by
David Harvey
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The conquest of space and time and the mastery of the world (of both 'mother earth' and the world market) appear in many capitalist fantasies as displaced but sublime masculine expressions of sexual desire and millennial charismatic belief. Is this the fetish belief that impels onward the ever rising 'animal spirits' of the financiers? Is this why so many financiers and hedge fund wizards are men? Is this how people feel when they bet the whole of the New Zealand currency in one go? What astonishing power to ride the world and bend it to one's will!
I mean I think the major reason hedge fund managers overwhelmingly male is cus only men have the power to become successful hedge fund managers, but his other point is quite valid (aligns with my idea for a post on why people go into finance, if not just for money)
The difference between socialism and capitalism is worth noting. Socialism aims to democratically manage and regulate capitalism in ways that calm its excesses and redistribute its benefits for the common good. It is about spreading the wealth around through progressive taxation arrangements while basic needs--such as education, health care and even housing--are provided by the state out of reach of market forces. Many of the key achievements of distributive socialism in the period after 1945, in Europe and beyond, have become so socially embedded as to be immune from neoliberal assault. Even in the United States, social security and Medicare are extremely popular programmes that right-wing forces find almost impossible to dislodge. [...]
[...] an ethical, non-exploitative and socially just capitalism that redounds to the benefit of all is impossible. It contradicts the very nature of what capital is about.
[...] there is no way that an anti-capitalist social order can be constructed without seizing state power, radically transforming it and reworking the constitutional and institutional framework that currently supports private property, the market system and endless capital accumulation. [...]
[...] Racism and the oppression of women and children were foundational in the rise of capitalism. But capitalism as currently constituted can in principle survive without these forms of discrimination and oppression, though its political ability to do so will be severely curtailed, if not mortally wounded, in the face of a more unified class face. [...]
To understand the political necessity of this requires first that the enigma of capital be unravelled. Once its mask is torn off and its mysteries have been laid bare, it is easier to see what has to be done and why, and how to set about doing it. Capitalism will never fall on its own. It will have to be pushed. The accumulation of capital will never cease. It will have to be stopped. The capitalist class will never willingly surrender its power. It will have to be dispossessed.
I can write the saddest verses tonight
Write, for example, "The night is full of stars,
twinkling blue, in the distance."
The night wind spins in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest verses tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
On nights like this I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times beneath the infinite sky.
She loved me, at times I loved her too.
How not to have loved her great still eyes.
I can write the saddest verses tonight.
To think that I don't have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the verse falls onto my soul like dew onto grass.
only the first half. I love the original Spanish for the last two stanzas:
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.Oir la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.
Pores, veins, circles of smoothness
weight, silent temperature,
arrows cleaving to your fallen soul,
beings asleep in your thick mouth,
dust of sweet pulp consumed,
ash full of snuffed-out souls,
come to me, to my measureless dream,
fall into my room where night falls
and incessantly falls like broken water,
and clasp me to your life, to your death,
to your crushed matter,
to your dead neutral doves,
and let us make fire, and silence, and sound,
and let us burn, and be silent, and bells.
From Entrance Into Wood (Entrada a la madera)
Rise up and be born with me, brother.
From the deepest reaches of your
disseminated sorrow, give me your hand.
You will not return from the depths of rock.
You will not return from subterranean time.
It will not return, your drilled-out eyes.
Look at me from the depths of the earth,
plowman, weaver, silent shepherd:
tender of the guardian guanacos:
mason of the impossible scaffold:
water-bearer of Andean tears:
goldsmith of crushed fingers:
farmer trembling on the seed:
potter poured out into your clay:
bring all your old buried sorrows
to the cup of this new life.
Show me your blood and your furrow,
say to me: here I was punished
because the gem didn't shine or the earth
didn't deliver the stone or the grain on time:
point out to me the rock on which you fell
and the wood on which they crucified you,
burn the ancient flints bright for me,
the ancient lamps, the lashing whips
stuck for centuries to your wounds
and the axes brilliant with bloodstain.
I come to speak through your dead mouth.
Through the earth untie all
the silent and split lips
and from the depths speak to me all night long
as if we were anchored together,
tell me everything, chain by chain,
link by link and step by step,
sharpen the knives you kept,
place them in my chest and in my hand,
like a river of yellow lightning,
like a river of buried jaguars,
and let me weep, hours, days, years,
blind ages, stellar centuries.
Give me silence, water, hope.
Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.
Fasten your bodies to mine like magnets.
Come to my veins and my mouth.
Speak through my words and my blood.
Heights of Macchu Picchu: XII - Rise up and be born with me
When the trumpet sounded, everything
on earth was prepared
and Jehovah distributed the world
to Coca Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other entities:
The Fruit Company Inc.
reserved the juiciest for itself,
the central coast of my land,
the sweet waist of America.
It re-baptized the lands
"Banana Republics"
and on the sleeping dead,
on the restless heroes
who'd conquered greatness,
liberty and flags,
it founded a comic opera:
it alienated free wills,
gave crowns of Caesar as gifts,
unsheathed jealousy, attracted
the dictatorship of the flies,
Trujillo flies, Tachos flies,
Carias flies, Martinez flies,
Ubico flies, flies soppy
with humble blood and marmalade,
drunken flies that buzz
around common graves,
circus flies, learned flies
adept at tyranny.
The company disembarks
among the bloodthirsty flies,
brim-filling their boats that slide
with the coffee and fruit treasure
of our submerged lands like trays.
Meanwhile, along the sugared-up
abysms of the ports,
indians fall over, buried
in the morning mist:
a body rolls, a thing
without a name, a fallen number,
a bunch of dead fruit
spills into the pile of rot.
hell yeah