by
David Harvey
172
The Madness of Economic Reason
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terms
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notes
180
One of the reasons that a troubled global capitalism survived as well as it did after 2007-8 was because of China's sustained growth of productive consumption. The Communist Party leadership in Beijing almost certainly did not set out to save global capitalism, but this is in effect what they did.
basically the govt pushed for a massive construction boom during the downturn, not necessarily because the country actually needed these new buildings/cities, but because it was the best way of holding economic depression at bay
One of the reasons that a troubled global capitalism survived as well as it did after 2007-8 was because of China's sustained growth of productive consumption. The Communist Party leadership in Beijing almost certainly did not set out to save global capitalism, but this is in effect what they did.
basically the govt pushed for a massive construction boom during the downturn, not necessarily because the country actually needed these new buildings/cities, but because it was the best way of holding economic depression at bay
205
When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession--as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life--will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semicriminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. All kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they my be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting accumulation of capital, we shall then be free, at last, to discard.
from Essays in Persuasion
When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession--as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life--will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semicriminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. All kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they my be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting accumulation of capital, we shall then be free, at last, to discard.
from Essays in Persuasion