Very promising new blog:
D. Harvey, “Towards Urban Revolution?”
From David Harvey’s “THE URBAN ROOTS OF FINANCIAL CRISES: RECLAIMING THE CITY FOR ANTI-CAPITALIST STRUGGLE” in SOCIALIST REGISTER 2012.The city is a terrain where anti-capitalist struggles have always flourished.
The history of such struggles, from the Paris Commune through the Shanghai
Commune, the Seattle General Strike, The Tucuman uprising and the Prague
Spring to the more general urban-based movements of 1968 (which we now
see faintly echoed in Cairo and Madison) is stunning. But it is a history that
is also troubled by political and tactical complications that have led many on
the left to underestimate and misunderstand the potential and the potency
of urban-based movements, to often see them as separate from class struggle
and therefore devoid of revolutionary potential. And when such events do
take on iconic status, as in the case of the Paris Commune, they are typically
claimed as one of ‘the greatest proletarian uprisings’ in world history, even as
they were as much about reclaiming the right to the city as they were about
revolutionizing class relations in production.
(more…)
Labor’s location and power in finance
“[L]abour itself is being incorporated into capital in new ways, not just via workplace discipline but via the process of securitization. Some have sensed this new development, but have cast it in terms of growing household debt, with the appropriation of interest payments out of labour’s income being treated as a further ‘take’ on surplus value. But this is not the critical aspect of the development, and it is certainly not new….The critical development is the recasting of labour as the provider of income streams for securities, to facilitate asset diversification and the search for yield. The rapid growth of mortgage, auto, credit card and student loans, as well as contracts on telephones, energy and healthcare, all provide the raw materials on which securities are built to meet the demands of global investors.
Anticipating the Occupy Movement
There is a vicious campaign underway at the moment against ‘communism’, this despite the utter lack of a Left with any social power. The most meager Democratic Party proposals, or defenses of remaining aspects of the social safety net, minor extensions in unemployment aid, are branded ‘class warfare.’
Related articles
- Theories of the Current Crisis: David Harvey and the Left’s search for a new master (pogoprinciple.wordpress.com)
- David Harvey and Capital Volume 2 (slog.thestranger.com)
- Sat. March 31 World Action Day vs. Capitalism (thefreeonline.wordpress.com)
- Harvey reminds us… (transportgeo.wordpress.com)
- Nice review in Capital and Class (anarchyalive.com)
- Workers’ governments and the crisis of politics (johnriddell.wordpress.com)
- Capitalists @ Work says STFU (samizdata.net)
- Paris Commune formed (oup.com)
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