[PEN-L:3785] Re: Clarification on Cuba

[Barbara Laurence <cns@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lou, I'm pleased that my Cuba book was useful to you.

About Harvey review.  I want to help make this as sharp as possible, as
there are many Harveyists around.  I haven't read his new book and read
Limits to Capital some time ago.  But I think I have pretty good sense of
how he thinks, and that what you say about his work makes sense.  If I
recall rightly, Limits to Capital is not an account of capitalist
accumulation and crisis (and through crisis) historically understood, but a
theory of the conditions of capitalist accumulation.  Marx got away with
doing both of these jobs because England roughly approximated both.  But
there is a sense in which Marx was "just" another 19th century social
theorists, like Weber who theorized the conditions of legitimate domination
and Durkheim who did the same for social solidarity.  As you doubtless know
better than I do, to do theoretical history (as Marx did) is incredibly
difficult, the proof of which is 1000 texts on Marx and history that get
everything wrong.  You have to be sensitive to historiography, sociology,
political theory, etc. etc..  I find that in general what I call the
"Antipode geographers" fail on these grounds; especially their sociology is
weak or nonexistent.  On inter subjectivity, a key problematic about which
Marx said little of importance, geographers are also weak.  In fact, I
think but am not sure the geographers are weak in those areas that Marx was
weak, hence have not followed the varied and rich Marxist literature of the
20th century, but rather simply apply without much thought the old man's
ideas to the present.
If I remember right, the key failure of Limits to Capital, or so I thought
when it came out, was that it was useless to theorize really existing
struggles and movements;  that the method Harvey used was just not set up
to do this.  And I never understood why "Marxists" and Marxist-type theory
is useful if it doesn't illuminate something for people struggling for this
of that, or to offer a way for people to evaluate their goals, how they are
trying to reach their goals, and the effects of their actions (including
unintended effects).  If this in fact is Harvey's weakness it's the biggest
weakness any self-styled Marxist can have.  By contrast, in my own latest
work, the second contradiction of capitalism idea is meant to theorize the
so-called new social movements, to indicate the scope and limits of the
actions of same, and to locate their implicit political goals.
Maybe another way to say the same thing, or maybe another although closely
related topic, is the fact (for me) that S/V and all of Marx's "economic"
categories are also "sociological categories," that is, the sociology is
built into the system from the start.
Thus for me, S/V is a quantitative (economic) measure of the potential for
the system to encounter a realization crisis, and also a qualitative
(sociological/political) indication of the power of capital over labor.
For example, neo-liberalism for me means relatively high S/V hence a real
problem of overproduction of capital (realization of capital problem).  I
realize this is simplistic and say it to illustrate the idea only.

I was hoping that the CNS symposium on Harvey's last book would get into
some of these critical and difficult questions, but it didn't.  It was
organized by our Toronto editorial group and might  be worth reading, in
CNS, 9,3, Sept. 1998, if you haven't already.

I think this job you're doing is very important.  If you're right that
Harvey minimizes the self-destructive aspects of capitalism (which he or
anyone would do if they're theorizing the only conditions of capitalist
accumulation)  and end up with a "philosophical" acceptance of the system's
ability to overcome crisis (which he or anyone else would do if they don't
talk about cap accumulation historically understood) then they are not
Marxist at all.  Or rather are using a structuralist type of Marxism to
"explain the world" instead of a dialectical type of Marxism which thinks
about both structure and agency at the same time, as the old man did.  That
Harvey spends a moment of his time talking about ecology and nazism shows
just how far he is from saying anything useful from a practical or
political point of view.  There's about as much chance of environmentalism
today becoming fascistic as there is "radical geographers" studying their
sociology and history and ecology itself.  This is much too long a letter
as it is, but I believe all the leading so-called Marxist geographers
suffer the same lack.
Can I have your regular mail address, as I may dig up some items to send you?

 Try Richard Powers, Gain, a "serious novel."  I think you'll like it.
Recently published.

I too am a crime novel fan;  in fact, on a hunch that crime novelists as a
group are likely to be astute observers of US (criminal) society, that is,
good sociologists, I started collecting quotes on subjects like money, law,
lawyers, cops, politicians, savings and loan industry, etc.  Have over 300
as of now.  Minimally, I'll make a photocopied book, a kind of anatomy of
American society as seen through the collective mind of crime novelists.
Maximally, who knows.....?          Jim O'C