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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.
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' A Companion to Marx s Capital David Harvey VERSO London • New York First published by Verso 2010 Copyright © David Harvey 2010 All rights reserved The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London WIF oEG USA: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201 www.versobooks.com Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-359-9 (pbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-358-2 (hbk) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh Printed in the USA by Worldcolor / Fairfield A Companion to Marx's Capital Contents PREFACE INTRODUCTION vii 1 Capital, Part I 1: COMMODITIES AND EXCHANGE 15 2: MONEY 55 Capital, Part II 3: FROM CAPITAL TO LABOR POWER Capital, Part III 4: 5: THE LABOR PROCESS AND THE PRODUCTION OF SURPLUS VALUE 109 THE WORKING DAY 135 Capital, Part IV 6: RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE 7: WHAT TECHNOLOGY REVEALS 8: MACHINERY AND LARGE-SCALE INDUSTRY Capital, Part V-VIII 9: FROM ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE SURPLUS VALUE TO THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL 10: CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION 11: THE SECRET OF PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION REFLECTIONS AND PROGNOSES INDEX 315 345 Preface When it became known that the lectures I give annually on Marx's Capital, Volume I, were about to go online as a video series, I was approached by Verso and asked whether I would have any interest in preparing a written version. For a variety of reasons, I agreed to the idea. To begin with, the failing economy and the onset of what threatens to be a serious global crisis, if not depression, have generated an upwelling of interest in Marx's analysis to see whether it can help us understand the origins of our current predicaments. The problem, however, is that the past thirty years, most particularly since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war, have not been a very favorable or fertile period for Marxian thought, and most certainly not for Marxian revolutionary politics. As a consequence, a whole younger generation has grown up bereft of familiarity with, let alone training in, Marxian political economy. It therefore appeared an opportune moment to produce a guide to Capital that would open the door for this generation to explore for itself what Marx might be about. The timing for a constructive reevalution of Marx's work is opportune in another sense. The fierce oppositions and innumerable schisms within the Marxist movement that bedeviled the