David Harvey is a British geographer and professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. A Marxist, Harvey has argued that conservatives are generally populists and that capitalism creates racial and social inequality. Harvey got his degree in geography and focused his career on urban studies and geographical development while putting significant effort into spreading Marxism by writing multiple books, delivering lectures, and writing companion books to Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. ^{1 2 3 4}

History

David Harvey was born in Britain in 1935. He received his bachelor’s degree from Cambridge University in 1957 and his Ph.D. from Cambridge in 1962. Harvey’s first significant piece of work came in 1969, while working at the University of Bristol, when he wrote Explanation in Geography. Soon after finishing the book, Harvey took a job at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to study Baltimore’s urbanization. While studying class and race segregation in Baltimore, Harvey discovered that the works of Karl Marx worked as a guide for his work. As a result, he gradually became a proponent of Marxism and in 1973 he wrote Social Justice and the City. This book has been credited with generating a Marxist turn in urban studies. Harvey continues to push his ideologies and even worked his ideas into other ideologies such as feminism and environmentalism. ⁵

Books

Anti-Capitalist Chronicles

Harvey published Anti-Capitalist Chronicles in 2020. The book describes global capitalism as a crisis and the need to move away from capitalism to create a better world. The book talks about neoliberalism, capitalism, globalization, the environment, and social movements. The book also discusses the power of China in the world economy, carbon emissions, and the benefits of socialist COVID-19 policies. ^{6 7}

Social Justice and the City

Social Justice and the City is one of Harvey’s most influential texts and is the first piece in which he used Marxism substantially as a basis for his ideas. It was published in 1973 and describes geography in three pieces: liberal formulations, socialist formulations, and synthesis. Under liberal formulations, Harvey proposed that it is impossible to separate spatial development from social development, meaning city planners needed to consider social relationships in a city before planning physical structures like businesses and housing developments. Under socialist formulations, Harvey used Marxism to claim that to have equitable urban spaces, it is necessary to redistribute wealth from rich areas and invest it into poorer areas. In the synthesis section, Harvey suggested that social structures in urban areas create the physical structure of cities, and as a result those physical structures dictate future development of social structures. ⁸

Partners

Harvey has a podcast series called David Harvey’s Anti-Capitalist Chronicles in which he discusses his books, his ideas, and Marxism. The show was produced by Democracy@Work for 5 seasons and is now being produced with a nonprofit called Politics in Motion. Democracy@Work is an entertainment and educational media outlet which focuses on challenging capitalism through left-wing and radical-left ideas and media. The group calls capitalism an unjust economic system and believes it does not work with democracy. It claims that the path to equality is through “equal collaboration and shared leadership among workers inside enterprises.” ⁹

Politics in Motion, the current production company of Harvey’s podcast, is also an anti-capitalist media organization. It asserts that radical change needs to happen in society and that change needs to happen through social and environmental justice. ^{10 11 12}

1. “David Harvey Talks to Verso Books.” Verso, May 12, 2023. https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/david-harvey-on-capital-theory-and-becoming-a-marxist.
2. “David Harvey.” The People’s Forum, February 27, 2019. https://peoplesforum.org/instructor/david-harvey/.
3. Harvey, David. “Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey.” Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey, June 28, 2023. https://davidharvey.org/.
4. “Harvey, David.” Verso. Accessed February 17, 2024. https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/authors/harvey-david.
5. “David Harvey.” obo. Accessed February 17, 2024. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780190922481/obo-9780190922481-0029.xml#:~:text=David%20Harvey%20(b.,Professor%20of%20Geography%20at%20Oxford.
6. Harvey, David. “The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles.” Pluto Press, July 21, 2021. https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745342092/the-anti-capitalist-chronicles/#.
7. Harvey, David. “The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles.” Pluto Press, July 21, 2021. https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745342092/the-anti-capitalist-chronicles/.
8. ^[1] “Social Justice and the City: Urban Design Library.” Urban Design Group, January 26, 2022. https://www.udg.org.uk/publications/udlibrary/social-justice-and-city.
9. “Mission & Vision.” Democracy at Work (d@w). Accessed February 17, 2024. https://www.democracyatwork.info/mission_vision.
10. “About Democracy at Work.” Democracy at Work (d@w). Accessed February 17, 2024. https://www.democracyatwork.info/about.
11. “Anti-Capitalist Media.” Politics In Motion. Accessed February 17, 2024. https://www.politicsinmotion.org/.
12. Harvey, David. “Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey.” Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey, June 28, 2023. https://davidharvey.org/.