Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

By: David Harvey

Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart

To modern Western society, capitalism is the air we breathe, and most people rarely think to question it, for good or for ill. But knowing what makes capitalism work - and what makes it fail - is crucial to understanding its long-term health and the vast implications for the global economy that go along with it.

In Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, the eminent scholar David Harvey, author of A Brief History of Neoliberalism, examines the internal contradictions within the flow of capital that have precipitated recent crises. He contends that while the contradictions have made capitalism flexible and resilient, they also contain the seeds of systemic catastrophe. Many of the contradictions are manageable, but some are fatal: the stress on endless compound growth, the necessity to exploit nature to its limits, and tendency toward universal alienation. Capitalism has always managed to extend the outer limits through "spatial fixes", expanding the geography of the system to cover nations and people formerly outside of its range. Whether it can continue to expand is an open question, but Harvey thinks it unlikely in the medium term future: the limits cannot extend much further, and the recent financial crisis is a harbinger of this.

©2014 David Harvey (P)2020 Tantor

A welcome challenge

The language used is precise and conveys layers of meaning. There are phenomena referenced throughout which have very technical rather than colloquial meanings, but are always exactly what is needed to understand the broader context of big picture capitalism. This book challenges you to adopt exacting concepts to build a larger understanding, start clarifying the ideas for yourself early if a term goes over your head, you are likely to hear them a lot throughout.

Wonderful!

Excellent analysis of the Contradictions within our modern capitalist world. I especially enjoyed the short epilogue on Praxis.

Highly recommend for anyone who is already well versed in Marxist economics and theory.

Amazing and easy to understand

Great book for basic understandings of why capitalism needs to change. I love it! Genial para todos los que quieran lo básico para empezar una conversación sobre todo lo que está mal con el capitalismo

Loved to his lectures, this is garbage

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover but after he went on a 20min rant about mortgages without acknowledging everyone has the opportunity to just save for their home I checked out. I’ve listened to his lectures on Marx which are excellent btw, but this is god awful, just your run of the mill “capitalism is bad” book tinged with a complete disregard for undergrad level economics and human psychology