What are some great works under the "political economy" umbrella?
January 23, 2016 8:45 AM Subscribe
I'm interested in studying more topics that fall under the category of "political economy" but I'm not quite sure where to start. Can anyone recommend any articles or books -- academic or otherwise -- that would fall under the "political economy" umbrella? (Note that I do not have a great definition of what I mean by political economy, so feel free to chime in there as well!)
You can't go wrong with Adam Smith and Karl Marx.
posted by hydropsyche at 10:49 AM on January 23, 2016
posted by hydropsyche at 10:49 AM on January 23, 2016
Read Capital, Volume 1 alongside David Harvey's A Companion to Capital. Afterward consider some of Harvey's other works (his The Limits of Capital is genius, but a bit of a slog; his other recent work on neoliberalism is also worth looking into.
Oh, and Harvey has put videos of his classes on Capital online, so if you're an auditory learner that might be actually better for you than A Companion to Capital is.
The footnotes in Capital will provide you with an excellent reading list in the best parts of pre-Marxian political economy; one key reason why Capital is so much smarter than the Manifesto and Marx's other early works is that he spent the intervening decades reading basically all of political economy.
The first three chapters of Capital are, famously, a real slog; Marx spends these chapters giving a relatively abstract (but very, very rigorous) definition of what commodities are and what money is. some people say skip them and start with chapter 4. I enjoyed them, but I was one of those obnoxious boys who read Kant for fun. The other thing to remember about Marx is that he more or less invented a new language for the discussion of political economy, and it just necessarily takes a little bit of confusion at first until you see how all the parts of his argument snap together. My go-to comparison is to the Netflix season of Arrested Development; there's all these in-jokes right up front that are very confusing until you see how they work in the later episodes.
so I guess the tl;dr is to read Capital Volume 1, to read it with Harvey at your side in one medium or another, and to be prepared to have to read it twice, or at least read the first part twice.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:03 AM on January 23, 2016 [4 favorites]
Oh, and Harvey has put videos of his classes on Capital online, so if you're an auditory learner that might be actually better for you than A Companion to Capital is.
The footnotes in Capital will provide you with an excellent reading list in the best parts of pre-Marxian political economy; one key reason why Capital is so much smarter than the Manifesto and Marx's other early works is that he spent the intervening decades reading basically all of political economy.
The first three chapters of Capital are, famously, a real slog; Marx spends these chapters giving a relatively abstract (but very, very rigorous) definition of what commodities are and what money is. some people say skip them and start with chapter 4. I enjoyed them, but I was one of those obnoxious boys who read Kant for fun. The other thing to remember about Marx is that he more or less invented a new language for the discussion of political economy, and it just necessarily takes a little bit of confusion at first until you see how all the parts of his argument snap together. My go-to comparison is to the Netflix season of Arrested Development; there's all these in-jokes right up front that are very confusing until you see how they work in the later episodes.
so I guess the tl;dr is to read Capital Volume 1, to read it with Harvey at your side in one medium or another, and to be prepared to have to read it twice, or at least read the first part twice.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:03 AM on January 23, 2016 [4 favorites]
+1 for David Harvey, and his Capital lectures are all free on his site.
posted by colie at 11:10 AM on January 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by colie at 11:10 AM on January 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
Mark Twain has a short piece titled Political Economy.
(tee hee!)
posted by Liesl at 12:00 PM on January 23, 2016
(tee hee!)
posted by Liesl at 12:00 PM on January 23, 2016
i don't know what you mean by "political economics", but these two books are about economics and inform a political position:
both are good reads.
posted by andrewcooke at 3:15 PM on January 23, 2016
posted by andrewcooke at 3:15 PM on January 23, 2016
Have a look at Brad DeLong's blog. He teaches on it, and blogs on it, and that'd be a good place to pick up information going forward.
posted by persona au gratin at 4:13 AM on January 24, 2016
posted by persona au gratin at 4:13 AM on January 24, 2016
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