In Greece as the “guest star” of the 13th European Sociological Association (ESA) conference held in Athens, distinguished anthropology and sociology professor David Harvey – also one of the world’s foremost scholars of Marxism – spoke to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA) about Greece, its economic woes, Donald Trump and the Korean missile crisis, among others.
On a break from the ESA conference, the 82-year-old Harvey was carrying a bag with two copies of his latest book, “Marx, capital and the madness of economic reason”, which had been released a few days earlier in English.
Asked whether Marx remains relevant in the 21st century, Harvey replied that the study of Marx had meaning “because in some ways we are reliving the work conditions of the 19th century.” Neoliberalism, he said, sought to not just reduce the power of labour but make it unable to withstand the terrific changes being made.
“Neoliberalism, capitalism, tries to present itself as something that it is not in reality, for its own interests, of course. Marx’s greatest ambition was to de-fetishise the understanding of capital and it is important to highlight this today,” he said.
Firmly pessimistic about the future, Harvey said he “was not at all optimistic that the 21st century will be better than the 20th.”
The discussion also touched on the presence of Donald Trump in the White House, where Harvey did not hide his concern.
“Trump’s election was the result of the fact that a large part of the population has been alienated from its work, from political processes. Many people feel desperate and behave in a way that, unfortunately, correlates with alienation. Disappointment and rage but without doing something to change the system. What a left government must do is give meaning to daily life,” he told ANA.
As for the launch of a missile from North Korea over Japan, Harvey described it as “sheer madness” and noted that Trump was “equally unpredictable” so that no one could be indifferent to what was happening in Asia. “I am afraid there might be a nuclear war in the region,” he said, visibly disturbed.
Regarding developments in Greece, Harvey noted that “the situation is one in which you really do have no choice except to enforce whatever it is that the EU, the IMF, demand.”
“The fact is they have been totally unreasonable and stupid but there doesn’t seem any hope of that changing,” he added, while noting that Merkel’s re-election might improve some things but Greece would not have many options.
“Yeah, you could change some of the social measures, which I think is important in the long run, but not in terms of the economy…” he said.
Regarding the Greek government’s options for transforming society, Harvey noted that there was some change socially but not “much of a transformation” that was anti-neoliberal in terms of organising the demographic, the population and developing collective systems of provision.
“This is an opportunity to do much more on that than the government has done. It’s stuck, I think, with a neoliberal way of doing things,” he added.
Harvey also highlighted his concern over the rise of the ultra-right in Europe, noting that progressive forces must try to find ways to overcome their differences to form a united front against this.
“I think there is a question of how do we respond to the growing power of the ultra-right, neo-Nazi movement, Hungary and places like that. I think it’s a big question as to whether you have an anti-capitalist struggle, an anti-neoliberal struggle or an anti-Fascist struggle. And I think, right now, many people are recognizing that, probably, we have to submerge some of our differences into a coherent anti-Fascist struggle. This means that many of the things that I would like to see done are not going to get done, because the conditions of such an alliance are such that there will not be a really progressive way of doing that,” he said.
Harvey FBA is the Distinguished Professor of anthropology and geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNYand the author of many books and essays that have been prominent in the development of modern geography as a discipline. He is a proponent of the idea of the right to the city.
In 2007, Harvey was listed as the 18th most-cited author of books in the humanities and social sciences in that year, as established by counting cites from academic journals in the Thomson Reuters ISI database.
— source amna.gr 2017-09-10