David Harvey Quotes

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Capital creates space-time.

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?

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

Skills that are monopolizable are anathema to capital.