David Harvey on Marxism for the 21st Century
Karl Marx developed his critique of capitalism by studying England’s “satanic mills.” But, as David Harvey writes, he understood capitalism as a global system. Were he alive today, he would insist that socialists focus on Silicon Valley as much as Shenzhen.
It is an open question whether the laws of motion of capital that Karl Marx laid out apply with equal force in China, Bangladesh, the EU, and the US today. (Eye Ubiquitous / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Karl Marx set his theoretical investigations of capital’s mode of production and its laws of motion in the context of British industrial capitalism between the 1840s and the 1860s. He initially did so in the belief that “the country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.” Whether or not such a belief was justified is, of course, an open question.
Toward the end of his life, after intensive anthropological investigations and detailed consideration of the Russian case in particular, Marx himself began to doubt this proposition, thus preparing the way for a subsequent critique of what many view as his Eurocentrism. But what is not open to question is the depth and range of Marx’s knowledge of the state of industrial capital in mid-nineteenth-century Britain.
Made in Manchester
In this, Marx was fortunate to find a huge archive of investigative materials assembled by the British state-appointed factory inspectors, public health officials and parliamentary inquiries on everything from child labor to banking practices. He fulsomely acknowledged the importance of these materials for his own interpretations and complained at the “wretched state” of information from elsewhere:
Sorry, but this article is available to active subscribers only. Please log in or become a subscriber.