The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles by David Harvey Pluto Press, 2020
This is more a collection of short essays than a comprehensive book. Harvey remains impressive as ever when explaining the basic ideas of Karl Marx succinctly and effectively, including such things as the operation of the rate of profit and how it relates to technological change.
The intent of the book is to give print form to Harvey’s regular podcast output, and the editors suggest it is a good accessible gateway into Harvey’s work and thoughts.
The chapters are thus short, and slightly repetitive, using the same examples (eg. that China has used more cement in two or three years than the US has done in the past 100). But that reflects the bite sized nature of the chapters, the book can be picked up and put down.
The focus across chapters is on the difference between mass and rate. Harvey notes that we should be more concerned about the mass of carbon dioxide we have already put into the atmosphere, rather than think about the rate at which we are adding more carbon. Likewise, he notes the importance of examining the mass of profit rather than just the rate of profit when examining the operations of the capitalist system (and he also gently uses that to criticise the Marxist writers who see the fall in the rate of profit as the key feature of capitalism).
As a geographer, he has useful insights into the geopolitical goals of China, and particularly notes how the brutal treatment of the Uighur may be connected with their attempts to control central Asia and thus cement a position as the predominant power on Earth. This is also joined by useful comments on the ‘second nature’ of the urban environment, as well as a useful discussion of his notion of accumulation through dispossession.
There is also a useful discussion on the place of the concept of alienation in Marxian thought, which includes a light sketch in how the notion has been examined in the second half of the twentieth century and the usefulness of continuing to apply it as a tool of analysis today. Particularly, there is an interesting discussion of how the notion of alienation might be used to examine the rise of Donald Trump as a symptom of the disaffection of the deindustrialised areas of the United States (he goes into dispiriting detail of the betrayal involved in the closure of a Detroit car plant).
Disappointingly, Harvey sees modern capitalism as too complex and interrelated to be changed wholesale, and instead looks to micro-changes and warm words. The book is thus long on analysis of capitalism but short on actual concrete anti-capitalism.
As a pedagogue, Harvey includes a selection of discussion questions for each chapter and further reading at the end of the book. These are actually good questions, and going through them might be a useful exercise and worth the price of the book.
Pik Smeet
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