David Harvey is a professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has authored many books and articles dealing with the social issues of the modern world, his writings include; Social Justice and the City, The Condition of Postmodernity, The Limits to Capital, and A Brief History of Neoliberalism. In the book, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism, David Harvey examines the circumstances that resulted in the 2007 economic collapse. He attempts to connect what appears at the surface to be random market failures into a larger indictment on the entire capitalist system.
It is Dr. Harvey’s belief that capital flow is the lifeblood of capitalist societies and for the system to work there must be constant growth. When there isn’t enough growth then the system is in crisis. Reoccurring crisis is one of the major issues with capitalism in his opinion as perpetual growth will eventually become unsustainable and a market correction will result. These corrections rarely affect the wealthy individuals that caused the issue as they have already pocketed all the profits available and moved on to their next target market. The lower and middle classes of society are left with the results of a system that adds wealth only to the world’s elite while saddling everyone else with massive debts and liabilities.
The economic system of the United States and the rest of the world were once based on industry and the manufacturing of goods. As the profits from these industries began to be unable to keep up with the demand of three percent annual growth, the amount David Harvey feels is necessary to prevent crisis, investors began looking to the higher profit margins that the financial markets can achieve. This ...
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...rack Obama, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
Works Cited
Harvey, D. (2010). The enigma of capital: and the crises of capitalism. Oxford [England:
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Capitalism was suffering from the industrial success. Parenti uses the term “over-accumulation” do describe this issue, saying there was a “chronic excess capacity on a global scale” (32). Because of this issue, the American manufacturing and merchandising organizations found it problematic to keep up with the postwar profits. Many commodities were already around and one wanted to create a new one, the price declined. Upholding the profits that they had earned before, businesses had to switch how they ran their business. They had to expand their output which only drove down prices more than they previously were. Parenti then concludes by saying “there was too much capital looking for profitable investment outlets, and not enough profitable investment opportunities”
After a generation of portfolio managers and investors profiting from decades of favorable returns on stocks, they believed the modern economy was impervious to major calamities (“Rethinking” 20). As inflation rates fell from record highs in the late 1970s and early 1980s to the record lows that they are today, interest rates followed, enabling Americans to borrow more money from lenders which, in turn, increased housing prices to all-time highs (“Rethinking” 21).
Finally, President Obama calls for action. He reminds us, through anaphora, that “our journey is not complete” until we are all equal and more opportunistic, per-se. Obama tells us that that is our task, alluding to the Declaration of Independence, to “make these words, rights, these values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness real for every American” is a task that we will all go through together as one to achieve for all. Concluding his speech, the president reminds us that we are the hope; we ARE the change.
His point was that with capitalism and the people working would develop to have less money and experience alienation that is viewed as the workers developing more separation and solitude with their own job developing into a feeling of helplessness.
Obama goes on to say “We cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together.” He believes that this is the time to change, and a new generation governed by racial minorities. Obama support these claims by reiterating his own beliefs and those of the American nation. “I would not be running for President...
Often times, Americans do not realize the corruption that surrounds them in their nation. Capitalism is an economic and political system in which the country’s trade and industry is controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. Business owners, CEO’s, corporations, and large businesses have the propensity of taking extreme advantage of the power capitalism brings. For decades companies and corporations have been taking unexplainable benefit of the power they have. Capitalism in the Unites States leads to corruption.
This is a crucial factor for what caused the 2008 Global Financial Crisis: as the ratio of capital value to variable value was increasing at a faster rate than the rate of surplus value for many years in the lead up to the crisis (Bowman 2009). Thus, business profits had been in steady decline in the years leading up to the GFC and it was inevitable that as long as the rate of profits continued to fall then a financial collapse and economic crisis would
... America, there has to be a change. We not only have to make a change in the person, but also there needs to be a change in the economy. Let’s make a change for the future generations to come.
Communism, socialism, and capitalism are the three basic forms of economical systems, each evident in the world. Although Karl Marx is portrayed as the father of communism, Marx is able to provide a substantial amount of information about the capitalistic world. In his work, “Capital (1867)”, Marx discusses the nature of commodities, wages, and the relationship between a worker and the capitalist economic system. As a result, Marx portrays workers as human beings who have been exploited in order to maximize production and profit in a capitalistic society. Although Karl Marx wrote “Capital (1867)” over a century ago, Marx’s arguments concerning the various uses of human labor, commodities, and values, have remained relevant in the United States
Through out history money, wealth and capital have dictated a way of life to the masses. Wealth dictated the lives that the rich lived and the lives of the poor that worked for and surrounded them. In some cultures your class could never be escaped in life, you had to wait for your next incarnation, while in other cultures the idea of wealth transcended a life and allowed for growth from one class to another. This is the reality of a capitalist society that was first discussed by Karl Marx in the 19th century.
Lynn Harsh (Nov. 2002). ‘Capitalism – A Deal with the Devil?’. Retrieved on Mar. 23 from:
There were many theories that promotes and explains how the capitalist system works; however, Karl Marx’s Capital is the first one that can explain the imminent relationship between poverty and wealth, inequality and growth under capitalism. ...
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
...e happy. However, Carl argued that now more than ever people are questioning capitalism. It is important to question and critique our current capitalistic system. The current system in place is alienating workers and places too much emphasis on profit and the modes of production. There are extensive problems and repercussions that must be death within a profit-driven society. We should be working towards a system that is driven by what is needed not what is profitable. A profit-driven system can lead to over-accumulation and production of items that are actually not required because of over-production. We need to undergo change in order to construct a form of social and economic life based on production for need, not production for profit. This means that a system must be created that has a focus on democratic planning, worker-self management, and global solidarity.
Shawki, Ahmed, Paul D’Amato (2000), “Briefing: The Shape of World Capitalism,” International Socialist Review, [http://www.isreview.org/issues/11/world_capitalism.shtml], accessed 19 May 2012.