Left Out: David Harvey on Marx, Capital & the Madness of Economic Reason
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- čas přidán 6. 11. 2017
- Left Out, a podcast produced by Paul Sliker, Michael Palmieri, and Dante Dallavalle, creates in-depth conversations with the most interesting political thinkers, heterodox economists, and organizers on the Left.
In this episode, we speak with David Harvey about his latest book, MARX, CAPITAL, AND THE MADNESS OF ECONOMIC REASON, as well as what the Left most focus on to effectively organize for a better economy and society.
** Please support Left Out on Patreon. We need your support to keep this show running! / leftout **
David Harvey is arguably the most influential living geographer, as well as one of the world’s leading Marxist scholars. He is among the most cited intellectuals of all time across the humanities and social sciences.
Harvey currently works as distinguished professor of anthropology and geography at CUNY, where he has been teaching Marx’s “Capital: Critique of Political Economy” for more than four decades. His course on Marx’s Capital has been downloaded by over two million people internationally since appearing online in 2008.
Harvey is also a famous author of several bestselling books, including The Enigma of Capital, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 17 Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, and many more.
His latest book, Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason (out today), makes the core of Karl Marx’s thinking in the three volumes of Capital clear and accessible for the lay reader, without compromising their depth and complexity.
Marx's trilogy concerns the circulation of capital: volume I, how labour increases the value of capital, which he called valorisation; volume II, on the realisation of this value, by selling it and turning it into money or credit; and volume III, on what happens to the value next in processes of distribution.
As Harvey argues in our interview, most people who read Capital often stop after the 1,152 pages of Volume I, which is very problematic if you want to understand the workings of capital as a totality.
We ask Harvey why understanding all three volumes of Capital is so crucial, and why technological, economic and industrial change over the last 150 years makes Marx’s analysis more relevant now than ever.
In the last half of the discussion, we probe into whether it’s necessary for social movements today to develop a stronger institutional basis for understanding how capital and capitalism works, and ask Harvey what the Left most focus on to effectively organize for a better economy and society.
Thanks everyone for the great feedback! Remember that LEFT OUT is aired on d@w's networks but is an independently funded show. Here's how you can support them on Patreon (just a $3 donation gives you the chance to call in/write in questions for future guests!): www.patreon.com/leftout
is this a joke: why should anybody give money to hear something everybody knows
"The vice chairman of the New York branch of the Chase Manhattan bank for real estate was there and he said 'this is a fantastic insight, I don't know why you're all complaining about it!' So he said to me 'where did you get it from?' and so I thought I'd tell him. 'It comes from Engels.' 'Oh, does he work at the Brookings Institution?" 😂😂😂
I’d love to see Harvey and Wolff run the treasury and federal reserve
I like your plan for how to run the finances!
Pill Box So you'd like to see the reserve done away with too? I'm good with that.
Pill Box I'll second that...haha. can you imagine?
After the revolution my friend :D
The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve are institutions designed to serve the sole purpose of supporting and upholding capitalist rule. Attempting to use these institutions to advance a progressive agenda is naïve at best and foolish at worst.
Just imagine a well intentioned progressive in the position of chairman of the Federal Reserve arguing in the midst of a financial crisis that the big banks should not be bailed out. He would face against him the combined forces of US Congress, the mainstream media, the vast majority of the bankers that populate the boards of the Federal Reserve Banks through out the country. To put it mildly, that "progressive" would be crucified if he did not go along with the program of bailing out the big banks.
You guys have just MADE my Tuesday evening. Professor Harvey is a wonderful, insightful and important thinker and teacher. With D@W - a marriage made in heaven.
As a general comment on this show: I very much appreciate hearing a younger person both expounding knowledge and generally helming a discussion with authority. You obviously grasp the importance of inter-generational collaboration.
Awesome! I will be picking up this book as soon as I travel to a bookstore. My town has no more bookstores and I absolutely refuse to support Amazon in any way.
In depth is a wonderful thing. In depth with David Harvey is especially wonderful, thank you!
Ditto! Bravo! Really fascinating discussion with David Harvey.
Extremely worthwhile episode. I particularly appreciated Mr. Harvey's final comments on worker co-ops because he succinctly said that they might have their place, but ultimately they ain't gonna make a revolution. Especially today, it being the 100th Anniversary of the October Revolution, a seizure of state power by the working class seems to me to be the way to go. Workers would be very happy to give the workplace to the robots while they teed up that little white ball on their recently appropriated beautifully landscaped golf course, and then after a few G&T's at their recently appropriated clubhouse, could look forward to a few relaxing hours watching Ballad of a Soldier or perhaps The Cranes are Flying via their online streaming service. And the day ends with another sweet dream where a shot from the fairway takes two bounces on the green and plops into the cup.
Thanks everyone. Love this podcast.
Great interview - and it's nice to see D@W expanding its content. Thank you!
Excellent program. Insightful dialogue with Prof. Harvey. Would be fascinating to hear a discussion between Profs. Harvey and Wolff on the immediate and long-term efficacy of growing worker co-ops in the overall effort to transition from prevailing capitalist models toward something better.
Solidarity from Afghanistan
Really interesting point about artificial scarcity being a sort of classist eugenics. If you plunder the economy, double the rent, maximize profits on medicine, and sell utilities to the lowest bidder, people are gonna die, most of them poor. It's common practice to buy food and store it until the price goes up, while people who can't afford it starve. And "decrease the surplus population", as Scrooge put it.
Very good stuff. I like the roundaboutness, in political terms. It can be frustrating, because people want a simple answer and a simple strategy - "do this and we get revolution", but it's better overall to take in the whole picture and tease out the insight, which allows a more flexible and dynamic response to everything.
Thank you!
Finally very relevant, qualified comment on UBI by Harvey. He is right to be "nervous" about it and correctly explains how Silicon Valley is pushing it.
The only way things have ever gotten better for working men and women in the United States has been through mass mobilization and class struggle, period. Be it Social Security, Medicare, collective bargaining (which has been steadily chipped away at by the employer class and corporate interests for decades now), 40 hour work week, women's suffrage, minimum wage (which has been stagnating), black rights, decent wages, consumer protections, the Bill of Rights!, occupational safety measures, environmental protections -- ALL of these life affirming policies were NEVER given to the common folks by the elites, they were fought for and struggled for over many years and wrested away from a ruling class that was wedded to an exploitative status quo. Most of the time the corporate owned mainstream media were indifferent, ignored or were downright hostile to the forces advocating for progressive change. We the masses will once again have to mobilize over the coming years to stop the wasteful and violent Washington war machine and institute a serious federal jobs program at family supporting wages, and pass single-payer national healthcare coverage. The battles are looming. Will you be ready to 1.) know when to support and join the movements, and 2.) know how to recognize the disinformation that's sure to come from the corporate media and ruling elites (most Republicans but many of them corporate Dems)?
Drew Hunkins, excellent post. I agree with you completely.
Thank you. In solidarity, Drew Hunkins
I want to hear David Harvey debate or at least in conversation with Noam Chomsky.
you guys should film also if possible to put here on youtube, thanks great podcast
Hey can you guys get economist Edward Wolff from NYU on your program. (Wolff, 2017) International Comparisons of Household Wealth Inequality
Very interesting discussion and interview. But please do something to clarify your audio. Very difficult to hear what Dr Harvey says. The words are hard to make out. Probably due mainly to his speaking style in an interview. Needs to speak directly into the mic.
20 minutes in and youve plugged twice for me to give you money.
I agree with that. Marx had the concept...political economy. On the one hand, you can look at production, distribution and exchange and the creation of surplus value in economic terms. But that doesn't explain, on it's own, how society is divided by class and how the ruling class came to appropriate the surplus. Politics decides how the surplus value is distributed and in historical terms. Indeed, to be crystal clear, existential and definitive about it, politics means THE LAW. That is, the legal ownership and control of land , wage labour and capital. Although economics informs proceedings economics, as such, has no legal status....without the law. Capitalism and the economic and social institutions and relations of capitalism are all legally constituted. This leads neatly onto the point about the future....what "socialism" should we replace capitalism with? Never mind Marx...who has not noticed these alleged "individual" members of the ruling class are all backed up with military and civil institutions of law enforcement? Without that they would not own and control anything for long. Likewise who has not noticed the tendency of capitalism to resort to barbarism and how that "cripples" the development of civil society? Marx's socialism means the development of civil society and freedom from the destructive military and civil forces the ruling class use to oppress the working class. I would also add that I have studied Hegel. Although I would not recommend doing that without guidance, there's plenty who misuse Hegel in support of their Anti-Marxism, I think Lenin was right. Make no mistake....Marx is deep. So long as these capitalist laws exist and remain on the books Marx will always be relevant.
i mostly agree, but we have to remember that the people are not only opressed, they are exploited. looking to the law we can see that the workers are opressed, but looking at production we can see the exploration. so marx's socialism does not mean only the development of civil sociery and freedom from the ruling class using opression, but to overcome this process of exploration by the ruling class on the labor of the working class. the exploration and the opression, in capitalism, have an interesting dynamic, they dominate each other in a way that creats a dependency of sorts, so to speak. sorry if my interpretation was wrong, english is not my first language, im just beggining my studies on marx
im reading a book of lenin about his studies in switzerland about hegel, and i do agree with lenin too about the bourgeoisie otimism in hegel, wich is understandable under his circumstances
30:30
How do I argue with people about socialism and Marxism? Because each time I try, to them I immediately become another screaming antifa supporter who wants more muslims in American and should go live in Venezuela. Someone give me some good ideas....
we cannot fight against the windmills..socialism is a matter of historical processes..if the masses will find themselves in poverty,wars,ecc they will start taking communists more seriously..
epsilon881 I always attempt to explain that socialism is direct democracy and places power in the hands of the people. They've been brainwashed into believing capitalism gives them freedom and democracy, when the exact opposite is true. It's difficult to get through to people who are so thoroughly brainwashed. You also have to explain things to them in the absolute simplest of terms.
callisto I suppose I should have read your comment before commenting myself. It appears we're on the same wavelength.
Don't argue. Start from values and good sense, and build up slowly. I find moral clarity works, which begins with recognising Marx as a humanist (a Christian humanist, according to some). Morality is built into the human genome, and is part of our brains, so moral arguments are always understood. I explain Marx's insight as an analysis of the so-called "real world" of work and paying bills in terms of the idolatry of Mammon, that the nature of capital is a social relation in which humans are placed at the service of previously amassed value to cause it to grow in amount, in which the human is subordinated to the inhuman, rather than wealth being at the service of human beings, or humanity, to enable them to grow. The process of capital accumulation is thus the idolatrous worship of the false god which practically rules our lives, and which we have to overthrow to liberate ourselves, and to do away with inhumanity and the causes of inhumanity. Profits measure and manifest greed, as the portion gained from others so as to have more than others and more than actually in any way needed by the wealthy individual. If you get people with the concept and definition of greed, the rest follows, sooner or later, including that it is not the rich who are better people than others, but exactly the opposite, clinically speaking, since profits and private wealth measure greed, whether people consciously feel greedy or not, and that therefore it is the rich who ought to be policed and fined, not the poor, and those who don't build their lives around the desire to get rich, who do more useful and necessary work who should be rewarded to make the world healthier and less dysfunctional. Also, the origin of inequality is profit-taking in general, pure and simple, because by definition a profit is a redistribution of income to the profit-taker. Marxism traditional labours the point about workplace exploitation, the exploitation of people's effort and creativity (and other aspects of humanity, especially in sales, which tends to require people's ability to charm and be nice as well) for which they are paid less than the value realised from their work. But the exploitation of labour is just one form of profit-taking, which include rents and interest as well, and all of which involve and require some combination of compulsion and deception. People do not willingly accept a deal they know to be unfair. Capitalists consciously seek out situations in which people have no choice at all about how much they are paid, if at all, about how much they pay for things, and for what, to make the highest profit, and create those situations to ensure them. The sole and entire purpose of the whole advertising industry is to mislead the public about the relative desirability of commodiites so they will pay more for them than they are actually worth, and buy more than they need - to indoctrinate false values. So profits also measure the level of force - tyranny - and fraud involved.
As David Harvey said in the interview, Present your views not as Marx or leftist. Most Americans say they're conservative but they support medicare for all.
Using labels such as socialist or communist, even atheist will kill your chances of having a good discussion with people.
Point out facts about society without saying its a Marxist critique.
But also you have to bare in mind that you're never going to convince someone in one session of chat. The best you can do is get them to think. Using a socialist label turns the thinking process off. It's the same reason to actually get people to become atheist, you need to critique religion from within it, pointing out inconstancies with presenting a conclusion. That comes naturally.
@romanmir01 Explain, in detailed economic terms, why in your view that wouldn't be possible. Because it is, if you do a little self education you might understand
I have a hell of a lot of respect for David Harvey, but I simply son't understand his stance on UBI and automation. The pace of automation is not going to stop, and there simply will be more job losses. In a society where there is less and less need for human labour, we simply have to find some way of fairly distributing the burdens of work and the fruits of automation. UBI is a pretty decent, manageable, realistic solution in the current economic and political climate. I don't find the fact that Silicone Valley are in favour of it to be a good argument against it, in and of itself. Yes, they want it because it benefits them as members of the capitalist class. But on the left, we can also want it because it benefits the working class (and the underclass). It doesn't have to be a solution for all time, it just needs to deal with the concrete problems of distribution which we're facing right now. And it does so in a semi-radical way: it goes beyond traditional welfare state tinkering, but doesn't alter the fundamental structure of society. Purely pragmatically, that's a winning political formula.
If not UBI, then what's the solution in the short to medium term? Can we really continue to place work at the centre of our lives in a world where work is increasingly unnecessary? Should we act like new Luddites, and smash the machines / actively attempt to stall the progress of automation? Wouldn't that be a complete abrogation of moral responsibility, insofar as we have a duty to emancipate humanity from the burden of labour to the greatest degree possible? I'm yet to come across a single, realistic solution for dealing with the problem of automation aside from UBI. I recognise that it means we keep ourselves in thrall to capitalism, but at least we'd be in thrall to a fairer version of capitalism. Frankly, I don't think its realistic to say we need the socialist revolution first, and worry about these problems later. I suspect that UBI-capitalism is the most realistic transitional stage towards socialism, anyway. Without UBI, there may never even be a socialist society. Unless of course the idea is to get us to a point where the working classes break under the strain of their condition and revolt, but to advocate against UBI on this basis is to instrumentalise people in a way which is morally repugnant. I'm not interested in keeping people miserable in order to mobilise them against capitalism, and no-one else with an ounce of decency should be happy with that either.
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'left out' ..worth a sup (or two or three..)
Displacism.
48:00 whuuuuhhh, a leading marxist intellectual critical of george sorros?
what marxist wont be critical of capitalists lul. in socialism george soros would lose his empire.
It's a shame he pays no attention to how he talks - almost as if he were bored of what he was saying...
fair point
I think it generally agreed that Marx's economic analysis in Das Kapital is nearly unassailable; however, his prediction of and prescription for future social change in the Communist Manifesto were erroneous. Assuming we can understand the nature and causes of our current economic malaise, how can we have any assurance as to how to remedy it?
In this regard, Harvey observes that liberals are too fragmented to effect change, and populism is too easily co-opted by totalitarianism. Is the alternative some form of optimistic nihilism? If not, else what?
Tom Eubank Marx didn't write much about communism he wrote critiques of existing socialism and capitalism. We can look at world leaders who operate under socialism and fairly critique their techniques. But we must also relax the propaganda and look at a sensible way of taking what we like from the Soviet Union and Cuba and etc. and throw away that which we don't like.
You talk about class - but you buy clothes - and the money you spend on your clothes - the majority of that money goes into the bank accounts of the 1%. Every purchase you make - you have no choice, but to give money to 1% ers. You talk the talk - but are you able to walk the walk?
I think we could believe more of what you are saying if you went beyond talking - be practical - show that you are actually supporting the working class with your purchases and not supporting the 1% ers.
Vote Republican
Capitalism and profit motive is the most moral economic system, which allows people to vote with their money, to have their sovereignty instead of being absorbed and oppressed by some collective.
romanmir01 there is no democracy under capitalism.
Nor morality
Occupy wall street was idiotic. The culprits are in washington dc, wall street certainly acted upon the incentives provided to them like any rational actor would, but the reasons are hiding in plain sight in the government halls