Anti-Capitalist Chronicles: Alienation - Part 1

[S1 23] Alienation - Part 1
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Prof. Harvey talks about alienation of labor and capital and their relevance in helping us understand the relationships between politics and the economy.
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[@thamimbasha4140]

Thanks Sir , long live David Harvey.

[@juniorgod321]

Cross your fingers, because I don't think that this commie will last much longer...

[@秋分-d8i]

long live Harvey

[@twelve4514]

Whew. Have to listen to this again.

[@matsm0n0]

I've been anti-capitalist for years, because of the unfair exploitation of labor that is at the center of the system. It's only recently, I've realized just how the system permeates and corrupts ever fiber of human culture and our relationship to nature. I wish this aspect was understood by more people, since I think it could serve as the base for a much broader rejection of the false hopes capitalism has instilled in people. We have enslaved ourselves and we can free ourselves. Let's just hope it's not too late.

[@slightlygruff]

It's too early. Not too late. We are still living too happily. That's the only explanation for why people without families keep quiet

[@matsm0n0]

@Jon Dhoe "Ourselves" in the breader sense; mankind has created this system. Either we undo it, or nature will - taking mankind with it in the process.

[@dizzyboy352]

​@@matsm0n0 come on man. the ruling class david harvey was talking about who control what the capitalists do, want ecological collapse to happen. that's why they have the capitalists rushing as fast as they can to destroy nature. burn the rain forest for pasture land to sell beef and grow round up ready GMO soy and palm oil plantations, use pesticides that kill all the bees and everything else, burn fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow, strip mine the oceans until there is nothing left. the ruling class is playing them like a puppet on a string just like they do with everyone else. getting the capitalists to destroy the planet for their own personal gain is great cover for causing ecological collapse to use the shock doctrine on the entire planet. can you explain to me how mother nature will get into a bunker under the denver airport to take down the elites in there? causing ecological collapse is just the starting point of the apocalypse. it's all laid out in the book of revelations. a show called "the nostradamus effect" laid it out pretty well too. even the elites who are not privy to the government built bunkers have their own private bunkers built. all the good people of earth will be left out to endure armageddon. there is no hope for the future but we must fight as hard as we can to convert the world to communism until the end. ideally convert the world into an empathic commune where people do things based on the desire to help other people. rather than doing things for money and personal gain and selfish comfort like in capitalism. then we will never have to deal with this mindset of trying to take over the world ever again.

[@at1one]

@earth ocean in a capitalist society it's either work for a small percentage of the value of your labor or die, unless you come from wealth, then you can exploit the labor of others, not having to work as hard and gaining more wealth.

[@pairadeau]

Very informative. Thanks.

[@dulariparmar3091]

Prof. Harvey, I hope you're taking good care of yourself. The world needs you today.. more than ever.

[@Latuernich09]

Hi, David Harvey, what about talking about why the interest rate is so low nowadays, or zero or even minus??

[@abguitar99]

Who's reading Marx's 'The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844' at the moment?

[@jeffkeil1595]

Fuck you.

[@antediluvianatheist5262]

@@jeffkeil1595 Grow up.

[@adamplentl5588]

This kid is big mad.

[@antediluvianatheist5262]

@@adamplentl5588 Yup.

[@whygohome172]

@@antediluvianatheist5262 jeff is a troll fyi

[@ellana2402]

i hope one day you can put a link for the transcript for all of video in this youtube blog

[@democracyatwrk]

A transcript for this episode is linked in the description box! Volunteers help us with episode transcripts but we don't always get them out quickly after the episode release. But we're doing what we can! Thanks for your interest in our work.

[@dalealmonrode4581]

Banks are failing, just like in 2009, everything you see and hear are redirection !!

[@abdulazizalabdulaziz9191]

I've been waiting for this

[@lambbone8302]

Can’t wait to finish, brilliant work. Keep it up!

[@foodparadise5792]

The biggest religion is capitalism.

[@chriscourtney7369]

Next to climate change!

[@chriscourtney7369]

@Craig Bowers mankind brought climate change even under socialism brother. Does not matter what kind of system it is mankind is responsible. Weak as argument

[@chriscourtney7369]

@Craig Bowers how intelligent you got me😥

[@allypoum]

Essential stuff. As ever, liked and shared.

[@amasulem]

Just another viewer saying 'thanks'...

[@ToxicTerrance]

Glad I'm finally getting around to listening to this today. I love this work you're doing.

[@sybilcochrane1969]

Thank you so much for this series!

[@connorb2127]

alienation is as relevant as ever

[@OH-pc5jx]

Will David ever do a series on reading any of Marx’s other works, such as the Grundrisse?

[@pauljmeyer1]

No matter what the economic system is, there will always be the challenge of self-interest groups to distort the workings of that economy in their favor.

[@evolvedape3341]

Yap

[@buttercuptaylor7135]

Not if we democratize the enterprise. Capitalism kills democracy. Give us control of the workplace, and stop the ridiculous subsidies to the industries that are destroying the earth. If the corporations can have socialism, why can't the workers? Thanks for your comment.

[@BattleDroid-sd4rp]

Fuck defeatism. Take a stand and be bold with it. Capitalism must be destroyed in its entirety; it IS the system of the elite exploiting the rest.

[@benjaminkeyrose4294]

👍

[@mr.lavalove1532]

Watching this as I'm staying in a homeless shelter.

[@markayala3754]

It eventually becomes American culture, bubbled in their own cars

[@KilgoreTroutAsf]

That was extraordinarily well put. Kudos to prof. Harvey and D@W.

[@brianbooker8736]

This video was very informative; Dr. Wolff sent his Patreon subscribers a list of recommended reading books and the first one that I'm reading is "Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays" by Louis Althusser. What I've read so far deals with Marx between the 1840 to 1860 period. This is harvest season so I have winterizing chores and I'm finishing up reading Dr. Horne's book therefore I'm not that far into Althusser's book yet but this video ties in nicely with what I've read so far. Althusser talks about the proletariat class instinct in contradiction with bourgeois ideology and how only when Marx experienced both could he use dialectic materialism to critique Capital's political economics. I was born a proletariat I understand the instincts of class; I use this instinct and dialectic materialism to explore the conceptualization process in the production of value. My career has been in the energy sector and there was no alienation; my labour created value through steam, the steam engine/boiler and conversion of carbon heat energy into electrical/mechanical energy. The value I helped create defines the start of the industrial revolution; the birth of Capitalism. Although the energy sector is heavily automated through out my career I was required to understand its beginnings; a historical materialism of Carbon energy. It is like teleology; all my career I was an apprentice/artisan perfecting my craft until I became a chief engineering boiler operator; the value I created was the conversion of potential energy into kinetic energy. This video wasn't serendipity; the laws of dialectic materialism are in full effect.

[@d-5037]

Thanks for doing this.

[@yabyum108]

Great! Thanks.

[@jeffheller642]

The man is at the top of his game! But I don't think in our haste to be scientific we should abandon the concept of species-being, which in addition to being at the center of a humanist sociology is key to a universal psychology as well ...

[@regsmith5972]

Postmodern capitalism is where the creation of real value is offshored, with rentier extraction kept in the first world, via monopoly and patent and trademark farming. If this model surplus value is extracted from meaning itself that is destroyed (valourised) in the process. This is the surplus value of meaning that the artist adds to the product. The label or cut of clothes the style of a iPhone, as the real value is created in China, where it is manufactured by labour. All that is left is rentier extraction of intangible assets, that transfers some of the value created by labour into rentier extraction enabled by the small amount of real value created in the west by design that adds some labour value. As the reproduction costs approach zero, so does the natural price, operation systems, music and films for example, this is why a profit can only be generated by a monopoly/oligopoly. Amazon, Microsoft, iTunes, Google or example. The concept of objective truth is being destroyed, as isolated subjective feelings has replaced the age of reason that underpined radicalism. You cannot form a community of shared belief's and political action based on subjective feelings. If everything is subjective, truth and meaning do not exist. This was the capitalist assimilation of situationism, which was called postmodernism. Where feelings would be marketed too, not needs to overcome the crisis of overproduction in the 70s, and destroy leftist opposition by destroying meaning and the commons. If meaning itself is being destroyed in the capitalist system, no wonder more people are becoming alienated.

[@amandaharig1978]

Very well said. Especially regarding the assets that these companies are accruing are indeed intangible and in most cases, fictitious -- a post-modern paradox. Thank you for the time it took for you to summarize this. I wish more commentators would put this kind of effort into their thoughts.

[@lisakeitel3957]

Good work about alienation.

[@Mentisia]

The podcast feed for this episode doesn't download

[@dalealmonrode4581]

End the FED!!

[@teddybear1757]

An amazing explanation of my current situation as I'm in exploitation.

[@bagiee1]

@John conner If Marx was alive, he would support TVP and TZM.

[@evolvedape3341]

Unlikely

[@DavidThomas-fb8bq]

I have heard of this man before, but just wondered if he has had any debates with capitalists and how they defend the ' free markets'?

[@BattleDroid-sd4rp]

Arguing with capitalists & libertarians is a waste of time. It always goea like this: Muh """Voluntary exchange""" """Free markets""" and insert cold war slander here

[@GnosisMan50]

I can't understand why it is that David never addresses the issues he's so passionate about from a psychological perspective. Can the right kind of psychology shed greater light as to why the working class, among other issues, allow themselves to be treated like slaves?

[@amyadmirer]

Just think for a second gnosis, is it easy to fight power when you have practically no power and almost no knowledge of how things are and have been orchestrated politically and economically and the possibilities beyond that?

[@jeremystein4534]

You might find this book helpful: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, M Weber. You can get it free online.. It certainly helped me to understand the relationship between psychology and economics.

[@billyoldman9209]

The whole point of the Freudo-Marxist movement was to answer that question (Reich, Fromm, Marcuse etc.). Their views never got popular traction (except the short episode of the 1968 unrest). That doesn't mean the problem was ever answered by someone else (especially not Weber or any economist alive) or that the question now is no longer relevant. It means it went out of fashion largely because critical European thinkers simply had to distance themselves of the stupid vulgarity of the parliamentary Communist Parties who were still pushing Stalinism even after 1956.

[@billyoldman9209]

I think Lacan's concept of jouissance is probably the most important development in this area. The need and enjoyment of self-destruction is something that positivist minds cannot grasp at all, even though they all have their own vices and they also suffer from work/lifestyle induced chronic illnesses. And this also presupposes an even deeper layer of alienation between body and the ego which allows humans to sacrifice themselves for irrational ends, something that the animal is incapable of. Question is, whether it's possible to create a life-affirming civilization that can replace the current one or are humans doomed to reproduce history for eternity?

[@fergalcussen]

Great video. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

[@troywalkertheprogressivean8433]

1:20 agreed, the difference between what is SAID, and what is DONE

[@dinnerwithfranklin2451]

I've enjoyed this talk. Thank you Dr Harvey.

[@miguelaphan58]

..finally , a trustefull versión of Marx theory..

[@Latuernich09]

Thank you very much for bringing back the long unaffected topic of alienation that is deeply routet in the capitalistic production system back to attention and emphasized its objective economic foundation. The psychological effects are a derived problem.

[@Owl350]

And parts of prehistory reminding people they don't need to be lying. Caucasians would still be Caucasian so if you weren't trying to lie.

[@haydock18]

,Species being' could be 'scientofically' interpreted to simply mean that human beings have relatively more ability to plan and purposely do things ... so therefore should be overcoming the invisible hand ... making the latter kind of alienation not so different from the 1944 variety?

[@cocojumbo197]

How is this problem of capitalism? In communist china or soviet union these problem still existed, people were just machines, exploited and alienated. Soviet factory worker assembling tanks or guns is just a slave with barely livable wage

[@hoodee1334]

Fantastic as always

[@user-yk9sk7pg6v]

Thank you.

[@wtfhah]

David Harvey seems as though he's encountering some health issues. I pray we can squeeze some more years out of him!

[@christophersmith2581]

Made me sad reading this. Not your fault. It just means, I think, we need to pick up that intellectual torch as we stand on the shoulders of previous philosophers. I remember taking classes on Capital in grad school and using David as my intellectual crutch to get through. Those were rough times, but well worth it!

[@amyadmirer]

Yeah, I had the same impression

[@kerycktotebag8164]

Algoritmic support

[@fattahmoosavi9652]

🌹👍David Havey is one of the most important filosof in the modern time!!!🌹👍

[@jintarokensei3308]

Well, why use shovels when you can dig with spoons? Make it less alienating. Go one step further, junk your vehicles and walk. Get rid of your stove and light a fire. Throw away your calculator/phone and solve by hand, send snail mail so that the postman has a job. This isn't anti-capitalism, it's anti-technology. And it's retarded. I want something to do my work for me, so that I can have the time to do more important things. Monotonous tasks are for robots.

[@clarestucki5151]

Harvey, as do all Marxist philosophers, goes fundamentally wrong by, implicitly at least, overlooking or denying the reality that capital (savings) is itself productive. That fundamental error is what gives rise to the erroneous conclusion that the difference between what labor is paid in the form of wages, and what the finished product is worth in the marketplace (the capitalist's 'profit') represents "theft" from the laborer.

[@evolvedape3341]

Shocking how this doesn’t work, isn’t it? He acts like he understands so well how capitalism works and his ideas and critiques are nothing new, but every time they are attempted they fail. Shocking isn’t it how capitalism is critiqued based on its real world failings, but socialism is supported by how it would work in theory. Let’s compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges here. If you critique capitalism based on the real world capitalist impact, critique socialism by the same.

[@ParcelOfRogue]

I think Labour alienation is all relative compared to being chased by a Sabre Toothed Tiger, surviving famines and plagues without modern pharma and living to an average of 28, one 5th of whom have broken bones

[@GoldenHairAngel]

I have it pretty good under capitalism I'd say. Have my small business and making more and more money as time goes.

[@BattleDroid-sd4rp]

*guillotine*

[@GoldenHairAngel]

@@BattleDroid-sd4rp Yeah, guillotines were cool.