RSA Animate – Crisis of Capitalism

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  • Social enterprise
  • Behaviour change

In this short RSA Animate, radical sociologist David Harvey asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism, towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that could be responsible, just and humane. View his full lecture at the RSA. Download a transcript of this video (pdf).

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  • 1) Apart from the fact that 'Anti-capitalism movements' instantly conjour-up connotations of hippies, eco-hippies amid violent throngs of 'anarchists' (not true, but effective propaganda nonetheless). It's nigh impossible to 'market' anti-capitalist 'aims' simply because...who's going to market it in such a large and coordinated style? Not marketing companies, not the PR industry, not the mass media, not anything (with the means to promote anti-capitalist aims effectively) that relies on, essentially, a capitalist system where as large as possible profit margins are the bottom line.

    2) Its not about replacing a system overnight with another extreme, its about actually returning to that concept known as Democracy, a tool that is used so primitively but is still the best 'means' we have for moving towards a society based on tenets of humanism (those annoying tenats of self-empowerment through self-knowing, the growth of human capacity, understanding that it is in our self-interest to 'help' each other and be tolerant to each other, learning off each other, active participation in our work places and society by lessoning the hierarchies of private property fetishists who believe efficiency is more important than visionary ends).

    The point is, a sign of maturity in an individual is understanding that there are no ready made alternatives, simply you must work towards them, the way? Well....we can start by making economic decisions more democratic for the people affected, if people have respect for themselves and society (because they have more of a say) then stubborness and egotism have less of an impact....surely a good thing. Anti-capitalism is not just about destroying everything....that's the sign of a necrophilious personality type....far more congenial to a society that encourages rampant egotism and callousness.

  • How about we stop the redistribution of middle-class wages to the people that already have 95% of the money... Cut the taxes, and let the individual be free to take care of the poor, as the churces and other charities in America have been doing for 250 years already.

  • And let's just have a look at the Marxist of history, and how the devaluation of the individual has led to the rise of the totalitarian state... Anyone familiar with how the banks have funded both sides of the great wars? Who won? Not the Marxists. Certainly not the citizens. It was the banks!

  • The two main issues that he fails to deal with are:
    1) That "Money" as he describes it, is not "Money" at all. It's Debt. If we had a true "Monetery" system, the Money would be a strictly fixed value of a hard good, based on a fixed amount of work.
    and 2) The main problem is (as it always has been) that morality has always been discarded at the altar of profit. The rise of humanism (wherein a human has no transcendent moral authority ) leaves us in a state of relative law, rather than absolute law. The founders knew well that the lust for power was far greater than monetary greed. Although the latter is usually a side effect of the former, the supreme law of the land has to be enforced without the influence of the ruling class, yet how can this be when the ruling class are both bankers and government leaders? The lack or morality in leadership leads to backroom deals that leave the the constituency outside. The role and power of government is defined by the people (on paper), but in reality, we the people have no power.