How capital operates and where the world and China are going: a conversation between David Harvey and Paik Nak-chung

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe conversation first takes up the theme of David Harvey’s public lecture in Seoul, “Realization Crises and the Transformation of Everyday Life.” Harvey stresses that the relative neglect of Volume 2 of Marx’s Capital has prevented scholars and activists from paying due attention to the crucial importance of value realization for the reproduction of capital. The discussion then moves on to the city as both a site of production and of liberation struggles, a topic so far largely neglected in the Marxist tradition. Regarding the neoliberal phase of capitalism, Harvey calls it a “new imperialism” characterized by “accumulation by dispossession” as its guiding principle. Paik agrees to that distinguishing feature as compared with the immediately preceding phase where creation and appropriation of surplus value were more prominent, but suggests that “accumulation by dispossession” may have been an essential attribute of capitalism from the sixteenth century on. After ranging over a variety of topics, the conversation looks at the latest developments in the Chinese economy, how they may illustrate Harvey’s notion of capital’s “spatial fix,” and what other potentialities may yet be found in China’s diverse and complex reality.