Rebel Cities: The Urbanization of Class Struggle

Speaker(s): Professor David Harvey
Recorded on 10 May 2012 in Old Theatre, Old Building.

Given the strong relationship between urbanization and capital accumulation, and the consequent urban roots of both past and present fiscal crises, it follows that the city is a key arena within which class forces clash. The sharpening of these clashes transforms movements for the right to the city into urban uprisings and revolutionary movements. This then poses the key question of how to mobilize and organize a whole city around a movement for revolutionary change.

David Harvey is Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His most recent books include A Companion to Marx's Capital; The Enigma of Capital (Deutscher Prize, 2010); and Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution.

mp3 audio podcast available here - http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/vi...

• Category

  Education

[Scott Arundel]

He is a good man, a good man with a good beard.

[diomedes39]

The point of Socialism is to get rid of class.

[MincPubInc]

while i havent given him the time that some have, after conversing with dedicated marxist's it has been acknowledged that a free society (anarcho-communitarianism) based on labor federations and technological production is its ultimate end. that said- communists have a choice to make- stick the book, according to marx, or embrace what trotsky called 'permanent revolution; or, an unceasing move towards shedding the state actively. the principles of that transformation are not inherent in marx

[freedumb32]

Marx's analysis ends with the "withering away of the state," not because you've abolished it, but because it is no longer needed. YOu don't understand Marx at all. How about just actually reading him instead of wasting everybody's time?

[freedumb32]

That is NOT Marx's definition of communism. Marx was describing how history changes, how capitalism already works, not how he thought it *should* work. Communism, for Marx, was what emerged "inevitably" when capitalism had destroyed itself. The invisible hand pushes market competitors to innovate and make the means of production of socially necessary goods and services so efficient that all it can produce are market gluts, therefore making profit impossible.

[MincPubInc]

how can a directed economy NOT be a state?

(the definition of communism according to Marx is, a dictatorship of the proletariat.)

Meaning all the functions of the modern state are taken over by 'workers'.

This is indeed statism. in fact it is the worst kind of state because it is people who know better imposing a 'state' to ride itself of a 'state'. to say communism is stateless is to pluck a needle from a haystack, and to try to sew a dress with a bale of hay.

[MincPubInc]

anarchist communism is the only stateless entity i know of in modern communist practice ala- the paris commune, or the ukrain during the Bolshevic revolution... but take a look at how those turned out.

the state is a bureaucracy that seeks to limit the progress of the people, to keep a record of progress

there is no possible way for an accountant to keep up with the pace of a people united, and for that reason uniting people has been a major taboo in modern society.

(collective bargaining(union)

[MincPubInc]

anarchist communism is the only stateless entity i know of in modern communist practice ala- the paris commune, or the ukrain during the Bolshevic revolution... but take a look at how those turned out.

the state is a bureaucracy that seeks to limit the progress of the people, to keep a record of progress

there is no possible way for an accountant to keep up with the pace of a people united, and for that reason uniting people has been a major taboo in modern society.

(collective bargaining(union)

[GalenAus]

Communism is stateless mate

[MincPubInc]

Socialism is a process of addressing the lowest tier of society in order to ensure the safety of the highest. It is a reformist reinforcement of classism. You may be referring to Communism, which holds the goal of a 'workers state'- effectively consuming class differentiation; yet the massive bureaucratic State apparatus is only fallible, as historic experiments with communism have shown.