Harvey cautions against the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism on the grounds that such a strategy is outmoded. His central argument is that capitalism is “too big to fail” and thus the best we can hope for are incremental reforms to prop up the system. Since capitalism is too big to fail, Harvey argues, it is necessary that we not allow it to fail: “We have to actually spend some time propping it [capitalism] up, trying to reorganize it, and maybe shift it around very slowly and over time to a different configuration. But a revolutionary overthrow of this capitalist economic system is not anything that’s conceivable at the present time. It will not happen, and it cannot happen, and we have to make sure that it does not happen.”
One of Harvey’s arguments on the need to tame capitalism rather than replace it is that perilous internecine conflict worldwide has to be avoided at all cost. He calls on the left to try “to manage this capitalist system in such a way that we stop it being too monstrous to survive at the same time as we organize the capitalist system so that it becomes less and less dependent upon profitability … so that the world’s population can reproduce in peace and tranquility, rather than the way it’s going right now, which is not peace and tranquility at all, but eruptions. And these eruptions can, of course, also lead to conflicts between different parts of the world, and geopolitical conflicts, and the like.”
So there is that way of looking at things. I don't share that view. I think yeah, there are some acute problems with the neoliberal form of capitalism, but there are certain parts of the world where you don't really have strong neoliberal capitalism and you've still got the judgment that the economic system, the economic model, is not working, and that economic model is that of capitalism.
So I guess we're still good but I'll listen to the whole thing later today to see if this holds water. I've been listening to his podcast regularly and he is always talking about progressing from capitalism so I do not believe that he was saying that. From the part I just read it sounds like he was just saying people make that argument sometimes.
Edit:
Okay, so this is the point he is actually making and it's really not a bad point:
So that is, if you like, one half of the problem. But the other part of the problem is this: that in Marx's time if there was a sudden collapse of capitalism, most people in the world would be able to feed themselves and reproduce. Because most people were self-sufficient in their local area with the kinds of, you know, things they needed to live on – in other words, people could put breakfast on their table irrespective of what was going on in the global economy. Right now that's no longer the case. Most people in the United States, but increasingly, of course, in Europe, and in Japan, and now increasingly in China, and India, and Indonesia, and everywhere are dependent entirely upon the delivery of food to them, so that they get the food from the circulation of capital. Now, in Marx's time, like I say, that would have not been true but now this is a situation where probably around 70 or maybe 80 percent of the world's people are dependent upon the circulation of capital in order to assure their food supply, in order to deliver them the kinds of fuels which are going to allow them mobility, going to actually deliver them all the necessities to be able to reproduce their daily life.
So this is a, I think, a situation which I can really summarize in the following kind of way: that capital right now is too big to fail. We cannot imagine a situation where we would shut down the flow of capital, because if we shut down the flow of capital, 80 percent of the world's population would immediately starve, would be rendered immobile, would not be able to reproduce themselves in very effective ways. So we cannot afford any kind of sustained attack upon capital accumulation. So the kind of fantasy that you might have had – socialists, or communists, and so on, might have had back in 1850, which is that well, okay, we can destroy this capitalist system and we can build something entirely different – that is an impossibility right now. We have to keep the circulation of capital in motion, we have to keep things moving, because if we don't do that, we are actually stuck with a situation in which, as I've said, almost all of us would starve.
And this means that capital in general is too big to fail. It is too dominant, and it is too necessary to us that we cannot allow it to fail. We have to actually spend some time propping it up, trying to reorganize it, and maybe shift it around very slowly and over time to a different configuration. But a revolutionary overthrow of this capitalist economic system is not anything that's conceivable at the present time. It will not happen, and it cannot happen, and we have to make sure that it does not happen. But at the same time, the other side of the coin is capital is too big, too monstrous, too huge to survive, that it cannot survive in its current form. So on the one hand, we can't do without it; on the other hand, it is on a suicidal path. So this is, if you like, what I think the central dilemma is.
So there are numerable contradictions in a capitalist system right now. One of the big contradictions, as I've mentioned, is incredible class and social inequality. The second is the environmental aggregates. But then comes the kind of question of this too-big-to-fail, too-monstrous-to-survive contradiction. And I think that that is the major contradiction that we should be addressing. And therefore a socialist program, or an anti-capitalist program, of the sort that I would want is one about trying to manage this capitalist system in such a way that we stop it being too monstrous to survive at the same time as we organize the capitalist system so that it becomes less and less dependent upon profitability and becomes more and more organized so that it delivers the use values to the whole of the world's population – so that the world's population can reproduce in peace and tranquility, rather than the way it's going right now, which is not peace and tranquility at all, but eruptions. And these eruptions can, of course, also lead to conflicts between different parts of the world, and geopolitical conflicts, and the like.
So there it is. I think we need to think about this idea that capital is too big to fail, but at the same time that it's too monstrous to survive.
He's not saying that's good. He's saying if the forces of capital would be to just stop producing now 80% of the world population would not be able to feed themselves. That's 5,600,000,000 people starving. This is a fact we will have to reckon with. This does not mean capitalism is good. It means we're way deep into it.
This is literally the same argument every anti communist or revisionist has made since 1917
To not "rock the boat"
Actually Existing Socialism has proved itself a much more efficient system than capitalism. The fastest countries to industrialise were Marxist-Leninist ones that achieved in 10-20 years what took the Western capitalist states 100-150 years to develop
Harvey is garbage and I'm convinced the only people allowed to practice Marxism in bourgeois Academia (in the US) are Marxists that spread nonsense like a firehose like Harvey, Wolff etc
That's not how I read the argument he's making at all. I would urge a little caution before completely discarding some of the most powerful voices we have on the left, even if they're not left enough for your taste. I think calling a man garbage who has been spending his entire career railing against capitalism and teaching Marxism is very unwise from a strategic perspective. I think that's doing a service to the bourgeoisie and we can find more constructive ways to critique points we don't agree with.
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/david-harveys-new-thesis-is-that-capitalism-is-too-big-to-fail-is-it
Imagine claiming to have studied Marx inside out and becoming a reformist lol
From the same video he says:
So I guess we're still good but I'll listen to the whole thing later today to see if this holds water. I've been listening to his podcast regularly and he is always talking about progressing from capitalism so I do not believe that he was saying that. From the part I just read it sounds like he was just saying people make that argument sometimes.
Edit:
Okay, so this is the point he is actually making and it's really not a bad point:
So this is a, I think, a situation which I can really summarize in the following kind of way: that capital right now is too big to fail. We cannot imagine a situation where we would shut down the flow of capital, because if we shut down the flow of capital, 80 percent of the world's population would immediately starve, would be rendered immobile, would not be able to reproduce themselves in very effective ways. So we cannot afford any kind of sustained attack upon capital accumulation. So the kind of fantasy that you might have had – socialists, or communists, and so on, might have had back in 1850, which is that well, okay, we can destroy this capitalist system and we can build something entirely different – that is an impossibility right now. We have to keep the circulation of capital in motion, we have to keep things moving, because if we don't do that, we are actually stuck with a situation in which, as I've said, almost all of us would starve.
And this means that capital in general is too big to fail. It is too dominant, and it is too necessary to us that we cannot allow it to fail. We have to actually spend some time propping it up, trying to reorganize it, and maybe shift it around very slowly and over time to a different configuration. But a revolutionary overthrow of this capitalist economic system is not anything that's conceivable at the present time. It will not happen, and it cannot happen, and we have to make sure that it does not happen. But at the same time, the other side of the coin is capital is too big, too monstrous, too huge to survive, that it cannot survive in its current form. So on the one hand, we can't do without it; on the other hand, it is on a suicidal path. So this is, if you like, what I think the central dilemma is.
So there are numerable contradictions in a capitalist system right now. One of the big contradictions, as I've mentioned, is incredible class and social inequality. The second is the environmental aggregates. But then comes the kind of question of this too-big-to-fail, too-monstrous-to-survive contradiction. And I think that that is the major contradiction that we should be addressing. And therefore a socialist program, or an anti-capitalist program, of the sort that I would want is one about trying to manage this capitalist system in such a way that we stop it being too monstrous to survive at the same time as we organize the capitalist system so that it becomes less and less dependent upon profitability and becomes more and more organized so that it delivers the use values to the whole of the world's population – so that the world's population can reproduce in peace and tranquility, rather than the way it's going right now, which is not peace and tranquility at all, but eruptions. And these eruptions can, of course, also lead to conflicts between different parts of the world, and geopolitical conflicts, and the like.
So there it is. I think we need to think about this idea that capital is too big to fail, but at the same time that it's too monstrous to survive.
Its a fkn terrible point given how 9 million people starve to death each year while food is buried to keep its market price high
He's not saying that's good. He's saying if the forces of capital would be to just stop producing now 80% of the world population would not be able to feed themselves. That's 5,600,000,000 people starving. This is a fact we will have to reckon with. This does not mean capitalism is good. It means we're way deep into it.
This is literally the same argument every anti communist or revisionist has made since 1917
To not "rock the boat"
Actually Existing Socialism has proved itself a much more efficient system than capitalism. The fastest countries to industrialise were Marxist-Leninist ones that achieved in 10-20 years what took the Western capitalist states 100-150 years to develop
Harvey is garbage and I'm convinced the only people allowed to practice Marxism in bourgeois Academia (in the US) are Marxists that spread nonsense like a firehose like Harvey, Wolff etc
That's not how I read the argument he's making at all. I would urge a little caution before completely discarding some of the most powerful voices we have on the left, even if they're not left enough for your taste. I think calling a man garbage who has been spending his entire career railing against capitalism and teaching Marxism is very unwise from a strategic perspective. I think that's doing a service to the bourgeoisie and we can find more constructive ways to critique points we don't agree with.