David Harvey - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Discourse exclusively on the basis of historical materialist methodology.
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By Zyx
#13137946
Worth listening to or reading? What?

My video list so far:

[youtube]02eskyHJY_4[/youtube] (watching now)

[youtube]YYQb0fthNfI[/youtube]

[youtube]UhqD3az9cZ4[/youtube]
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By HoniSoit
#13137979
David Harvey is very much worth listening to and reading. He's both an orthodox Marxist in that he sticks very close to the insights he derived from the Capital but is also somewhat unorthodox because he extends Marxist analysis to geography and urban sociology which isn't really the traditional focus of Marxism.
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By KurtFF8
#13138747
but is also somewhat unorthodox because he extends Marxist analysis to geography and urban sociology which isn't really the traditional focus of Marxism.


Indeed, this is one of the most valuable things about his analysis in my opinion actually.

If you're trying to get through Capital, I suggest his online courses on his site. He offers valuable insight that can help anyone out who is having a hard time finishing capital (or at least anyone having a hard time being motivated to finish it).

The first two videos are definitely good though. (I also recommend the Zizek speech from Marxism 2009)
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By Beren
#13160333
The guy seems to really enjoy looking like Marx's true reincarnation. ;)
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By Wellsy
#15218468
He does take a position on Marx that some say raises theoretical confusion by asserting that value only exists in exchange itself and has certain implications which are not radical or based in class struggle.
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2018/04/02/marxs-law-of-value-a-debate-between-david-harvey-and-michael-roberts/
DH mentions just once (and in passing) this vital discovery of Marx (i.e. abstract labour) that distinguishes Marx’s law from the classical labour theory of value. And that is because DH wishes to press on to his interpretation of Marx’s theory as one where value is created/realized only in exchange, and not in the process of production using labour power. DH says that “value is initially taken to be a reflection of the social (abstract) labour congealed in commodities.” But “as a regulatory norm in the market place, value can exist, Marx shows, only when and where commodity exchange has become “a normal social act.” So, without money, there is no value.

Yes, but the value of a commodity is still the labour contained in it and expanded during the production process before it gets to market. Value is expended physical and mental human labour which is then abstracted by the social process of production for the market. Value is not a creature of money – on the contrary. Money is the representation or exchange value of labour expended, not vice versa. I think Marx is clear on this crucial point. He says in Capital Volume One: ‘The value of a commodity is expressed in its price before it enters into circulation, and it is therefore a pre-condition of circulation, not its result.”[ii]

Murray Smith in his new and forthcoming edition of his book, Invisible Leviathan[iii], provides a concise explanation of the difference between Marx’s law of value and DH’s interpretation. Marx said that: “Money as the measure of value is the necessary form of appearance of the measure of value which is immanent in commodities, namely labour-time.” Smith comments that this “is certainly inconsistent with the idea that value can be created in the act of exchange. ..It is precisely because exchange effects a process of ‘equalisation of products of lab our on the market’ (that is, involves a real abstraction) that production oriented toward exchange must take account of the fact that ‘physiological labour’ is both utility-shaping and value-creating – that is, both concrete and abstract at one and the same time. To try and argue that that value is created ‘not in production but at the articulation of production and circulation’ is a notion replete with circular reasoning and requiring the most robust of mental gymnastics to entertain…. The problem with this approach is that if one accepts that abstract associated labour has no substantial existence apart from the value form, money, then commodity values appear to be severed entirely from any determination in the conditions of their production, and the way is paved for an effective identification of value and price.”
...
There is reason behind DH’s interpretation. If value is created only at the moment of exchange for money and ‘money rules’, then it will be (effective) demand that will decide whether capitalism smoothly accumulates without recurring crises. To show this, DH describes in some detail the impact of capitalist accumulation on the conditions and living standards as capitalists strive to raise relative surplus value through the introduction of machinery. He uses some of the graphic examples provided Marx in Chapter 25 of Volume One. DH emphasises that capitalist accumulation aims to minimize the value of labour power – even to the point of pauperism.

It tends towards an underconsumptionist view of crisis as a result.
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By ckaihatsu
#15218570
Will be working on the more-*finished* version of the following diagram, but here's the gist of that non-labor-purchasing capital-value 'pass-through' dynamic of capitalism -- which yields profits as deriving basically-solely from labor-power exploitation, which can arguably be considered to be inherent 'theft' of labor value in the production (M-C-M') process.

material-economic exploitation DRAFT

Spoiler: show
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