To understand Capital: Books II and III

Abstract

In this book, Harvey's intention is to serve as a guide to the reader so that they can understand books II and III of Capital in Marx's own terms. Unfortunately, he acknowledges that it will be “particularly difficult to understand what those terms would be” (p.9). Why? The answer comes right after stating that book II was written “at a high level of abstraction”. In this book, he comments, Marx considers the capitalist class in total, that is, without taking into account the different class factions and their respective functions as agents representing the different forms of existence of industrial capital (money capital, productive capital and capital- merchandise).