I am a retired bankruptcy lawyer in the US. My grasp of economic theory is weak at best, though I have sone experience with the consequences of economic policy on individuals and businesses in my state. I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation particularly because you did not simply present a fait accompli essay, but presented your thinking out loud. Excellent. It appears to me that the struggle we are experiencing now is a cold class war between monopolistic capitalism (Amazon, Google, Blackstone, et al.) and reciprocity capitalism (advocated by those who don’t want “socialism”-at least by name- but who want the end of gross inequality). I agree that some form of sovereign intervention will likely be required to break the hold of the monopolistic elites on the dominated underclass.
There is a new book you might find insightful, written by the British political economist Fred Harrison. The book is titled, "#WeAreRent" -- the first book in what he promises is a trilogy. Harrison is not a Marxist. He looks for his theoretical guidance from the American Henry George.
Great to have you back David - we missed you! Yanis Varoufakis has recently called this coming age that we are morphing into techno-feudalism! This chimes in with your authoritarian thesis, and Yanis argues that it is “techno” as the big money is in the techno driven corporations: Facebook, Amazon, Tesla, Microsoft, Apple and so on.
I think you guys have other actors to consider as well. The rise of bitcoin citadels which would fall into a similar category given the nature of the asset. Don’t believe me on bitcoin citadels aka autonomous smart cities? Google Akon city outside the capital of Senegal. There’s another citadel under construction since he end of the 2017 bull run in Nevada. Nevada did recently allow for innovation zones or self governing company towns. Again don’t believe me use google. I’m sure at the end of the current bitcoin bull market a few more will start construction. Mini ancapistans shall rise.
@@johntravena119 though it is a space. Albeit a digital one. (See manual castells network theory). Maybe its the space Inbetween our ears. The gaps in our hearts. Or as Bush jnr and T Blair et al said "the battle for hearts and minds". If we are quoting fascists that is.
38:58 Jimmy Dore has predicted the same, stating that the gov't does not want to provide relief checks or rent/mortgage assistance specifically so corporations can buy up all the properties as they did before. Excellent talk. Thank you.
As usual, brilliant and edifying, so glad you are back. The perils within the parallels. The answers are indeed most often found in the scrutiny of history. I was very gratified to hear Mitch Jeserich and yourself on his KPFA show "Letters and Politics" just yesterday, Professor Harvey. To the readers of this thread: it is available on TH-cam with the above title. Or from the KPFA podcast /archive. For those followers of Professor Harvey here---albeit few, and likely younger, I reckon---who might have missed it at 7:36, the good professor intended to refer to WW I, rather than WW II.
Thank you, David. Wren I was taking a Macroeconomics course (1979-80), The Eagles had an album called "The Long Run", which could be used to describe "longue duree". My father had died, and I finished the course with grit, for Dad. An understanding of economics is the only way to achieve the ability to criticize it. I subscribed to the Economist for a year, writing letters against their "Endless Growth" mantra. You and Richard Wolff have re-invigorated the "socialism" vs capitalism debate. Your work may have inspired a new Canadian book "Canada in the World - Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination" by Tyler A. Shipley. China's "Belt and Road Initiative" is a kind of neo-colonialism. The book points to capital and colonialism working in unison, serfs turned to colonials. De-colonization is still popular as Canadian Indigenous struggle to rescue their ancient traditions. "Settler Colonialism" is still in play in Israel, one might say.
Many chinese people don't perceive BRI as neo-colonialism,but personal I found out some aggrement is not quite right .Still I want to point out:even BRI act like the same way like colonialism in certain way , it will be extremely expensive to do projects from economic point of view, so I think it's not quite like colonialism~In fact, I think BRI currently in a cross road and not many people will know.what to do next
We need to break the existing paradigm of capital domination i.e. bourgeois domination. We don't need to worry about so-called "authoritarianism." Look at the underlying structure and its contradictions. The proletariat needs to organize itself, and however that organization looks, or appears, we need to understand it, work with it, and work within it.
I verry thankfully of your return and really hope you are in great health. The idea that capital has changed is a mistake that we tent to add. Capital is always the same chasing and killing "labor". It is type of ponagraphy verry few grasp. Capital is savage, brutal and fake. Alwayz tank you for discussion.
It is always very interesting to compare the East and the West. The difference between the East and the West is all due to the different results of the king and the aristocracy fighting for power: in the West, the aristocracy made themselves the leader of the citizens, combined the power of the citizens, and defeated the king. In the East (China), it was the king who made himself the leader of the citizens and defeated the aristocracy. Such differences have caused Western society to always be divided, because different aristocrats have formed different parties. As long as their own parties can obtain benefits, they will not consider the rise and fall of the overall society. However, the entire society in China is a whole community of interests. Even without Marxism, Chinese society has already formed such a system. Authoritarianism legality is quite accurate here, because the authority of the government is legally authorized by all the people. . This is also the reason why China can develop rapidly and maintain long-term stability. The most important difference between the two systems is when a crisis comes, whether the government betrays its people or the people can betray the government . Obviously, the capital aristocrats in Western society will decisively abandon their own people and preserve their own interests, while in China, the people can abandon their existing authority in order to preserve their own interests.
Have you ever consider "stability "doesn't always mean mutual development ? Anciet Egypt can also have thousands years of "stability",but eventually they even abandoned their cultures and history~personal I 'm tired of "achieve stability from control purpose",which are the mentality of government for thousands of years, even philosophy from confucius are just "correction on how to control"~pity people can't see this
@@stevenhe198911 It is very interesting that for rulers, stability always takes priority over development, and mutual development is the way of thinking of ordinary people, not those in power. Because development means reshuffling the cards, existing interest groups are not willing to let more people share their power. And the essence of Confucianism is to maintain the feudal system and feudal rule.
I would say it evolved with its contradiction with feudalism and it wound end with its contradiction with existence Wish good health to Professor David Harvey
Flexibile specialisation for the rich, reflexive modernisation for the poor. You and Beck were both correct. And we are better for knowing. Call it "the risk society".
The big mistake is thinking that any of this is new. This is not neo anything. Both Plato and Thucydides would be all too familiar with what is going on today because it is not much different at all from what they saw in their own time.
@@S.A.U.1489 In The Wealth of Nations, Smith explained that when the systems of law and taxation favor privilege and rent-taking over the production of goods and services, the inevitable outcome is a level of income and wealth concentration that eats away at the instinct to cooperate that is essential for societies to survive and grow.
@@S.A.U.1489 Participatory democracy would help. Replace elections of legislators with selection by lottery. Willing to serve? Take and pass a civil service examination that confirms competency. You name goes into the lottery. If chosen, you serve one term after which you return to your private life. No campaigning. No fund-raising. No more domination by special interests.
It's amazing how Graeber and Wolff got Bitcoin so wrong. This is how capital is evolving in late stage cognitive capitalism and the immaterial economy. You managed to warn in 2015 on Truthout that this might happen. Kudos for being one of the few on the left to notice this.
What we are living through is a historic singularity. Several aspects of society and technology are on the brink of radical shifts, to the point that we cannot make many accurate predictions for more than a couple years. We can only picture general trends, and this is... frankly terrifying.
What terrifies me is the nonexistent assessment and lessons to take after an objective analysis of the condition and evolution of the working class in the context of class warfare. We are aware that capitalism is in a depressive historic singularity as you say and the dominant class in a radicalized attitude taking a strong political inclination towards fascism in order to abort any serious challenge to their political position. That is the study we most need. I mean alternatives of course.
Good to see you back. Do you mind of I ask you something? The people in zero books made some critiques of some of your comments in thus channel. Do you think you can have a fruitful discussion about their points? Cheers.
@@owesteen-hansen2152 I was thinking about the fact that there is a predator pecking order. Once a prey ( the 99%) has been brought down and feasted upon the lowly scavengers swoop in to pick at the bones. Seems to me there is not much more than a pile of bones left.
The idea that China's socialism with Chinese characteristic exposes and surpasses neo-liberal capitalism, and is therefore the model to reckon with in the Chinese century, is far from new. Though to be sure, David's historical-Marxian context (i.e., the role of Genoan networking v. Venitian statist), deepens and strengthens the argument. However, the suggestion that we, and the world over, may have no choice but to emulate Chinese authoritarianism is both sad and scary, aside from the requisite surrender of our founding principles (however corrupted). First because we effectively 'sold the farm' by giving American corporations a range of incentives to set up shop in China, and second because unlike China we are not a culturally homogeneous society with a tradition of Confucian paternalism. And so, what other outcome from an American authoritarianism can one expect than a post-Soviet one, solely on behalf of the oligarchs?
Good to have you back, professor. I'm sorry to hear about your recent health problems. Your voice gets more crucial the longer we go down the path capitalism forces us to go. I don't know what's a good term that captures what's going on today, assuming neoliberalism no longer applies. Capitalism certainly still applies, we're just in a different form of it. It's not Adam Smith capitalism, but it's still capitalism nevertheless. That said, to use the word socialism in any context (i.e., "corporate socialism" and other crap terms) for what's going on today is still misleading and intellectually irresponsible, and does nothing but further weaponizes capitalism.
Some call it socialisme for the rich and that is not bad, but you need more and I do not see why it is necessary to nail it to one expression, because when you shall explain you must use more words. Both techno feudalisme and neo feudalisme is ok and also state capitalisme because as Hudson tells us it is a planned economy and Wall Street is doing the planning and tells Fed and Treasury what they must do increase the wealth of the rich by plunder through financialization.
With large corporations coming free of their national rooting and becoming not only multi-national or even global, and in addition growing in their annual revenues to become economically more powerful than many nations, we are getting governmental structures that transcend national boundaries, for example, the EU.
David accurately predicting Trump 2024. I'm still not sure if neoliberalism is over. But some of Trump's policies are def anti-neolib. For example, America First at face value is actually damaging to large international corporations. And tariffs of course. Let's see what he actually does and how the world reacts. Would be wonderful to hear David's thoughts again. Wishing you good things, professor.
I just want to know what David thinks about reproduction trends in places like Korea, Japan, Italy etc. as the working class feels a total lack of security/stability and near-hopelessness that a "growth" economy, neoliberalism, global trade, etc. can no longer provide.
The US may have stayed out of some European affairs, but it was never isolationist. Once the Revolutionary War was over it was a race to California, and the war with the Spanish was designed to inherit an imperial apparatus which leap frogged the US from settler colonial project into a global imperial force.
The New York Times April 3, 2021 2:28 PM PT Stacy Blatt was in hospice care last September listening to Rush Limbaugh’s dire warnings about how badly Donald Trump’s campaign needed money when he went online and chipped in everything he could: $500. It was a big sum for a 63-year-old battling cancer and living in Kansas City on less than $1,000 per month. But that single contribution - federal records show it was his first ever - quickly multiplied. Another $500 was withdrawn the next day, then $500 the next week and every week through mid-October, without his knowledge - until Blatt’s bank account had been depleted and frozen. When his utility and rent payments bounced, he called his brother, Russell Blatt, for help. ETC ETC ETC
Greetings from Brazil, David. As you suggested, here we have a clear idea of 'neoliberalism' as the economic thought of the 'Chicago boys', the one that wreaks havoc in South America since the 80s' - just as we were about to start thinking of recovering from decades of corrupt military dictatorships. What I feel is that from Thatcher and Reagan onward those people are doing to the world what we in Brazil call 'arrastão', a name borrowed from those large fishing nets to mean that enormous wave of people - often very poor - that suddenly start ravaging the beaches, mostly in Rio, stealing from the bewildered bathers: neoliberals are determined not only to shrink governments, but to take their place to enact that upside down idea of 'anarcho-capitalism' some of them still nourish, although calling it 'globalism', 'new world order' or whatever. They have become capable of doing that because in the last thirty years they have been educating people in very large numbers into the neoliberal 'tenet', apparently through infiltrating the programs of the left to raise the professional and 'intellectual' standards of the masses. But all of these are just some steps in the ways that through the ages money-using has evolved - more in the sense of the movement of a dancer than in Darwin's. And there is no way out of this ballet, because exchanging production, and in particular when intermediated by money, doesn't have other way of behaving. In other words, an economy based on exchange and money won't ever be free from, among countless plagues it brings, setting people into a permanent state of war against each other, euphemistically christened 'competition' and seen as 'healthy'. So, the only way to establish a meaningful system out of the handful of possible economic relations (gifting, stealing, sharing and exchanging) is to abandon exchange and money and put back in the center of the economy the good, old sharing, which still is quite alive, although at the margins of the current system, inside groups with strong affective ties, like families and some friendships. Economics in general, however, seems to see no economic life outside this lame system ruled by finance, and which is proven resilient to all the fixes humankind tried to do to it in the last 6000 years or more - and no doubt we have tried them all in every way. But thinking of an economy of sharing out of widespread, worldwide friendship, to be adopted by people raised by the ideology coming along with money is just dreaming, at least for the next couple of centuries, in the best of the hypotheses, even if we all agree on reeducating ourselves en masse to erase thousands of years of immersion in competitive behavior, in believing in merit, in commodifying even our souls. Given such, therefore, the only rational and caritative thing to think about right now is not fixing capitalism or finding a substitute to it, but to concoct an antidote to what is coming next, something to help people coping with having to live through a perpetual nightmare.
Can i attach a file? The term used by Jesus himself wasdocs.google.com/document/d/1rszl8nmpTlTL2XC7cH_eJXT4FaKuRwhco28UQnUQvKw/edit?usp=drivesdk 'the I am' as here discussed
I honestly believe we should call it absolutist liberalism. The state has played an increasing role in the management of economy and has hyper expanded over all aspect of civilian life. Contrary to the absolutist during the classical era, this one is controlled by financial and industrial oligarchs, not an aristocracy.
I wonder about using the word "populism" in view of Thomas Frank's recent book (and talks, articles) tracing the roots of the word to an actual grassroots movement of the working class. As with so many words, it's been by co-opted by those who'd like to brainwash us into believing they're on our side. (The Nazi's called themselves socialists to win popular support, and they were anything but.) The term "Pseudo-Populism" might be more apt.
I call the new word to represent the changes taking place from neoliberalism, the wages system of bondage, where the working class produces the wealth which is called capital and somehow doesn't notice that it is the power, that power grows out of the barrel of wealth ownership. What goes on 'underneath' it all is that mysterious entity called the "commodity'. Thus, the fetishism of commodities. (see the last section of the first chapter of the first volume of CAPITAL) where the producers' mindset is turned upside down, attributing political power to those who do nothing but accumulate the wealth the bottom 90% produce. LIBERTY, EQUALITY & FRATERNITY are the Ideals of the bourgeois revolution. But does a wage-slave have liberty? Can an equality of classes exist? And fraternity, another word for 'solidarity". Can solidarity exists within a system of laws made by the bourgeoisie, by the ruling class? Can we all be equal under the laws the made by the legislators of the political State, political States not ruled by the producers of wealth, but the owners of same? We have been living under the dictatorship of the capitalist class since they took over from the aristocrats in those first city States of Genoa and Verona. One of the chief illusions is that some of us have been living in a democracy. We should socially own and democratically manage the wealth we produce and that which lies in natural resources so that we can have the power to distribute it on the basis of need and live in harmony with the Earth.
I prefer to understand Power from a psychological perspective that describes human behavior. Most desperate circumstances results from Pathological Narcissism. Be it individual or collective Narcissism. Certainly, I cannot be the only person to contemplate such a hypothetical belief.
All of this is excellent as an analysis of the economic evolution of the capital without challenging the Marxist interpretation accuracy. However the void I observe among the different platforms of the left is the almost nonexistent assessment of the conditions and evolution of the working class in the context of class warfare. Since fascism has taken the initiative in the offensive. Trump and the GOP represent the radicalization of the corporate class. What is the analysis of that aspect in the evolution of class warfare ???
Fascism is capitalism in decay, comrade. The system now needs scapegoats to avoid a united proletariat. Radicalisation to the right is nothing but capitalism seeking to regain popularity by diverting anger and dissatisfaction caused by systemic failure to false divisions among people.
The capitalist class's shadow is fascist in nature. In the face of supposed democracy and liberal values, it always needs the far right to establish control over the middle. Thus, the working class must be "by all means available" be held in check, via propaganda and he pitting of some segments of the working class against others, via race, via region, via religion, via patriotism, via nationalism, etc. The class warfare is central, the capitalism class being very aware of their class status and using all means to keep the working class believing it's part of a classless society. That gets harder to do when monopolization and the accumulation of wealth and power become too apparent. Enter, the technocratic class to utilize mass surveillance and the growing police state with its erosion of civil liberties to hold revolution in check.
@@whythelongface64 you guys describe the dominant class as almost an omnipotent power , god like. As if the system has a power of its own in the hands of a puppeteer. It isn't like that. We all are human and workers we have will and a mind. Nothing is absolute in the struggle. The system is also inherently weak. It has a natural tendency to decay and failure by the obvious corruption that power gives. Their confidence is not always correctly placed. We should be more optimistic in the capacity of the people to react to injustice and oppression. Just for the sake of mental health.
@@georgefurman4371 Agreed. Part of the problem is educational -- getting people to understand what sort of government and what sort of laws and policies actually serve the common good. Part of the problem, also, is that a large number of people have succumbed to superstition-based belief systems. Forget science. Their belief system is grounded in magic.
Thatcher/Reagan's reality has not yet broken from the minds of enough people, but we are living in state of post-industrial and high tech transformation wherein the ground is shifting beneath the feet of more and more people in the middle classes across Europe and America. Instead of debate on ideas in the midst of these massive changes and confusion, it is better to have leadership or events that shock the system into change and demonstrate some other means for people to experience stability and possibly a higher standard of living. Right now, we are in a downward spiral despite China's rise. China cannot build a new global order while workers everywhere experience more instability and confusion and decrease both their reproductive rates and their consumption. We are on the cusp of seeing these trends culminate in economic collapse, perhaps an overall massive global collapse that will finally kill Reagan/Thatcher AND undermine China's rise altogether. Sadly, it would appear that no one has an answer unless you can duplicate something like the societies of Scandinavia... or, drastically reducing consumption, production and living in a world of dramatically reduced overall growth and human reproduction are likely the consequence. Either this, or we all end up living in a semi-apocalyptic landscape, trying to avoid caveman/tribal brutality by organizing enclaves in the midst of more global climate change and extreme weather and tectonic shifts.
I fail to see how Blackstone (the hedge fund that gobbled up all the houses that were foreclosed following the the sub-prime mortgage defaults) can possibly profit from the fact that the unemployed renters occupying the foreclosed houses are now unable to pay the rent. That sounds to me more like potential disaster for Blackstone.
Getting a hold of a house for non-payment means all the money that has been paid is free, and the house can be sold again, perhaps with a good gain. But if housing crashes with NO support, low prices will attract buyers. If Blackstone gets a "bail-out" they will profit even if prices fall.
The contradiction is that making the needed changes will require radically democratic grassroots movements that will be hostile to authoritarian solutions. It may be that forms of decentralized power are the only way to break the corporate grip.
Authoritarianism implies completely top-down decisions. An ethically regulated & genuinely democratic society justly empowers a democratic polity/governance. These all require a well, thoroughly educated, and thus critically thoughtful citizenry. Fully fund schools & teacher education for these objectives. Mandate adequate nutrition, mental & physical wellbeing, shelter, gifted level curriculum for every American cradle to grave. That's not authoritarian; it's good common sense governance.
I do not like the framing that "some form of authoritarianism" is required to get us out of this mess, though I do agree that a "sovereign intervention", as one of the commenters put it, is necessary. One of the big lies propagated by the regressive forces is that we got into this mess because democracy has not been able to handle the manifold crises we face, while the truth is that under capitalism true democracy is continuously being repressed and that it is democratically unaccountable capital that has been feeding those crises. So yes, we very much need a sovereign intervention, but it has to have democratic roots or else we will just create new problems.
David, please get a microphone of some sort! Your stuff is too great to be distracted by the echo effect of using the computer microphone, as it seems you’re doing. Especially when you’re talking about Braudel and Arrighi!
Not a bad way to describe where too many people seem to want to go. For forty years I have tried to bring people to think differently, of how to achieve true individual liberty within a cooperative social framework. In the 1990s I attended a lecture by historian Paul Gaston. He talked about the principles of "cooperative individualism" embraced by the founders of a utopian community they founded on Mobile Bay in Alabama, they named "Fair Hope."
This makes it sound as if immigrant workers weren't used for this same wage discrimination for over a century prior. I'm ignorant on this subject, so I don't want to come off angry here. Possibly the issue is there's just so much more to talk about.
If a corporation wants to start a project, they call the bank and raise capital. Correct? If that corporation cannot get anyone to do the work, they have no capital. All they have is currency. Everyone has capital. How much, that depends on your skill set. There is no equity in the value of capital. Yes, some people have more capital than others but, people with low capital do not deserve to toil just to barely scrape by. What percentage of workers worked in the food industry in 1898? What is that statistic today? What we call capitalism is just a euphemism for the master slave paradigm. Whether it is the master slave paradigm, Lord serve paradigm, or the employer employee paradigm, it is all the same relationship. Everyone is good at something. We must define what capital is and is not.
I am a retired bankruptcy lawyer in the US. My grasp of economic theory is weak at best, though I have sone experience with the consequences of economic policy on individuals and businesses in my state. I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation particularly because you did not simply present a fait accompli essay, but presented your thinking out loud. Excellent. It appears to me that the struggle we are experiencing now is a cold class war between monopolistic capitalism (Amazon, Google, Blackstone, et al.) and reciprocity capitalism (advocated by those who don’t want “socialism”-at least by name- but who want the end of gross inequality). I agree that some form of sovereign intervention will likely be required to break the hold of the monopolistic elites on the dominated underclass.
The oncoming reality is probably far more grim and uncontrollable.
There is a new book you might find insightful, written by the British political economist Fred Harrison. The book is titled, "#WeAreRent" -- the first book in what he promises is a trilogy. Harrison is not a Marxist. He looks for his theoretical guidance from the American Henry George.
Hi Paul ... Nice comments ...
Great to have you back David - we missed you! Yanis Varoufakis has recently called this coming age that we are morphing into techno-feudalism! This chimes in with your authoritarian thesis, and Yanis argues that it is “techno” as the big money is in the techno driven corporations: Facebook, Amazon, Tesla, Microsoft, Apple and so on.
See Ulrich Beck for in depth understanding of technologies and risk.
I think you guys have other actors to consider as well. The rise of bitcoin citadels which would fall into a similar category given the nature of the asset. Don’t believe me on bitcoin citadels aka autonomous smart cities? Google Akon city outside the capital of Senegal. There’s another citadel under construction since he end of the 2017 bull run in Nevada. Nevada did recently allow for innovation zones or self governing company towns. Again don’t believe me use google. I’m sure at the end of the current bitcoin bull market a few more will start construction. Mini ancapistans shall rise.
He was talking about non-territorial fascism. Maybe the territory is cyberspace.
@@johntravena119 though it is a space. Albeit a digital one. (See manual castells network theory).
Maybe its the space Inbetween our ears. The gaps in our hearts. Or as Bush jnr and T Blair et al said "the battle for hearts and minds". If we are quoting fascists that is.
@@DJWESG1 True!
Great to have you back Professor Harvey!
Thank you Professor Harvey. Your lectures has helped me enormously to understand the world in which I live.
38:58 Jimmy Dore has predicted the same, stating that the gov't does not want to provide relief checks or rent/mortgage assistance specifically so corporations can buy up all the properties as they did before. Excellent talk. Thank you.
Know that when you say Govt. You mean corporate owned representatives.
I still like the term Yannis Varouflakis uses “Technologically Feudalistic”
Where he use this term, in what book, article ... Please? There's a video on youtube of him about this please?
Sheldon Woling called it "Inverted Totalitarianism", captures pretty well the essence of current political economy if u ask me.
Prof. David Harvey is the very best of the best academics and modern intellectuals. So glad to see him back!
Welcome back, Prof Harvey!! I enjoy learning little nuggets when I listen to your talks. I'm glad you are better and I hope you stay that way!
As usual, brilliant and edifying, so glad you are back. The perils within the parallels. The answers are indeed most often found in the scrutiny of history.
I was very gratified to hear Mitch Jeserich and yourself on his KPFA show "Letters and Politics" just yesterday, Professor Harvey.
To the readers of this thread: it is available on TH-cam with the above title. Or from the KPFA podcast /archive.
For those followers of Professor Harvey here---albeit few, and likely younger, I reckon---who might have missed it at 7:36, the good professor intended to refer to WW I, rather than WW II.
Thank you, David. Wren I was taking a Macroeconomics course (1979-80), The Eagles had an album called "The Long Run", which could be used to describe "longue duree". My father had died, and I finished the course with grit, for Dad. An understanding of economics is the only way to achieve the ability to criticize it. I subscribed to the Economist for a year, writing letters against their "Endless Growth" mantra. You and Richard Wolff have re-invigorated the "socialism" vs capitalism debate. Your work may have inspired a new Canadian book "Canada in the World - Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination" by Tyler A. Shipley. China's "Belt and Road Initiative" is a kind of neo-colonialism. The book points to capital and colonialism working in unison, serfs turned to colonials. De-colonization is still popular as Canadian Indigenous struggle to rescue their ancient traditions. "Settler Colonialism" is still in play in Israel, one might say.
Many chinese people don't perceive BRI as neo-colonialism,but personal I found out some aggrement is not quite right .Still I want to point out:even BRI act like the same way like colonialism in certain way , it will be extremely expensive to do projects from economic point of view, so I think it's not quite like
colonialism~In fact, I think BRI currently in a cross road and not many people will know.what to do next
Mr. Harvey's good friend Michael Hudson calls the emerging system, Neofeudalism.
Yes, here in the UK many ppl use that term of phrase to describe the world we are edging toward.
Hudson also emphasizes the power of rent-takers in his model of neofeudalism.
We need to break the existing paradigm of capital domination i.e. bourgeois domination.
We don't need to worry about so-called "authoritarianism." Look at the underlying structure and its contradictions. The proletariat needs to organize itself, and however that organization looks, or appears, we need to understand it, work with it, and work within it.
Nice to have you back sir!
Excellent, looking forward to the next one in th series. - Thank you
I verry thankfully of your return and really hope you are in great health. The idea that capital has changed is a mistake that we tent to add. Capital is always the same chasing and killing "labor". It is type of ponagraphy verry few grasp. Capital is savage, brutal and fake. Alwayz tank you for discussion.
🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 glad to have you back sir
It is always very interesting to compare the East and the West. The difference between the East and the West is all due to the different results of the king and the aristocracy fighting for power: in the West, the aristocracy made themselves the leader of the citizens, combined the power of the citizens, and defeated the king. In the East (China), it was the king who made himself the leader of the citizens and defeated the aristocracy.
Such differences have caused Western society to always be divided, because different aristocrats have formed different parties. As long as their own parties can obtain benefits, they will not consider the rise and fall of the overall society.
However, the entire society in China is a whole community of interests. Even without Marxism, Chinese society has already formed such a system.
Authoritarianism legality is quite accurate here, because the authority of the government is legally authorized by all the people. . This is also the reason why China can develop rapidly and maintain long-term stability.
The most important difference between the two systems is when a crisis comes, whether the government betrays its people or the people can betray the government .
Obviously, the capital aristocrats in Western society will decisively abandon their own people and preserve their own interests, while in China, the people can abandon their existing authority in order to preserve their own interests.
Have you ever consider "stability "doesn't always mean mutual development ? Anciet Egypt can also have thousands years of "stability",but eventually they even abandoned their cultures and history~personal I 'm tired of "achieve stability from control purpose",which are the mentality of government for thousands of years, even philosophy from confucius are just "correction on how to control"~pity people can't see this
@@stevenhe198911 It is very interesting that for rulers, stability always takes priority over development, and mutual development is the way of thinking of ordinary people, not those in power.
Because development means reshuffling the cards, existing interest groups are not willing to let more people share their power.
And the essence of Confucianism is to maintain the feudal system and feudal rule.
This was excellent. Thank you.
I would say it evolved with its contradiction with feudalism and it wound end with its contradiction with existence
Wish good health to Professor David Harvey
Flexibile specialisation for the rich, reflexive modernisation for the poor.
You and Beck were both correct. And we are better for knowing.
Call it "the risk society".
The best name may be "surveillance Capitalism" which is offered by Shoshana Zuboff or "Data Colonialism" prefered by Nick Couldry.
The big mistake is thinking that any of this is new. This is not neo anything. Both Plato and Thucydides would be all too familiar with what is going on today because it is not much different at all from what they saw in their own time.
It was also accurately predicted by Adam Smith.
@@nthperson what did he say exactly ?
@@S.A.U.1489 In The Wealth of Nations, Smith explained that when the systems of law and taxation favor privilege and rent-taking over the production of goods and services, the inevitable outcome is a level of income and wealth concentration that eats away at the instinct to cooperate that is essential for societies to survive and grow.
@@nthperson my main criticism of this is that no distinction is made between the oligarchs and the common people.
@@S.A.U.1489 Participatory democracy would help. Replace elections of legislators with selection by lottery. Willing to serve? Take and pass a civil service examination that confirms competency. You name goes into the lottery. If chosen, you serve one term after which you return to your private life. No campaigning. No fund-raising. No more domination by special interests.
Welcome back!!
It's amazing how Graeber and Wolff got Bitcoin so wrong. This is how capital is evolving in late stage cognitive capitalism and the immaterial economy. You managed to warn in 2015 on Truthout that this might happen. Kudos for being one of the few on the left to notice this.
What we are living through is a historic singularity. Several aspects of society and technology are on the brink of radical shifts, to the point that we cannot make many accurate predictions for more than a couple years. We can only picture general trends, and this is... frankly terrifying.
neo-absolutism has a ring to it.
What terrifies me is the nonexistent assessment and lessons to take after an objective analysis of the condition and evolution of the working class in the context of class warfare. We are aware that capitalism is in a depressive historic singularity as you say and the dominant class in a radicalized attitude taking a strong political inclination towards fascism in order to abort any serious challenge to their political position. That is the study we most need. I mean alternatives of course.
Totally agree.
1. Green, circular, sustainable economy, 3D printing
2. Automation, artificial intelligence, robotics.
3. Crypo currencies, decentralised finance, smart contracts, tokenisation of assets
4. Space exploration, mining, tourism
5. Biotech revolution, anti-aging, genetic engineering
Good to see you back. Do you mind of I ask you something? The people in zero books made some critiques of some of your comments in thus channel. Do you think you can have a fruitful discussion about their points? Cheers.
How about the term, off the top of my head, "Scavenger Capitalism" to describe what is coming next? Has capitalism ever really been anything else?
A feast for crows capitalism lol
Scavengers are predators and "predator cap" is in use.
@@owesteen-hansen2152 I was thinking about the fact that there is a predator pecking order. Once a prey ( the 99%) has been brought down and feasted upon the lowly scavengers swoop in to pick at the bones. Seems to me there is not much more than a pile of bones left.
Sharing, Justice and Peace for All.
Wishing you good health! Thanks for a great podcast
The idea that China's socialism with Chinese characteristic exposes and surpasses neo-liberal capitalism, and is therefore the model to reckon with in the Chinese century, is far from new. Though to be sure, David's historical-Marxian context (i.e., the role of Genoan networking v. Venitian statist), deepens and strengthens the argument. However, the suggestion that we, and the world over, may have no choice but to emulate Chinese authoritarianism is both sad and scary, aside from the requisite surrender of our founding principles (however corrupted). First because we effectively 'sold the farm' by giving American corporations a range of incentives to set up shop in China, and second because unlike China we are not a culturally homogeneous society with a tradition of Confucian paternalism. And so, what other outcome from an American authoritarianism can one expect than a post-Soviet one, solely on behalf of the oligarchs?
Good to have you back, professor. I'm sorry to hear about your recent health problems. Your voice gets more crucial the longer we go down the path capitalism forces us to go.
I don't know what's a good term that captures what's going on today, assuming neoliberalism no longer applies. Capitalism certainly still applies, we're just in a different form of it. It's not Adam Smith capitalism, but it's still capitalism nevertheless. That said, to use the word socialism in any context (i.e., "corporate socialism" and other crap terms) for what's going on today is still misleading and intellectually irresponsible, and does nothing but further weaponizes capitalism.
Some call it socialisme for the rich and that is not bad, but you need more and I do not see why it is necessary to nail it to one expression, because when you shall explain you must use more words. Both techno feudalisme and neo feudalisme is ok and also state capitalisme because as Hudson tells us it is a planned economy and Wall Street is doing the planning and tells Fed and Treasury what they must do increase the wealth of the rich by plunder through financialization.
With large corporations coming free of their national rooting and becoming not only multi-national or even global, and in addition growing in their annual revenues to become economically more powerful than many nations, we are getting governmental structures that transcend national boundaries, for example, the EU.
We need to hear from Dr.
Harvy - oh,,here he is!
I like his shirt.
Loved the Bad Faith interview
Evolution of an organism is determined by its success in adjusting to the irritants of its environment.
Whatever medical condition hope you're completely recovered.
David accurately predicting Trump 2024. I'm still not sure if neoliberalism is over. But some of Trump's policies are def anti-neolib. For example, America First at face value is actually damaging to large international corporations. And tariffs of course. Let's see what he actually does and how the world reacts. Would be wonderful to hear David's thoughts again. Wishing you good things, professor.
7 min 40 sec - I think you meant 'World War I'.
Woodrow Wilson, Treaty of Versailles.
We are living in a kind of techno-feudalism which is turning into techno-fascism ("smart" fascism).
I just want to know what David thinks about reproduction trends in places like Korea, Japan, Italy etc. as the working class feels a total lack of security/stability and near-hopelessness that a "growth" economy, neoliberalism, global trade, etc. can no longer provide.
The US may have stayed out of some European affairs, but it was never isolationist. Once the Revolutionary War was over it was a race to California, and the war with the Spanish was designed to inherit an imperial apparatus which leap frogged the US from settler colonial project into a global imperial force.
The New York Times
April 3, 2021 2:28 PM PT
Stacy Blatt was in hospice care last September listening to Rush Limbaugh’s dire warnings about how badly Donald Trump’s campaign needed money when he went online and chipped in everything he could: $500.
It was a big sum for a 63-year-old battling cancer and living in Kansas City on less than $1,000 per month. But that single contribution - federal records show it was his first ever - quickly multiplied. Another $500 was withdrawn the next day, then $500 the next week and every week through mid-October, without his knowledge - until Blatt’s bank account had been depleted and frozen. When his utility and rent payments bounced, he called his brother, Russell Blatt, for help. ETC ETC ETC
Greetings from Brazil, David.
As you suggested, here we have a clear idea of 'neoliberalism' as the economic thought of the 'Chicago boys', the one that wreaks havoc in South America since the 80s' - just as we were about to start thinking of recovering from decades of corrupt military dictatorships. What I feel is that from Thatcher and Reagan onward those people are doing to the world what we in Brazil call 'arrastão', a name borrowed from those large fishing nets to mean that enormous wave of people - often very poor - that suddenly start ravaging the beaches, mostly in Rio, stealing from the bewildered bathers: neoliberals are determined not only to shrink governments, but to take their place to enact that upside down idea of 'anarcho-capitalism' some of them still nourish, although calling it 'globalism', 'new world order' or whatever. They have become capable of doing that because in the last thirty years they have been educating people in very large numbers into the neoliberal 'tenet', apparently through infiltrating the programs of the left to raise the professional and 'intellectual' standards of the masses.
But all of these are just some steps in the ways that through the ages money-using has evolved - more in the sense of the movement of a dancer than in Darwin's. And there is no way out of this ballet, because exchanging production, and in particular when intermediated by money, doesn't have other way of behaving. In other words, an economy based on exchange and money won't ever be free from, among countless plagues it brings, setting people into a permanent state of war against each other, euphemistically christened 'competition' and seen as 'healthy'.
So, the only way to establish a meaningful system out of the handful of possible economic relations (gifting, stealing, sharing and exchanging) is to abandon exchange and money and put back in the center of the economy the good, old sharing, which still is quite alive, although at the margins of the current system, inside groups with strong affective ties, like families and some friendships. Economics in general, however, seems to see no economic life outside this lame system ruled by finance, and which is proven resilient to all the fixes humankind tried to do to it in the last 6000 years or more - and no doubt we have tried them all in every way.
But thinking of an economy of sharing out of widespread, worldwide friendship, to be adopted by people raised by the ideology coming along with money is just dreaming, at least for the next couple of centuries, in the best of the hypotheses, even if we all agree on reeducating ourselves en masse to erase thousands of years of immersion in competitive behavior, in believing in merit, in commodifying even our souls. Given such, therefore, the only rational and caritative thing to think about right now is not fixing capitalism or finding a substitute to it, but to concoct an antidote to what is coming next, something to help people coping with having to live through a perpetual nightmare.
Can i attach a file? The term used by Jesus himself wasdocs.google.com/document/d/1rszl8nmpTlTL2XC7cH_eJXT4FaKuRwhco28UQnUQvKw/edit?usp=drivesdk 'the I am' as here discussed
love your shirt
I honestly believe we should call it absolutist liberalism. The state has played an increasing role in the management of economy and has hyper expanded over all aspect of civilian life. Contrary to the absolutist during the classical era, this one is controlled by financial and industrial oligarchs, not an aristocracy.
The rent-takers have taken over.
Pluto-Populism is the word you're grasping for.
I wonder about using the word "populism" in view of Thomas Frank's recent book (and talks, articles) tracing the roots of the word to an actual grassroots movement of the working class. As with so many words, it's been by co-opted by those who'd like to brainwash us into believing they're on our side. (The Nazi's called themselves socialists to win popular support, and they were anything but.) The term "Pseudo-Populism" might be more apt.
I call the new word to represent the changes taking place from neoliberalism, the wages system of bondage, where the working class produces the wealth which is called capital and somehow doesn't notice that it is the power, that power grows out of the barrel of wealth ownership. What goes on 'underneath' it all is that mysterious entity called the "commodity'. Thus, the fetishism of commodities. (see the last section of the first chapter of the first volume of CAPITAL) where the producers' mindset is turned upside down, attributing political power to those who do nothing but accumulate the wealth the bottom 90% produce.
LIBERTY, EQUALITY & FRATERNITY are the Ideals of the bourgeois revolution. But does a wage-slave have liberty? Can an equality of classes exist? And fraternity, another word for 'solidarity". Can solidarity exists within a system of laws made by the bourgeoisie, by the ruling class? Can we all be equal under the laws the made by the legislators of the political State, political States not ruled by the producers of wealth, but the owners of same?
We have been living under the dictatorship of the capitalist class since they took over from the aristocrats in those first city States of Genoa and Verona. One of the chief illusions is that some of us have been living in a democracy. We should socially own and democratically manage the wealth we produce and that which lies in natural resources so that we can have the power to distribute it on the basis of need and live in harmony with the Earth.
I prefer to understand Power from a psychological perspective that describes human behavior. Most desperate circumstances results from Pathological Narcissism. Be it individual or collective Narcissism.
Certainly, I cannot be the only person to contemplate such a hypothetical belief.
Narcissism vs Classism, could that be a chicken and egg thing?
All of this is excellent as an analysis of the economic evolution of the capital without challenging the Marxist interpretation accuracy. However the void I observe among the different platforms of the left is the almost nonexistent assessment of the conditions and evolution of the working class in the context of class warfare. Since fascism has taken the initiative in the offensive. Trump and the GOP represent the radicalization of the corporate class. What is the analysis of that aspect in the evolution of class warfare ???
Fascism is capitalism in decay, comrade.
The system now needs scapegoats to avoid a united proletariat.
Radicalisation to the right is nothing but capitalism seeking to regain popularity by diverting anger and dissatisfaction caused by systemic failure to false divisions among people.
The capitalist class's shadow is fascist in nature. In the face of supposed democracy and liberal values, it always needs the far right to establish control over the middle. Thus, the working class must be "by all means available" be held in check, via propaganda and he pitting of some segments of the working class against others, via race, via region, via religion, via patriotism, via nationalism, etc. The class warfare is central, the capitalism class being very aware of their class status and using all means to keep the working class believing it's part of a classless society. That gets harder to do when monopolization and the accumulation of wealth and power become too apparent. Enter, the technocratic class to utilize mass surveillance and the growing police state with its erosion of civil liberties to hold revolution in check.
@@whythelongface64 you guys describe the dominant class as almost an omnipotent power , god like. As if the system has a power of its own in the hands of a puppeteer. It isn't like that. We all are human and workers we have will and a mind. Nothing is absolute in the struggle. The system is also inherently weak. It has a natural tendency to decay and failure by the obvious corruption that power gives. Their confidence is not always correctly placed. We should be more optimistic in the capacity of the people to react to injustice and oppression. Just for the sake of mental health.
@@georgefurman4371 everything can be traced back to power relations, like it or not.
@@georgefurman4371 Agreed. Part of the problem is educational -- getting people to understand what sort of government and what sort of laws and policies actually serve the common good. Part of the problem, also, is that a large number of people have succumbed to superstition-based belief systems. Forget science. Their belief system is grounded in magic.
Thatcher/Reagan's reality has not yet broken from the minds of enough people, but we are living in state of post-industrial and high tech transformation wherein the ground is shifting beneath the feet of more and more people in the middle classes across Europe and America. Instead of debate on ideas in the midst of these massive changes and confusion, it is better to have leadership or events that shock the system into change and demonstrate some other means for people to experience stability and possibly a higher standard of living. Right now, we are in a downward spiral despite China's rise. China cannot build a new global order while workers everywhere experience more instability and confusion and decrease both their reproductive rates and their consumption. We are on the cusp of seeing these trends culminate in economic collapse, perhaps an overall massive global collapse that will finally kill Reagan/Thatcher AND undermine China's rise altogether. Sadly, it would appear that no one has an answer unless you can duplicate something like the societies of Scandinavia... or, drastically reducing consumption, production and living in a world of dramatically reduced overall growth and human reproduction are likely the consequence. Either this, or we all end up living in a semi-apocalyptic landscape, trying to avoid caveman/tribal brutality by organizing enclaves in the midst of more global climate change and extreme weather and tectonic shifts.
I fail to see how Blackstone (the hedge fund that gobbled up all the houses that were foreclosed following the the sub-prime mortgage defaults) can possibly profit from the fact that the unemployed renters occupying the foreclosed houses are now unable to pay the rent. That sounds to me more like potential disaster for Blackstone.
They are going to suck up the "relief" checks. Just corporate welfare in a different guise.
Getting a hold of a house for non-payment means all the money that has been paid is free, and the house can be sold again, perhaps with a good gain. But if housing crashes with NO support, low prices will attract buyers. If Blackstone gets a "bail-out" they will profit even if prices fall.
@@robertcox14 That only applies to privately-owned houses with a mortgage. It doesn't apply to rental houses.
We're living in "it" alright.
The contradiction is that making the needed changes will require radically democratic grassroots movements that will be hostile to authoritarian solutions. It may be that forms of decentralized power are the only way to break the corporate grip.
Authoritarianism implies completely top-down decisions. An ethically regulated & genuinely democratic society justly empowers a democratic polity/governance. These all require a well, thoroughly educated, and thus critically thoughtful citizenry. Fully fund schools & teacher education for these objectives. Mandate adequate nutrition, mental & physical wellbeing, shelter, gifted level curriculum for every American cradle to grave. That's not authoritarian; it's good common sense governance.
I do not like the framing that "some form of authoritarianism" is required to get us out of this mess, though I do agree that a "sovereign intervention", as one of the commenters put it, is necessary.
One of the big lies propagated by the regressive forces is that we got into this mess because democracy has not been able to handle the manifold crises we face, while the truth is that under capitalism true democracy is continuously being repressed and that it is democratically unaccountable capital that has been feeding those crises.
So yes, we very much need a sovereign intervention, but it has to have democratic roots or else we will just create new problems.
David, please get a microphone of some sort! Your stuff is too great to be distracted by the echo effect of using the computer microphone, as it seems you’re doing. Especially when you’re talking about Braudel and Arrighi!
How about the the U.S. and Europe together?
I am no one, of course, but I have been calling the authoritarian rise "Popular Authoritarianism"
Not a bad way to describe where too many people seem to want to go. For forty years I have tried to bring people to think differently, of how to achieve true individual liberty within a cooperative social framework. In the 1990s I attended a lecture by historian Paul Gaston. He talked about the principles of "cooperative individualism" embraced by the founders of a utopian community they founded on Mobile Bay in Alabama, they named "Fair Hope."
This makes it sound as if immigrant workers weren't used for this same wage discrimination for over a century prior. I'm ignorant on this subject, so I don't want to come off angry here. Possibly the issue is there's just so much more to talk about.
Inverted totalitarian is they way Sheldon Wolin called where we are now: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
If a corporation wants to start a project, they call the bank and raise capital. Correct? If that corporation cannot get anyone to do the work, they have no capital. All they have is currency. Everyone has capital. How much, that depends on your skill set. There is no equity in the value of capital. Yes, some people have more capital than others but, people with low capital do not deserve to toil just to barely scrape by. What percentage of workers worked in the food industry in 1898? What is that statistic today? What we call capitalism is just a euphemism for the master slave paradigm. Whether it is the master slave paradigm, Lord serve paradigm, or the employer employee paradigm, it is all the same relationship. Everyone is good at something. We must define what capital is and is not.
Out 😂 of circulation (like a newspaper) for a while. Out 🙂 of order, sorry 😞
Please replace your microphone with something better.
Neo-fascism, looks like. Not very fierce yet but getting there
🔻👍
Technocratic global oligarchy,
Yes, what Yanis said techno feudalism
I hope Professor David Harvey is fine
He is. This is a new episode. Thank you for your concern.
Rake care of yourself.
National Conservatism.
Inter-nationalist conservativism
This podcast is made possible, by CAPITALISM.
Wow
Your comment is so vapid, it's hard to know where to begin addressing it. Since you're most likely a troll, why bother?
@@revelationreflection DO you want my address in Brazil, for me to tell this in your face?
@@revelationreflection You tube keep deleting my answer, I can tell you in your face if you want.
@@destruction1928 troll me too.. 😃