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David Harvey: “Feral Capitalism Hits the Streets”
I adore Harvey and have been telling all of you to buy The Enigma of Capital since last fall. Harvey is as ivory tower as it gets but I don’t think that’s a bad thing, for what it’s worth. He’s one of the most important Marxist scholars in the world, and he has publicly declares he’s ready for the revolution. Here’s his blog post about the London riots:
There will of course be the usual hysterical debate between those prone to view the riots as a matter of pure, unbridled and inexcusable criminality, and those anxious to contextualize events against a background of bad policing; continuing racism and unjustified persecution of youths and minorities; mass unemployment of the young; burgeoning social deprivation; and a mindless politics of austerity that has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with the perpetuation and consolidation of personal wealth and power. Some may even get around to condemning the meaningless and alienating qualities of so many jobs and so much of daily life in the midst of immense but unevenly distributed potentiality for human flourishing …
What I say may sound shocking. Most of us don’t see it because we don’t want to. Certainly no politician dare say it and the press would only print it to heap scorn upon the sayer. But my guess is that every street rioter knows exactly what I mean … Slash and burn is now openly the motto of the ruling classes pretty much everywhere.
This fits so clearly even with what has been happening with the youth in Milwaukee this summer.
