Jacobin Radio

Behind the News: How Capital Works w/ David Harvey

26 snips
Feb 9, 2026
David Harvey, a Marxist geographer and longtime scholar of political economy, and Adam Faderman, an investigative reporter on Arctic and Greenland issues. They discuss the role of finance and the state in capitalism, metropolitan regions as political terrain, neoliberal uses of AI, the end of Arctic exceptionalism, Trump’s Greenland fixation, and strategic and resource realities in the Arctic.
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INSIGHT

Finance Is Integral To Capital

  • Finance is integral to capitalist accumulation because borrowing and leverage enable fixed-capital investments.
  • Harvey argues political economy is incomplete without a theory of finance embedded in the totality.
INSIGHT

State And Finance Rescue Capital

  • The 2007–08 crisis showed the state–finance nexus rescues capital from capitalists.
  • Harvey emphasizes institutions like the Treasury and central banks act as backstops to maintain accumulation.
INSIGHT

Postwar Sinkholes Absorbed Surplus

  • Harvey identifies military spending and wasteful urbanization as sinkholes that absorbed surplus capital after 1945.
  • Those sinkholes helped stabilize U.S. capital accumulation by devaluing excess capital.
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