Renowned geographer and political economist argues that austerity is a political decision and not an economic necessity. Instead, Greece should default.
David Harvey is the world’s most famous geographer and a leading political economist on the subject of financial crisis. He is the author of, most recently, The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis of Capitalism, as well as classic textbooks in critical political economy like The Limits to Capital and A Brief History of Neoliberalism.
This weekend, Harvey appeared on a short interview with The Real News on the Greek debt crisis. In it, he argues that austerity is a political decision — not an economic necessity — made with an overt class bias in favor of the extremely wealthy. Instead of following further disastrous austerity measures, Harvey argues Greece should default.
Check out an animated lecture on Harvey’s neo-Marxian theory of financial crisis here.
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ok finances are the problem, but contrary to what he thinks manufacturing is the problem too, and finances expansion has actually enabled this incredible development of infrastructure of consumerism, where most get poor if you cannot have a car, pay restaurant, take the plane etc. None of the crisis interpretations of Harvey mention that the crisis could come from that. In addition to inequal distribution, we simply have too much total capacity to consume resources and exploit our siblings
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