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Where to Start with Karl Marx
The way of the master
Laura Westford, 06/29/26
Trying to understand where to begin in the vast pantheon of left-wing or especially Marxist literature is a daunting task for many of us. Not only are there a plethora of works from the likes of Marx, Engels, and Lenin to read, but there are likewise many biographies of and commentaries on the various works by these great thinkers.
It’s a well-known joke/meme online that different strands of leftists/Marxists all hate each other, and there is certainly a grain of truth to this. What this ends up meaning is that huge swaths of people inevitably end up having different perspectives on where to start when trying to get into these studies of politics.
Many will recommend something like Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engels, or they might recommend State and Revolution by Lenin, and some will even recommend jumping straight into Marx’s Capital. Either way, there is a wide variety of perspectives on where to start in engaging with these ideas.
Someone who many on the left will no doubt be aware of is the great Marxist geographer and economist David Harvey. Harvey has been active in left-wing politics and Marxism for many decades at this point, and he has written many well-acclaimed books on Marxism, such as The Limits to Capital, 17 Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, The Conditions of Postmodernity, and Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason.
Harvey has also written a number of other books on politics such as A Brief History of Neoliberalism, which is very well-regarded as an analysis of the form of capitalism we live under to this very day.
Many people are aware of David Harvey because of the yearly courses he teaches on Marx’s Capital. This is where I first heard about him almost a decade ago, and I grew to have an interest in him. More recently, he has published a book, The Story of Capital, which gives us a great insight into Marx’s magnum opus, as well as showing how it can help us understand contemporary capitalism. I wanted to go over some of my thoughts on this book, having read it, and now come to the conclusion that it’s honestly one of the best books I’ve ever read.
The Story of Capital is, first and foremost, a book about Marx and his great book, Capital, which was an analysis of capitalist production and a critique of various analyses of political economy we saw during Marx’s day.
What Harvey does in The Story of Capital is give us an outline of some of the goals of Marx’s work, as well as presenting everything in the context of what Harvey calls his “Marx project,” which he has embarked on for several decades at this point.
One of the best and most valuable insights that Harvey presents is to point to Marx’s analysis of capitalism as a totality. The idea of the “totality” in Marxism is something some will be aware of, and Harvey presents it as a unique way of understanding capitalism.
Capitalism and capitalist society are not a mere collection of isolated individuals and actions, atomistic and unconnected from the wider social world. Instead, Harvey presents us with an analysis of capitalism in which everything is connected, the economy and broader social relations that underpin it.
A common criticism that is levied against liberal or bourgeois politicians and writers is to view capitalism in solely economic terms, thereby disconnected from social relations and historical processes leading to the social world we now live in.
The Marxist totality is about trying to understand all of these various systems and processes as being connected.
Harvey drew an analogy between this view of the totality and medicine/the understanding of the body. The human body is not a mere collection of random, unconnected parts. Instead, the body is made up of various systems, organs, parts, etc., which all work together as part of a wider process.
This analogy from Harvey was really interesting and something which is certainly useful in trying to understand capitalism and society.
It should be noted here that Harvey is not against trying to study specific aspects of capitalism, be it social relations, money, inflation, or whatever the case may be. He actually continues the analogy with medicine, and pointing out how sometimes you need people who specialise in specific fields of study in order to understand a certain thing.
This applies in trying to understand capitalism. However, Harvey does stress that ultimately, things need to be understood as a totality and connected to one another.
Some of my favourite parts of this book are when Harvey discusses primitive accumulation, the process in history where, during the early stages of capitalist development, people were separated from the land they previously owned/worked on, in order to make way for the development of capitalism and private ownership.
Land which was once owned in common by peasants was taken by force, with peasants being forced off their land and moved into developing cities, where they were forced to take up employment and sell their labour power to the emerging capitalist class.
This is a very basic overview of primitive accumulation and in the vast array of Marxist literature on this subject, you will see this analysis really fleshed out in great depth. In the case of Harvey and in the specific book The Story of Capital, we see some characteristically brilliant insight into this topic.
As you can no doubt imagine, this process of primitive accumulation and development of capitalism was a hugely violent process. Forcing people off land which had once been owned in common did not come easily and required a massive use of state power in order to achieve this.
As capitalism further developed, and when the introduction of machinery into the productive process became more common, you also had the rise of who correctly identified capitalists as replacing them with machines in order to avoid paying their workers for the same work.
Of course, Harvey presents this analysis as being interconnected and not at all as some isolated instance, but something deeply necessary for the development of capitalism. Capitalists are able to benefit from having the state on their side, exploiting their position as the ruling dominant class to further their interests via the state. The state in a capitalist society functions to legitimise class rule on behalf of the bourgeoisie.
Some of the most interesting parts of the book are when Harvey discusses matters of geography, most notably in the chapter “The Production of Space, Time and Place”. Being that Harvey is a geographer, this is really where he is in his element, and you can tell that he has great insight and experience in discussing these matters.
The kind of reactionary politics deciding who gets to be in our countries and which cultures we should allow is something we hear a great deal about, especially in the West, and it’s also highly related to capitalism.
Harvey’s insights into these topics from a Marxist analysis, making reference to the writing of Marx and others, are really powerful and make for some of the best reading in the whole book.
Overall, I have to say that The Story of Capital might genuinely be the best book I’ve read this year. There is a tendency when approaching certain Marxist books to be a bit worried, as things can often be very complex and hard to understand, but that isn’t the case with The Story of Capital whatsoever. Everything is presented very nicely, and it’s all easy to follow and understand, regardless of what understanding someone has of any of these topics.
I would actually recommend this book to people if they want to start getting into Marxism and Marx specifically. As I mentioned, the insights contained in regard to Marx are brilliant, but the way Harvey presents all of this and shows how we can use Marx’s insight to understand current politics and the state of capitalism is absolutely masterful, also.
Written by Laura Westford
Writer covering topics such as politics, culture, and philosophy
Published in Philosophy Today
Philosophy Today is dedicated to current philosophy, logic, and thought.
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