Royal Society of Arts
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2011–2016
11:11 · 3.3M views · Jun 28, 2010
An RSA Animate video that illustrates a talk by geographer David Harvey on the crises of capitalism. It covers creative destruction, wage stagnation masked by credit, and the search for a more just economic order.
HN commenters recommend it as a quick animated introduction to Harvey's and Marx's critique of capitalism.
8 comments from Hacker News
Disasters like this are, in theory, actually beneficial to economies--especially stagnant ones like Japan's. The capacity for immediate bonafide economic growth has been diminished but that doesn't mean that economic production will decline. There is now ample room to deploy all that surplus capital (humans, machinery, money) that was previously unproductive. The upper echelones of the financial sector will make a killing shorting and re-buying. Advanced reading on a parallel concept: [LINK] The quoted and cited David Harvey piece (2007, albeit the condensed article veresion and not the full-length book) would have been a better reference however is apparently no longer online. This, though, is amazing: this video I believe Naomi Klein made a good buck on dumbing down and re-orienting the above hypothesis.
In this particular case it may also have something to do with the LTOV's association with Marxist economics. The only thing Americans are expected to know about anything even vaguely associated with Marxism is that it's bad (mmmkay?), so U.S. educational institutions tend to avoid teaching things in that category to students who aren't specializing in economics. Which leads to Americans coming up with their own labels and descriptions for things that Marx observed and labeled long ago. All of which is too bad, because Marx had a lot of interesting and valuable things to say about the problems of industrial economies (see this video for a good introduction), even if the solutions that were tried in his name didn't work out. It just wastes people's time and energy having them spin their wheels re-discovering things he discovered 150 years ago.
Oh Graeber's book is out! Lovely! I have been passing around his essay by the same name for some time now. Should be a good intro to the book [LINK] I would also recommend anything by David Harvey. Start out with this animated version of one of his talks: this video Then move on to his Capital vol. 1 lecture series. [LINK] There is also a book format of his reading guide
The main explanation is not considered here: Automation and Outsourcing. Both reduce the demand for local human labor, and thus depress wages. They cause wealth redistribution upwards by providing a power imbalance between the capitalist and the worker. David Harvey did a nice talk about this: this video
On Mayday of all days such a characterization of Marxism as the extreme on a 1D number line of political responses to urbanization feels simplistic. Of the infinitude of academic distinctions of Marx's writing to be raised here, the distinction between "political Marxism" and "analytical Marxism" seems fruitful. For the purposes of this distinction, political Marxism would be the set of writings embedded in the political climate of Marx's age, The Manifesto, etc. The politics that resulted from these writings bloomed initially, but as the mantle was passed through Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky the politics became increasingly fraught with problems (being gentle here.) Analytical Marxism for me is limited to _Capital_. Marx proceeds analytically, taking the rich tradition of political economy to heart. Ricardo and Adam Smith are addressed directly. Marx attempts no emotional arguments here, no appeals for solidarity or revolution. Instead, the ideals of capitalism (e.g. exchanges between individuals are mutually beneficial) are taken as true, and Marx attempts to create a framework for analyzing the structural forces that result from this economic mode. _Capital_ provides a set of analytical tools that are timeless and non-dogmatic. A great example is the exploration of how the relative prices of various commodities are set (Marx suggests it is emergent behavior). _Capital_ also takes on such problems such as the contradiction between exchange value and use value, and how the investo