David Harvey: Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism.
Stilwell, Frank
David Harvey
Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism
Profile Books, London, 2014, 338pp.
Contradictions in an economic system generate recurrent problems
such as class conflicts, systemic instability and economic crises.
Focusing on these features of capitalism contrasts with the neoclassical
economists' emphasis on 'equilibrium'. Whereas
neoclassicals see competitive market processes as being conducive to
harmony and stability, political economists emphasize deeply-rooted
tensions in the economy that can only be resolved by systemic
transformation. This latter viewpoint is particularly characteristic of
political economists of Marxist inclination, such as David Harvey who
has contributed so prodigiously to this field over more than four
decades of productive scholarship.
In his recent book Harvey provides, in effect, a guide to
'everything you'd want to know about capitalist contradictions
but were afraid to ask'. Many of the seventeen contradictions he
identifies have been considered in his previous books but to bring them
together in this single volume is a sterling effort. It gives us a
series of interlinked essays. The first seven deal with what he calls
the 'foundational' contradictions of capital. These include
the relationship of use values to exchange values; the relationship
between capital and labour; and the recurrently incompatible conditions
for producing surplus value and realizing it in a monetary form as
profits. The next seven are the more contingent 'moving'
contradictions, relating to social reproduction, technology, divisions
of labour, uneven spatial development, monopoly and competition.
Finally, attention turns to the 'dangerous' contradictions
that arise from endless compound growth, the rapacious relationship of
capital to nature and the alienating character of capitalist social
relations. This is a manifesto for our times. As a comprehensive
critique of capitalism, it is unabashedly problem-saturated, perhaps
leaving some readers seeking some more solution-focused treatment. It is
not all doom and gloom, however, because where there are contradictions
there is always the potential for politics and for progress. Recognising
this,
Harvey ends the book by setting out, for each of the seventeen
contradictions, the corresponding principles that 'can frame and
hopefully animate political praxis' (p.294). This gives us
guidelines for a post-capitalist political economic order. But
capitalism won't collapse simply under the weight of its own
contradictions or because a preferable alternative may be envisaged: it
needs activists to drive the change, as Harvey has always emphasised.
Otherwise 'the end of capitalism', to which the latter part of
this book's title alludes, remains unattainable.
