Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult (Spectre)

I have recently read David Harvey and also heard him at the London School of Economic lectures (online of course!.)

But the question remains: what do these so-called radical thinkers do besides think? Think and speak to university audiences. Then think some more.

Ted Rall recently had a column on Occupy as one of the persons who was there at the founding. His observations which can be found at the site for the biweekly printed Progressive Populist asks the same question.

With their thinking and speaking they light the spark and espect that, we the people light the fire and keep it burning. There's never going to be any change if we don't make it happen. Take for example "Das Kapital" Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote it in 1867 and in 1917 the Bolshevik revolution and Lenin created in Russia a Marxist government and economy. You see what thinkers do. Sometimes change doesn't happen as quick as we want, but thanks to these thinkers the seed of change is planted.

Yes for one such as myself who is not fluent in Marx, for me the important point is that IIRC Marx wrote as a reaction to the American Civil War against slavery from England. As to the cover art on the book, here is a pic of a humor book that says more about a familiar topic than most of the naysayers could imagine:

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Worrying-Gus-True-Story/dp/0679449507

I have two copies of this small book myself. I got it just for the cover shot. You can still get this as a treat for kids but it's written by some of the old National Lampoon gang.

the David Harvey speech at the LSE is worth listening to as well as his interview on Democracy Now and his recent book "Rebel Cities."

LSE is here:

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2012/05/20120510t1830vOT.aspx

But cities are not rebelling in any noticeable way. What Harvey's book gave me was a phrase I took to the local newspaper and my visits to city council meetings regarding the use of public space. That phrase was "the commodification of public space."

Here in a small size city the gentrified populace can organize themselves about removing a couple of trees for roads but have no interest in anything not vivible from their living room windows. These are the well-spoken liberal types who take no interst in the larger issue of what selling (in figurative terms) a public park space at the center of town to Miller beer has to do with them.

Same for Occupy. They avoided making their stand here last winter where they could be seen at all and selected a park away from the downtown. I pointed this out but they didn't get it or didn't want to get it. I should add I stood with them many days in the cold in front of a bank while the action was going on. Today, no actions and the website has been dormant for a long time.

And I'm in Wisconsin, site of the uprising but far from Madison. That wound up being a dead end because the teachers and their friends amounted to the haves against the have mores-- the larger issues of boycott, divestment and so on in solidarity with the poor never even came up in conversation.