Much is to be gained by viewing the contemporary crisis as a surface eruption generated out of deep tectonic shifts in the spatio-temporal disposition of capitalist development. The tectonic plates are now accelerating their motion and the likelihood of more frequent and more violent crises of the sort that have been occurring since 1980 or so will almost certainly increase. The manner, form, spatiality and time of these surface disruptions are almost impossible to predict, but that they will occur with greater frequency and depth is almost certain. The events of 2008 have therefore to be situated in the context of a deeper pattern. Since these stresses are internal to the capitalist dynamic (which does not preclude some seemingly external disruptive event like a catastrophic pandemic also occurring), then what better argument could there be, as Marx once put it, “for capitalism to be gone and to make way for some alternative and more rational mode of production.”
A Financial Katrina
Remarks by Professor David Harvey
From “The Disruption: Left Interpretations of the Financial Crisis” Panel Discussion
Organized by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, the Center for Humanities and the Brecht Forum
City University of New York Graduate Center
October 29, 2008
26 minutes 33 seconds
David Harvey has been teaching Karl Marx’s Capital, Volume I for nearly 40 years, and his lectures are now available online for the first time. This open course consists of 13 video lectures of Professor Harvey’s close chapter by chapter reading of Capital, Volume I.
The text for this course is Capital, Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx. The page numbers Professor Harvey refers to are valid for both the Penguin Classics and Vintage Books editions of Capital. Help finding the text.
A close reading of the text of Karl Marx's Capital Volume I in 13 video lectures by David Harvey. Start here
David Harvey is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) and author of various books, articles, and lectures. He has been teaching Karl Marx's Capital for nearly 40 years. Read his CV.
