Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey

The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism
University of California at Berkeley
Sponsors: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Center of Global Metropolitan Studies
October 8, 2010

Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Update: Audio file now available. Thanks to Christopher.

Listen now (44 minutes):

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Interview with Against the Grain, KPFA Radio
October 12, 2010

Thursday, October 21, 2010
Book Party for Géographie et capital (Syllepse) and Le nouvel impérialisme (Les prairies ordinaires)
6:30 – 10 pm | Paris School of Architecture
à l’École d’architecture de Paris
60 bd de la Villette, 75019 Paris
métro Belleville ou Colonel Fabien

October 22-24 2010
Utopia Today? Conference
Saline Royale (Royal Salt Works), Arc-et-Senans, Paris
The conference is organized by the Ecole Spéciale d’architecture together with the Saline Royale and the Hochschule Luzern, Technik und Architektur

Saturday, October 30, 2010
The Marx Lounge in Conversation – Alfredo Jaar with David Harvey
Liverpool Biennial
14.00 | Liverpool Biennial Visitor Centre, 52 Renshaw Street, L1 4PN
This event is free but booking is essential – click here to book tickets

Saturday November 6, 2010
The Economic Crisis and Left Responses Conference
9 am to 6 pm | One Pace Plaza, Multipurpose Room
Pace University in lower Manhattan, New York City
Conference convened by Marxist-Humanist Initiative
Pre-registration required

Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Crisis Theory and the Current Conjuncture
4 pm | 206 Ingraham Hall
University of Wisconsin-Madison | The Havens Center

Wednesday, November 10, 2010
A Commentary on Marx’s Method
4 pm | 8417 Social Science
University of Wisconsin-Madison | The Havens Center

Thursday, November 11, 2010
Open Seminar for Students, Faculty, and Public
12:20 pm | 8108 Social Science
University of Wisconsin-Madison | The Havens Center

Monday, November 15, 2010
Brecht Forum 35th Anniversary Celebration
Honoring Bhairavi Desai & David Harvey
6:00 pm | Brecht Forum 451 West Street, New York City
Reserve a seat

A Companion to Marx’s Capital reviewed by Joshua Clover for The Nation.

The Enigma of Capital reviewed by Atish Rex Ghosh for the IMF.

Interview with the International Socialist Review.

THE ENIGMA OF CAPITAL AND THE CRISIS THIS TIME

(paper prepared for the American Sociological Association Meetings in Atlanta, August 16th, 2010)

David Harvey

There are many explanations for the crisis of capital that began in 2007. But the one thing missing is an understanding of “systemic risks.” I was alerted to this when Her Majesty the Queen visited the London School of Economics and asked the prestigious economists there how come they had not seen the crisis coming. Being a feudal monarch rather than an ordinary mortal, the economists felt impelled to answer. After six months of reflection the economic gurus of the British Academy submitted their conclusions. The gist was that many intelligent and dedicated economists had worked assiduously and hard on understanding the micro-processes. But everyone had somehow missed “systemic risk.” A year later, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund said “we sort of know vaguely what systemic risk is and what factors might relate to it. But to argue that it is a well-developed science at this point is overstating the fact.” In a formal paper, the IMF described the study of systemic risk as “in its infancy.”¹ In Marxian theory (as opposed to myopic neoclassical or financial theory), “systemic risk” translates into the fundamental contradictions of capital accumulation. The IMF might save itself a lot of trouble by studying them. So how, then, can we put Marx’s theorization of the internal contradictions of capitalism to work to understand the roots of our contemporary dilemmas? Continue Reading »

Continuing the success of Professor Harvey’s online video lectures of Marx’s Capital, Volume I, we are currently raising money to continue the project with new lectures on Capital Volumes II and III.

Inspired by the overwhelming interest in the Volume I lectures, which according to Google Analytics have logged over 700,000 page views from 10,884 cities in 187 countries since June 2008, we are happy to announce the next stage of this project.

Professor Harvey is planning on teaching a semester class on Capital Volumes II and III in the Spring of 2011. With your help, we plan to film, edit, and post a new set of free online videos to this site. To do this, we need to raise our budget of $10,000.

Support this project by making a tax-deductible donation today.

From RSA Animate

Watch original lecture.