“The
Anti-Capitalist Chronicles,” by David Harvey, 2020
This is a
series of essay on different topics, centered around Harvey’s reading of Marx – mostly Das Capital,
the Grundrisse, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, the Communist
Manifesto - along with his own analysis of the present ‘conjuncture.’ Much of this will be familiar to readers of Harvey or Marx or
socialism, so I’m going to concentrate on new or significant points he makes in
this book.
Harvey begins the book by saying he is for
a peaceful transition to an anti-capitalist society. His picture of a violent revolution where capital
is “burned down overnight” seems out of the playbook of some infantile
anarchist or nihilist, not actual Marxists.
In his scenario he also leaves out the inevitable self-defense against
fascism, something he sees as rising. Harvey ends the book with
a description of the revolutionary side of capitalism, citing Marx. This consists of the relentless development
of technology to enhance profits, or as he puts it the “technological dynamism
of capitalism.” Harvey,
like Marx, points out that the capitalist developments in labor-saving devices
and technology have to be taken over by the working class that built them. This situation will then raise human society
from the “realm of necessity to the realm of freedom” where all human basics
are taken care of, with minimum work and more free time for everyone, not just a few.
Here are Harvey’s uncommon or most
important insights:
1. Neo-conservatism
failed over the Iraq
war. Neo-liberalism failed during the
2007-2009 Great Recession. These two
projects have lost their political legitimacy.
Consequently a segment of capital is seeking to bloc with
petit-bourgeois neo-fascist and ultra-rightists groups to protect their profit system.
2. Harvey almost says that blue-collar work and
factories have disappeared in the center capitalist countries. He contends most
profits now come from the deployment of fictitious capital in the markets or
from rents in real estate, agricultural land or other capitalist property, like
intellectual property. This is similar
to the position of Michael Hudson, but he doesn’t go as far in ignoring direct labor
exploitation as does Hudson.
3. Harvey contrasts labor-intensive methods,
such as occur in Bangladesh,
Cambodia or India, with capital-intensive development based
on technology, i.e. Silicon Valley. This is the real rub between China and the U.S.,
as the latter wants to maintain a monopoly on technological progress, while China is
forging ahead with artificial intelligence, 5G, internet commerce, space landings and the like. This is already reducing the capital transfer
from China to the U.S. Harvey
calls this a development in the inevitable world-wide ‘equalization of the
profit rate.’
4. The Chinese ‘Belt and
Road' Initiative represents China’s
attempt to export surplus capital. China is planning a high-speed Eurasian railroad
from China to Europe, a modern ‘silk road,’ which will cut transport
times in two. This is part of what Marx
called ‘the spatial fix’ for excess capital.
5. He intimates that China is capitalist but then hopes the CCP will
turn towards socialism, so his class picture of China is muddled.
6. A central problem of
world-wide capital is what to do with their overwhelming amount of money!
7. He thinks “a
transition to socialism will be organized by movements.” But he also highlights a bloc of 6 left
parties in Brazil
which put aside sectarianism. He claims
his book is an attempt to shape a program, but there is little evidence of
programmatic conclusions.
8. Harvey cites the 3% compound growth in the
money supply (with help from quantitative easing) and production as destroying
the planet and society. In a way,
capital is now too big to survive, but too big to die an easy death, given its
invasive and globe-spanning character.
9. Events in Brazil (and Chile before) highlights the bloc
between neo-liberalism and neo-fascism. This
is also reflected in the ultra-rightist nationalist ADP in Germany, which supports
neo-liberal market methods.
10. Tariff wars and immigration hatred are not part of the
neo-liberal project, but they play a role in national capitalist competition
and getting votes from a petit-bourgeois reactionary base.
11. Harvey calls market
and money-based liberal utopianism about abstract freedom to actually be a
barrier to real freedom – which comes about when you don’t have to always worry
about work, school, housing, health care, food, transportation, child care and
utilities.
12. China went from a cash to a
cashless economy in 3 years. 300 million
moved from the countryside to the city in 10-15 years – the biggest movement of
humans in history. The 4 largest banks
in the world are Chinese. 4 of the top
10 tech companies in the world are Chinese.
There is no intellectual property law in China, so quick technological developments
are common.
13. Territorial power and
money power dominate the world, but ultimately money power rules – especially
after 1971 and the end of Bretton-Woods.
“State power becomes subservient to private capital.”
14. Rosa Luxemburg
understood the role of colonial capital in under-developing colonies, an
example being Britain’s
hobbling of Indian development. She also pointed out that as long as the whole peripheral
world is controlled by capital and imperialism, primitive accumulation will
continue. Capital needs a frontier. Once it runs out of frontiers it will fail
according to Luxemburg. In his examination of geography Harvey
does not mention regional differences within countries, such as the U.S.
south. These areas sometimes act as semi-peripheries
or semi-frontiers.
15. Harvey contrasts the concept of ‘rates’ and
‘mass.’ In other words, a 10% rate
increase in wages for a worker making $40K results in far less wealth than a 5%
increase in profits for a capitalist on a $300M investment. So a falling rate
of profit is double-sided, not a unitary concept that always points downward. He
supports Marx’s idea of ‘the falling rate of profit,’ though he seems to
support it with this caveat.
16. “Accumulation by
dispossession” means absorbing companies through mergers; privatization of various types of public
property; forcing people or companies or real estate into bankruptcy or foreclosure and
getting their property at a discount (‘creative destruction’); gentrification;
land grabbing in the global south; shedding pensions; tax evasion; disaster
capitalism; corporate welfare.
There are
chunks of this book that are somewhat behind the times, especially his section
on environmental issues. He still thinks
McDonald’s is the biggest U.S.
employer, not Amazon and Wal-Mart. Harvey understands that China will play a major role in the
future of the world economy, as his points indicate. He also discusses two different definitions
of alienation, COVID, Hudson Yards and the brutal and immediate closing of the
Lordstown GM Assembly plant, which ripped up the town, workers and social
networks. Ironically it was Trump’s move
to get rid of a regulation limiting the production of SUVs which gutted
Lordstown, as it was making the Chevy Cruz sedan.
An easy
book to read, not clotted with academic terms, which might allow you to peer
deeper into the corrupt soul of contemporary capitalism and configure some
emerging solutions.
Prior blog
reviews on this subject, search our 14 year archive using these terms: “Seventeen
Contradictions and the End of Capitalism,” “The Enigma of Capital and the
Crisis of Capitalism,” “Rebel Cities,” “Spaces of Global Capitalism” (all 4
by Harvey); “Two Sea Changes in World Political Economy,” “Is the East Still
Red?” “China, the Bubble That Never Pops,” “China – 2020,” “From Commune to
Capitalism,” “The End of the Revolution,” “Jasic Factory Struggle,” “China’s
New Red Guards,” “The Rise of China and the Demise of the World Economy.’ Or
terms like primitive accumulation, Luxemburg, fascist, China or
Marx.
And I
bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog
May 16,
2021
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