The Power Center of Capitalism Has Shifted - David Harvey's Anti-Capitalist Chronicles
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- Опубликовано: 30 сен 2024
- Prof Harvey takes a look into why modern capitalism concentrates power more in finance and merchant capital than industrial capital. What changes in neoliberalism created such focus on financialization instead of surplus value?
"What we've seen since the 1980s, because of the neoliberal way in which the neoliberal door was opened to all kinds of financial operations, we find a situation in which more often than not finance capital becomes the master, not the servant." - David Harvey
This clip is from David Harvey's Anti-Capitalist Chronicles S4 E08 "The Evolution of Capitalism". Watch the full episode on our channel at • Anti-Capitalist Chroni...
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In other words, the owner class has shifted but the little people are still being exploited & living off crumbs. So nothing has basically changed.
A lot has changed really.... because this financial capitalism seems as if its impossible to overthrow, even if hypothetically you have the conditions for a revolution.... this financial global banking system is on a totally different level than before.
So true that producers have to kiss the ring of Walmart. I’ve been in those meetings.
I read this in The Long Century - not sure if it was quoted from another author, but what I remember is that as the dominant society matures, industrial capitalism looses its profit margin to competition and more individuals move into finance capitalism, mostly funding the next round of industrial capitalism in the next hegemonic power
We are running out of NEXT hegemonic powers because we only have 1 planet. It's all just one big Ponzi scheme.
Read to the end !
27 May 1996, interview with Charlie Rose, USA
SAGAN: My feeling, Charlie, is that it's not that pseudoscience and superstition and New Age so-called "beliefs" and fundamentalist zealotry are something new. They've been with us for as long as we've been human. But we live in an age based on science and technology, with formidable technological powers.
ROSE: Science and technology are propelling us forward at accelerating rates.
SAGAN: That's right. And if we don't understand it, and by "we" I mean "the general public," if it's something that, "Oh, I'm not good at that, I don't know anything about it," then who is making all the decisions about science and technology that are going to determine what kind of future our children live in? Just some members of Congress? But there's no more than a handful of members of Congress with any background in science at all. And the Republican Congress has just abolished its own Office of Technology Assessment-the organization that gave them bipartisan, competent advice on science and technology. They say, "We don't want to know. Don't tell us about science and technology."
ROSE: Surprising. What's the danger of all this? I mean, this is not the thing that...
SAGAN: There's two kinds of dangers. One is what I just talked about. That we've arranged a society based on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it? And the second reason that I'm worried about this is that science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan political or religious who comes ambling along. It's a thing that Jefferson laid great stress on. It wasn't enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a Constitution or a Bill of Rights. The people had to be educated, and they had to practice their skepticism and their education.
Oherwise we don't run the government-the government runs us.
Does Financiers now include the big tech companies buying back their shares with free bank money?
Since 1880s actually. Hilferding, Lenin, Bukharin, Luxembourg all wrote about financial capital as the driving force of imperialism. Truth is that financial capital was under control after WW2 until the recession of the 1970s.
Harvey’s flaw: he never talks about imperialism enough. Another western-marxist.
It's all about profit it doesn't mater how?
What is said here is true, not just of "merchant capitalism". The modern finance system "invests" in things that are not the things that actually keep society going. E.g., they do not invest in health, education, etc of society. So the very things that are needed to keep society productive and sustainable are neglected. For example, we see a huge push for "green energy" with mostly tax payer money being diverted to these things which turn out to be scams rather than that money going to, say, universal healthcare or free education... which would do more for society than green energy or anything else. If people are not healthy they are not happy. If they are not educated they are easily manipulated, less productive, cannot solve complex problems. Our system is run by sociopaths who have no clue what they are doing except for pushing their own personal myopic ignorant agendas. The foundations of a society have been eroded to such a degree that the superstructure built on top(what we typically think of "modern" society) is collapsing. All the cracks that have formed are now fissures which are turning in to canyons because the people who have the power to fix the foundation refuse to do it either due to their ignorance, laziness, selfishness, or otherwise unwilling because it is not interesting.
The finance system has amplified the sociopaths since these are the types of people who will take big risks at the cost of other people. When their bet wins they become super powerful. When their bet fails they figure out how to make others pay for the losses(e.g., take a million dollar loan out using banker buddy's help. Bet on X. If win then 100M. If loss then file for bankruptcy, forward losses to someone else, etc). There is no real accountability in our society and being rich has no conditions on it except that the system generally dictates that the it's based on risk taking. Hence what happens is that the very kinds of people you want in power do not get there and are generally actively repressed by the sociopaths who see them as a threat(which they are).
Look at the bigger picture
MICHAEL HUDSON
The tendency of any economy that has an interest-bearing debt is the debt growing faster than the economy as a whole. You have exponential debt doubling every so many years and economies have never been able to keep up with it. The tendency of debt for any family, any corporation, any economy, is to grow faster than the ability to pay, until there’s a crash. And when you can’t pay, either you lose the property, or you become in one way or another, a servant to your creditor, in terms of having to pay labor, having to pay whatever you produce. You have a concentration of property ownership in the hands of the creditors, if you don’t write off the debts, which ancient society did, and which used to be the core of ancient religion.
Every economy that has interest-bearing debt has to restructure at some point, or else all of the economy will end up being owned by just a teeny group of people at the top, like you had in Rome. That’s how the Roman Republic ended up in the Roman Empire. It becomes centralized. The tendency of any financialized economy is to centralize. Not only wealth, but by centralizing wealth, you centralize political power, and decision-making, and ultimately, military force in the hands of the financial class.
Interest is the redistribution mechanism from labor to wealth. It is far more powerful than labor exploitation by employers and price exploitation in prices because it exploits not only from every transaction in the economy. It exploits the exploiters; the apex predator in the economy. It is unlimited in growth in a way unlike goods or services which are bound to people of raw materials. Creditors are the apex predator because their raw power in wealth grows without limit endogenously through credit. It is the Money Syndrome (Das Geld Syndrome). This is why reforming the financial and monetary system is the third pillar. Democracy in gov, work and reform of the finance system. Gesell offered solution in freigeld.
Kurt Vonnegut put it well when he said that the founding fathers neglected to place income caps on Ameircans, that they didn't think a small group of thieves could possibly do enough damage to make a difference.
The 401k was the tool that made the financial capitalists the master.
@ INOYB
I was a very young person the first time I heard that pensions would be substituted with 401ks but it shocked me to think that my retirement money was going to be based off winnings from a gambling casino.
I thought to myself, that had to be the cruelest act of abandonment placed on any working class, ever!
Why didn’t Americans fight to the teeth on that change?
Why did the shut down of one baby formula factory cause a shortage?
I don’t think anything changed. The balance of power have shifted from one group of ppl to another. But there’s always the haves and havenots.
I love how this enumerates terms I haven't committed to memory. Finance capital/ist, merchant capital/ist, industrial capital/ist. I was wondering about the dangers of financialization. Michael Brooks interviewed Grace Blakeley. I got her book on Audible. It's titled, "Stolen". The book talks of Financialization and its history in the UK. I didn't know there was over 300 trillion in world-wide corporate debt. Professor Wolff talks about the debt but I don't recall him mentioning that it was that high.
the other day, as I am a commications / dist. network installer,. the other thought occurred to us, more of the information as Dr. Harvey refers to a gamut of process and decision alternatives, is completely objective. The subjective is a tale, woven to accommodate a myth of reality. To discuss an sector of an economy, portends Albert Camus. why this is what happens is the main theme. of course Prof Harvey brings it forward as an explanation.. in Buckland's work Information and Information Systems, he explains information is opposed to information. The overthrow of the notion of being informed, is the answer sought. a mechanical information system is not what is made real. The output of the machine is 'real'. A ghost in the machine emerging.. good evening
@@rockinray6197 Well it does make sense to be humble in your learning process. I just wish someone knew what to do about our predicament.
@@thecatsbackyard4833 my research pointed to the simulation (in a simulator) of the outcomes, placing the feedback loop into high gear. Why wait for a 30 day cycle of earnings? The forecast replaces the actual reality, for several dozen cycles, we propel ourselves into the next decade, telling everyone they are ten years younger than they might recall. And Issue new bank statements, explaining the rich lost the war of 2028 and their descendants are similar in character, and were sent to North Korean reeducation camps for 5 years. But that was in the past. And the files are all there.. if the identity is not claimed.. then the person returns as an anonymous peasant and establishes s new citizenship credential for themselves. Writing a library of records is just what has always been done. No need to change minds.. change social realism.. There have been some conferences.. Ref. Adequate Modeling of Systems.. Procedings of the international..and (2) Control and Estimation of Distributed Parameter Systems : international.. Both item is priced at $175+ on ebay.com. i have them saved in the app for when the price is less to purchase
Miss Michael Brooks, recall that Blakeley interview. Left Is Best.
Another reference.. advances in knowledge discovery and data mining.. Publ jet propul. Lab Cal Tech 1996. Lot about early AI wirh assumption about one data set (project) leading to the next set, by auto query. Project data stored as the data fir an outcome coincident with the instant outcomes, stored expectations, of history.. Man there is no market.. Truthstream Media youtube channel publ the future of work.. Explains your existence is a happening. Not functional or in lieu of some time or purpose you hope to find. Yuk yuk said my duck.. And after all. The hungarian sargent wrote to me.. And after all .... He was a secret agent.. Secret Agent man.. Odds on.. You won't live to see tomorrow.. live from behind the Iron Curtain ... It's Saturday Night...
What impact does this have on Prof Wolfe's beloved Worker co-ops?
Does this shift mean that Financial and Merchant capital still dictate terms to the working class, even in a Co-op?
Open a worker's bank because bank creates money and labour creates value
Power making and keeping is self perpetuating.
Amazon is high on the chain?
An important element in this story not mentioned by David Harvey is that most of the entities that produce goods or provide services are also beneficiaries of land rent. They either own valuable land in return for which they pay to the community a small portion of the full potential rental value of the locations owned, or they lease out the land to others and bring in land rent, a return that is 100% unearned, above whatever legitimate return the market determines is appropriate for use of whatever buildings or equipment are provided by the owner under a lease arrangement.
Make sense that the social classes in the sphere of circulation, i.e, merchants, banks, would get larger than the social classes in the sphere of industry especially with the passage of NAFTA. Conversely, the industrial social classes emerged in another part of the world and the industrial social class that could not move with production was left behind.
Thank you Professor Harvey. Perhaps what we now have is what Professor Wolin describes in his book "Democracy Incorporated" as Inverted Totalitarianism?
Seems too me like reigning in on this would require strong protections in form of congressional Act's, but ???
Capital is capital. It's all needs abolished.
You can abolish yours today. Please send me all your cash. Of course, if you don't, then I will simply assume that you are a bullshitter. ;-)
glasses, the optical industry is monopolized and the stores are ?
Loved the t shirt “Gezi Parki” ❤️
Shifted how? I ain't got time right now.
I dig the shirt.
Why is the old geezer in his armchair on the internet? He has nothing interesting to say. He is just an old man ranting. OK, Boomer! ;-)
and.....?
Is this man speaking English?