When David Harvey Writes on Marx

“While I do not always agree with Harvey’s appraisals of Marx’s arguments, there is no better secondary source to learn what that argument happens to be.”

Introduction

David Harvey, currently Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the City University of New York, is famed as one of the most acclaimed scholars in the humanities. At 83, his career has seen a remarkable number of turns. Starting out as a positivist geographer criticizing Kantian conceptions of space, Harvey’s work has come to encompass everything from an analysis of the “condition” of postmodernity to process philosophy and dialectical reasoning. But he is perhaps best known for his extremely lucid and readable interpretations and defenses of Karl Marx, particularly Capital, which Harvey has been teaching for many decades to a variety of bewildered graduate students. These efforts have culminated in a number of expository books, from a new introduction to The Communist Manifesto to Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. But undoubtedly, Harvey’s scholarly masterpiece is A Companion to Marx’s Capital. Based on his lectures, A Companion reflects a lifetime of serious thinking and teaching about Marxism. It is frequently funny, always easy to understand, and interestingly enough often quite critical. With both volumes now released in a single complete edition, the book is a necessary read for anyone with an interest in Marxist theory, whether as a proponent or a critic.

David Harvey on the Marxist Project

“My aim is to get you to read a book by Karl Marx called Capital…and to read it on Marx’s own terms. This may seem a bit ridiculous, since if you haven’t read the book you can’t possibly know what Marx’s terms are: but one of his terms, I can assure you, is that you read, and read carefully. Real learning always entails a struggle to understand the unknown.”

David Harvey, Introduction to A Companion to Marx’s Capital

My own relationship to Marx was always mixed. Having been born right before the end of the Cold War, I grew up in an atmosphere where his name was at best associated with an anachronistic utopian dream that failed, and at worst, with the purposeful slaughter of millions. While I always affiliated with the political left, my own progressivism was initially inspired by more liberal figures like Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls, or critical theorists like Judith Butler and Michel Foucault. As time went on, I gradually became intrigued by Marx, who seemed to inspire so many different authors in such rabidly different ways. After a stint working a number of odd and menial jobs after the 2008 Recession, I became inspired to actually go back and read the man himself.  This turned out to be a much trickier project than I’d thought. I picked up Volume I of Capital and immediately rolled my eyes over the sheer length. After opening it up I expected to be dragged immediately into a world talking about grand cultural dynamics, contradictions, and dialectics. Instead, Marx opened the book with a lengthy discussion of commodity and why we valued it. This seemed very strange given the epic scope I’d expected. What was worse is that nowhere in Capital, including the later Volumes, did Marx lay out his philosophical and methodological approach. The text just starts and barrels on. This made it extremely difficult to get a grip on what Marx was saying, even though his writing was often crisp and even funny. I wish I’d known about Harvey’s Companion at that point, since it would have made my life immensely easier. Harvey goes through Capital chapter by chapter, outlining the connections between each point and clarifying the seemingly endless array of new terminologies generated by Marx throughout.