David Harvey

The dominant notion of rationality is a capitalist notion of rationality, that is, whatever is profitable, whatever can be organised in terms of social control of labour-power and control of natural resources.

— David Harvey

The net worth of the 358 richest people in the world was then found to be 'equal to the combined income of the poorest 45 per cent of the worlds population - 2.3 billion people.'

— David Harvey

There's a difference between an outburst of spontaneous anger, which doesn't have a political objective, and a more measured response that we saw in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

— David Harvey

Massive concentration of financial power, accompanied by the machinations of finance capital, can as easily de-stabilize as stabilize capitalism.

— David Harvey

The invocation of social necessity should alert us. It contains the seeds for Marx's critique of political economy as well as for his dissection of capitalism.

— David Harvey

Marx set out to resolve the contradictions and to correct the errors in classical political economy. In this he thought he had succeeded very well. Judging by the sound and the fury of the controversy surrounding his interpretations, he either succeeded too well or deluded himself to the success of his enterprise.

— David Harvey

Skills that are monopolizable are anathema to capital.

— David Harvey

The equilibrium between supply and demand is achieved only through a reaction against the upsetting of the equilibrium.

— David Harvey

Money must exist before it can be turned into capital.

— David Harvey

Technological change can become 'fetishized' as a 'thing in itself', as an exogenous guiding force in the history of capitalism.

— David Harvey

Individual capitalists, in short, behave in such a way as to threaten the conditions that permit the reproduction of the capitalist class.

— David Harvey

But the net effect of increasing scale, centralization of capital, vertical integration and diversification within the corporate form of enterprise has been to replace the 'invisible hand' of the market by the 'visible hand' of the managers.

— David Harvey

The social relations of capitalism have penetrated slowly into all spheres of life to make wage labour the general condition of existence only in fairly recent times.

— David Harvey

Individual capitalists, in short, necessarily act in such a way as to de-stabilize capitalism.

— David Harvey

The inner logic that governs the laws of motion of capitalism is cold, ruthless and inexorable, responsive only to the law of value. Yet value is a social relation, a product of a particular historical process. Human beings were organizers, creators and participants in that history. We have, Marx asserts, built a vast social enterprise which dominates us, delimits our freedoms and ultimately visits upon us the worst forms of degradation.

— David Harvey

Perpetual revolutions in technology can mean the devaluation of fixed capital on an extensive scale.

— David Harvey

But planned obsolescence is possible only if the rate of technological change is contained.

— David Harvey

Money could not be converted into capital if wage labour did not exist.

— David Harvey

workers then have a strong stake in the preservation of the very system that exploits them because the destruction of that system entails the destruction of their savings.

— David Harvey

If all money capital invests in appropriation and none in actual production, than capitalism is not long for this world.

— David Harvey

When money functions as measure of value it must truly represent the values it helps to circulate.

— David Harvey

Rampant inflation is just as hard to live with as the devaluation of commodities.

— David Harvey

The onset of a crisis is usually triggered by a spectacular failure which shakes confidence in fictitious forms of capital.

— David Harvey

If, for example, a conspiratorially minded elite is so powerful, has at its fingertips such multiple and delicate instruments with which to fine-tune accumulation, then how can the periodic headlong slides into crisis be explained?

— David Harvey

The capacity to transform itself from the inside makes capitalism a somewhat peculiar beast - chameleon-like, it perpetually changes it colour; snake-like, it periodically sheds its skin.

— David Harvey

The accumulation of capital involves the the expansion of value over time.

— David Harvey

Because the earth is not a product of labour it cannot have a value.

— David Harvey

All rent is based on the monopoly power of private owners of certain portions of the globe.

— David Harvey

Speculation in land may be necessary to capitalism, but speculative orgies periodically become a quagmire of destruction for capital itself.

— David Harvey

Monetary relations have penetrated into every nook and cranny of the world and into almost every aspect of social, even private life.

— David Harvey

The geographical movement of money and commodities as capital is not the same as the movements of products and of precious metals. Capital is, after all, money used in a certain way, and is by no means identical with all money uses.

— David Harvey

The only solution to the contradictions of capitalism entails the abolition of wage labour.

— David Harvey

The accumulation of capital and misery go hand in hand, concentrated in space.

— David Harvey

Capitalists behave like capitalists wherever they are. They pursue the expansion of value through exploitation without regard to the social consequences.

— David Harvey

There is, in short, no 'spatial fix' that can contain the contradictions of capitalism in the long run.

— David Harvey

Not only must weapons be bought and paid for out of surpluses of capital and labour, but they must also be put to use. For this is the only means that capitalism has at its disposal to achieve the level of devaluation now required. The idea is dreadful in its implications. What better reason could there be to declare that it is time for capitalism to be gone, to give way to some saner mode of production?

— David Harvey

A work of this sort admits no conclusion.

— David Harvey

The ultimate Form of devaluation is military confrontation and global war.

— David Harvey