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Reading Marx’s Grundrisse with David Harvey (2023)

Hosted by The People’s Forum:

“Join us virtually for a close reading of Marx’s Grundrisse with Professor David Harvey. 

We’re excited to present another course studying Marxist thought with Professor Harvey. The course will be structured around the soon to be published A Companion To Marx’s Grundrisseand will be available to all, wherever you may be located in the world! 

Written during the winter of 1857-1858, the Grundrisse, also known as Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), was considered by Marx to be the first scientific elaboration of communist theory.”

The primary text is David Harvey, A Companion to Marx’s Grundrisse, Verso, 2023. The source text is Karl Marx, The Grundrisse, Viking/Penguin edition. Students are invited to work across both texts and to grapple with the intricacies of Marx’s arguments on the nature of capital.

  1. Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, Penguin Classics edition, translated by Martin Nicolaus, ISBN: 978-0140445756

    (The text of the Grundrisse can also be found for free on the Marxists Internet Archive. While any edition of the Grundrisse could work, the page numbers Professor Harvey refers to are from the Penguin Classics edition, so it will be easier to follow along with this edition.)

  2. David Harvey, A Companion to Marx’s Grundrisse. Verso, 2023.

Schedule

Class 1 Companion, pages vii-xxi and 1-35; Grundrisse pages 83-111

Class 2 Companion, pages 36-83; Grundrisse pages 115-238

Class 3 Companion, pages 84-123; Grundrisse pages 239-303

Class 4 Companion, pages 124-148; Grundrisse pages 304-70

Book Launch Book Launch for the Companion with Kanish Goonewardena (Toronto) and Nancy Fraser (New School) as commentators.

Class 5 Companion, pages 149-184; Grundrisse pages 373-458

Class 6 Companion, pages 185-232; Grundrisse pages 459-515

Class 7 Companion, pages 233-261; Grundrisse, pages 516-584

Class 8 Companion, pages 262-294; Grundrisse, pages 584-678

Class 9 Companion pages 295-324; Grundrisse, pages 640-701

Class 10 Companion pages 325- 362; Grundrisse, pages 702-741

Class 11 Companion, pages 363 – 404; Grundrisse 742-893

Class 12 Companion, pages 405-434

[Download course schedule as a PDF]


A Companion to Marx’s Grundrisse

A Companion to Marx's Grundrisse

Forthcoming from Verso Books on February 7, 2023

Text from Verso:

David Harvey tackles Marx’s notebooks that have spawned wide-ranging and raging controversies

When leading scholar of Marx, Roman Rosdolsky, first encountered the virtually unknown text of Marx’s Grundrisse – his preparatory work for his masterpiece Das Capital – in the 1950s in New York Public Library, he recognized it as “a work of fundamental importance,” but declared “its unusual form” and “obscure manner of expression, made it far from suitable for reaching a wide circle of readers.”

David Harvey’s Companion to Marx’s Grundrisse builds upon his widely acclaimed companions to the first and second volumes of Capital in a way that will reach as wide an audience as possible. Marx’s stated ambition for this text – where he was thinking aloud about some of possible metamorphoses of capitalism – is to reveal “the exact development of the concept of capital as the fundamental concept of modern economics, just as capital itself is the foundation of bourgeois society.” While respecting Marx’s desire to “bring out all the contradictions of bourgeois production, as well as the boundary where it drives beyond itself,” David Harvey also pithily illustrates the relevance of Marx’s text to understanding the troubled state of contemporary capitalism.

Reviews

“It is often said of Marx that you need to read to the end to grasp what comes at the beginning. True to that maxim, after a lifetime of studying and interpreting Marx, David Harvey has finally returned to where Marx’s critique of political economy effectively began, in the famous Grundrisse. Harvey likens his Companion to accompanying the reader on a long hike, pointing out key landforms, junctions and hazards along the way. So put on your boots, fill your water bottle, and join Harvey in his dazzling venture to bring Marx’s ‘most interesting and difficult’ book to life.”

– Brett Christophers

The ABC of Contemporary Capital | Session 12

As a part of this course, I’m sharing rough drafts of pieces of a manuscript I am working on, a sort of textbook on Marx’s political economy.

I’m experimenting with crowd sourcing the revision process. I invite you to read and offer your thoughts using the free social annotation program, Hypothesis.

There are two texts for this week:

To get started with Hypothesis, click the above link and then click “Sign Up” in the right hand sidebar to create a free Hypothesis account. Once you are logged into Hypothesis you are free to make comments on the text.

Previous Class | Course Home | Next Class

The ABC of Contemporary Capital | Session 11

As a part of this course, I’m sharing rough drafts of pieces of a manuscript I am working on, a sort of textbook on Marx’s political economy.

I’m experimenting with crowd sourcing the revision process. I invite you to read and offer your thoughts using the free social annotation program, Hypothesis:

The ABC of Capital: A Textbook | Session 11

To get started with Hypothesis, click the above link and then click “Sign Up” in the right hand sidebar to create a free Hypothesis account. Once you are logged into Hypothesis you are free to make comments on the text.

Previous Class | Course Home | Next Class

The ABC of Contemporary Capital | Session 10

As a part of this course, I’m sharing rough drafts of pieces of a manuscript I am working on, a sort of textbook on Marx’s political economy.

I’m experimenting with crowd sourcing the revision process. I invite you to read and offer your thoughts using the free social annotation program, Hypothesis:

The ABC of Capital: A Textbook | Session 10

To get started with Hypothesis, click the above link and then click “Sign Up” in the right hand sidebar to create a free Hypothesis account. Once you are logged into Hypothesis you are free to make comments on the text.

Previous Class | Course Home | Next Class

The ABC of Contemporary Capital | Session 9

As a part of this course, I’m sharing rough drafts of pieces of a manuscript I am working on, a sort of textbook on Marx’s political economy.

I’m experimenting with crowd sourcing the revision process. I invite you to read and offer your thoughts using the free social annotation program, Hypothesis:

The ABC of Capital: A Textbook | Session 9

To get started with Hypothesis, click the above link and then click “Sign Up” in the right hand sidebar to create a free Hypothesis account. Once you are logged into Hypothesis you are free to make comments on the text.

Previous Class | Course Home | Next Class

The ABC of Contemporary Capital | Session 8

As a part of this course, I’m sharing rough drafts of pieces of a manuscript I am working on, a sort of textbook on Marx’s political economy.

I’m experimenting with crowd sourcing the revision process. I invite you to read and offer your thoughts using the free social annotation program, Hypothesis:

The ABC of Capital: A Textbook | Session 8

To get started with Hypothesis, click the above link and then click “Sign Up” in the right hand sidebar to create a free Hypothesis account. Once you are logged into Hypothesis you are free to make comments on the text.

Previous Class | Course Home | Next Class

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