En relación a RE: [CrashList] Subject: [BRC-NEWS] Unnatural Dis,
el 30 Jan 01, a las 11:45, Patrick Bond [via Mark Jones] dijo:
> > My doctoral supervisor David Harvey uses the idea of
> > a "spatio-temporal fix"--or in english, shifting and stalling
> > the crisis--which I find useful.
It is one of the most fruitful generalizations in modern Marxism.
ough I had read "Social Justice and the City" before (in Spanish it was
translated with an abstruse title, most probably because 'social justice'
sounded too Peronist and the editors -Siglo XXI, Mexico- would not dare to lose
buyers due to that association), my real respect for David Harvey comes out
from two sources.
(a) he has been a marauder and an opener of new roads twice in his life, a
merit deserved to very few. Originally a positivist social-democrat, he headed
the intellectual movement that put Anglo Saxon geography in motion against the
old guard of Kantian American geographers (Kantian but ignorant of
philosophical depth, this was their problem). After that, and under the climate
of the 60s and 70s, he discovered Marxism and became one of the most important
Marxist geographers. The passage is told in "Social Justice and the City".
(b) he gave the first cogent and serious explanation to the last chapter in the
first volume of Capital, with his thesis of the spatial fix. The thesis, in
fact, and in my opinion, establishes the theoretical link between Lenin's
theories _Imperialism_ and _Capital_.
And there is a third, more personal, reason.
No matter what we think of Harvey's positions re: ecological disaster he is one
of the most interesting Marxist heads alive. Unfortunately, when he last to my
knowledge came to Buenos Aires -I've been told that he is married to an
interesting colonial (ah, the acme of Progressive Britishdom!), in this case an
Argentinean, and they use to come down here for vacations in Miramar- I could
not meet him because I was too full of work. But I still remember his address
to the academic audience who awarded him a Honoris Causa title of the
Universtity of Buenos Aires. An audience full of pomos and renegades from
Marxism, whose most important subject in life was academic power and
scholarships, an audience of graying old half-revolutionaries in the past, an
audience who wanted to forget their sins of youth and get incorporated, fully,
to the new Argentina. Well, to this audience he began a speech by addressing
the essential fact of Argentinean political life.
He warmly thanked everybody for the reception he had had, and he particularly
thanked us because in a country so ravaged by cultural imperialism, the
University had allowed him, David Harvey, to express himself in English. "Now,
he said, this is very generous, because I _am_ cultural imperialism". Of
course, this sentence made the assertion false from the beginning: cultural
imperialism needs to operate in disguise. In a couple of words, thus, Harvey
called the attention of those who were listening to him to the fact that they
were victims of cultural imperialism. Unfortunately, the raw matter at that
conference was not of the best quality, and most of what he said (which was
fascinating) was received with the ears that people lend to some old pundit
explaining the sexual behaviour of mating grasshoppers in Antarctica, under
experimental conditions.
I envy Patrick Bond for his tutor. Harvey gave me his e-mail while here. I lost
it. Anyway, Patrick, send him regards from a guy who accosted him in Buenos
Aires, and asked him for an e-mail. Maybe he will remember me.
Or are such intermediate concepts,
> > to link people's observations of crisis to a critique of capitalism,
> > not so crucial in B.A. or London, Nestor and Mark? Just curious
> > on how you tell a broader story...)
They are essential, in fact. Not less essential that the parts Mark Jones
misses:
>
> What I do not seem to see in the work of David Harvey for instance (to take just
> one example, but you could extend to include Panitch, Mattick, even John Foster,
> IMO) is any attempt even to engage the problem of linking up the dynamics of
> accumulation, rising org. comp., over-acc. crisis etc, and the material basis of
> production and the importance of energetics.
>
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________
Crashlist website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
