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David Harvey

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David Harvey
Capital creates space-time.

David Harvey (born 31 October 1935) is an English geographer and the Distinguished Professor of Geography and Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). His work has contributed greatly to broad social and political debate, most recently he has been credited with helping to bring back social class and Marxist methods as serious methodological tools in the critique of global capitalism, particularly in its neoliberal form.

Quotes

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  • It’s important to recognize the class origins of this project, which occurred in the 1970s when the capitalist class was in a great deal of difficulty, workers were well organized and were beginning to push back. Like any ruling class, they needed ruling ideas. So, the ruling ideas were that freedom of the market, privatization, entrepreneurialism of the self, individual liberty and all the rest of it should be the ruling ideas of a new social order, and that was the order that got implemented in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition)

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  • The net worth of the 358 richest people in the world was then found to be 'equal to the combined income of the poorest 45 per cent of the worlds population - 2.3 billion people.'
    • Introduction to the 2006 Verso Edition, p. xi
  • Massive concentration of financial power, accompanied by the machinations of finance capital, can as easily de-stabilize as stabilize capitalism.
    • Introduction, p. xxxii
  • The invocation of social necessity should alert us. It contains the seeds for Marx's critique of political economy as well as for his dissection of capitalism.
    • Chapter 1, Commodities, Values And Class Relations, p. 15
  • Marx set out to resolve the contradictions and to correct the errors in classical political economy. In this he thought he had succeeded very well. Judging by the sound and the fury of the controversy surrounding his interpretations, he either succeeded too well or deluded himself to the success of his enterprise.
    • Chapter 2, Production and Distribution, p. 39
  • Skills that are monopolizable are anathema to capital.
    • Chapter 2, Production and Distribution, p. 59
Because the earth is not a product of labour it cannot have a value.
  • The equilibrium between supply and demand is achieved only through a reaction against the upsetting of the equilibrium.
    • Chapter 3, Production, Consumption and Surplus Value, p. 82
  • Money must exist before it can be turned into capital.
    • Chapter 3, Production, Consumption and Surplus Value, p. 95
  • Technological change can become 'fetishized' as a 'thing in itself', as an exogenous guiding force in the history of capitalism.
    • Chapter 4, Technology, Labour Process And Value, p. 122
  • Individual capitalists, in short, behave in such a way as to threaten the conditions that permit the reproduction of the capitalist class.
    • Chapter 4, Technology, Labour Process And Value, p. 135
  • But the net effect of increasing scale, centralization of capital, vertical integration and diversification within the corporate form of enterprise has been to replace the 'invisible hand' of the market by the 'visible hand' of the managers.
    • Chapter 5, Organization of Capitalist Production, p. 146
  • The social relations of capitalism have penetrated slowly into all spheres of life to make wage labour the general condition of existence only in fairly recent times.
    • Chapter 6, Dynamics Of Accumulation, p. 165
  • Individual capitalists, in short, necessarily act in such a way as to de-stabilize capitalism.
    • Chapter 6, Dynamics Of Accumulation, p. 188
  • The inner logic that governs the laws of motion of capitalism is cold, ruthless and inexorable, responsive only to the law of value. Yet value is a social relation, a product of a particular historical process. Human beings were organizers, creators and participants in that history. We have, Marx asserts, built a vast social enterprise which dominates us, delimits our freedoms and ultimately visits upon us the worst forms of degradation.
    • Chapter 7, Overaccumulation And 'First Cut' Theory, p. 203
  • Perpetual revolutions in technology can mean the devaluation of fixed capital on an extensive scale.
    • Chapter 8, Fixed capital, p. 221
  • But planned obsolescence is possible only if the rate of technological change is contained.
    • Chapter 8, Fixed capital, p. 221
  • Money could not be converted into capital if wage labour did not exist.
    • Chapter 9, Money, Credit And Finance, p. 253
  • " workers then have a strong stake in the preservation of the very system that exploits them because the destruction of that system entails the destruction of their savings."
    • Chapter 9, Money, Credit And Finance, p. 263
  • If all money capital invests in appropriation and none in actual production, than capitalism is not long for this world.
    • Chapter 9, Money, Credit And Finance, p. 269
  • When money functions as measure of value it must truly represent the values it helps to circulate.
    • Chapter 10, Finance Capital And Its Contradictions, p. 293
  • Rampant inflation is just as hard to live with as the devaluation of commodities.
    • Chapter 10, Finance Capital And Its Contradictions, p. 295
  • The onset of a crisis is usually triggered by a spectacular failure which shakes confidence in fictitious forms of capital.
    • Chapter 10, Finance Capital And Its Contradictions, p. 304
  • If, for example, a conspiratorially minded elite is so powerful, has at its fingertips such multiple and delicate instruments with which to fine-tune accumulation, then how can the periodic headlong slides into crisis be explained?
    • Chapter 10, Finance Capital And Its Contradictions, p. 316
  • The capacity to transform itself from the inside makes capitalism a somewhat peculiar beast - chameleon-like, it perpetually changes it colour; snake-like, it periodically sheds its skin.
    • Chapter 10, Finance Capital And Its Contradictions, p. 327
  • Because the earth is not a product of labour it cannot have a value.
    • Chapter 11, Theory Of Rent, p. 347
  • All rent is based on the monopoly power of private owners of certain portions of the globe.
    • Chapter 11, Theory Of Rent, p. 349
  • Speculation in land may be necessary to capitalism, but speculative orgies periodically become a quagmire of destruction for capital itself.
    • Chapter 11, Theory Of Rent, p. 369
  • Monetary relations have penetrated into every nook and cranny of the world and into almost every aspect of social, even private life.
    • Chapter 12, Production Of Spatial Configurations, p. 373
  • The geographical movement of money and commodities as capital is not the same as the movements of products and of precious metals. Capital is, after all, money used in a certain way, and is by no means identical with all money uses.
    • Chapter 12, Production Of Spatial Configurations, p. 376
  • The only solution to the contradictions of capitalism entails the abolition of wage labour.
    • Chapter 12, Production Of Spatial Configurations, p. 385
  • The accumulation of capital and misery go hand in hand, concentrated in space.
    • Chapter 13, Crisis In The Space Economy Of Capitalism, p. 418
  • Capitalists behave like capitalists wherever they are. They pursue the expansion of value through exploitation without regard to the social consequences.
    • Chapter 13, Crisis In The Space Economy Of Capitalism, p. 424
  • There is, in short, no 'spatial fix' that can contain the contradictions of capitalism in the long run.
    • Chapter 13, Crisis In The Space Economy Of Capitalism, p. 442
The accumulation of capital and misery go hand in hand, concentrated in space.
  • Not only must weapons be bought and paid for out of surpluses of capital and labour, but they must also be put to use. For this is the only means that capitalism has at its disposal to achieve the level of devaluation now required. The idea is dreadful in its implications. What better reason could there be to declare that it is time for capitalism to be gone, to give way to some saner mode of production?
    • Chapter 13, Crisis In The Space Economy Of Capitalism, p. 445
  • A work of this sort admits no conclusion.
    • Afterword, p.446
  • The ultimate Form of devaluation is military confrontation and global war.
    • Afterword, p. 449
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