annotated bibliography
Wow, I haven’t updated this Annotated Bibliography in a long time. Times change, you read more books, you change your mind on some things. This page needs an update:
“Das Kapital” by Karl Marx. 1867 (first volume)
if you are reading Kapital for the first time and having trouble with parts of it you might find David Harvey’s online lectures helpful. You can find them on his website: http://davidharvey.org
I don’t agree with all of his positions on Kapital, so always remember to think for yourself and form your own opinions. Here is a critique I wrote of some aspects of Harvey’s thought.
I used to highly recommend Harevy’s “Limits To Capital”. I don’t highly recommend it anymore (see above linked critique). But I do still think that there are some valuable aspects to the book.
For a great perspective on how the labor theory of value is integrated between the three volumes of Kapital, and especially for a killer explanation of commodity fetishism and markets you must read I.I. Rubin’s “Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value.” It’s on the Marxist Internet Archive. I think this is one of the best things ever written on Marx’s value theory.
“The Critique of Political Economy”, by Marx, has some more detailed analysis of Money which can help with the opening chapters of Kapital. Keep in mind that when he wrote the Critique he hadn’t yet made the distinction between value and exchange-value.
“Marxist Economic Theory” by Ernest Mandel. Monthly Review Press. 1968. I feel like this book is good on many aspects. It is very accessible and combines theoretical ideas with historical examples that make things easy to follow. I don’t think it’s the greatest work of theory. I haven’t read it in awhile… not sure what critiques I’d have if I returned to it now.
“Marx for Beginners” by Rius. Pantheon Books. 1976
“The Marx Engels Reader” edited by Robert Tucker. WW Norton and Co. 1978
“Kapital for Beginners”
“Marx on Money” by Suzanne De Brunhoff. Urizen Books. 1973. I used to say this book is boring as dirt. Perhaps I was wrong.
“Studies in the Labor Theory of Value” by Ronald L Meek. Monthly Review Press. 1956
“Reclaiming Marx’s Capital; refuting the myth of inconsistency” by Andrew Kliman
“Frontiers of Political Economy” by Guglielmo Carchedi
on crisis:
“An Introduction to the History of Crisis Theories” by Anwar Shaihk. You can find this excellent introduction to marxist and bourgeois crisis theory on Shaihk’s website http://homepage.newschool.edu/~AShaikh/
“The Failure of Capitalist Production” by Andrew Kliman
“Return from the Grave” by Guglielmo Carchedi- a good synopsis of Marxist crisis theories. Carchedi comes from the Falling Rate of Profit camp.
“Marx’s Theory of Crisis” by Simon Clarke. A great book.
“Class, Crisis and the State” by Erik Olin Wright; Verso 1978. The last section of the book offer a good synopsis of crisis marxist theories but I think Wright’s attempted synthesis is not very convincing.
On bourgeois economics:
“Marx, Marginalism, and Modern Sociology” By Simon Clarke. I can’t recommend this highly enough. See my thoughts on the book here.
“Economic Theory of the Leisure Class” by Nikolai Bukharin. See my thoughts about this book here.
“From Political Economy to Economics” by Fine and Milonakis.
“Anti-Samuelson” by Mark Linder
“The Psychopathology of Walrasian Marxism” and other essays by Alan Freeman, available here
“Economics; traditional and radical perspectives” by EK Hunt
“A Critique of Economic Theory” edited by Jesse Schwartz
“The Subtle Anatomy of Capitalism” edited by Jesse Schwartz
On the labor process:
“Labor And Monopoly Capital” by Harry Braverman
“Manufacturing Consent” by Michael Burawoy
Hey Brendan,
I enjoyed your video bibliography and I’ve also impressed with the various pieces you’ve put together; a great way to interpret and change the world. It occurred to me that maybe you have or have not heard about Harvey’s online lectures on Capital Vol. 1 at http://davidharvey.org/
They are fantastic as you might already know, but I’d urge you to check them out if you haven’t already and to recommend the lectures to your bibliography viewers. They are as authoritative as Limits to Capital (also one of my favorites) and as a supplement/guide to the text I think they enable anyone to take on Vol. 1.
Also, you might be interested in a few works of Perry Anderson, editor of the New Left Review (a great publication), namely Considerations on Western Marxisms as well as In the Tracks of Historical Materialism. They are a few decades old now but having just read them myself, and having a similar backround bibliography as yourself, I found them extremely relevant.
Lastly, you mentioned Mandel. He’s great. You might recommend to your viewers that he authored a very distilled version of the two-volume book you’ve got called An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory. It’s small, like a pamphlet, but has the Mandel-flare for pulling the reader right in and laying out the argument in easily digestible historical examples. I’d really recommend it for anyone launching into the subject. Perhaps to be read along side the Marx-Engels Reader…
I’d recommend Ben Fine’s and Alfredo Saad-Filho’s “Marx’s Capital” (Pluto Press) 4th edition 2004. A very short but concise summary and introduction to all three volumes of Capital (plus some bits of “theories of surplus value”)
I haven’t as yet read much Harvey but am critical of his reference to the former USSR as “actually existing socialism” in the preface to a new edition of the Manifesto.
man you are doing are great job!! keep going Did you read some Antonio Negri’s books, he is a Marxist writer very famous for his Empire but he have a lot of material on Marx. again congrats for your excellent job
Yeah, that’s a good selection of books. I disagree a bit with you about reading Marx himself. I found him to be extremely readable. He’s clever and funny and savage, one of the nineteenth century’s great writers – and that’s saying something! The first three chapters are pretty tough – particularly the third – but the rewards to be had later on are great. Marx is also one of the great labour historians. Well, he have to be, wouldn’t he? And I am always impressed at his chapters on the stuggles of the Englsh working class over the working day, or the “bloody legislation” which drove thousands upon thousands of people from the land and into the factories. Marx is still one of the most sensitive and astute theorists of technology and machinery. As the logical structure of the book unfolds, Marx fleshes out the initial abstract concepts with concrete historical detail so that by the end of the book – where he finishes seemingly paradoxically with the origins of capitalist society in England – we understand that capitalist society is about commodity exchange maintained through the forced imposition of work, but that this itself is merely a passing phase of human history. The whole lot is thoroughly “de-fetishised”.
I think knowledge of these past (and present) struggles is important too. The historian EP Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class is the ultimate history from below, an exhausive account of the industrial revolution from the viewpoint of labour. Thompson also did pioneering work on time and rioting as a form of protest. There’s also Peter Linebaugh’s The London Hanged and Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker’s The Many Headed Hydra, an account of the slaves, pirates and sailors who made up the Anglo-American maritime proletariat in and around the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War 1973-1992 by the Midnight Notes collective contains stuff on more recent struggles and Beverly Silver’s Forces of Labour is good on the contemporary global working class.
In terms of general introductions to Marx, Reading Capital Politically by Harry Cleaver is useful, as is Ivan Ilich Rubin’s Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value and Fredy Perlman’s The Reproduction of Daily Life, which is widely available on the internet. In addition, on money, I’d recommend a getting hold of a book edited by Werner Bonefeld and John Holloway called Global Capital, National State and the Politics of Money.
Well, that’s quite a list … great blog, keep it up!
Yeah I have since regretted making that comment about Kapital in this video. I still think that it is useful to have a guide when tackling Kapital for the first time, especially in the daunting opening chapters. Since I made this video I discovered David Harvey’s online lectures on Kapital and these inspired me to reread Kapital It really is a great book…. I almost dare say a page turner. On the other hand, at this point in my readings I am beginning to lose my perspective on what is accessible and what isn’t to the lay reader… I remember as an 18 year-old barely being able to understand the Communist Manifesto. Since many of my viewers are young and they often ask what is a good book to start on I am hesitant to say Kapital. I would not have gotten through Kapital at 18!
Thanks for adding your book suggestions to the list. I have enjoyed seeing all the different suggestions folks have posted here, many books which I have yet to read myself. I think I will eventually trash this video and replace it with an updated reading list.
Funnily enough, it seems our mate David Harvey has an “Introduction to Marx’s Capital” out soon from Verso: http://tinyurl.com/da8krb
I am myself about two-thirds through his online lecture course. It’s very good and something that I wish had been around when I first read Marx when I was at school. It would have saved me a lot of trouble!
Very useful. But I guess things like race, (which “Detroit, I Do Mind Dying” is a good exploration of)– Or the woman question are things yet to be tackled. You’re welcome to find me on facebook.
I would like to add the works of three authors that in my opinion help to understand (in an easy way) a very difficult problem: the relation of economy to culture/subjectivity in general and the possibilities of emancipation.
Bertell Ollmans Alienation (among others)
Moishe Postones Time, Labor and Social Domination
and Andre Gorz (he has lots of books)
I am also very impressed by Postone’s work….but he is definitley not for the faint of heart . Many get quite pissed about his characterisation of “traditional Marxists ” (in whose camp he occasionally tosses in Ernest Mandel, although he spares Harvey),
But Postone’s take on time and value is top notch stuff and a wonderful antidote to those ensnared by Frankfurt School resignation.
I’m also in the process of reading Marx’s Capital and I would recommend Michael Heinrich introduction to Marx as a very good starting point. It’s only edited in german and spanish (http://tinyurl.com/yd9x6uh). His website has some texts in english: http://www.oekonomiekritik.de/
I would recommend to anyone interested in Marx, labour history, etc… to visit libcom.org which is an excelent resource.
A friend recommended Reading Capital Politically by Harry Cleaver as a good book to help with the understanding Capital’s first chapter. Anyone read this? (it’s also on libcom: http://libcom.org/library/reading-capital-politically-cleaver)
Nice bibliography, and interesting blog.
I think that some of Capital, especially Volume I, is pretty easy to read and quite engrossing. (I also read V. II and some of III, in a class with Kliman – a bit more difficult.)
I actually first became very interested in Marx from reading his earlier philosophical works, especially the first part of The German Ideology (which had a very significant effect on me) and the 1844 manuscripts. I also find Grundrisse to be very engrossing in places.
Maybe the best place for many to start would be The Communist Manifesto. There is nothing difficult to read in that.
I agree with the comment above recommending Andre Gorz. I always found his writings to be excellent.
If you want to read a Marxist-oriented book focused on the high tech world, I found Cyber-Marx by Nick Dyer-Witheford to be a good read. (However, I admit that at this point I’ve grown weary of that subject.)
Among David Harvey’s books, I really enjoyed The Urban Experience (which is a combination of two volumes originally published separately – with much longer titles…).
Also interesting (though not always that readable) is Loren Goldner, whose work can be found here: http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/
There’s one Marxist group in India that Goldner discusses to some extent, whose works I’ve been reading for quite some time. They are Kamunist Kranti:
http://libcom.org/tags/kamunist-kranti
I guess in some ways I am bit of an Indophile (I also have a WordPress blog devoted to classic Indian movies (some of which are very socialist, by the way)), so maybe that’s why I’ve been very interested in the communist/social-democratic movements in Kerala. You can find a lot of info about that here:
http://chss.montclair.edu/anthro/frankepaperskerala.htm
I could say a lot more, but… I guess I’ll stop there for now.
For more on Ben Fine (comment #2) there is a complete of his publications here, click the Publications tab. Some of these can be downloaded, mainly the ones labelled (unpublished). Fine and Milonakis: From Political Economy to Economics is good for Marx value theory and history of economics from a Marxist perspective.
Also, Roman Rosdolsky, The Making of Marx’s Capital, is a commentary by an early reader of the Grundrisee aka ‘Rough Draft’
I’ve only read parts of these so far but they ought to mentioned.
Thanks much for your time and effort in making these very useful videos. I’ll add some of my recent reading. I especially recommend Chris Harman’s book as it provides a good introduction to Marx in the first few chapters and then discusses the current crisis in terms of the falling rate of profit.
Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx by Chris Harman
The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism by David Harvey
A Companion to Marx’s Capital by David Harvey
The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation by Michael Perelman
The Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism: How Market Tyranny Stifles the Economy by Stunting Workers by Michael Perelman
Manufacturing Discontent: The Trap of Individualism in Corporate Society by Michael Perelman
And three from John Bellamy Foster of the Monthly Review:
The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth by John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York
Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature by John Bellamy Foster
Ecology Against Capitalism by John Bellamy Foster
Perhaps not strictly marxist but I’ve been reading Elias ‘what is sociology’ and I was amazed how closely Elias follows a relational, perspectival and processual way of looking at social reality. He generalizes the dialectical method in broader terrain (without the important focus on production). He critiques in a way Cartesian rationality like Harvey does. Highly recommended and interesting read! It would be interesting to compare it with Ollman and Harveys work on dialectics.
Hi there, I love the blog and thanks for effort put into making this video and list of books. I’m pretty much a complete novice on marxian economics but I’m steadily learning.
I noticed that you didn’t particuarly enjoy “Marx on Money” by De Brunhoff. I haven’t read the book so I can neither agree nor disagree, but I thought I might point you towards a book I have discovered which apparently covers that area as well as the social-economic foundations of capitalist production:
Political Economy of Money and Finance my M. Itoh and C. Lapavitsas
http://us.macmillan.com/politicaleconomyofmoneyandfinance
I also have to admit I haven’t actually read the book but have heard good things about and particularly enjoy some of Lapavitsas’ various papers so I thought I would suggest it to you.
(I have the pdf of the book if you want it, just email me)
I have a terrible photocopy version of M. Itoh and C. Lapavitsas’ Book. It’s a great book and I’d like to be able to read it on my Ipad. I would appreciate, if you could share the pdf version.
Kind regards,
Cem
Just while I’m on a roll of replying randomly to this site :
I love David Harvey, but I think his best and clearest work is ‘The Condition of Postmoderntiy.” ‘The Enigma of Capital’ was good but a bit disorganized, I felt.
I would recommend caution on J.B. Foster; he clearly has a love of Marx, but the oft offered suggestion that Marx could understand the ecological implications of capital is overwrought. Marx did understand them, but only in the context of his time. Marx was, alack, human.
I would recommend, as before, for an understanding of the development of Marx’s thought,
“Marx’s Critique of Politics” by Gary Teeple, (1984)
- The annotated bibliography is a study in acerbic academic wit, and the book itself is a study in studiousness – the sort of thoroughness which might be encouraged in genuinely critical thought. Teeple’s knowledge of German is particularly insightful here.
Somebody mentioned a pdf copy of “Political Economy of Money and Finance” by Lapavitsas and Itoh. I’d love to get my hands on that if anybody could email it my way. Cheers
Brendan, thank you so much for putting this bibliography. I found it by accident while searching for a coherent reading list for Marx’s Economics. Such resources are helpful to students of Marxian Economics. Keep it up!
I recommend “love and capital” by Mary Gabriel. I think it is a well written biography (interesting background information). I’m enjoying it. It reads like a novel. After digesting dry academic books this book reads incredibly fast.