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The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism |  | Author: David Harvey
Publisher: Profile Books
List Price: £14.99
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Rating:  5 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 1846683084
EAN: 9781846683084
Publication Date: April 15, 2010
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Product Description
Taking a long view of economic crisis, this title explains how capitalism came to dominate the world and why it resulted in the financial crisis. It examines the vast flows of money that surge round the world in daily volumes well in excess of the sum of its economies.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Never Arrived! July 7, 2010
ffuk (South West England)
1 out of 16 found this review helpful
Amazon use Home Delivery Network Limited (HDNL) to deliver their books. HDNL apparently(?) made repeated efforts to deliver the books to my home address but because this was in the daytime when I am out and no card was left for me to arrange pick up I am left without my books. There seems to be no solution from Amazon for this! I cannot ever order deliveries from Amazon again if they can't deliver to me. By the way I never have a problem with other companies delivering to me!
Book Review June 23, 2010
Mr. Alan Jones
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
A very thought provoking script with informative text on the current crisis in finance being explained.
A good read.
 Spellbinding .. .. as good as any thriller. June 3, 2010
Mr Fipple (Cheshire, UK)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
If you, like I, have found yourself pondering the banking crisis that befell the US and Europe at the close of 2008, agonised over the reasons and causes that led to the crisis, feel dispossession and indignation at the enormity and consequence of the bailouts, and wonder that the bailouts are indicative of counter-democratic tendencies, then David Harveys' 'Enigma of Capital' is a book for you; and if you have never contemplated any of the foregoing then David Harveys' 'Enigma of Capital' is also a book for you.
Prior to the events of 2008 and the succession of events that ensue within the Euro-zone I would never have considered reading such a title or such a topic, and I would have been scepitical that any one person could analyze the causes of a crisis, indeed a succession of crises, with such pragmatism and clarity. It is by chance and for unconnected reasons that in the new year of 2009 I began serious contemplation of other and more personal challenges and it was an entirely unexpected result that the direction I followed with regard to that would also yield unconventional insight in regard to economics, not from an aspect of a study of the flow of money, but from an aspect of evolutionary theory as applied to the long term functional evolution and expansion of economic activity. None of this makes me clever or knowledgeable but I do gain some satisfaction from having reasoned along one or two lines of thought and then subsequently finding similar assertions, and many, many more, put forward with aplomb and gravitas by Mr Harvey. 'The Enigma of Capital' is timely and revelatory in explaining not just the current, but a succession of market crises, and it resounds with me because a seemingly unlikely way of looking at things produced embryonic thoughts synergistic with (some of) the content.
David Harvey is a professor of anthropolgy with a detailed insight of Marx and Marxs' 'Capital'. Words like 'Marxism', 'Capitalism' and 'Communism' are loaded. Such loading precipitates pre-conceptions and such preconceptions would previously have been a barrier to my becoming interested, yet Harvey has fired curiosity in me, not for the political direction, but for potential to explain the how and why of the catastrophe.
Marx, I believe, was largely an essayist, reasoning out the evolutionary traits and likely consequences of growth and change within monetary economies and capitalist architectures much in the same vain that Darwin applied his insightful mind to the question of evolution. Marx, it is reported, had considerable interest in Darwins' work. It has taken decades for a clear endorsement and clarification of Evolutionary theory. Genetic science has now proven Darwin almost entirely correct in principle, albeit not entirely correct in the detail. For what I may know of Marx (very little) it may be that a succession of crises, especially the ripple effects of the banking crisis of 2008, and emerging analysis and comprehension could do for Marx what genetics did for Darwin, ie. prove him largely correct in principle. In appreciation of this Mr Harvey may have a head start over prevailing orthodoxy.
I agree with the two preceding reviewers, this is an immensely valuable analysis of the current financial and global monetary crisis that makes uncommon sense. I confess to be being a bit of a dullard, but I have found this volume to be both a compelling and readable explanation of a very challenging subject and it reads with the pace of a most skilfully crafted thriller. The suspense is in watching real-time events unfold as academics, advisers, governments and alliances try to face the ensuing challenges.
Excellent. Essential reading on the current crisis. May 10, 2010
Germinal (St. Ives)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
David Harvey has produced an excellent study of capitalism, the current economic crisis and the way the Left could respond to it.
Harvey deals with the current economic crisis in chapter one and gives a clear, concise account of what went wrong and why.
As for the current crisis, that is pretty much it in this book. What Harvey is concerned with is the fact that the current crisis is just the latest of many and Harvey is most concerned with demonstrating that crises are innate and necessary to capitalism.
Harvey presents his re-working and re-theorising of Marx's analysis of 'Capital' to show how capitalism uses crises to reform, renew and revitalise itself. This Harvey accomplishes brilliantly. Harvey explains complex ideas in an easy to understand way.
Harvey theorises that capitalism may have reached a point where it cannot get over crisis and get back to a compound growth rate of 3% PA as the amount of capital that needs to be invested is simply too huge. Hence the growth of the financial sector and financial crises.
This leads to the final section on what the Left should do to tackle the crisis. For capitalism can solve it's problems as long as it makes people pay the price of it's crises: lost jobs, lost pensions, destroyed environment, wrecked public services and vast amounts of capital destroyed in wars.
Harvey argues for a uniting of the Left across a broad range of struggles and across the globe. A necessary yet difficult task. Harvey's focus seems to be to look beyond the traditional labour movements which seems to contradict many of his arguments about how capitalism works - Harvey doesn't seem to see the working class as central to a socialist challenge to capitalism. That may prove contentious. Harvey's book deserves to be widely read and a focus for debates on the Left as to how to respond to the current crisis.
Brilliant! May 9, 2010
S. Moore
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
This book is excellent.
It explains everything about the world economy in a simple to understand way that even the most stupid of people should be able to understand
It explains how we got into the mess we are in now and how capital really is ripping us all off.
It explains how the world is run not by governments or people but by an elitist dogma called finacialism which has now gotten so far out of control that short of a world wide revolution know one knows quite how to stop it, or more to the point, capital won't allow us to stop it.
This book should be made compulsory reading for everyone, especially the politicians who are supposed to be running the show.
A really first rate book.
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