Hadas Thier has written an excellent new book on Marxist economic theory. Through reading books about Marxist theory, one often gets a picture of the author’s intentions and desired audience. Leontiev’s Political Economy: A Beginner’s Course is a weighty Stalinist tome designed to ensure correctness in the ranks of the CPSU and Comintern. Emile Burn’s Introduction to Marxism sought to provide an ideological underpinning for the daily work of members of the British Communist Party. Ernest Mandel’s From Class Society to Communism aimed to orient young members of the Fourth International at a time when hopes of workers power and revolution were in the air. Chris Harman’s How Marxism Works was written to consolidate shop stewards and industrial militants in the 1970’s upsurge of the British trade union movement. Paul D’Amato wrote The Meaning of Marxism to give a Marxist foundation to the many young radicals who came into contact with the International Socialist Organization.
Hadas Thier’s A People’s Guide to Capitalism is written to explain Marxism to young activists in today’s America. It speaks to a time of the growth of the Democratic Socialists of America and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s speaks to a world young people know. Netflix, macchiatos, and Mr. Byrnes of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant all get into the book. There’s no trace of the widgets so beloved by economic writers.
However, this book is more than just an introduction to political economy in the way that the books mentioned above were. It is a serious book on Marxist theory in its own right. It takes up a number of complex items such as the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the concept of productive and unproductive labor, and financial derivatives.
Structure of the book
The structure of the book is quite straightforward and logically covers the main components of Marxist economics.
Birth of capital (Rise of class society, feudalism, primitive accumulation, rise of the bourgeoisie, beginning of the proletariat, and the metabolic rift).
The labor theory of value (Commodities, exchange and use value, labor and labor power,socially necessary labor time, living and dead labor, and commodity fetishism.)
Money (Universal equivalent, store place of value, “From glittering gold to imagined electronic bits”, and prices.)
Profits (Capital,“the hidden abode of production, exploitation, constant and variable capital, surplus value, rate of exploitation, class formation and consciousness.)
Accumulation (Competition, rounds of production, technology, concentration and centralization of capital, monopoly, and imperialism).)
Crisis (Difficulty in realizing exchange value, overproduction, against “underconsumptionist” theories, overaccumulation of capital, boom and bust, falling rate of profit, countervailing tendencies).
This is the skeleton of the book. There also are chapters on COVID, financialization, and the working class as “gravediggers of capitalism.”The author has added a number of fascinating “sidebars,” taking up contemporary issues and debates.
Strengths of the book
This book has many strengths. It is much easier to read than many books on these topics. The author has a great sense of humor. There are many examples of this throughout the book. Many readers will remember Marx’s appeal to those who had difficulty reading Capital. “There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.” Thier writes that her aim is to, “help you keep climbing with minimal huffing and puffing.”
The old favorite of bourgeois economic theory, “Marginally Utility Theory” is marvelously referred to as a “Marginally Useless Theory.”In Marxist theory, M-C-M’(or M Prime, the prime indicating a greater some of money than you started with) is a basic formula of capitalist accumulation. In a move that would have Leontiev rolling his grave, the prime marke is retitled the “doohickey above the M.”
Were it not for the countervailing tendencies, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall would “seem like a pretty big glitch in the matrix,” she writes! A capitalist who defaults on a loan is compared to a roommate “who is just a flake and blows (the rent) on slot machines.”
It’s often said that the purpose of an introductory book is to encourage the reader to read more complex material on the topic, in this case to read Marx. Hadas actually succeeds in doing this. Marx’s writings combine captivating metaphors from literature and mythology with sometimes dry economic theory. Hadas’s Marx quotes show Marx at his most vivid and expressive. She has been able to show Capital as a great Gothic masterpiece that will certainly reward the reader.
Another virtue of this book is the author’s ability to get straight to the point, to cut to the quick.
A great deal of ink has been spilled on different levels of abstraction in Capital. Marxist writers have debated the influence of Hegel on Marx’s forms of exposition. In one paragraph, Hadas gets to the heart of the matter easily. It’s worth quoting. She writes, “much as a chemist or physicist must set up a controlled laboratory, Marx sought to establish a social corollary of such a laboratory, but as Marx wrote: ‘In the analysis of economic forms neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of assistance. The power of abstraction must replace both.’ By distilling, simplifying the key elements of the system, Marx was able to present them in their purest form, isolated from complicating factors”.
There are many other examples of crisp and succinct writing in this book.A good example is the clarity of the book’s definition of fictitious capital. Fictitious capital is not real existing capital, but claims on future capital.” If only all Marxists could be this clear and to the point.
Conclusion
Lance Selfa recently wrote on this website, “The good news about the otherwise awful year of 2020 is that millions experienced a political awakening. The challenge for the socialist left is to prepare itself to offer political and organizational alternatives to a ‘militant minority’ of them.”
This book is an important tool in the building of these alternatives.
Hadas Thier, A People’s Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics, Haymarket Books, Chicago, Illinois, 2020.
Adam Shils is a member of the International Socialism Project in Chicago.
