Against David Harvey, Against Marxism

Here you can see BBC’s HardTalk doing an interview with Marxist “author and academic” David Harvey. He’s the one in the natty waistcoat, in the highly unlikely event that you cannot work who is who.

First things first, it is probably worth questioning the extent to which this chap actually is a Marxist. Sure, he really doesn’t like capitalism, but that in and of itself is not enough to categorise someone as a Marxist. Harvey states “I’m a sort of a Marxist, I guess,” and professes to reading a lot of Marx. As far as I can see, with his reliance on conversations about the future and the need to push the overthrow of capitalism, Harvey’s not an orthodox Marxist; Marx argued that the demise of capitalism was inevitable and would happen regardless of the impact of individuals. In fact, that’s one of the things I find so dispiriting about Marxism; it denies human agency to a large extent.

Still, Harvey doesn’t seem to mind being called a Marxist, and he does defend Marxism, particularly when he says that it is “not a belief system… (it’s) a scientific explanation of how capitalism works.” This is very Marxist, in fairness – Marx and his followers tended to believe that Marx was a scientist uncovering the laws of history. Of course, the notion of Marxism as science is bollocks, quite frankly. The laws Marx laid down about the progress of history have been comprehensive disproved: capitalism has shown itself to be far more resilient than Marx ever thought it would be. The notion of Marxism as scientific is entirely down to his followers repeating, mantra like, that it is a science until people actually started to believe them. Of course, such methods don’t actually make a belief system scientific – otherwise Intelligent Design would be scientific, rather than a meek attempt to make Christianity a little more credible in a scientific world.

What is clear is that Harvey really doesn’t like capitalism. There are a number of different reasons for it; capitalism is unequal, businesses are protected by governments thus limiting competition, capitalism doesn’t make everyone happy, competition is bad, capitalism damages the environment and so and so on. Some of these objections I can sympathise with to some extent, others not at all. But the problem with Harvey and his ilk is that they have decided that they have truth – that capitalism is bad. And everything, everything has to fit in with that truth. Which leads to all sorts of incredible claims – such as the idea that Adam Smith was actually about wealth distribution and that Chairman Mao actually did a lot for his people despite being a brutal dictator. Any subtlety, and shades of grey are not allowed – capitalism is bad. It has to be replaced.

Which leads to all sorts of logical cul-de-sacs and delusions in the worldview of Professor Harvey. For example, he attacks the idea that capitalism can continue to grow at the same time as bemoaning the fact during the last crisis of capitalism that the number of billionaires in India doubled. But how else did those billionaires attain that status except through the growth of capitalism?

There is a childish side to Harvey’s “Marxist” outlook; it is a black and white worldview, a world of goodies (Harvey, but of course) vs baddies (the nasty capitalists). It is all absolutes: he cannot talk about reform of the system, it has to go. Even though Harvey has no real idea of what to replace it with. Even though when people do try to replace capitalism with this formless, undefined utopia, it goes horrifically wrong.

To me, the interview with Harvey highlights the extent to which Marxism is like a religion; it deals in supposedly concrete concepts of good and bad, and it requires substantial faith in a future world rather than living in, and working with, reality. Harvey is exactly wrong; Marxism is not a scientific theory, it is a belief system. Critique capitalism by all means, but you need to come up with something more meaningful than “let’s get rid of it and hope for the best”.