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Marx's Capital, Volumes II and III
Andrew Kliman Wednesdays, 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 15 sessions: January 25 - May 17 (except for March 22 and April 12) Tuition: $150 - $180, sliding scale (Vol. II only: $75 - $100; Vol. III only: $100 - $120)
If you’ve read Volume I of Capital and want to know how the book turns out, this is the course for you! In this 15-week course, we will emphasize how a rigorous theoretical understanding of the capital relation can aid ongoing challenges to global capitalism.
Volumes II and III of Capital complement and complete the analysis begun in Volume I. Volume II situates Volume I’s analysis of the immediate process of capitalist production within the circulation and reproduction processes. Volume III endeavors to show that real-world phenomena do not contradict, but are “forms of appearance” of, the “essential” relations and categories developed in Volume I.
We will begin with a 6-week survey of Volume II, focusing on the circuits of capital, the concept of productive labor, and the reproduction schemes. In connection with the latter, we will also discuss the debate over underconsumptionism, from Luxemburg to Hardt & Negri. The remaining 9 weeks, devoted to Volume III, will concentrate on the appearance of surplus-value as profit; the distribution of surplus-value within the capitalist class; Marx’s law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit and crisis theory; and his argument that capitalism’s production relations (not only its relations of income and wealth distribution) are historically specific and transitory. We will also critically examine critics’ persistent efforts to prove that Marx’s account of the transformation of values into production prices, and his theory of the falling rate of profit, are internally inconsistent.
Registered students will have access to a draft of a study guide and commentary on Volumes II and III – which includes weekly study suggestions and questions – that the instructor is currently writing. Use of the Penguin or Vintage edition of Volumes II and III, translated by David Fernbach, is strongly suggested.
Andrew Kliman has taught courses on Capital, Volume I and John Holloway’s Change the World Without Taking Power at the New SPACE. A professor of economics at Pace University, he has published extensively on Capital, crisis theory, and value theory. Co-editor of The New Value Controversy and the Foundations of Economics (2004), he has recently finished a book that reclaims Capital from the myth of internal inconsistency. Many of Kliman's writings are available at his website: http://akliman.squarespace.com.
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