David Harvey Lecture at Cornell (Part 1 of 10)

[dexblue]

Only delicate innocent child-like minds bloated on freedom as a raisin is in a large ball of dough can rapsodize about Marxism as you all do here...I'll take a wild guess and say that none of you live in Cuba...cheers little darlings

[carsanookdotcom]

The beginning of the clip.

Why am I getting seasick?

Rule # 1 Use tripod!

Rule # 3 Use tripod

Rule # 3 Use tripod

JohnCarsanookTripodLindgren

Bangkok

Royaume de Thailande

[dexblue]

Amazing. Educated people taking Marxism seriously; especially after the 20th cnetury. Whew. Think I'll skip four years of Cornell and go to a Jehova's Witness Bible college; At least there they don't ignore the cries of 200 million + innocent dead.

[fizywig]

@dexblue Seems like your lack of understanding of history, marxism, the present nature of the capitalist crisis(which even your neo-liberal friends are not blaming on socialist unions) or probably anything else for that matter means that you'll probably get a warm welcome from a jehovas witness college

[raptorkiller2k5]

@dexblue. Those millions dead were not the result of Marxism. I ask, were the working class behind those massacres or what it initiated by government managers? Most familiar with history know the source of these terrible events were autocrats. Not much different from capitalism actually with a high emphasis on hierarchy of power. Besides, capitalism has killed a LOT more than Marxist, just look at the former colonies ( most the poorest in the world) that benefited so greatly from capitalism.

[phunkblister1]

@dexblue *century

[busybuzzbuzz]

Is it going to be this noisy throughout the entire taping?

[phunkblister1]

@busybuzzbuzz yes, and when you get to heaven it is noisier

[warriorprince1010]

Capitalism needs to improved with better education and regulation, and higher minimum wages and competition. But there is no room for communism, state slavery and state ownership, and state controlled economies, sorry.

[MelioraCogito]

@warriorprince1010 "Better education & regulation" & "higher minimum wages" but no place for the state (government) in the economy.

By "regulation" do you mean regulating capitalism? Who makes the "regulations"? The State? The capitalists? That's the fox guarding the hen house & they already do that.

"Better education" for everyone or a few? As it is now? Who/what pays for it? Capitalists have no interest in educated masses.

Competition? When all can be owned by one, there is no competition.

[warriorprince1010]

@MelioraCogito Better education for all, higher wages, lower taxes and non corrupt governments regulating.

 But no room for government in the market system. NO state slavery.

[dharmaatdawn]

@warriorprince1010 U say better education for all, but then u say lower taxes. how u gonna fund u better education? Second. u say higher wages. if u understand principles of capitalism ull understand they dont wanna pay u higher wages. in fact they very comfy with slave labor in other places of the world. the golden era of capitalism, as it was here in around 1960 1970, when capitalism gave good living wages for us is over. they deindustrialized the county turning it into financial "economy"

[dharmaatdawn]

@warriorprince1010 It was a deliberate decision to deinstrialize to convert to finance so they dont have to do anything just speculate, and having the ppl to bail them out once they fail. They decided after 1970 that they werent getting enough profit and since the capital back then wasnt easily movable they made it so by financialisation of the economy. US is the ONLY developed country that cannot negotiate drug prices( they do negotiate for the vets) w pharm industry.

[dharmaatdawn]

@warriorprince1010 Theres no communism in Australia how come their government negotiates the drug prices for their citizens? How come u thing theres health care cost are highest than in any country its not bc we have the BEST medicine, this is ideological bullshit. its bc this government doesnt negotiate the prices for monopoly pharm comp. And forces 3rd world countries to buy drugs at full cost. Futhermore, "free trade agreements" have so called "process patents" which means coutn. like India

[raptorkiller2k5]

@warriorprince1010. How is an economy run by state autocrats different from one run by the autocratic "free" market? Both belong to the ruling class. In a Marxist world, the workplace, society itself, would be directly controlled by the people. Not by state managers, or bureaucrats but by working class-led movements.

[warriorprince1010]

@raptorkiller2k5  In no country is there no state. Someone would put themselves in charge and dominate the people, always has happened.

[dharmaatdawn]

@warriorprince1010 So Indian pharm industry cannot try to figure out a smarter new way to develop the drug at lower cost for their population. this is against ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY and technological development the principles that Capitalism supp. stands for. So u tell me how many ppl have died and will die from cancer, infections dx that easily treatable.. So im asking u why so much 'protectionism in so called "free market" that goes against efficiency, innovation, growth and COMPETITION??

[warriorprince1010]

@dharmaatdawn No idea what you are talking about. The state has a job to regulate and educate, not to run all businesses and decide what people need.

[Garcival]

Great video. I am a teacher in Brazil. Is there any way I can access the full video?

[giovannighaly]

Capitalism perfect? What utopia are you living on, because i'd very much like to go there! What's perfect about it? The fact that 2 billion of the worlds population have no food and clean water, or the fact that greedy banks and other financial institutions gamble with our money, safe in the knowledge that the good old state will bail them out at the ordinary joes expense? I won't deny that Capitalism has many pros, but it also has many cons too.

[tktkksully]

I've watched a number of his videos and it is all the same Marxist phrases... BTW: the man showed up to speak and didn't even bother to put on a belt. ...just the sort of guy I want to tell me how to live my life. ...the same garbage that G.B. Shaw was spewing nearly 100 years ago.

[the12gauge]

@tktkksully so you didn;t like Harvey because he didn't put on a belt?? how fucking stupid is that!!!!

[whatever2981]

I'm sorry in advance if I may raise a dumb question.. But, can someone, in short other words, tell me or reinterpret the Right To The City (is this a legal term?), so I could accurately translate it in our language.. It sounds meaningless in our language if I translate it literally and I need a good translation of it.. tnx a bunch to whomever steps up..

[jogobonito1234]

How is this related to geography? This is broad political and economic sociology.... can be interested but hey, the guy was Mackinder professor!

[Corpseifier]

In an "economic" world, profit is created by exploiting geographical differences. To make sense of a social phenomena, you also need the geographical context, or else it is meaningless.

Geography is an interdisciplinary perspective, but the unique approach which geography has, is its focus on places: why is a place the way it is? To understand this you need to combine many different academic perspectives, and in sum this becomes a geographical perspective.

[Ranger4564]

@Corpseifier "In an economic world, profit is created by exploiting geographical differences."

I have no idea how you or Harvey or anyone can conclude that all economic differences are created by geographical differences. What is geography to you then, other than the interdisciplinary perspective? I'm an architect and I understand the significance of spatial politics, or politics of space, but I would never argue that this alone, or predominantly, defines the failings of our economic system.

[Corpseifier]

@Ranger4564

I can't remember the content of this video. Must have been more than a year since I watched it. Every place is unique, and when we say geography, we mean that it is something which unifies social, natural and intellectual aspects of the world. Within geography as a discipline a place is much more than a location. A place is a container of cultural, physical and historically contingent factors. In order to create profit, one is dependent on exploiting geographical variation.

[Ranger4564]

@Corpseifier Oops. :D

Thank you for the clarification. Clearly, I have much more to learn.

[Corpseifier]

@Ranger4564

I also have a lot to learn. I am a geographer, and so is Harvey. If you asked a sociologist, political scientist, historian, an Anthropologist or economist, you would probably get different answers from all of them :P. Most likely they would all try to present an explanation which has been reduced to their own discipline...just like I did.

[TheMajorWorks1324]

boring.poooo pooo pooo

[nickglais]

Excellent

[pilkingtonphil]

I'd implore anyone who finds the notion of the reclaiming of the city and the aesthetics of man made surroundings generally to look into the work of another Marxist, Walter Benjamin, who went a long way in trying to establish what Harvey terms the "dialectic of man and the city". A worthy cause, to be sure...

[danieleriskay]

It's really too bad American leftists have made the city such a completely unappealing place to live. People wouldn't have fled to the suburbs if it wasn't for leftist lunacy and democratic party corruption.

[pilkingtonphil]

Really? Is that right? I thought that Harvey was trying to show that the main reason for the flee to the suburbs was financialisation...

That's certainly what happened in large parts of Dublin, Birmingham and many other places. In fact its a trend which can be observed in any major financial city, so perhaps before coming up with your own theories you could read a bit of the actual literature on it. I suppose it was leftists who caused the surge in housing prices and their subsequent collapse.

[pilkingtonphil]

Besides I'd love to see you put foward some actual evidence for the twin forces of "leftist lunacy" and "Democrat corruption" being the actual concrete reason behind the recent geographical dispersion in New York.

I mean do you honestly think that a minority political faction or even a major political party (which isn't centrally planned) being able to have such an effect on urban development? Come on, you sound absurd. Not everything in life can be blamed on "pinkos"...

[danieleriskay]

"I'd love to see you put foward some actual evidence for the twin forces of "leftist lunacy" and "Democrat corruption" "

Please go into any major US city and observe the terrible slums, the crime and violence levels, and generally appalling conditions which are death to the spirit and the soul of any sensitive person.

Then go to city hall. You'll find the it loaded with left-wing academics and politicians. Then go to the prosperous suburbs with low crime and good schools. Republican.

[pilkingtonphil]

Now THAT is confusing causation with correlation. Essentially all you've pointed out are that many poor people vote Democrat and many rich people vote Republican, as well as the fact that left-wing academics are drawn to horrible areas...

Unfortunatly, you find very similar conditions all over the world even in places where the Democrats can't do any supposed damage. The trend toward expelling the poor, through inflated land prices, to build prosperous areas can be found in basically all...

[pilkingtonphil]

...major wealthy cities. Take, for example, Dublin, a city becoming more and more centered around finance. Here you can see very similar problems emerging, gang violence and gun crime (which we've never had before), increasing disparities between the rich and poor areas etc etc. And yet we have no strong centre-left political party. Our two main political parties are centre-right... no leftist lunacy here, but yet we see similar trends... I wonder why?

[danieleriskay]

"Not everything in life can be blamed on "pinkos"..."

But America's wretched and squalid cities, their horrendous infrastructure, corrupt city officials, violent schools, etc.,etc. certainly can be.

[pilkingtonphil]

Yet again, after some three months, you're talking shit...

Harvey's point is that all of the ills you're talking about are derived from the structure of Captilism - not leftists, or whatever - that these things are structurally unavoidble. That these things are incurable without structural change.

If you want to argue then stop talking politics and start talking policy........

[danieleriskay]

"Harvey's point is that all of the ills you're talking about are derived from the structure of Captilism"

My point is that he's wrong. Perhaps he needs to take a class in critical thinking and learn some useful distinctions such as the difference between correlation and causation.

[pilkingtonphil]

It seems pretty simple to me. The problems encountered in cities around the world could be tackled with far more efficiency if wealth were distributed in a different manner. If it were channeled away from the wealthy and pumped in at the bottom levels of society.

While these things may not be causative, in the positivistic sense of the term, they are interlinked. Social sciences, including free-market economics, cannot be based on the notion of causality which you're eluding to...

[danieleriskay]

" The problems encountered in cities around the world could be tackled with far more efficiency if wealth were distributed in a different manner. If it were channeled away from the wealthy and pumped in at the bottom levels of society."

Umm.. that's a big part of what got us into this mess. The subprime crisis is built on two essential factors: excess capital flowing into the US along with REGULATION that encouraged banks to give loans to people who shouldn't have received them.

[pilkingtonphil]

I completely disagree. The root of the banking crisis is the deregulation of the financial markets back in the 1980s. By allowing financiers to essentially run their own shit they got out of control and started packaging shady debt with normal debt... had this been nipped in the bud when it began the crisis may have been avoidable...

[pilkingtonphil]

Actually, just so that I don't have to put up with opinions on the financial markets pulled straight from the nearest Ron Paul fansite, I'll paste some evidence for the problem being blind faith in the free-market coupled with deregulation - or, if you insist on being pedantic, self-regulation. Its from an article a few months by Robin Blackburn - written no doubt while he was foaming at the mouth from an acute attach of leftist lunacy...

[pilkingtonphil]

Financier Warren Buffett "pointed out that there are widely shared risks in the derivatives world and that there is no central bank assigned to the job of preventing the dominoes from toppling in insurance or derivatives."....

Too much regulation?

[pilkingtonphil]

"Alan Greenspan, whose job it was to monitor such problems, preferred to remain a cheer-leader for the financial services industry. Addressing the Futures Industry Association in March 1999, he insisted that any new regulations on derivative products would be a major mistake: Regulatory risk-measurement schemes, he added, are simpler and much less accurate than banks [own] risk-measurement models."

[pilkingtonphil]

"Ned Gramlich, a Federal Reserve governor, queried the chairmans approach in 2000 and later drew up a detailed indictment asking why super-sophisticated mortgage products were being foisted on the poor. In 2004 the Fed published a paper by Michael Gibson outlining how vulnerable cdos were to the business climate; they could come unstuck very quickly if a recessionary breeze unsettled the interlinked flow of payments. "

[pilkingtonphil]

"Two men were well placed to anticipate these problems, yet failed to do so: Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson. Rubin was a respected director at Citi and could have ensured a much smaller exposure to the risky instruments. He was at the forefront of the financial revolution in the 1980s, when he recruited the ace risk-evaluators to Goldman Sachs, where he then worked. Henry Paulson as Goldman chief ensured that the bank would emerge almost unscathed from the subprime debacle."

[pilkingtonphil]

"Yet at the Treasury he took no public or effective steps to avert the catastrophe. Were there aspects of the problem that simply eluded these super-intelligent and deeply informed financiers? Or were they blinded by faith in the market, or in the ability of the financial community to regulate itself?"

Too much regulation? I think not...

[danieleriskay]

"hese things may not be causative, in the positivistic sense of the term, they are interlinked. Social sciences, including free-market economics, cannot be based on the notion of causality which you're eluding to..."

Hmmm. A classic tactic! Attack the ignorant other. Of course, all social developments are based on a dynamic, interplay of factors creating a dialectic of interactions in which cause and effect are not always distinct.

Nevertheless, left-wing idiocy is of no help.

[pilkingtonphil]

"Hmmm. A classic tactic! Attack the ignorant other. Of course, all social developments are based on a dynamic, interplay of factors creating a dialectic of interactions in which cause and effect are not always distinct."

Then why earlier did you accuse Harvey of muddy thinking and an inability to conceive of the notion of causation properly?

"Nevertheless, left-wing idiocy is of no help."

Vague, indistinct... "Hmmm. A classic tactic! Attack the ignorant other. "

[pilkingtonphil]

Do you honestly think that all of the above can be blamed on a political faction...

Well, if it can then you've just solved all of the Western worlds problems!

"Violence? Corruption? Just choose my way of doing things and it'll all evaporate...."

If you buy into that you're a fool...

[danieleriskay]

"Do you honestly think that all of the above can be blamed on a political faction..."

Oh, no! Sorry, you must have me confused with a left-winger!

[pilkingtonphil]

Oh, sorry! You're continuing to make idiotic generalisations of what "left-winger" means. But by all means continue to construct your imaginary enemies so as to assure yourself of your own infallibility.

A classic tactic, attack the "ignorant other", the religious, the left, whoever can be used to construct a stupid stereotype... South Park politics at its best!!!

[danieleriskay]

"by all means continue to construct your imaginary enemies so as to assure yourself of your own infallibility. "

Hmmm. Sounds to me like you're engaging in projection.

[pilkingtonphil]

Well I was sort of hinting that you were engaging in projection... If you look at the last few posts its clear that I haven't constructed any "agents" to blame anything on, I've been more concerned with actions... its kind of hard to "project" onto the dark screen of impersonal forces... much easier to do so onto the white screen of "leftists" and "Democrats"..... nice try at psychologising my arguments though, could have been more subtle but what the hell...

[danieleriskay]

I mean, seriously... did you listen to this fool talking? It was filled with some of the silliest talk I've heard in quite some time. Truly an indication of how far anthropology has sunk as a discipline from the days when it was merely verbose, passive-voice travel writing about places without plumbing.

This guy seems to be for everything that would make a city an unlivable, miserable place to be.

[pilkingtonphil]

I don't see what you mean at all. You give me the impression that you're just talking empty rhetoric... give some examples of why Harvey is wrong instead of the crass generalisations you have so far been making.

[bapyou]

"America's wretched & squalid cities, their horrendous infrastructure, corrupt city officials, violent schools, etc.,etc. certainly can be (blamed on "pinko communists")."

Wow. Don't you idiots ever stop & consider reality? What fucking morons you show yourselves to be. No wonder you lost the election.

A toast! To100 years of Democrats in office!

Idiots. Fucking idiots. Morons. Animal dogs who need to be put down. Give me your address & I'll put you out of your pinko-hating misery!

[bapyou]

As put forth in nearly every lecture David Harvey gives, the reasons for such conditions in large cities is directly traceable to the neoliberal (i.e. conservative) program to reestablish class rule in America and elsewhere. Viewed in this light, your comment amounts to blaming such conditions on those who've been its victims, and by doing so, you perpetuate and give support to the neoliberal agenda.

[CajunCommie]

No, see, capitalism is perfect, and fell directly out of God's butt through Ayn Rand's mouth. It follows then if there are poor people they are poor through there own personal failure. Any patterns to the poverty are just an illusion perpetuated by liberal professors for the sole purpose of getting rich and guilting white people for some reason.

[bapyou]

Ha ha. Love you username. :)

[Tehcarp]

reread your Rand. She wrote about people.

[Ranger4564]

@Tehcarp She wrote about People, their social exchanges, their political exchanges, their economic exchanges, and about self-interest, atheism, positivism, and capitalism, among other things. She was basically a Fascist of One. It's a sad and bitter world, hers. One I loathe to think about.

[ciaran1123]

@CajunCommie THAT was a fabulous comment

[danieleriskay]

"I suppose it was leftists who caused the surge in housing prices and their subsequent collapse."

Indeed it was. Please look into the roots of the subprime lending programs, the history of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc.

[pilkingtonphil]

Okay, lets look into the subprime mortgage crisis... Well it would seem to me that the cause was essentially greed and rather stupid bankers, who decided that it was in their own immediate self interest to cloak bad debt in a veil of nonsense. These people were supported by free-market economists who claimed that deregulation was the way foward...

Actually there was an excellent documentary made about this around '99. Its on YouTube, type in "The Mayfair Set".. Check it out, get back to me...

[danieleriskay]

"subprime mortgage crisis... Well it would seem to me that the cause was essentially greed and rather stupid bankers"

I can see where it might seem that way to you. It's the most simple of all possible narratives. You really think that it was merely greedy and stupid bankers? No other factors?

[pilkingtonphil]

Obviously there were other factors, so many that the human mind will never be able to conceive of them. However, I most definetly think that the MAIN factor was, not simply these suspicious banking practices - I'm talking about the existence of the "shadow" banking system which arose in the past 20 years - but the policy makers which allowed these practices to arise through the championing of deregulative free-market policies. I think the majority of commentators would agree with me here...

[cryptsub]

Oof, you got pwned!

[ekourl]

Harvey's work has transformed the way contemporary geographers view the world.

[historywillabsolve]

a great intellectual