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David Harvey is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology & Geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), and the Director of Research, Center for Place, Culture and Politics. His highly influential books include Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (2012); A Companion to Marx’s Capital (2013); Social Justice and the City (2009); A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005); The New Imperialism (2005); Paris, Capital of Modernity (2005); Limits to Capital (rev. ed, 2007); Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography (2001); Spaces of Hope (2000); Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference (1997); The Condition of Postmodernity (1991); and The Urbanization of Capital (1985).
Costas Lapavitsas is a professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He was elected as a member of the Greek Parliament for Syriza in January 2015. He is the author of numerous books including The Left Case Against the EU (Polity Press, 2018), Marxist Monetary Theory: Collected Papers (Brill, 2017), Word for word: Writings on the Greek Crisis (Athens: Topos Press, 2014), Profiting Without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All (2013) and Crisis in the Eurozone (2012).
I have written quite a few books over the course of my academic career, beginning with Explanation in Geography (Harvey, 1969) and most recently Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason (Harvey, 2017). I am often asked which of these many books I consider to be the most important. My invariable answer is Limits to Capital (Harvey, 1982) and Paris, Capital of Modernity (Harvey, 2003), the first draft of which appeared in Consciousness and the Urban Experience (Harvey, 1985). Why those two bodies of work rather than others, such as The Condition of Postmodernity (Harvey, 1989) or A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Harvey, 2005) which are by far my most cited works?
The answer lies in what for me was the driving force, the central animating theme, of my thinking, reading, and writing from the late 1960s on. During the 1960s I had already left behind the particularist and nominalist perspectives of traditional regional geography that dominated the discipline in favor of a more “scientific” universalizing and theoretical approach to the subject. I was aided in this by the rise of a more quantitative approach to geography (powerfully advocated by Dick Chorley and Peter Haggett during my doctoral research years at Cambridge), incorporating statistical methods and more positivist methods. It was in this spirit (and very much under their influence) that I wrote Explanation in Geography. In the conclusion to that work I ended with the hopeful utopian slogan: “by our theories you shall know us.” That slogan is, I believe, more relevant than ever.
On the show, the second in a two-part interview, Chris Hedges discusses with Professor David Harvey, the social, political, and economic consequences of neoliberalism and globalization, exploring alienation, the rise of authoritarianism, the significance of China in the world economy, the geopolitics of capitalism, carbon dioxide emissions and climate change and our collective response.
In our previous show we discussed central themes raised in The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles by Professor David Harvey, who is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Library Journal calls Professor Harvey “one of the most influential geographers of the later twentieth century.” Professor Harvey earned his Ph.D. from Cambridge University and was formerly professor of geography at Johns Hopkins, a Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics, and Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at Oxford. You can hear him on David Harvey’s Anti-Capitalist Chronicles, a bimonthly podcast that looks at capitalism through a Marxist lens. He also gives a series of lectures called Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey on his web site DavidHarvey.org, which if you have not read volumes I and II of Marx’s Capital is an invaluable way to match your reading with insightful commentary on this classic work.
COVID-19 and the consequences of contemporary capitalism has deeply exacerbated the already existing housing crisis in the United States. Researchers say renters in the US owe landlords a collective $20 billion after months of economic instability and disruption caused by COVID. And despite the eviction moratorium, tenants were not protected from their landlords and more than 455,000 evictions occurred across just six states during the pandemic.
As of Aug 26, 2021, the Supreme Court has blocked the Biden administration’s extension of the eviction moratorium. With no rent cancellations in sight, we all sense the horrible scale of the looming eviction crisis. Join organizers, scholars, and educators from the US and UK, David Harvey, Rebecca Garrard, Savina Martin, and Glyn Robbins as they discuss “Strategies for Eviction Resistance.”
On the show, the first in a two-part interview, Chris Hedges discusses with Professor David Harvey the reconfiguration of global capitalism, the contradictions of neoliberalism, the financialization of power, the commodification of spectacle, Rate Versus Mass of Surplus Value, and other issues fundamental to economic literary.
David Harvey , Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, is a leading theorist in the field of urban studies. Library Journal calls Professor Harvey “one of the most influential geographers of the later twentieth century.” Professor Harvey earned his Ph.D. from Cambridge University and was formerly professor of geography at Johns Hopkins, a Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics, and Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at Oxford.
He is a prolific author, including his books Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution; A Companion to Marx’s Capital; Social Justice and the City and his classic, A Brief History of Neoliberalism. You can hear him on David Harvey’s Anti-Capitalist Chronicles, a bimonthly podcast that looks at capitalism through a Marxist lens. He also gives a series of lectures called Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey on his web site DavidHarvey.org, which if you have not read volumes I and II of Marx’s Capital is an invaluable way to match your reading with insightful commentary on this classic work. His latest book is The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles.
Harvey’s latest public-facing effort, The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles (2020), offers readers two things. It contains useful commentaries on the crises of global capitalism and the socialist possibilities opened up in the contemporary conjuncture. But it is also a handy portal into some of the most exciting realms of Harvey’s intellectual output. Readers already familiar with Harvey’s work will appreciate how he revivifies concepts and interventions from various periods in his career, using them to weave together insightful, unfamiliar commentaries on important matters, from financialization to urban development to geopolitical and military contests. Newcomers to Harvey’s work are sure to find in the Chronicles ample incentive to begin the long and fruitful journey through his prodigious oeuvre. Educators will be pleased to encounter a book constructed with them in mind.
David Harvey and Amna Akbar in conversation about Marx’s idea of human freedom Sponsored by Haymarket Books 11 November 2020
The crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity for us to think again about Marx’s idea of human freedom. Emergency steps to get through the crisis also show us how we could build a different society that’s not beholden to capital.
Unless we address the root cause of those problems in the structure of our economic system, we’ll never be able to solve them.
This a moment where we can use this socialist imagination to construct an alternative society. This is not utopian. Our needs can only be taken care of through collective action.
Speakers:
David Harvey is a distinguished professor of anthropology and geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His latest books are The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles and The Ways of the World .
Amna Akbar is a professor of law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. She writes about policing and social movements, with a focus on grassroots demands for social change.
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