On Demand
Amerika
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Social theorist David Harvey, distinguished professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center of CUNY and author of various books including The Limits to Capital, discusses the economic crisis and what it means for the future of U.S. global power.
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Glad to hear from a Marxist - hope to learn something - only thing I remember about Marx is that he said something like 'capitalism carries within it the seeds of its own destruction' - which seems worth thinking about these days. And that I enjoyed reading John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" in the 70's, which my father refused to look; said Berger was a Marxist and those people were all terrorists.
what is the relationship
between
capitalism and democracy?
Susan, I wonder sometimes if Marx would be nonplussed by the fact that there is something called Marxism. My understanding of Marx is that he observed and commented on capitalism; never proposed an alternative.
I derive immense satisfaction from knowing that Marx's ideas are still resonating in the public discourse today... Partly because I know it infuriates the conservatives who've slowly gripped the frame of debate in this country over the last 40 years or so.
Why do supercapitalist free marketeers label Obama's supercapitalist free market economic policies as socialism while, along with nearly all American leftists, forgetting that Keynes and FDR were the ones who in fact saved capitalism. The conversation has to at some point move away from the more obvious critique of Obama's advisers/policies and toward an analysis of why the current heavy national discourse on macroeconomics invariably excludes any views to the left of Paul Krugman (or Joseph Stiglitz, when the media is feeling especially populist).
Hi. I'm a big fan of Karl Marx - brilliant and perspicacious (did I spell that right?).
Would you ask your guest for a quick precis of how *he* defines Marxism today?
There are many progressive and left -- and many open-minded liberal -- economists to read in this vein.
Robert Heilbroner, who taught at The New School.
Herbert Gintis and Samuel Bowles - two extremely respected economists who were denied tenure at Harvard despite the unanimous support of the Economics Dept. They were denied for no reason other than their left political thinking.
Lester Thurow, at MIT, who co-authored a layperson's intro to economics with Heilbroner.
John Kenneth Galbraith, liberal but no leftist.
James K. Galbraith, at the University of Texas
Michael Hudson, who has been a guest on the Leonard Lopate Show.
many others.
Another good guest with an interesting take on this. I'm starting to come around, wnyc...
Trickle down 'theory' (it was no more a theory than Creationism is) has been the default economic view since the late 70s. But the real point about what's happening is nicely stated by Josh Cohen and Joel Rogers in a book called "On Democracy".
Roughly, "it is a straightforward feature of the logic of interest satisfaction in capitalist democracies that the interests of the wealthy decision-makers must be satisfied before those of the broad population".
It's not trickle down theory, it is that we have a grossly oligarchical system which forces dependence of average people on the oligarchs like AIG and Citigroup and Goldman Sachs executives.
Fascinating. We still have no real alternative. Marx was smart enough not to propose one. What should we do?
Hi Professor,
I've spent dozens of hours listening to your courses on Das Kapital online. I'm glad and surprised to hear you speaking about the current crisis directly. How likely are we to hear more people speaking in public about similar issues who are not paid directly or indirectly by large corporations? It seems to me the vast majority of commentary on the financial crisis (and other news events) emanates from individuals and institutions with a pecuniary interest in what's being said. Thus no one speaks disinterestedly, or at least not in the interest of ordinary working people.
and what about Tito?
I'm interested in hearing your views of Singapore. They seem to be a successful socialist regime.
The caller raises a good point. We can argue about the Kuhmer Rouge or Pinochet as bad actors on both sides, but the riddle to me is: how do we come up with a new social compact with the checks and balances to prevent any cabal from seeking and gaining the advantage?
Marxism and communism. To assert as the caller Mark asserts, that Communism as practiced was a direct outgrowth of Marxism is simply false. Glaringly false.
That said, it is undeniable that all attempts at implementing Marxism broadly have been pretty dismal failures.
BUT neither is it the case that ALL capitalism is a resounding success.
Any honest commentator must distinguish Marx's economics from the prescriptive schemes attempted in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
It is telling that you will not find any reading of Marx in any leading business school in the United States. You'll be hard pressed even to find John Maynard Keynes read at, say, Harvard Business School or Wharton or Chicago.
So much for an honest, open, capitalist view of history.
For Mark who just called in:
Isn't the colonialist empire built upon a capitalist economy? Hasn't capitalism participated in fascism and silencing and murdering people who challenge the interests of Western property owners? Hasn't the U.S. government constantly intervened and supported the fascist regimes of various "Third World" countries in order to maintain oil and land interests?
Cuba has the better infant mortality rate because they abort problem fetuses right into the 9th month- in the USA, with our better technology, we try to save even the most seriously ill and damaged newborns.
The professor was disingenuous to bring this up.
Oh, please. Are we going to illegal immigration? The numbers show that low wages and unemployment are caused in greater numbers by technological replacement of workers, not illegal immigrants or outsourcing to other countries.
If the professor wants to compare the amount of blood that was shed by each side in the Cold War, by all means, let's compare!! The collectivist agricultural policies of the Chinese and the Russians killed countless millions, and that's just the beginning...Police states throughout the Eastern bloc countries that destroyed people's lives and very souls. And Cuba? The professor mentions education, but what good is being able to read when you're told what books are acceptable...what good is being able to think for that matter??
Here's the alternative:
If we have the right to vote for our Congressman, we should have the right to vote for our boss.
Wal-mart and all corporations should be owned and managed democrtically by their employees.
Great show! Great comments! BTW, I lived in Japan for three years and visited Singapore 11 years ago. Back then, it was very clean but also had a heavy police presence. I was never really comfortable there. Maybe it's changed, I don't know.
Why doesn't Congress take right to print and coin money back from the Federal Reserve so our financial policies have a better chance at serving the people than the private banking families that compose the Federal Reserve?
The root of the problem is the system is fixed - to serve our banking masters and not the people
Marx had it ALL WRONG. His fundamental axiom was false, that LABOR creates wealth, and that the boss or "capitalist" exploits and robs the laborer of this "surplus value," and hence the boss is a thief who should be put down if labor is to get the full value of its work.
But in fact, Labor does NOT produce wealth. Labor produces THINGS. Or services. But those things and services are WORTHLESS unless they are sold. You can make the best thing in the world, but if for whatever reason, no one is willing to pay for it, then it is worthless - even if it useful. Wealth is created only by profits, if any, in the trading process. The capitalist who puts all the factors of production together, and makes the sale, naturally reaps the greatest benefit. That is what capitalism is, and why the capitalist is at the top of the pyramid, but only for as long as he or she can continue to put deals together at a profit.
BTW, the closest thing ever to approach voluntary communism was the kibbutz system in Israel, but it has mostly collapsed and required government bailouts. I lived on one, and they really look pretty at the outset, but after a while you begin to see that most people really do want to run their own lives. They don't want a Central Committee to decide if they go to college or work in the chicken coops.
Bill,
That is an intriguing idea. Where would the employees get the capital necessary to start a business like Wal-Mart?
Regarding all the caller questions on what a Marxist economy would or should look like, perhaps one should examine the lack of bona fide Marxist economists/Marxist economics departments at a time when economists clearly have more power than ever in both government and the private sector. A proponent might advocate the cultivation of Marxism in the academic fields that capitalism infiltrated long ago. Namely mathematics and science, the subverted models of which completely determined the current crisis.
Capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth, whereas Communism is the equal distribution of poverty (except for the Party bosses).
This caller is lumping together so many things. There is "Marxism" at play in every economy around the world, including within the US. Any form of economic exchange that recognizes the social implications and doesn't immediately commodify the people involved has a Marxist perspective.
By the way, what use is it to compare Communist regime death tolls when no one wants that system? Do you think Harvey wants the USSR again? Forming new versions of hybrid capitalism that fits the time is what is currently going in the US and around the world.
In regards to his comment about people looking for more meaningful connections, I think back to my need to meaningfully connect to people and do something meaningful, productive and future building after 9/11 and am told that the most important thing I can do is to go shop (hence feed the never capitalism engine). We have had significant cooperative efforts in our country in the past - be it community barn building, field planting, during war efforts, etc. It seems that when cooperative efforts are socially valued and stressed, a significant number of us raise to the occasion. When greed is promoted as "good"; selfabsorption is glamourized; we relentlessly see what we need to wear, smell like, drive, watch to be socially acceptable enough to have friends or love; it does seem to set it up so social cooperation is for loosers, every person has to be for themselves and to succeed every action is an act of war. And we as a people, a social entity, a country are the worse for it.
I heard that in Singapore you can be flogged for offenses that might be considered minor here, like littering.
mc in Brooklyn:
"That is an intriguing idea. Where would the employees get the capital necessary to start a business like Wal-Mart?"
Good question there are a number of possibilities. Two examples/sources of info I can personally recommend:
1)
http://www.theworkingworld.org/
This is a fund started to help workers in Argentina who took over their workplaces when the owners abandoned them after the 2001 economic collapse. See also the Avi Lewis/Naomi Klein documentary on the subject, "The Take."
2)
http://www.usworker.coop/front
This is the homepage of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives
Uncommon economic indicator: A Marxist is allowed on public radio to address the crisis! Is that a breakthrough? Keep it up Brian , there are lots of us out there.
We know what Marx would propose: class stuggle and internationalism. Professor Harvey has it right too- it's essential to use the crisis to build solidarity and understand the causes of these events as historic developments generated by the movements of capital
Hi Bill:
I'll try those links, thanks. I notice that one had to do with a takeover of a workplace that was abandoned. Seems like a good idea. What I wonder about is starting something new. Often businesses have small, humble beginnings, and there is no reason for them not to be started by cooperatives, but it can be dangerous to allow your economic well-being to get mixed up with someone else's. I have seen situations like this go really bad. On the other hand, our collective well-being seems to be mixed up right now with mega-capitalists and look where that got us.
I had to laugh when I discovered that the event that David Harvey is speaking at has a dress code: "The Down Town Association requires visitors to adhere to a dress code. Attendees who do not adhere to this dress code may not be admitted to this event. For Gentlemen: Business casual (collared shirt; slacks). No denim or sneakers." Clearly no grubby workers allowed. God forbid that "Business Casual" include business casual clothes for those who don't shop at Bob's Overpaid and Arrogant Shop, eh?
jgarbuz (#23),
There's wealth, and there's wealth. True wealth exists, independent of any economic system, in the natural resources of any given place. The wealth you are talking about is only relative to a capitalist economy. The "things" and "services" produced by individuals are of real value, whether or not they have been "sold". The "profits" that a businessperson reaps by processing and packaging them are merely a contrivance, as are their "monetary" value.
mc from brooklyn:
That is true but usually you'll get fined if you are a a foreigner. On the other hand, most ex-pats in Asia are aware of the rep that Singapore has and wouldn't dare to litter. It's so clean that you don't want to anyway. I never saw anyone eating on the street and I heard that chewing gum on the street is against the law.
Bruce Foster:
Wow. Serious irony. So much for NYC and its tolerance. I guess that could mean no bridge-and-tunnel people, eh? A little class warfare, maybe?
Bruce and mozo,
Isn't is a bit simplistic to say that not wearing jeans and sneakers amounts to some form of hypocrisy? Technically a pair of Dickie's work pants, a standard Dickie's collard work shirt and some steel toe safety boots would pass the dress code requirement of a collard shirt, no jeans and no sneakers. If you want to look at economic factors and their relation to exclusion, take as a point of comparison the fantastic lecture series at the New York Public Library, an institution that even has the word public in it and is financed in part by public funds. Although it does not require a dress could, there is an admission fee per lecture of $25 per person, or $15 for members, who have already paid other fees. The event in which the Professor is speaking next week requires no fee at all, and is part of a 5 part series--all of which are free and would amount to a spending of $125 dollars to attend the entire series if it were presented in say the NYPL. They're a great number of people who could not afford this, which is why programs like Brian Lehrer's and this series are important. Nitpicking aside, the NYPL lectures are some of the most intellectullay stimulating in the city. What is more troubling about your line of glib thinking, oh isn't it ironic that x does y and says z, is that this syllogism is a tangent from the subject matter being presented and is employed as a defense mechanism so as to distract from any substantive discussion about what is being presented. I for one would prefer to fully and frequently debate the content of what the Professor is saying as opposed to get into a quaint argument about fashion that doesn't even look at fashion closely itself.
Why is capitalism associated with freedom and communism associated with dictatorship. Marx believed capitalism also had a dictatorship,namely the bourgeoisie over the proletariat. In other words those that have the ownership of business over the workers.
Does that freedom give an individual to exploit others in the name of democracy. People today are questioning the very nature and fundamentals of capitalism.
Go ask anyone today who is living under a bridge or has been thrown out of their house how free they really are?
Coach (#38),
Why limit it to homeless people? One thing the current crisis is making painfully clear, is how much the average person, even gainfully employed and comfortably housed, is at the mercy of a relatively small class of elite business people who are able to manipulate the system to their own advantage. The great freedom we supposedly have is, if not illusory, certain relative.
TO all those that think That American capitalism is some sort of moral triumph against the so called "ravages" of Maoist and Stalinist "Marxism". When you are calculating the "millions" that died, are you too self justifying to leave out the estimated HUNDRED million Africans that died in the middle passage alone to feed the free market capitalist slavery evil for 400 years? How about the tens of millions of Native American lives that were destroyed by capitalism? Oh but you only seem to recall what so called marxism has done? Whilst Stallinism and Maoism can be debated as to if they REALLY were an example of communist practice.. there is NO debate on the philosophical source of the death, genocide and destruction that European capitalism has and continues to wrought on THIS continent. Stop picking on Cuba with outlandish and unprovable lies about that societies development. Spend more energy contemplating the horrors the system you defend inflicts on others in an endless historical list of economic cruelty and violence fed by the need to preserve privileged, power and capital at the expense of this planet and its peoples.
Some one up above wrote: "Labor does NOT produce wealth. Labor produces THINGS. Or services But those things and services are WORTHLESS unless they are sold. "
The ridiculousness of this commenter's logic has to be repeated. It is this sort of thinking that valued derivatives and the phony wealth that wall street conned many Americans into believing that they had. Meanwhile those countries that produced the real THINGS, who utilized and employed the labor have the cash to miraculously buy our debt. They are called communist by the way. As long as a substantial amount of people are high on this sort of mental "dope" there is no hope for reforming this economic system. No logic No hope
Steve,
I totally agree with your comment. I grew up in a time when after WWII, the United States and Soviet Union were waging the cold war against each other. The USA was of course also waging an ideological brainwashing of its' people and communism was considered and equated to be as bad as fascism.
Now, as I look back, it's kind of ironic that when nuclear missiles were pointed at each other, at least the world felt safer(at least to me) as it does now. Marx said that society is constantly evolving, and history never repeats itself. The most important and sleeping giant in this country today is the working class. When they get knocked on their butt, and their living condition becomes intolerable, then change happens. Certain sectors of the media have contributed to this illusion of how good we have it here, and in America, if you go to college and educate yourself, you will be financially successful, but it seems that the party is over. I am grateful for shows like this one to open people's minds.
Cuba? How many people trying to get into Cuba, legally or otherwise? C'mon...
Mass murderers: Pol Pot, 2,000,0000, Pinochet, maybe 30-50,000. N. Korea? S. Korea? Red China? Taiwan? C'mon... Reds do it betta
Coach,
The party is definitely over, but everyone is still acting like it's not. The system is designed to keep people anesthetized with material comfort and mindless entertainment. Americans are incredibly spoiled and complacent, but when the reality of our ever-diminishing standard of living eventually hits home, we could very well see civil unrest. Then what? Reform, or police state?
And now that we have a handle on the stats for the Communist death toll, the one that also may actually be only the one for authoritiarian societies, shall we do the one for Christianity? And I would suggest that it is also the case that the stats for the Capitalist death toll is equally impressive, the problem is that they are harder to assemble, subject as they are to all sorts of quibbles. Start tossing in the death toll from fatal AIDs infections that resulted from attempts to make a buck off of tainted blood products, or from Belgian colonial empires in Africa, and all sorts of quibbles about what constitutes Capitalism get raised. Sort of comes down to how many Capitalist Profiteers Can Dance On The Head Of A Pin, eh? It's a squirmy little thing, don't you know. Arguably there is no such a single thing as Capitalism. Which then leaves one arguing over the nature of Moral Responsibility, too.
"Isn't is a bit simplistic to say that not wearing jeans and sneakers amounts to some form of hypocrisy? ... "
Mmmm... As I never said anything about hypocrisy at all, I find myself wondering where The Simplistic lies ... I find it totally in keeping with what I expect is the attitude. Degenerate? Yes. Hypocritial? No terribly.
Do remember that hypocrisy is rarely the problem in life, at least compared to the problems associated with people actually acting on their beliefs, contradictions and all.
re: #45
For the capitalist death toll, no need to get too fine over it. Just take the list of the dictators the US supported as a "bulwark against communism": Mobutu, Suharto, Marcos, Somoza, Duvalier, Batista, Noriega etc., etc. Who were we kidding? Nothing to do with freedom, everything to do with domination.
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