History versus Theory
A Commentary on Marx’s Method in Capital
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12673147 |
|---|---|
| Authors | D C Harvey (0000-0002-1499-8751, City University of New York, corresponding author), David Harvey (0000-0003-3703-7336, City University of New York) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 3-38 |
| Publication date | 2012-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Historical Materialism (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1465-4466 • E-ISSN: 1569-206X |
| Publisher | Brill (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1163/1569206x-12341241 |
| OpenAlex | W2015841637 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 43 |
| References cited | 18 |
The gap between Marx’s theoretical writings on political economy (for example, the three volumes of Capital ) and his historical writings (such as The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and The Civil War in France ) arises out of certain limitations that Marx placed upon his political-economic enquiries. These limitations are outlined in the Grundrisse where Marx distinguishes between the universality of the metabolic relation to nature, the generality of the laws of motion of capital, the particularities of distribution and exchange, and the singularities of consumption. What an analysis of the content of Capital shows is that Marx largely confined his efforts to identifying the law-like character of production to the exclusion of all else. While this allowed him to identify certain laws of motion of capital within any form of the capitalist mode of production, it did not and could not constitute a total theory of a capitalist mode of production. A better understanding of what it is that Marx can do for us through his identification of the general laws of motion leads to a far better appreciation of what it is that we have to do for ourselves in order to make Marx’s theoretical findings applicable to particular conjunctural conditions, such as those that have arisen throughout the economic crisis that began in 2007
Capital (architecture · Capitalism · Capitalist mode of production · Economics · Epistemology · Generality · Neoclassical economics · Physics · Political science · Politics · Relation (database · Sociology · Universality (dynamical systems · Economic Theory and Institutions · Economic Theory and Policy · History · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism
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Introduction to 'The Change in the Original Plan for Marx's Capital and Its Causes
Abstraction in the Marxian Oeuvre
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Rent and financialisation as concrete totality
The territorial fix
Difference as practice
Interview with Werner Bonefeld
History and Theory in the Time of Capital
Reading Capital in an Age of Climate Change
How Not to Write about the Rate of Profit
From Marx to market and back again
Poverty finance and the durable contradictions of colonial capitalism
Relative surplus populations and the crises of contemporary capitalism
Economic geographies of Asian international financial centers
Marx's Capital as History
Marxism in the Anthropocene
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Historical institutionalism for critical transport studies
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Exploitation, colonial capitalism, and the deep roots of climate vulnerability in West Africa
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Oocyte provision as a (quasi) social market
| Unique citing works | 43 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3,07 |
| Citation span | 2012 - 2026 (15) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 42 |