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ENIGMA OF CAPITAL, THE

AND THE CRISIS OF CAPITALISM

By David Harvey

(4)

| Others | 9781846683091

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2 Reviews

Again, another nice book by Harvey.
The foundation of the Enigma is in Marx's Capital: there is basically nothing new compared to that. Harvey's book is focused on the crises of capitalism, and tries to explain why they do not simply happen and why crises are a necessity.
This is done in a very cle ... (continue)

Again, another nice book by Harvey.
The foundation of the Enigma is in Marx's Capital: there is basically nothing new compared to that. Harvey's book is focused on the crises of capitalism, and tries to explain why they do not simply happen and why crises are a necessity.
This is done in a very clear way, going through some of the analysis of the Capital, looking at modern history till 2010, revealing how crises of capitalism have succeded, how they have never been solved but merely moved away, elsewhere.
The book is concluded by a couple of chapters on alternatives: how they may happen and who may be the protagonists.
In these times when we are flodded by neoliberal concepts such as austerity and cuts, this book turns out to help looking at them from a different and alternative point of view, which is too seldom considered.

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mathias said on Feb 5, 2012 | Add your feedback

Soft on capitalism critique, hard on the myth of growth

A different, interesting, good perspective on economics.
The first valuable feature of this book is the unusual story it tells: a history of capitalism from a very critical perspective, which is a welcome change from that of most common popular economy books. It depicts capitalism as an engine of ... (continue)

A different, interesting, good perspective on economics.
The first valuable feature of this book is the unusual story it tells: a history of capitalism from a very critical perspective, which is a welcome change from that of most common popular economy books. It depicts capitalism as an engine of growth and crises in growth, that may be struggling more and more to produce the former and yielding more and more of the latter in the attempt.
This perspective in itself is valuable, if only for contrast. The financial, then economic crisis started in 2007 makes it also timely.
The second key feature of this book, contributing to its interest and still making it limited and frustrating, is that the arguments underpinning this history and analysis feel sketchy and limited, at least for readers like me with a minimal understanding of economic theory and history. To mitigate this, they feel as sketchy and limited as arguments supporting the merit of free market's invisible hand and portraits of capitalism as the best of possible worlds. The story and argument does flow, still it feels as only a scholar in Marxian economy and other economic theories can fully understand, and criticize, the reasoning.
An especially tantalising component of what I have struggled to grasp and still this book brings up as extremely important is the symmetric, dialectic nature of capital and work as components and dimensions of economy and world view.
In the end, the key feature that makes this book valuable and interesting is that this critique of capitalism turns out to be a very convincing critique of the notion and assumption of growth - "three percent compound annual growth and return on capital" that capitalism ends up requiring no matter what to make sense of itself and keep working. The implication, sounding very, very reasonable in today's world, is that capitalism has turned a requirement it has into a required feature of the commonly accepted world view, making us less and less sensitive to the side effects of growth, limits to it, and implications of what has been required to achieve it as we have had to make growth and capitalism itself possible. Even more important, this has made clueless in front of the perspective that long term growth of this kind may be simply out of the realm of things possible.

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Famiglia Marcellino said on Aug 28, 2011 | Add your feedback