[Reviewer Tetler assesses Harveys commentary on Marxs famous and
influential early work.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

A COMPANION TO MARX’S GRUNDRISSE  
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Benjamin Tetler
May 15, 2023
Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
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_ Reviewer Tetler assesses Harvey's commentary on Marx's famous and
influential early work. _

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A Companion to Marx’s Grundrisse
David Harvey
Verso
ISBN: 978180429098

When it comes to the critique of capitalist society over the last half
century, few thinkers can rival David Harvey’s influence and
originality. Set in a broadly Marxist framework, and bringing his
geographical background to bear, Harvey has consistently pushed
forward into new territory, integrating questions of space and place
into his attempts to theorise the contradictory dynamics of capital
accumulation. More recently, to bring the contemporary relevance of
Marx’s work to a wider audience, Harvey has turned his attention to
dealing directly with the critique of political economy. Regarded
‘in retrospect’ as his ‘Marx Project’ (vii), _A Companion to
Marx’s Grundrisse_ is the latest instalment in this series, the aim
of which ‘is to open a door into Marx’s thinking and to encourage
as many people as possible to pass through it and take a closer look
at the texts and make of them what they will’ (viii). At a time when
a critical social theory based upon a sound reading of Marx’s
critique of political economy is sorely needed in order to counter the
multiple social and ecological problems arising as a consequence of
capital’s crisis-ridden development, Harvey’s aim here is
laudable. Moreover, the turning of Harvey’s attention to the
_Grundrisse_ is especially welcome given that he has long regarded it
as a key text for the inspiration of many his own theoretical
innovations.

The importance of the _Grundrisse_ for the revival of a critical
Marxist tradition that blossomed in the wake of the de-Stalinisation
period is hard to overestimate. It has been of particular influence,
for instance, in the development of Italian _Operaismo_. Little-known
and rarely read until the late 1960s – when it was rescued from
obscurity by the publication of Roman Rosdolsky’s _The Making of
Marx’s Capital_ – it is now recognised as a vital text for
investigating the development of Marx’s thought. This is
particularly true in regard to the problem of method in the critique
of political economy. Begun in 1857 in an effort to get to grips with
the financial crisis then unfolding, the _Grundrisse_ – a long,
meandering, unpublished manuscript – is the place where Marx really
begins to make headway against the conceptual limits of classical
political economy and the utopian socialism that built upon it. As
such, it can be taken as a sort of open theoretical workbench, the
place where Marx hammers out and refines his conceptual apparatus.

The notion that the _Grundrisse_ gives privileged access to the
essence of Marx’s method means that there is a wide and varied
secondary literature dealing with this aspect of it. The
_Companion_’s commitment to a direct dialogue with Marx necessarily
treats much of this with silence. This is a shame because Harvey’s
appreciation of the nuances of Marx’s method is one of the weaker
parts of the book, and it could have benefited from dealing with some
of the more considered accounts of the _Grundrisse_’s method – in
particular, those that have addressed the Hegelian heritage from
within the value-form approach. This is especially so given that
Harvey himself readily admits he is ‘not equipped, by intellect or
temperament, to wrestle with the complexity of the Hegelian influence
and the extensive philosophical explorations of Marx’s language and
method’ (xi).

Meant as aid and encouragement to one’s own reading of the
_Grundrisse_, _The_ _Companion_ takes the text in a linear fashion. As
such, Harvey starts with a consideration of Marx’s
‘Introduction’, and key points about the purpose and method of his
critique of capital. Briefly considered, Harvey proposes that the
_Grundrisse_’s main concern is ‘to grasp the nature of capital as
a totality’, and his reading of Marx’s method is very much
predicated on how he regards this picture of the totality as forming:
‘[Marx’s] method is to start with basic concrete abstractions,
build in the rational abstractions that arise within a given mode of
production (such as value theory) and gradually pin together a picture
of the totality in motion and formation’ (9). Unfortunately, this
general method, whereby a totality is formed out of bringing together
its component parts, is not specific enough to capture the particular
method that underpins Marx’s critique of capitalist society. This is
because, while Harvey recognises that ‘the idea of totality
undoubtedly derives from Hegel’, his commentary fails to appreciate
that even as Marx ‘reworks it and revolutionizes it’ (xvi) he does
so through appropriating the dialectical method of categorial
derivation found in Hegel’s _Logic_.

As indicated in correspondence with Engels, it was while working on
the _Grundrisse_ itself that Marx recognised that the method found in
Hegel’s _Logic_ would be ideally suited for his purpose of
presenting value, money, and capital as fetish forms of social
relations. Both accounts of Marx’s critique of political economy
that he subsequently worked on and published in his own lifetime, _A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy_ (1859) and
_Capital_, Volume I (1867), demonstrate this method in action. Rather
than build up a picture of the totality through bringing together its
component parts, as Harvey has it, Marx’s method, like Hegel’s,
unfolds the conceptual totality from out of its most abstract element
in a process of categorial derivation. Marx’s dialectical
presentation demonstrates that the forms of economic objectivity in
which the social relation between capital and labour manifest
themselves – commodity, value, money, capital – necessarily
presuppose one another, they hang together. As such, the suspension of
capital requires the suspension of money, value and most importantly
labour, their constitutive essence. Harvey’s failure to appreciate
this point can be seen in his claim that Marx, ‘does not take the
question of socialist money seriously enough’ (48). The implications
of not fully grasping Marx’s method are significant. Harvey
continues to the traditional Marxist notion of ‘the emancipated
laborer’ (430) as the standpoint for a critical theory of capital.
Yet, what constitutes capital – the working class and its labour –
cannot provide a standpoint from which to transcend that relation.
Harvey’s version of socialism would humanise the economy of labour
and its social forms for the benefit of those who labour rather than
abolish its necessity.

This fundamental issue aside, a stroll through the _Grundrisse_ in the
company of Harvey is often a delight, and he is on the whole well able
to bring out and direct our attention to Marx’s many and varied
insights. Often, as Harvey says, these are parts of his thinking that
Marx never returned to develop systematically, so that they continue
to provide possible roads for contemporary thought to travel down.
The_ Grundrisse_ has certainly been an inspiration for Harvey in this
way. As such, _The Companion_ contains many extended diversions upon
elements of Marx’s text that Harvey himself has developed in scope
well beyond the original. These are often accompanied by well-chosen
examples taken from contemporary capitalism that show the extent to
which ‘the _Grundrisse_ is … a prescient text … relevant to our
world today’ (413).

To take only three of the best examples: firstly, Harvey makes much of
Marx’s exposition of the contrasting circuits of fixed and
circulating capitals. As Harvey notes, the ‘_Grundrisse_ is … the
one place in all of Marx’s writings where fixed capital gets a
thorough going-over’ (340). These passages have provided Harvey with
many of his own key insights into the dysfunctional workings of the
capitalist economy, and he here (as elsewhere) links them to patterns
of debt, devaluation, and crisis formation, as well as showing how
they have proved ‘inspirational’ for his ‘interest in the role
of urbanization in relation to capital accumulation’ (297). Another
point of interest focused on is ‘the small-scale circulation of
labor power’ (284-94), which Harvey uses to ‘venture well beyond
Marx’s text and speculate freely on the subjective and political
consequences of the circulation of labor capacity’ (286). Indicating
the influence that Marxist feminism and social reproduction theory has
had upon him, Harvey proposes five separate phases in the flow of
labour-power as it moves inside and outside of production. As the
seller of a commodity; as a worker under the command of capital; as a
receiver of a money wage; as purchaser of commodities; and as embedded
within community and familial relations, workers play several
contrasting roles through the various stages of the capital relation,
and so ‘must, perforce, relate to these different experiential
worlds and the fragmentations they express’ (291). For Harvey, this
complicates the traditional Marxist focus on working class
subjectivity at the point of production as the privileged standpoint
from which to extrapolate a class conscious opposition to capitalism.
It also presents him with another opportunity to point towards the
importance of grasping capital as a totality, this time as a means for
workers to ‘hone their class consciousness around an understanding
of that totality’ (294).

A third example is that given by consideration of the tendency of the
rate of profit to fall to which Harvey dedicates most of a further
chapter (363-84). Harvey maintains that Marx’s understanding of the
tendency of the rate of profit to fall is more complicated than it is
often presented as, especially in theories of automatic breakdown.
Harvey carefully parses Marx comment that … ‘this is in every
respect the most important law of modern political economy’ by
pointing out that ‘Marx is just as concerned in his initial
statement with the gross (or mass of) profit as he is with the falling
rate’ (368). As Harvey goes on to say, the law would be better
understood as ‘that of the falling rate and rising mass of profit’
because in general ‘although the rate of profit falls, the mass of
profit can and does increase’ (369). Harvey’s reformulation, in
effect, takes the various countertendencies that Marx elaborated more
fully in _Capital_ into account. Interpreted this way the law operates
not as a simplistic device for demonstrating the inexorable decline of
capital, but more as a means for recognising its always contradictory,
self-expansive dynamics. Harvey points out a number of contemporary
features that are better understood in the terms of his own reading of
his law than than the more simplified version: ‘for example, the
problems of environmental degradation and climate change; the
production of the world market (globalization); speedup in turnover
times; increasing financialization; rising social inequalities; and
the massive increase in the global proletariat since 1980’ (370).

_The Companion_ then is as much about Harvey, and Harveyian themes
mediated by Marx, as it is about what Marx himself has written. Yet it
is precisely this which gives the book its real interest. This is so
because one of Harvey’s clear aims is to make the _Grundrisse_ speak
to contemporary developments and problems in capitalist society, and
he is best placed to do this when concentrating on exactly those
themes that have made his own contributions stand out over the years.
For those looking for the original source and inspiration of many of
Harvey’s key themes, _The Companion_ makes it clear just how
impactful the _Grundrisse_ has been on his thinking. From his early
through to his late work, Harvey has dipped into the rich text of the
_Grundrisse _and used it to go beyond Marx to frame the patterns and
shapes that capital, as the governing principle of modern society, has
wrought upon the earth, while spelling out the often deleterious costs
to its human hosts. The many ways in which _The Companion_ is able to
connect the themes of the _Grundrisse_ to contemporary issues is a
testament to this. To this extent the book will be much read and
appreciated.

As to whether it is the best guide to the _Grundrisse_ itself, there
are certainly other works out there that can and should be considered
alongside it. One reason for this is that Harvey’s claim that ‘it
is hard to dispute that [the _Grundrisse_] is by far the most
sophisticated and in-depth presentation of Marx’s critical political
economy available to this day’ (413) is in fact much disputed. This
claim shows it is not only consideration of the secondary literature
on the _Grundrisse_ that is generally absent from Harvey’s text but
that, more importantly, so is _Capital_ (as are the draft manuscripts
from the early 1860s that separate the two). As Rosdolsky made clear
long ago, any reading of the _Grundrisse_ needs to take into account
the far more sophisticated and conceptually refined exposition of
Marx’s critique of political economy that is to be found within the
pages of _Capital_. Yet, Harvey’s _Companion_ does little to situate
the _Grundrisse_ within the context of the ongoing development of
Marx’s critique. As a final consideration, _The Companion _will no
doubt serve its intention of bringing a new audience to Marx’s text,
which is important, because, as Harvey himself will surely agree, no
commentary on the _Grundrisse_ is any substitute for getting to grips
with the thing itself.

 

* Karl Marx
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* economic theory
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* capitalism
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