Book Reviews 147 Pathologies of Capital Review of The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism by David Harvey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 296, ISBN: 978-0-19-975871-5, $24.95 (Hbk.) By Matthew Morgan By Matthew Morgan By Matthew Morgan By Matthew Morgan Since the global financial crisis began to emerge in 2007, we have been treated to first a trickle and now a deluge of books on the topic. Most so far have sought to provide a perspective on the crisis, as it broke, from the inside of either a financial institution or the halls of American political power, focusing on how different responses were formulated. Meanwhile, a second and smaller stream of books has sought to conduct a thoroughgoing analysis of the factors that caused the crisis to occur (see e.g. McDonald and Robinson, 2009; Foster and Magdoff, 2009). What has been missing from this burgeoning literature, however, is a book which places the current crisis within a larger framework, recognising that while the circumstances that led to the crisis of 2008 may themselves be unique, crisis, as a product of capitalism, is not. The Enigma of Capital is an important contribution in this regard as it adopts a systemic perspective and proceeds to demonstrate, in a clear and ‘non-academic’ style, that crisis and instability are inherent to capitalism, revealing the latest crisis as simply the most recent manifestation of this tendency. Harvey has produced some of the most important works of the past several decades in terms of understanding the present configuration of global capitalism. While the Enigma of Capital incorporates elements from all of his prior books, it is perhaps most closely connected to A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005). If that book sought to comprehend the formation, extension, and dominance of neoliberalism across the globe, the Enigma of Capital seeks to underline its weaknesses, portraying the economics of neoliberalism as increasingly under strain. For Harvey, the crux of the problem is that the reproduction of a healthy capitalist economy requires a continual compound rate of growth per annum of 3 per cent (2010, p. 27). The rise of financialisation and neoliberalism that began in the 1970s was a response to this imperative, and to the surplus of capital that had been built up in the preceding years. However, rather than being invested in production, this surplus capital was directed towards the acquisition of property or absorbed within the banking system as speculative capital. And whilst temporarily effective, both of these avenues proved to be problematic and fuelled