A Companion to Marx's Capital
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.
David Harvey’s video lecture course can be found here: davidharvey.org/reading-capital/
Paperback, 368 pages
ISBN: 9781844673599
March 2010
$19.95 / £10.99
Other Editions
Ebook
ISBN: 9781844674725
March 2010
$15.99
Hardback, 368 pages
ISBN: 9781844673582
March 2010
$100.00 / £55.00
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Part of the A Companion to Marx's Capital series
Reviews
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“Harvey is a scholarly radical; his writing is free of journalistic clichés, full of facts and carefully thought-through ideas.”
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“Without a doubt one of the two best companions to Marx's [Capital].”
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“No short review can do justice to this outstanding book ... Essential.”
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“A valuable guide.”
Blog
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The Essential Verso Undergraduate Reading List
If you think the latest tome of Giddens’ Sociology is the one textbook you need to get you through your undergraduate days, think again. Impress your tutor and learn something beyond the lecture theatre with these essential Verso titles.
Bolster any politics, philosophy, economics, literature, sociology or history essay with one of these books and not only score the grade, but begin your lifelong love affair with radical writers.
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David Harvey at #OccupyLSX—"This is going to change politics in a very fundamental way"
Last Saturday, November the 12th, David Harvey visited Occupy London Stock Exchange. The author—amongst others—of A Companion to Marx's Capital and Spaces of Global Capitalism described Occupy LSX as "a marvelous kind of site" and invited the protesters to "keep at it, keep at it, keep at it." We publish below the full speech, transcribed by Elaine Castillo.
"This is, this is absolutely fabulous, this is fantastic. I mean, you know, this is great—I couldn’t imagine that London could get like this! And you’re doing a really, really great job. And this is really, I think, going to change things.
Because one of the things that I think we’re learning over the last few years actually and particularly over the last few months, is that it’s people—on the street, in the squares—that really matters, in the end. Because that’s the only political force we’ve got.
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Feral, slash-and-burn capitalism is the new normal - David Harvey on the UK riots
David Harvey writes on feral capitalism and the UK riots:
"Nihilistic and feral teenagers" the Daily Mail called them: the crazy youths from all walks of life who raced around the streets mindlessly and desperately hurling bricks, stones and bottles at the cops while looting here and setting bonfires there, leading the authorities on a merry chase of catch-as-catch-can as they tweeted their way from one strategic target to another.
The word "feral" pulled me up short. It reminded me of how the communards in Paris in 1871 were depicted as wild animals, as hyenas, that deserved to be (and often were) summarily executed in the name of the sanctity of private property, morality, religion, and the family...
But the problem is that we live in a society where capitalism itself has become rampantly feral. Feral politicians cheat on their expenses, feral bankers plunder the public purse for all its worth, CEOs, hedge fund operators and private equity geniuses loot the world of wealth, telephone and credit card companies load mysterious charges on everyone's bills, shopkeepers price gouge, and, at the drop of a hat swindlers and scam artists get to practice three-card monte right up into the highest echelons of the corporate and political world.
Discussions
Begin a discussion about this book-
Is capitalism over, or is it too early to tell?
In his Nation review, Joshua Clover said that the financial bailout showed "that the price signal is dead," and that we should return to Marx to get an account of where "value actually comes from ... people laboring to produce stuff that gets sold." Given the contraction of America's economic base, and the end of the tech, credit and property bubbles, are we now facing "the possibility of an unhappy ending for capitalism?"
