Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

David Harvey to do Capital Vols 2 and 3 videos

love detective said:
Pretty good essay, but found one part of it a tad simplistic and even incorrect at the abstract level
Click to expand...

Check out Harvey's Limits to Capital for a sustained discussion of this issue. Hardly fair to dismiss someone's take on an issue as fraught as the reproduction schemas by relying on a secondary source written for a popular audience.
 
i've read it a couple of times and it's a good book and very helpful in a lot of areas. However, despite being nearly 500 pages long, it focuses on the reproduction schema for only a handful of those pages, and even then is just a very brief, fairly bog standard, high level overview of marx's reproduction schema, luxembourg's criticism of it etc.. (and it certainly doesn't engage with them directly in the context of the credit system) - which ties in with what i said in a previous post, i.e. marx's work on the reproduction schema & social reproduction, which to me seem to be incredibly important in the context of his overall project, does seem to be an area that is often overlooked by marxists and non-marxists critics alike.

Which is why Rosa Luxembourg's engagement with it, despite its flaws (while at the same time having many valid critiques of marx's schema), still remains probably the most useful marxist analysis & engagement with marx's reproduction schema to date (whether you agree or disagree with her ultimate position on it, you can't take away from the usefulness and uniqueness of the book in explaining, exploring, analysing,critiquing, historically situating and attempting to build on what Marx had started with it)

David Harvey is incredible useful and has been great in opening up a proper understanding of Marx through his books and seminar series, but that doesn't mean we can't critically engage with some of the things he comes out with (for example his knowledge of the specifics of modern financial instruments and derivatives etc.. seems to be fairly poor, however that is compensated for by his strong knowledge of the wider structural frameworks in which they are used within)
 
love detective said:
i've read it a couple of times and it's a good book and very helpful in a lot of areas.
Click to expand...

I agree that Volume II is an under-appreciated treasure. Professor Harvey is currently writing a 'A Companion to Vol II' based on the lectures which will probably be published next year - so, more to come on this. I certainly don't think that Harvey is beyond criticism, but if you are familiar with Limits, I can't see how you would say that Harvey's take on the reproduction schema is "simplistic" or "standard". One of the main projects of Limits, in addition to re-thinking the three volumes of Capital as if geography mattered, was to re-integrate credit/interest-bearing capital into the core of Marx's argument. One of the recurrent themes in Vol II is Marx saying over and over again, well we really need to discuss credit to resolve this or that issue, but I don't want to deal with that here... He continually tries to put it off, but it continually intrudes again and again. Harvey interprets Marx's reproduction schema - contra Luxemburg- to be saying that it is only the expansion of production tomorrow that creates the demand for yesterday's suplus product, and that credit is the only way to bridge that temporal gap and keep capitalist production turning over. By putting credit back into the center of the story, it allows Harvey's take on the current crisis in the Enigma of Capital to see the seizing up of credit markets not as some epiphenomenal distraction as many Marxists do, but central to the dynamics of crisis formation. I think this is why Harvey's take on the current crisis is so compelling, while the more traditional Marxist explanations that rigidly cleave to the falling rate of profit theory fall flat.
 
tonyharkney said:
Yeah, so "ironic" that he is working to make available two entire semesters of graduate level instruction for free...
Click to expand...
Tony, you're missing the dramatic irony,which your entry provides.

I've never got why 'marxist economist' have had a problem with credit - it's there, it extends the contradictions into the future.The schemas demand it. I say i don't know why, but i do,it's because they stopped at vol1.
 
tonyharkney said:
I agree that Volume II is an under-appreciated treasure. Professor Harvey is currently writing a 'A Companion to Vol II' based on the lectures which will probably be published next year - so, more to come on this. I certainly don't think that Harvey is beyond criticism, but if you are familiar with Limits, I can't see how you would say that Harvey's take on the reproduction schema is "simplistic" or "standard". One of the main projects of Limits, in addition to re-thinking the three volumes of Capital as if geography mattered, was to re-integrate credit/interest-bearing capital into the core of Marx's argument. One of the recurrent themes in Vol II is Marx saying over and over again, well we really need to discuss credit to resolve this or that issue, but I don't want to deal with that here... He continually tries to put it off, but it continually intrudes again and again. Harvey interprets Marx's reproduction schema - contra Luxemburg- to be saying that it is only the expansion of production tomorrow that creates the demand for yesterday's suplus product, and that credit is the only way to bridge that temporal gap and keep capitalist production turning over. By putting credit back into the center of the story, it allows Harvey's take on the current crisis in the Enigma of Capital to see the seizing up of credit markets not as some epiphenomenal distraction as many Marxists do, but central to the dynamics of crisis formation. I think this is why Harvey's take on the current crisis is so compelling, while the more traditional Marxist explanations that rigidly cleave to the falling rate of profit theory fall flat.
Click to expand...
Don't say Professor Harvey please.
 
tonyharkney said:
I agree that Volume II is an under-appreciated treasure. Professor Harvey is currently writing a 'A Companion to Vol II' based on the lectures which will probably be published next year - so, more to come on this.
Click to expand...

that's good to hear

I certainly don't think that Harvey is beyond criticism, but if you are familiar with Limits, I can't see how you would say that Harvey's take on the reproduction schema is "simplistic" or "standard".
Click to expand...

Been a while since I read Limits, but just going from my memory of it at the time - certainly if read together/compared with Luxembourg's Accumulation of Capital I think the description of standard & simplistic bears out (although appreciate the two things were not necessarily comparable in terms of focus/scope etc..). I say simplistic & standard because it doesn't seem to do much more than give an outline of Marx's schema along with a couple of very short perspectives on it. As i said I don't think the coverage of the schema in total took up more than a handful of pages (10 at the most probably?) - so in light of that I don't see how it could be anything other than simple or standard - there's simply not the space/time allocated to it to go beyond that in say the way that Luxembourg did. And in his (Harvey's) introduction to the section on the reproduction schema he pretty much states that this is all he is going to do in terms of covering it, so to an extent Harvey and I are on the same side here in that the coverage of it in Limits wasn't intended to be a full on critical engagement with the reproduction schema (and in addition to his comment in the introduction I also recall him saying something along the lines of him not doing justice to the schema overall and the issues it raises)

One of the main projects of Limits, in addition to re-thinking the three volumes of Capital as if geography mattered, was to re-integrate credit/interest-bearing capital into the core of Marx's argument. One of the recurrent themes in Vol II is Marx saying over and over again, well we really need to discuss credit to resolve this or that issue, but I don't want to deal with that here... He continually tries to put it off, but it continually intrudes again and again.
Click to expand...

Yep can appreciate this, but at the same time one of the reasons that Marx was so dogmatic about excluding credit (and other things) in various areas was that it got in the way of the core of his argument and that there was a danger of it obscuring the underlying essence as to what he was trying to get across. So there is a tension between excluding and abstracting away from things to give a better view/outline of the fundamental essence and then bringing them back in later to build on that fundamental analysis. I think you're right that throughout the three volumes of capital there's a tendency to do the former and put off the later - but again this needs to be thought about in the context of Marx's overall project and the various other books/volumes that he intitially intended to write - so to give him the benefit of the doubt, the reintroduction of these things were probably seen as fitting in better in the works/books that he never got round to writing. So we can blame him for not completing his project, but not for being disciplined about deciding where is and where is not the right area to cover things (or you can disagree with him as to the specifics of where things should be introduced/re-introduced but conceptually the approach seems fairly solid to me)

Harvey interprets Marx's reproduction schema - contra Luxemburg- to be saying that it is only the expansion of production tomorrow that creates the demand for yesterday's suplus product, and that credit is the only way to bridge that temporal gap and keep capitalist production turning over. By putting credit back into the center of the story, it allows Harvey's take on the current crisis in the Enigma of Capital to see the seizing up of credit markets not as some epiphenomenal distraction as many Marxists do, but central to the dynamics of crisis formation. I think this is why Harvey's take on the current crisis is so compelling, while the more traditional Marxist explanations that rigidly cleave to the falling rate of profit theory fall flat.
Click to expand...

Can't really argue with most of that (although as i said previously he doesn't engage with the role of credit in the reproduction schema directly in context ,i.e. in relation to the section covering/analysing the reproduction schema - other than to say that money and credit should be more fundamental to the analysis - then in the analysis of money, credit, and the financial system it seems (imo) to be somewhat disconnected from the reproduction schema itself)

ps - i don't know what epiphenomenal means, but it's a nice word to say - rolls of the tongue very smoothly
 
love detective said:
that's good to hear
Click to expand...

Yes - I think we are in basic agreement on these points. And perhaps things are less explicitly stated in Limits than I remember. The one thing I would add is that Harvey sharply disagrees with Luxemburg at several points around the schemas, although he does draw on her thinking elsewhere. Luxemburg (rightly, imho) finds Marx's explanation of where the demand comes from to mop up the surplus in expanded reproduction wanting - Marx says it comes from owning class consumption in Vol II - and proposes imperialism/colonialism as the answer. Harvey, as already said, thinks credit has a major role to play here. Also, Luxemburg complains that Marx's schemas make it seem like capitalism can happily expand forever, while Harvey sees Marx saying in the schemas that the conditions for the stable expansion of capitalism are actually quite precarious and crisis-prone.
 
tonyharkney said:
And perhaps things are less explicitly stated in Limits than I remember.
Click to expand...

I had a quick flick through earlier and that's reinforced my opinion that I gave above

Coincidentally, there are a number of David Harvey 'themed' sessions at the Historical Materialism conference next week in London - one of them specificaly on Limits to Capital (although not sure if this means the book itself or the general topic)

(amusingly, and somewhat coincidentally related to some of my comments above, there is also another paper at another 'Spaces of Marxism' session at the event called The Limits To Harvey)
 
love detective said:
I had a quick flick through earlier and that's reinforced my opinion that I gave above
Click to expand...

I looked through Limits to Capital and well and the way I read it, beginning with section II (Accumulation Through Expanded Reproduction) of Chapter 6, The Dynamics of Accumulation, he begins a sustained discussion of the reproduction schema that continues to explicitly inform his thinking through the rest of chapter 6, throughout Chapter 7, Overaccumulation, Devaluation and the 'First-cut' Theory of Crisis, and into the first few sections of Chapter 8, Fixed Capital. He's clearly writing in dialogue with the schemas and continues to explicitly reference them after the section you mentioned which starts on page 166 through at least page 220, where he is talking about the implications of the reproduction schemas for fixed capital formation.

Should be a good conference. He's also giving the Deutscher Memorial Lecture on Friday, 11 November at another event in London.
 
tonyharkney said:
I looked through Limits to Capital and well and the way I read it, beginning with section II (Accumulation Through Expanded Reproduction) of Chapter 6, The Dynamics of Accumulation, he begins a sustained discussion of the reproduction schema that continues to explicitly inform his thinking through the rest of chapter 6, throughout Chapter 7, Overaccumulation, Devaluation and the 'First-cut' Theory of Crisis, and into the first few sections of Chapter 8, Fixed Capital. He's clearly writing in dialogue with the schemas and continues to explicitly reference them after the section you mentioned which starts on page 166 through at least page 220, where he is talking about the implications of the reproduction schemas for fixed capital formation.

Should be a good conference. He's also giving the Deutscher Memorial Lecture on Friday, 11 November at another event in London.
Click to expand...

Not really worth arguing about, but I'd say that's a very generous reading - there's really only around 10 pages that engages with the Reproduction Schema in the way that I was talking about, i.e. a Rosa Luxembourg type analysis & engagement - this takes place from pages 166 to 176.

Then from there up until page 190 it's fairly standard falling rate of profit stuff (which is very much volume 3 stuff - productivity, technological & organisational change, organic/technical composition of capital, production sphere type stuff). Then from page 190 onwards it largely continues the themes of, and a dialogue with, not the Reproduction Schema as you claim, but the falling rate of profit analysis (in terms of the falling rate of profit being a signifier/manifestation of over-accumulation, impending criss, and the resultant devaluation/destruction that will come etc..) which as i've pointed out before always seems to be the shiny thing that marxists are attracted to like magpies - to the detriment and neglect of other areas. And then the subsequent parts on Fixed capital circulation that you refer to are more analogous to sections 1 & 2 of Volume 2 of capital, not section 3 where the meat of the social reproduction and the reproduction schema are dealt with.

Your points about Fixed capital formation & circulation etc.. to me seem more of an engagement by Harvey with the earlier parts of Volume 2 of Capital, not the social reproduction part, i.e. the reproduction and circulation of total social capital. And I think a couple of the comments made by Harvey in the small section of the book that he does focus on this area backs up what i'm saying.

For me there is a big switch/leap forward in analysis & perspective between sections 1&2 of Volume 2 of Capital and section 3 of Volume 2 (i.e. the reproduction and circulation of total social capital and the reproduction schema) - and it's this area that is usually neglected and overlooked in marxist analysis. This is not a specific criticism of Harvey itself, just a general observation that it's an area that is very poorly and rarely engaged with by people who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on other areas.

(obviously none of any of this exists in a vacuum in isolation and anything can be connected to any other part which is part of the strength of Marx's integrated framework/approach overall)
 
love detective said:
Not really worth arguing about, but I'd say that's a very generous reading
Click to expand...

And I would say that yours is a very narrow reading. You seem to have an axe to grind on this topic for some reason.

We'll just agree to disagree then. In any case, as I said, Harvey's book length treatment of Vol II will be out next year.
 
I've no axe to grind - i'm merely discussing Capital and exploring people's writings/developments on it

Isn't this something that Harvey, through his lecture series, tries to encourage?

Are you an academic by the way?
 
tonyharkney said:
Charming. I apologize for offending your delicate sensibilities by failing to detect the keen sarcasm of your one line posts.
Click to expand...

Tony, don't let the way people here express themselves put you off.

I think the mods may intervene in the case of plausible death threats and obvious racism, but that's about it as far as I know, which results in a lot of rude words being tossed around. It means nothing.

Thanks for the great work you and your colleagues have done getting David Harvey's stuff online so far. It's a tremendously valuable resource.

Wish there were more transcripts though, I personally prefer words to video. I recognise that I'm an old fart in this respect though and many, many more people prefer the video versions.
 
Bernie Gunther said:
Tony, don't let the way people here express themselves put you off.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Bernie. Although I did play a small role in the Vol 1 taping, I have since had to move out of NYC and wasn't able to participate in the Vol 2 filming at all. Though I have stayed in touch with some of the folks involved.

Transcripts of the Vol 1 class are available here:

http://harvey-capital-lectures.wikidot.com/

The first four English classes have been corrected by humans, but the rest are machine generated (awaiting human correction for now). Plus folks are working on translating the transcripts into 20+ languages...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Kate Sharpley
Dave / David Poole
Replies
0
Views
165
Kate Sharpley
Kate Sharpley
Jeff Robinson
Urban Guerrillas: The Decade of Leftwing Terrorism (video essay about the 1970s)
Replies
17
Views
615
DaveCinzano
DaveCinzano
ska invita
Government debt, do you understand it?
2
Replies
33
Views
2K
gosub
gosub
brixtonscot
Sexual Liberation and/or Capitalist Assimilation ?
2
Replies
39
Views
2K
yield
Y
Cloo
What do/should the World Wars mean to us now & in the future?
2
Replies
44
Views
2K
AnnO'Neemus
A
Back
Top Bottom