The Enigma Of Capital - Professor David Harvey - Part 1 - London School of Economics

For three centuries the capitalist system has shaped western society and conditioned the lives of its people. Capitalism is cyclical and increasingly bankrupt. Boom-and-bust is its model. Laying bare the follies of the international financial system, eminent academic David Harvey looks at the nature of capitalism and why it's time to call a halt to its unbridled excesses.

He examines the vast flows of money that surge round the world in daily volumes well in excess of the sum of all its economies. He looks at the cycles of boom and bust in the world's housing and stock markets and shows that periodic episodes of meltdown are not only inevitable in the capitalist system but essential to its survival.

The essence of capitalism is its amorality and lawlessness and to talk of a regulated, ethical capitalism is to make a fundamental error. The Enigma of Capital considers how crises of the current sort can best be contained within the constraints of capitalism, and makes the case for a social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just, and humane.

David Harvey is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York Graduate School and former Professor of Geography at Johns Hopkins and Oxford Universities. The author of numerous books, he was awarded the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1995 and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007. He is the world's most cited academic geographer and his course on Marx's Capital has been downloaded by well over 250,000 people since mid-2008: http://davidharvey.org/|

This event celebrates Professor Harvey's new book The Enigma of Capital|.

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  News & Politics

[SparTAKKY]

The rich play while the poor die.

[Fourman Films]

no warrior prince fantasy is the cause of most problems and your clearly in the clouds, or D&D world lol

[9avedon]

Keynesian market management helped create corporatism on a scale that resulted in "To Big To Fail".Governments did this by granting near monopoly status ,ordering interest rates with no relation to the actual market demand. All in the name of stabilizing ,instead of fostering productivity........Thus Harvey mistakenly believes These past 50 or so years were a successful thanks to JMK.These regulations in fact hindered competition.When poor business choices go unpunished the market is irrational

[arfived4]

...and that's why countries who maintained the regulations separating retail and investment banks like india and canada, er, didn't get affected anywhere near as badly

[Scott Loranger]

Dean Baker is a Keynesian and he saw the housing bubble in 2002. Nick Beams is a Marxist and he saw it in 2004.

[Nijat Garayev]

Thats bullshit. Gov.t intervention did not cause it, but precisely de-regulation caused it. Moreover, intervention had to be done to save the asses of the banks to prevent the domino effect, with public money! Now, as I have told you, Harvey explains it in to books and in a paper (2006), that crisis is within 5 year time, and the explanation is neither in intervention or de-regulation, but in accumulation and over-accumulation of financial capital via speculation. I suggest you reading him.

[Aahlookoutbehindyou]

I'm not sure where you are trying to go with your first question. It has nothing to do with what I previously said. As for banks, they should remain private but be allowed to fail if they screw up rather than being propped up by tax payer money funneled through the government.

[Daniel Herrera]

Can you mention one of Hayek´s works in economics theory after 1940, He mentions in his preface to the Road to Serfdom that after that book (published in 1944) his dedication was totally committed to political philosophy and states that the book is a political book. On nationalization of banking, well that is something for US people to decide, but I should remind you that the banks were bailed with public money and they are still private hands. Any alternative Idea to nationalization?

[Aahlookoutbehindyou]

I disagree about Hayek. His contributions to economics were quite influential, and at least on par with his more philosophical contributions. I checked out Steven Keen and I disagree with him on nationalizing finance. Government intervention into the markets seems to have gotten us into trouble in the first place.

[Daniel Herrera]

I think your interest in economics is genuine, Hayek did more political philosophy than theoretical economics, what you know as Austrian Economics is based in the thought of two economist Ludving Misses and Murray Rothbard, according to my knowledge this school did a poor job predicting this crisis (apart of signaling the dangers of fractional banking), pure liberal economy is an utopia, government will intervene in the economy the question is in which sense. Search for professor Steven Keen.

[Aahlookoutbehindyou]

It wasn't one economist in particular, but rather those from the Austrian school. So it really all goes back to guys like Hayek.

[Nijat Garayev]

He actually saw it coming. Read a bit, read his Neoliberalism (2005) and The New Imperialism, plus his paper on the recent financial crisis. At least watch fucking inside job if u don't like reading.