Anti-Value in Marx, Professor David Harvey, SOAS University of London

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https://www.soas.ac.uk/development/ This seminar titled "Anti-Value in Marx" was given by Professor David Harvey as part of the Development Studies Seminar Series at SOAS University of London on 17 November 2016. You can find out more about this event and download the main slide at https://goo.gl/bw5ueb At the end of the very first section of Capital, after offering an initial definition of the labor theory of value, Marx observes that "nothing can be of value without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value." For the rest of Volume 1 of Capital Marx assumes everything exchanges at its value. What happens to the theory when we drop that assumption? David Harvey is one of the most influential geographers in the world, one of the most cited intellectuals in the humanities, and a leading intellectual in the field of radical and Marxist geography. He is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) and the Director of Research, Center for Place, Culture and Politics. He has authored over 25 influential books including The Ways of the World (2016), Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (2014), A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), The New Imperialism (2003), The Limits to Capital (1982 and 2006) and Social Justice and the City (1973). His research interests span geography and social theory; geographical knowledges; urban political economy and urbanization in the advanced capitalist countries; architecture and urban planning; Marxism and social theory; cultural geography and cultural change; environmental philosophies; environment and social change; ecological movements; social justice; geographies of difference; utopianism. He taught at universities such as the University of Bristol, University of Oxford and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. One of the most prominent scholars of Marxism in the twenty-first century, he has been teaching Karl Marx's Capital for over 40 years, and has a free online course called ‘Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey’ which inspired his 2010 book A Companion to Marx’s Capital.