结构性的失业

p218-219，虽说问题不在机器而在资本主义生产模式，但我们不能靠资本主义生产模式的技术来组织社会主义，否则我们很可能只是得到另一种资本主义，就像在使用福特主义技术的苏联。因此技术并非中立，社会主义革命需要资本主义阶段最先进的技术，但长期来看需要替代的技术基础

p222，剩余资本吸收问题可以通过奢侈品生产增加、对外贸易扩张、投资基础设施建设、非生产性雇佣（私人仆人、公务员、军人）等

p225-226，马克思似乎认为他那个时代共存的工厂系统、手工业系统、工场手工业系统、家庭劳动系统最终会由工厂系统统治，其他系统是过渡阶段的生产模式。哈维不这么认为，例如过去四十年里还出现了血汗工厂系统、家庭劳动系统、分包系统等，他认为应该将这些系统及在其中选择的权力看作资本家可以用来在阶级斗争中使用的武器

p244-246，资本论第一册关于资本主义模式的分析基于充分供应、同质资产阶级、封闭系统三个前提假设，分析资本主义在“正常”状态下、平衡状态下的运动。第二册假设了技术恒定和劳动关系稳定，基于此考察了如何发现市场以及如何将市场带入一个平衡过程。前者指出了资本主义的失业、社会不平等等问题，后者指出了供应不足等问题，目前我们更多面临前一个问题，后一个问题通过信贷关系的过度使用暂时解决，但肯定会导致灾难性后果

p250，瑞典的社会民主政府曾试图在限制工人薪资之后将额外的利润征税并由工人控制的社会投资基金用来购买资本主义企业的股份，假以时日社会投资基金将控制这些企业，实现对资本家的和平赎买，这个想法很符合马克思的思考方式。但资本家予以反击，特别是新自由主义学者在媒体上的攻击，使得社会民主政府从来无法推行这个计划

p259-260，哈维针对资本主义“一切为了增长”“为了生产而生产，为了消费而消费，为了积累而积累”的现状批判到位，文字动人

p261-267，马克思认为，随着生产力发展，每单位劳动力所消耗的生产资料增多，因此资本构成（c/v）长期会上升，这个趋势及其推论“利润率下降趋势”，在他看来这是资本主义固有的运动规律之一；马克思承认，由于生产资料本身的生产效率提升，其价值可能下降，从而在某些阶段减缓甚至暂时逆转这一趋势，但不影响这个长期趋势；马克思对这个规律的论述不够充分，导致后世马克思主义经济学家对此产生许多争议；哈维个人认为，生产力发展确实会导致资本构成的失衡，但长期资本构成上升、利润率下降的结论并不必然成立

p282-285，马克思指出劳动者的状况必然越来越糟糕，这与历史不符，似乎证伪了马克思的理论。但哈维指出，马克思的这个论断是在第一卷的假设中才成立的，这里市场永远供求平衡；在第二卷中，为了解决有效需求的问题，工人就必须能够去消费而且被教育得按照资产阶级的要求去消费。这个论断只是指出古典政治经济学家的自由主义乌托邦的错误，同时在比较符合马克思的假设的地方（印度尼西亚、孟加拉、越南、危地马拉等，以及新自由主义兴起之后的世界），马克思推断的相关现象几乎复现出来

p304-305，原始积累在其暴力的一面的同时，也有看似和平的时候，例如通过工资吸引将农民从土地分离来到城市，当然这也伴随着马克思所说的对土地的剥夺，这个过程非常复杂。马克思还忽略了性别的维度，原始积累往往还伴随着妇女的失权

p305-307，哈维认为原始积累应该被视作在整个资本主义历史地理上连续的，而非在某一个时刻终止。他引用罗莎卢森堡的观点，指出原始积累和资本主义积累同时而连续性地存在，资本主义也必须通过帝国主义暴力的方式获取原始积累的果实来维系资本主义的运转。在今天，体现在对农村和农民人口的剥夺、殖民主义、新殖民主义、帝国主义的剥削政策、国家权力收集资产交给资产阶级、国际金融和信贷体系、国债、（特别是妇女的）人口买卖

p307-308，以中国为例，1978年开始的邓的农业改革释放了大量劳动力和剩余产品，实现了原始积累，同时中国的开放稳定了全球资本主义体系，但这个过程并不以帝国主义暴力完成，而是中国国家和其执政的共产党主动采取了准资本主义道路来实现国家财富的积累。这说明了原始积累仍然存在，以及这个存在很可能是资本主义存活下去的基础

p307-309，卢森堡认为原始积累连续地存在于资本主义的边陲地区，但哈维认为原始积累还存在于资本主导地区的核心。例如，国债和信贷系统、华尔街和金融机构在金融市场上的掠夺策略��剥夺劳工的养老金等社会福利、国企贱卖和公共事业私有化等。这种情况在五六十年代并不多，特别是那些有强大的社会民主国家机器的国家，但在新自由主义化之后这种剥夺在资本主义核心地区内化了

p309，综上，哈维认为原始积累的称呼并不合适，他更乐意称其为“剥夺”（dispossession）

p313，哈维主张，反对剥夺式积累的运动与反对剥削积累的工人运动应该结合而非敌对，因为正如卢森堡所认为的，这两种积累之间有着有机关系，因而这两种运动也需要一种有机关系。葛兰西和毛理解在这两种不同的形势下建立阶级联盟的重要性

p317-318，资本的不同部分与国家在集中过程中会因争夺垄断权力而关系紧张，但上升的垄断权力会削弱竞争的强制法则的管理力量，从而导致停滞

p319，为了创造过剩人口，资本可能采取借助国家机器打击工会和摧毁左翼政党，或者促进资本流动性来借助境外有更多无产阶级和可无产阶级化的人口的国家，或者开放移民政策，这使得劳工阶级普遍反对外来移民

p319，资本家阶级的利益可能与一些相信“我死后哪怕洪水滔天”的私人资产阶级不一样，会补贴工人消费品以降低劳动力价值以及提升劳动供应的质量以提升劳动力的健康、能力和训练，对于后者，国家军事利益是重要的支持角色

p321，由于资本向利润率最大化流动的规律，市场平衡并非自动产生，它需要政治活动来克服和规避掉这些问题，比如国家对基础建设、研究等活动的补贴和规划

p322，最近，资产阶级的政治有很多保证自然资源同时可以被资本简单地利用，还能够持续提供未来的使用。这两者之间的张力有时候会很剧烈，因为便宜的资源往往会带来过度消耗以及随之而来的环境问题。这个矛盾被一些马克思主义者认为是资本主义的第二矛盾（第一矛盾当然是劳资关系）

p327，我们的时代相比较马克思的时代，花了更多的努力，例如建立了整个广告工业体系，来操控人口的欲求，来保障需求

p328-329，对于工人需求不足的问题，卢森堡想到第一个可能性是增加通货，但这长期来看会导致通胀；第二个可能是寻找资本主义系统之外的需求，这意味着原始积累的延续，通过帝国主义手段强加给没有被吸纳进资本主义生产模式的社会。后者曾主要源自于对封建秩序里积累的财富，这使得封建阶级逐渐被消耗。这个方法在今天很难奏效。

p329，其实卢森堡忽略了最重要的答案，就是不断地扩大生产，通过扩大的生产消费来弥补消费不足，这就使得持续复合成长的逻辑占了上风

p332-334，通过扩大生产来解决需求不足的问题，有两个问题：一是流通过程依赖于将来的扩大生产不会遇到任何障碍，这是投机性质的，导致资本流通的连续性非常依赖于人们的预期，即今天的盈余只有在明天生产的商品能被卖出去时才能被有效利用；二是金融和信贷体系内部的问题，比如货币的内在矛盾以及货币作为社会权力导致的囤积趋向，会导致流动性危机，再比如对货币符号（国家货币信誉）和货币质量（通货膨胀）的信心下降也会导致严重的危机

p336，关于危机的马克思主义理论研究，历史上有一个趋向是对资本主义生产模式的危机倾向的起源寻找一个主导的及排他的解释，有三个传统阵营，包括利润挤压、利润率下降、消费不足，这些分裂可能很强，比如认为消费不足的会被批判为凯恩斯主义者而非真正的马克思主义者，或者卢森堡的粉丝对利润率下降没有放在核心的理论很生气

p337，哈维认为，资本主义在面对各种需要克服的障碍时，可能通过以另一个障碍出现为代价来解决一个障碍（比如通过制造失业来解决劳动力供应问题，但这会导致需求不足；通过信贷系统解决需求不足的问题，但这会导致货币质量和信誉下降）。因此更的方式是认为在不同的历史和地理环境下危机的出现会有不同的多种原因

p337-338，哈维总结了资本主义可能面临的潜在障碍：
1.无法积累足够的原始资本启动生产（“进入壁垒”问题）；
2.劳动力短缺或劳动组织的对抗形式导致利润压缩；
3.劳动分工体系内的部门发展不均衡或比例失调；
4.资源枯竭、土地和环境退化引发的环境危机；
5.竞争压力及工人抵制推动技术变化过快或不均衡，导致生产不稳定或技术过早淘汰；
6.工人在资本控制和管理的劳动过程中进行抵抗，影响生产；
7.消费和有效需求不足；
8.金融系统依赖复杂的信贷工具和国家干预，但其稳定性取决于市场信心和信任，容易导致货币和金融危机（如流动性陷阱、通货膨胀或通货紧缩）。哈维强调，在资本循环的每个环节都可能存在矛盾，这些潜在的对立可能会激化，最终演变成公开的经济危机。

p338-339，哈维认为，凯恩斯认为1930年代的危机主要由有效需求的不足导致，是对的，尽管他没有指出这与收入不平等的关系。人们对持续积累的怀疑导致流动性陷阱，这只有通过政府负债开支或战争来促进资本流通。同时，哈维还认为，认为1960年代末在发达资本主义国家利润压缩影响很大也是对的，那里劳动匮乏、工人组织很强，有过度的垄断，因此国家财政危机导致了很长时间的动乱，后来通过规训工人及释放竞争的强制法则来解决

p339，哈维再一次强调对马克思工作的研究需要流动地、相关地去理解而非形式化地

p340，哈维将危机看作资本主义时空逻辑中的深层地壳运动在表面的爆发，这个地壳板块运动正在加速，可能导致危机增加得更频繁、更暴力。我们必须打出阶级斗争的旗帜在它的鼓声下前进

单词表


commodity
商品

exchange
交换

use-value
使用价值

value
价值

exchange-value
交换价值

concrete labor
具体劳动

human labor in the abstract
抽象的人类劳动

homogenous human labor
无差别的人类劳动

congealed quantities
凝结量

abstract labor
抽象劳动

socially necessary labor-time
社会必要劳动时间

simple labor
简单劳动

complex labor
复杂劳动

relative form
相对形式

equivalent form
等价形式

equivalent
等价物

money
货币

mode of production
生产方式

money commodity
货币商品

fetishism
拜物教

precious metal
贵金属

commodity fetish
商品拜物教

money fetish
货币拜物教

hidden hand
看不见的手

coercive laws of competition
竞争的强制规律

commodity exchange
商品交换

measure of values
价值尺度

money-name
货币名称

price
价格

means of circulation
流通手段

antagonistic form
对立形式

metamorphosis of commodities
商品形态变化

division of labour
劳动分工

means of payment
支付手段

paper money
纸币

accumulation of money
货币积累

labor-power
劳动力

surplus-value
剩余价值

merchants’ capital
商业资本

usurers’ capital
高利贷资本

interest-bearing capital
生息资本

industrial capital
工业资本

finance capital
金融资本

means of subsistence
生活资料

labor process
劳动过程

instruments of labor
劳动工具

raw material
原材料

means of production
生产资料

productive consumption
生产消费

individual consumption
个人消费

alienation
异化

living labor
活劳动

valorization process
价值增殖过程

constant capital
不变资本

variable capital
可变资本

dead labor
死劳动

productivity of labor
劳动生产率

surplus-labor
剩余劳动

necessary labor
必要劳动

surplus labor-time
剩余劳动时间

necessary labor-time
必要劳动时间

working day
工作日

Factory Acts
工厂法

factory inspectors
工厂视察员

relay system / shift system
换班制度

Poor Law
济贫法

surplus population
过剩人口

Corn Laws
谷物法

industrial bourgeoisie
工业资产阶级

landed aristorcracy
土地贵族

mass of surplus-value
剩余价值量

rate of surplus-value
剩余价值率

relative surplus-value
相对剩余价值

absolute surplus-value
绝对剩余价值

organizational forms
组织形式

cooperation
协作

divisions of labor
劳动分工

productive power
生产力

manual labor
体力劳动

mental labor
脑力劳动

manufacturing
工场手工业

manufacture
工场

factory
工厂

superstructure
上层建筑

Luddite movement
卢徳运动

time wages
计时工资

piece wages
计件工资

wage-laborer
雇佣工人

composition of capital
资本构成

technical composition (of capital)
（资本）技术构成

value composition (of capital)
（资本）价值构成

organic composition (of capital)
（资本）有机构成

primitive accumulation
原始积累