An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital
Published | 2004 (Schmetterling Verlag) |
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Published in English | 2012 (Monthly Review Press) |
Pages |
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LC Class | HB501.M37 H4513 2012 |
Text | An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital at Internet Archive |
An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital (
Background
Michael Heinrich published An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital in 2004 while working as a lecturer in economics at HTW Berlin.[5] He was the managing editor of PROKLA: Journal for Critical Social Science until 2014 and was a contributor to the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA; lit. 'Marx-Engels Complete Writings').[6][5] In a 2011 interview, Heinrich stated that the aim of the book was to present Marx's Capital and other basic elements of Marx's theory to new readers.[7]
The foundations for the book were laid in his 1991[note 1] PhD thesis The Science of Value (German: Die Wissenschaft vom Wert)[7] which, along with the Introduction, was published as part of a wider discourse in Germany on the monetary character of Marx's theory of value.[9] This revival of research into Marx, known as the Neue Marx-Lektüre (lit. 'New Reading of Marx'), was based on the earlier work of Western Marxists like Theodor Adorno and Louis Althusser and was initiated by West German scholars Hans-Georg Backhaus and Helmut Reichelt during the 1960s and 1970s.[10][9] The Neue Marx-Lektüre involved a re-examination of Marx's auxiliary texts and the theoretical distinctions between the different editions of Capital that were published in the second edition of MEGA in 1975.[11]
As part of the Neue Marx-Lektüre, the book rejects "worldview Marxism" (German: Weltanschauungsmarxismus), which Heinrich characterises as a reading of Marx marked by its oversimplification of social phenomena as the result of purely economic interests, its historical determinism, and view of Marx's theories as "all-encompassing".[10][12] In the book, Heinrich attributes the development of "worldview Marxism" to the contributions of Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky following Marx's death that were later incorporated into Marxism–Leninism.[10] The book contests that Marx had adopted the ideas of classical economics and its labour theory of value in an attempt to build an alternative political economy and instead argues that Marx's project was based on a critique of the presuppositions of all established economic science.[13][14][15]
Following the 1993 publication of the original economic manuscripts for Volumes II and III of Capital in MEGA, Heinrich argued that Engels had distorted Marx's manuscripts as part of his attempt to publish a coherent third volume.[16] This stance was met with harsh criticism and generated a number of defences of Engels's editorial work.[17] In the book, Heinrich argues that Capital was a fragmented and unfinished work that therefore included concepts that that needed to be redesigned to be used for concrete economic analysis.[18][19][20]
Summary
Heinrich's Introduction is organised around various themes in Marx's work, and draws on his unfinished manuscripts the Grundrisse and Theories of Surplus Value in addition to its reading of Capital.[21] Chapters 1 and 2 of the book introduce and place the book within the wider Marxist corpus. Chapters 3–5 discuss Capital Volume I, chapter 6 discusses Volume II, and chapters 7–10 discuss Volume III; chapters 11 and 12 discuss theories of the state and communism, respectively.[5] The book also incorporates an analysis of the differences between the various revisions made by Marx to Capital,[11][22] as well as a wide range of historical documents.[1]
Like other Neue Marx-Lektüre adherents, Heinrich favours a monetary reading of Marx's theory of value, arguing against conventional conceptions of Marx's theory of value, where the value of a commodity is derived from its
The book devotes special attention to the concepts of
Heinrich also rejects the significance of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in Marx's theory of crisis. He argues against popular interpretations that suggest a law between a rise in the organic composition of capital and a fall in the rate of profit, which fail to consider the contradictory effects that capitalist development can have on the rate of profit.[30][31]
Reception
The Introduction has been praised for its systematic examination of Marx and for its comprehensive inclusion of Volumes II and III of Marx's Capital, in contrast to many other books on Marx's critique of political economy which primarily write about Volume I.[5] Heinrich insists in the book that a reading of Capital must include Volumes II and III to not be subject to distortion.[32] Academic Johan Fornäs praised the book for its attention to detail on the various differences between the different editions of Marx's Capital.[22] In Germany, the book has been reprinted many times and is widely used in universities and Capital reading groups.[33]
Author
The
See also
Notes
Citations
- ^ a b Sica 2012, p. 838.
- ^ Hoff 2012, p. 201.
- ^ Burghardt 2018, p. 219.
- ^ a b c d DiLeo 2013.
- ^ a b c d Basu 2015, p. 25.
- ^ Heinrich 2020.
- ^ a b Heinrich 2011, p. 709.
- ^ Heinrich 2011, p. 708.
- ^ a b Hoff 2012, pp. 198–199.
- ^ a b c Basu 2015, p. 26.
- ^ a b Hoff 2012, pp. 199–200.
- ^ Heinrich 2012, p. 24.
- ^ Basu 2015, pp. 26–27.
- ^ Heinrich 2012, pp. 32–34.
- ^ Heinrich 2012, pp. 9.
- ^ Dellheim & Wolf 2018, p. 2; Bellofiore & Wolf 2018, p. 32.
- ^ Dellheim & Wolf 2018, p. 2.
- ^ Post 2013.
- ^ Heinrich 2011, p. 710.
- ^ Saito 2018, p. 188.
- ^ Paulson 2013, p. 175.
- ^ a b Fornäs 2013, p. 295.
- ^ Cockshott 2013, p. 295.
- ^ a b c d O'Kane 2013.
- ^ Pitts 2017, p. 25.
- ^ Fuchs 2014, p. 41.
- ^ Heinrich 2012, p. 149.
- ^ Paulson 2013, pp. 175–176.
- ^ Paulson 2013, p. 176.
- ^ Pitts 2017, pp. 126–132.
- ^ Lange 2018, p. 413.
- ^ Paulson 2013, pp. 174–175.
- ^ Oittinen & Rauhala 2013, pp. 175–176.
- ^ Sica 2012, p. 837.
- ^ Starosta 2017, p. 106.
- ^ Cockshott 2013, p. 287.
- ^ Holloway 2015, p. 20.
- ^ a b Fuchs 2016, p. 60.
- ^ Fuchs 2013, pp. 300, 306.
References
- Basu, Deepankar (September 26, 2015). "Review: Marx's Critique of Political Economy". JSTOR 24482457.
- Bellofiore, Riccardo; Wolf, Frieder Otto (April 13, 2018). "Taking Up the Challenge of Living Labour A 'Backwards-Looking Reconstruction' of Recent Italian Debates on Marx's Theory of the Capitalist Mode of Production". In Dellheim, Judith; Wolf, Frieder Otto (eds.). The Unfinished System of Karl Marx: Critically Reading Capital as a Challenge for our Times. Luxemburg International Studies in Political Economy. Translated by Wolf, Frieder Otto. ISSN 2662-6381.
- Burghardt, Daniel (July 4, 2018). "Kritische Pädagogik nach Marx" [Critical Pedagogy after Marx]. Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Pädagogik (in German). 94 (2). S2CID 199318310.
- S2CID 154744859.
- Dellheim, Judith; Wolf, Frieder Otto (April 13, 2018). "The Challenge of the Incompleteness of the Third Volume of Capital for Theoretical and Political Work Today". In Dellheim, Judith; Wolf, Frieder Otto (eds.). The Unfinished System of Karl Marx: Critically Reading Capital as a Challenge for our Times. Luxemburg International Studies in Political Economy. ISSN 2662-6381.
- DiLeo, Petrino (May 1, 2013). "Reexamining Marx's Capital". International Socialist Review. Archivedfrom the original on February 16, 2023. Retrieved February 16, 2023.
- Fornäs, Johan (2013). Capitalism: A Companion to Marx's Economy Critique. London: ISBN 978-0-203-55151-6.
- .
- ISBN 978-0-41571-615-4.
- S2CID 151537823.
- JSTOR 41931952.
- JSTOR j.ctt9qg6g7.
- Heinrich, Michael (November 25, 2020). "Marx and the Birth of Modern Society: An Interview with Michael Heinrich". JHI Blog (Interview). Interviewed by Kathrin Witter. Translated by Meyer, Anselm; Blumenfeld, Jacob. Journal of the History of Ideas.
- Hoff, Jan (April 25, 2012), "Marx in Germany", in ISBN 978-0-415-50359-4
- .
- Lange, Steffen (February 25, 2018). "Fundamentals". Macroeconomics Without Growth: Sustainable Economies in Neoclassical, Keynesian and Marxian Theories. Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Nachhaltigkeitsforschung [Economic Sustainability Research]. Metropolis-Verlag. pp. 403–425. ISBN 978-3-7316-1298-8.
- O'Kane, Chris (January 2, 2013). "'An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital' reviewed by Chris O'Kane". Marx & Philosophy Review of Books. ISSN 2042-2016.
- Oittinen, Vesa; Rauhala, Paula (November 28, 2013). "Evald Ilyenkov's Dialectics of Abstract and Concrete and the Recent Value-Form Debate". In Levant, Alex (ed.). Dialectics of the Ideal: Evald Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism. Historical Materialism Book Series. Vol. 60. Leiden, Netherlands: ISBN 978-90-04-24692-8.
- Paulson, Justin (July 1, 2013). "An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital". S2CID 144298318.
- Pitts, Frederick Harry (2017). Critiquing Capitalism Today: New Ways to Read Marx. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. S2CID 148921136.
- Post, Charlie (May 1, 2013). "Reading Capital". Against the Current. No. 164.
- ISSN 2662-6381.
- Sica, Alan, ed. (2012). "Review of An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital". S2CID 220840202.
- Starosta, Guido (December 13, 2017). "The Role and Place of 'Commodity Fetishism' in Marx's Systematic-dialectical Exposition in Capital". S2CID 149442292.