At about the ten minute mark, Dr. Harvey compares the abstracting of individuals by Marx into classes and that of a statistically-minded economist of the capitalist orientation and destroys a criticism of “dehumanization” by virtue of collecting persons together by class by simply pointing out that individuals do not count at all in an analysis of factor inputs such as labour or capital which are themselves collective abstractions. Dr. Harvey’s response was both clever and devastatingly correct. Bravo!
I'm so glad that you bring the concept of ecosystem into the conversation of totality. It was the major insight which really drew me to Marx, particularly Marx as a proto-systems thinker. I also think that ecosystem science, with all of its conceptual relationships, have much to offer in filling in Marxist analysis and practice. While this doesn't do away with deductive logic and mechanical reductive thinking, by any means, it certainly undermines their dominance in the way we think of 'economics,' which is no longer set apart from a 'natural world,' that latter simply being another way of retaining the dangerous false dichotomy between 'man' and 'nature.' In fact, why not use 'totality' and 'ecosystem' interchangeably or even the latter as substitution?
Good point, capitalism is kind of ecosystem which we organise for ourselves, but we also live in natural ecosystems ecosystem of oceans of forests, in a way all ecosystems of nature in which we coexist with other living beings. Then we have ecosystem of our agriculture, and our towns, and they are kind of part of this capitalistic ecosystem in which we operate as productive beings. Is it capitalistic ecosystem in coherence with natural ecosystems that is the question, and if is not why is not. Why people project this incoherent dissonance with nature in their own ecosystem. Is there something about human nature or is result of unpredictable historical evolution of human culture, or is both. Capitalism didn't emerge from nothing. Is long process of cultural change. And to not forget influences of environment on this changes, so is not just product of human reorganisation from evolution of human thinking capacities. I think that is essentially important to understand this relationship between natural ecosystems and human made ecosystem. How they affect each other. Here we have to include other natural changes like climate change. Of course position in any ecosystem is important, but that is just characteristic of that particular ecosystem and tells nothing about how and why this hierarchy emerged. And that is important to understand nature of ourselves. Are we just sellers and buyers by nature, is that core principle of our relationships with others. Maybe is. Maybe that is driven by natural gen selection. Like peacocks feathers we polish, and grow our product of influence on others, through material wealth and political power. So capitalism is resulting from our natural characteristics, and certain historical cultural developments. We can reduce this problem of understanding, to selling own skin for highest price, in class struggle. Or we can try to establish new cultural paradigms and institutions with multidisciplinary approach for understanding relations between natural ecosystems and our cultural ecosystems. Its very complex task I don't know how to formulate it on right way. Should be more like scientific institution than political movement.
@b- dubz Ecosystems aren't necessarily large at all nor do they have pre-existing/fixed boundaries. Sure, a pond is one of the easier ecosystems to study because the shoreline makes for ready demarcations. But, the ecosystem *concept* itself is also applicable to, say, the underside of your pinky nail. See what I'm saying. Within ecology, ecosystem ecology in particular, there is a process of delimiting by the scientists themselves what is to be observed and studied. There are no fixed boundaries 'out there,' but neither is this arbitrary nor (Marko Svetlica) exclusive of other ecosystems which may encompass, overlap or lie within it. Capital seems to have its own nutrient cycles and energy flows which comprise it *as* a system. One of its characteristic features is, as Marx pointed out, the mechanism which it eats up very own requirement for existence which is why it's so life-threatening. Also, it's tendency toward efficiency eradicates the redundancy required for its continued sustainability. It's a sort of mono-culture, which why I think it requires so much intervention through brute force...kind of like a lawn.
The distrust of totalities is not just a matter of taste. It is history itself that has discredited the totalizing utopian theories of the 20th century. Because even though Marx recognized the role of fetishism in our society, he was also guilty of fetishizing the concepts of labor and value in order to build his grand materialistic theory. All totalities rest on some kind of fetishization. This is also true of Darwinism and western medicine that tell the stories of the individual, even though it is the biologists or the doctor that carries out the act of individuating by forcefully isolating the specimen from its environment. The only way out of the mortifying totality of the market logic is to respect that part of reality (and also the human being) that lies beyond the realm of the Logos, that which resists any kind of categorization and fetishization, because that is the outside of the market that we ultimately have to aim for if we want real change.
Sound works fine. There are 4 or 5 places to turn sound on and off. 1 is in the tab, 1 for the browser settings, 1 for the computer settings and the sound on the video. I also have the sound on the TV controller. I seems to me that there is another I can't think of off hand. The way I take what he is saying is that the whole economy includes the welfare of people and of all the activities involving the well being of a society as a whole. I would include economizing or caring for resources in the definition. An somehow inclusive definition.
There seems to be some interesting stuff in Marx. I don't like the way he writes and don't like to read his books. it's nice to just have some one explain it in a more normal language.
David, please use less jargon and more words that the general public uses. E.g. please don't say "social reproduction" unless you define it. I have been a Marxist activist for decades but I don't know what that jargon means. Is it workers taking care of themselves?
social reproduction is a concept, which a social system expand itself through many activities, using Capitalism as an example, it need 1. Capitalists invest in a project 2. Free able workers get hired 3. Possible machinery on the market 4. Has to be able to make a profit at the end For #1 to happen, capitalists have to be able to get their money from somewhere like a bank, and how bank reproduce itself in the system is another topic, but also in this social reproduction concept. For #2 to happen, workers need to be raised, feed, educated, and free enough to be hired, each has their institutions like family, school, government, and same, each has their own reproduction cycle. ... ... This list can goes on forever if details are required, each element in the list is running their own reproduction cycle, but also connected to the other element of the society, one fails, others might be affected, and crisis can be generated. And in the process, certain things happens as a result, like inequity gap expand, job quality decreasing... So, if every time professor need to explain this when he want to use the concept social reproduction , we wouldn't have a 30 minute lecture Das Kapital is a hard book, these jargon are used in the book, so professor uses them from the book. You can listen to Reading Marx's Capital with David Harvey, great lectures to get comfortable with these concepts, link here: th-cam.com/users/readingcapital
I would say social reproduction in the broadest sense refers to everything we take for granted around ourselves on a daily basis, infrastructure, goods and services, morals, traditions, manners, education/propaganda, class relations, family relations, institutions of all kinds etc. Because they're all "social" in some sense and if they people didn't work on them all the time, they'd disappear. But as the different replies show, there is no one good answer and definitions change from author to author, depending on their focus. Unfortunately you can't really dispense doing your own reading and research, and even if you do, there is no guarantee you'll ever be able to put your knowledge into practice. The very act of theorizing is contradictory.
Try "The View of Life; Completing the Darwinian Revolution: by David Sloan Wilson" It will save you a lot of time....since what the totality is, has evolved and in terms of economic thinking, which are all "continual growth" dependant, it effectively renders all "isms" irrelevant.....and this will remain true until we either escape the gravity well to which we are currently confined, or transform our economics to a sustainable model, which respects the "limits" that are clearly imposed by it. As for the ease with which words can be used to dismiss "ideas" without any serious consideration there is this rather interesting observation which precedes our present reality by 2500 years: "The Master said....If names are not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language is not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success........Therefor a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately. What the superior man requires, is just that in his words, there may be nothing incorrect." "The Master said,.....Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men." Confucius 551 -479 B.C. Since "capitalism" is not your problem, anti-capitalism is not a solution to it. After all, the primary form of the "private ownership of the means of production" rests entirely on the foundation of ones claim to the "fruits of one's own labor"......which becomes an immediate self contradiction and provides no credible foundation upon which to proceed.
. REPUBLICAN SENATORS: *The motto : Pauperes sunt ad uicesimum dicendum quod comedere!* _Once Upon a Time - Video:_ Once Americans had a Budget for a HOME th-cam.com/video/svMtp4PYA5k/w-d-xo.html
@@DavidRodriguez-ky5si Perhaps... I just think it's so one sided to never mention the most obvious fact about Capitalism! In the words of the great star, Ertha Kitt, "I've been rich and I've been poor, rich is better"...
@@ClaudyArfaras I think wealth is something people should have the ability to decide wether they want to produce it or not, and not be thrown into the world and be forced to work eight hours a day producing wealth for someone else, in order to survive.
Of course it has which is why Marx explicitly and enthusiastically praised it for those qualities in many of his works, including the Communist Manifesto. It is precisely this productive capacity which makes the evolution to socialism possible.
@@allypoum The only consistent way I've seen he praises capitalism throughout his work is in the sense that if provides means for the emancipation of the working class; but in Capital for example he is quite critical of it and how it destroys lives.
Billy OldMan But I want to understand and he’s not making it easy. I’ve listened to quite a few of his talks in the hope of getting something out of them. I heard him being recommended by his friend Lawrie Taylor but I have been left sorely disappointed. Pretty much the polar opposite of listening to Richard Wolff
@@kennethmarshall306 Yeah I see what you mean. Behind this idea of "totality" there is actually a very long theoretical debate and criticism against structuralism. It's far more complicated than the word "totality" being scary, so no wonder if people feel lost. He is also not aware of the simple fact that attention span is unfortunately shrinking and some people might not have the time to re-watch 30 minute videos to learn about Marxism. But that's Harvey I guess.
At about the ten minute mark, Dr. Harvey compares the abstracting of individuals by Marx into classes and that of a statistically-minded economist of the capitalist orientation and destroys a criticism of “dehumanization” by virtue of collecting persons together by class by simply pointing out that individuals do not count at all in an analysis of factor inputs such as labour or capital which are themselves collective abstractions. Dr. Harvey’s response was both clever and devastatingly correct. Bravo!
I'm so glad that you bring the concept of ecosystem into the conversation of totality. It was the major insight which really drew me to Marx, particularly Marx as a proto-systems thinker. I also think that ecosystem science, with all of its conceptual relationships, have much to offer in filling in Marxist analysis and practice. While this doesn't do away with deductive logic and mechanical reductive thinking, by any means, it certainly undermines their dominance in the way we think of 'economics,' which is no longer set apart from a 'natural world,' that latter simply being another way of retaining the dangerous false dichotomy between 'man' and 'nature.' In fact, why not use 'totality' and 'ecosystem' interchangeably or even the latter as substitution?
Good point, capitalism is kind of ecosystem which we organise for ourselves, but we also live in natural ecosystems ecosystem of oceans of forests, in a way all ecosystems of nature in which we coexist with other living beings. Then we have ecosystem of our agriculture, and our towns, and they are kind of part of this capitalistic ecosystem in which we operate as productive beings. Is it capitalistic ecosystem in coherence with natural ecosystems that is the question, and if is not why is not. Why people project this incoherent dissonance with nature in their own ecosystem. Is there something about human nature or is result of unpredictable historical evolution of human culture, or is both. Capitalism didn't emerge from nothing. Is long process of cultural change. And to not forget influences of environment on this changes, so is not just product of human reorganisation from evolution of human thinking capacities. I think that is essentially important to understand this relationship between natural ecosystems and human made ecosystem. How they affect each other. Here we have to include other natural changes like climate change. Of course position in any ecosystem is important, but that is just characteristic of that particular ecosystem and tells nothing about how and why this hierarchy emerged. And that is important to understand nature of ourselves. Are we just sellers and buyers by nature, is that core principle of our relationships with others. Maybe is. Maybe that is driven by natural gen selection. Like peacocks feathers we polish, and grow our product of influence on others, through material wealth and political power. So capitalism is resulting from our natural characteristics, and certain historical cultural developments. We can reduce this problem of understanding, to selling own skin for highest price, in class struggle. Or we can try to establish new cultural paradigms and institutions with multidisciplinary approach for understanding relations between natural ecosystems and our cultural ecosystems. Its very complex task I don't know how to formulate it on right way. Should be more like scientific institution than political movement.
@b- dubz Ecosystems aren't necessarily large at all nor do they have pre-existing/fixed boundaries. Sure, a pond is one of the easier ecosystems to study because the shoreline makes for ready demarcations. But, the ecosystem *concept* itself is also applicable to, say, the underside of your pinky nail. See what I'm saying. Within ecology, ecosystem ecology in particular, there is a process of delimiting by the scientists themselves what is to be observed and studied. There are no fixed boundaries 'out there,' but neither is this arbitrary nor (Marko Svetlica) exclusive of other ecosystems which may encompass, overlap or lie within it. Capital seems to have its own nutrient cycles and energy flows which comprise it *as* a system. One of its characteristic features is, as Marx pointed out, the mechanism which it eats up very own requirement for existence which is why it's so life-threatening. Also, it's tendency toward efficiency eradicates the redundancy required for its continued sustainability. It's a sort of mono-culture, which why I think it requires so much intervention through brute force...kind of like a lawn.
Thanks for the talk. I already support Democracy at Work, and plan to do so in the future.
Became a patron right now. Glad to be supporting this excellent podcast. Stay safe, stay healthy.
Very great video 👍🏼
The totality of capital-land-labour is a culture designed to create profit...which should be shared but itsn't.
supporting via Patreon! Love this work...please stay healthy
is the patreon the one that says "Democracy at Work
is creating Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff"?
Love this, thank you David Harvey!
Thanks!
Red salute
Wish good health to David Harvey Sir
Love the lecture
David Harvey
The distrust of totalities is not just a matter of taste. It is history itself that has discredited the totalizing utopian theories of the 20th century. Because even though Marx recognized the role of fetishism in our society, he was also guilty of fetishizing the concepts of labor and value in order to build his grand materialistic theory. All totalities rest on some kind of fetishization. This is also true of Darwinism and western medicine that tell the stories of the individual, even though it is the biologists or the doctor that carries out the act of individuating by forcefully isolating the specimen from its environment. The only way out of the mortifying totality of the market logic is to respect that part of reality (and also the human being) that lies beyond the realm of the Logos, that which resists any kind of categorization and fetishization, because that is the outside of the market that we ultimately have to aim for if we want real change.
Sound would be nice....had to turn the captions on.
Mary Loyd Shell sounds working for me
Can confirm sound works
Sound worked for me
Sound works fine. There are 4 or 5 places to turn sound on and off. 1 is in the tab, 1 for the browser settings, 1 for the computer settings and the sound on the video. I also have the sound on the TV controller. I seems to me that there is another I can't think of off hand. The way I take what he is saying is that the whole economy includes the welfare of people and of all the activities involving the well being of a society as a whole. I would include economizing or caring for resources in the definition. An somehow inclusive definition.
Marx did said about Ape anatomy
And I believe it's something like if child got a good cloth,the family felt happy and so the child
What is refered to as totality we could call a system and I believe this would be beneficial for multiple reasons.
he calls it an ecosystem in the video
Thanks
They don't know metallic currency as such and will never and therefore puts a big crisis on existence of human being
There seems to be some interesting stuff in Marx. I don't like the way he writes and don't like to read his books. it's nice to just have some one explain it in a more normal language.
David, please use less jargon and more words that the general public uses. E.g. please don't say "social reproduction" unless you define it. I have been a Marxist activist for decades but I don't know what that jargon means. Is it workers taking care of themselves?
No. It is how the social system you are discussing is reproduced.
Such as: how does capitalism getvreproduded from generation to generation.
Don't dwell too much on it because communists don't make any sense anyway:)
@@juniorgod321 😂. Yeah don't think about things.
social reproduction is a concept, which a social system expand itself through many activities, using Capitalism as an example, it need
1. Capitalists invest in a project
2. Free able workers get hired
3. Possible machinery on the market
4. Has to be able to make a profit at the end
For #1 to happen, capitalists have to be able to get their money from somewhere like a bank, and how bank reproduce itself in the system is another topic, but also in this social reproduction concept.
For #2 to happen, workers need to be raised, feed, educated, and free enough to be hired, each has their institutions like family, school, government, and same, each has their own reproduction cycle.
... ...
This list can goes on forever if details are required, each element in the list is running their own reproduction cycle, but also connected to the other element of the society, one fails, others might be affected, and crisis can be generated.
And in the process, certain things happens as a result, like inequity gap expand, job quality decreasing...
So, if every time professor need to explain this when he want to use the concept social reproduction , we wouldn't have a 30 minute lecture
Das Kapital is a hard book, these jargon are used in the book, so professor uses them from the book. You can listen to Reading Marx's Capital with David Harvey, great lectures to get comfortable with these concepts, link here:
th-cam.com/users/readingcapital
I would say social reproduction in the broadest sense refers to everything we take for granted around ourselves on a daily basis, infrastructure, goods and services, morals, traditions, manners, education/propaganda, class relations, family relations, institutions of all kinds etc. Because they're all "social" in some sense and if they people didn't work on them all the time, they'd disappear.
But as the different replies show, there is no one good answer and definitions change from author to author, depending on their focus. Unfortunately you can't really dispense doing your own reading and research, and even if you do, there is no guarantee you'll ever be able to put your knowledge into practice. The very act of theorizing is contradictory.
Marx remains a four letter word
Yes Sir I am busy with cakes, actually it is cake so one must be very careful
Try "The View of Life; Completing the Darwinian Revolution: by David Sloan Wilson"
It will save you a lot of time....since what the totality is, has evolved and in terms of economic thinking,
which are all "continual growth" dependant, it effectively renders all "isms" irrelevant.....and this will remain
true until we either escape the gravity well to which we are currently confined, or transform our economics
to a sustainable model, which respects the "limits" that are clearly imposed by it.
As for the ease with which words can be used to dismiss "ideas" without any serious consideration
there is this rather interesting observation which precedes our present reality by 2500 years:
"The Master said....If names are not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language is not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success........Therefor a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately. What the superior man requires, is just that in his words, there may be nothing incorrect."
"The Master said,.....Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men."
Confucius 551 -479 B.C.
Since "capitalism" is not your problem, anti-capitalism is not a solution to it. After all, the primary
form of the "private ownership of the means of production" rests entirely on the foundation of ones
claim to the "fruits of one's own labor"......which becomes an immediate self contradiction and
provides no credible foundation upon which to proceed.
. REPUBLICAN SENATORS:
*The motto : Pauperes sunt ad uicesimum dicendum quod comedere!*
_Once Upon a Time - Video:_ Once Americans had a Budget for a HOME
th-cam.com/video/svMtp4PYA5k/w-d-xo.html
Capitalism has created the most productive and innovative societies ever on Earth... Does that count for anything?
War has produced great innovations in technology. Great advances in medicine. We should have another big one!
@@DavidRodriguez-ky5si
Perhaps... I just think it's so one sided to never mention the most obvious fact about Capitalism! In the words of the great star, Ertha Kitt, "I've been rich and I've been poor, rich is better"...
@@ClaudyArfaras I think wealth is something people should have the ability to decide wether they want to produce it or not, and not be thrown into the world and be forced to work eight hours a day producing wealth for someone else, in order to survive.
Of course it has which is why Marx explicitly and enthusiastically praised it for those qualities in many of his works, including the Communist Manifesto. It is precisely this productive capacity which makes the evolution to socialism possible.
@@allypoum The only consistent way I've seen he praises capitalism throughout his work is in the sense that if provides means for the emancipation of the working class; but in Capital for example he is quite critical of it and how it destroys lives.
What waffle. Terrible explanation and presentation.
Give him some slack, he is probably busy with a 100 other things.
Billy OldMan But I want to understand and he’s not making it easy. I’ve listened to quite a few of his talks in the hope of getting something out of them. I heard him being recommended by his friend Lawrie Taylor but I have been left sorely disappointed. Pretty much the polar opposite of listening to Richard Wolff
@@kennethmarshall306 Yeah I see what you mean. Behind this idea of "totality" there is actually a very long theoretical debate and criticism against structuralism. It's far more complicated than the word "totality" being scary, so no wonder if people feel lost. He is also not aware of the simple fact that attention span is unfortunately shrinking and some people might not have the time to re-watch 30 minute videos to learn about Marxism. But that's Harvey I guess.
Billy OldMan Ok, but I listened to a one hour lecture by Prof Wolff recently and was gripped from start to finish.