Astral Codex Ten

David Harvey

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David Harvey

Article

David Harvey is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between May 04, 2021 and June 28, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as “Not if you read about it in David Harvey’s A Brief History Of Neoliberalism”; “impresses David Harvey”; “both he and David Harvey make some of the same points about how the Washington Consensus in favor of free market reforms harmed developing countries”. It most often appears alongside Britain, China, IMF.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: May 04, 2021
  • Last seen: June 28, 2021

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: A Brief History Of Neoliberalism
May 04, 2021 · Original source
Sound straightforward? Not if you read about it in David Harvey's A Brief History Of Neoliberalism. This treatment is almost the opposite of the way ABHoN describes events. Telling the story this way makes me feel like Jacques Derrida deconstructing some text to undermine the author and prove that they were arguing against themselves all along.
Inline links: A Brief History Of Neoliberalism
There were some other supposed examples of neoliberal practice contradicting liberal ideology - although I can’t find easily quotable bits, I think he’s thinking of the Iraq War and various bailouts (though not the 2008 bailouts, since this book was written in the early 2000s). I agree that the government has not been a perfect ideological neoliberal at all times, but this impresses me less than it seemingly impresses David Harvey. Again, I think this critique is strong enough to apply to any ideology - what government has ever perfectly followed the diktats of socialism, or conservatism, or theocracy? The government is a blob of power that gets captured by different groups at different times and directed willy-nilly to one purpose or another; just because it does not perfectly follow a specific philosophy without deviation for fifty years doesn’t make that philosophy inherently fraudulent.
One more great thing about David Harvey: he makes specific predictions. And since it’s been 16 years since he wrote ABHoN, we can check how he did. In order to avoid debate over which things I count as predictions, I’ll only be looking over the middle of his last chapter, Freedom’s Prospect, which deals with the future. You can follow along here and make sure I’m representing him honestly.
Inline links: here
Book Review: How Asia Works
June 28, 2021 · Original source
One thing I appreciated about this book is that Studwell expects his audience to be classical liberals and takes care not to offend their (okay, my) sensibilities. He says again and again that he expects free-market-ish policies to be optimal for developed countries. He says again and again that certain aspects of free market policy, for example competition and entrepreneurship, are vital for the developing world. He treats his free market readers as reasonable people who are trying to do good economics but need to understand how the requirements of the developing world differ, and not as evil monsters who need to be shamed. So although both he and David Harvey make some of the same points about how the Washington Consensus in favor of free market reforms harmed developing countries, I felt like Studwell effectively explained where it went wrong and how to do better, whereas Harvey just sort of screamed that anyone who supported it was part of a conspiracy. I felt abused and confused after reading Harvey, I felt enlightened (and actually changed my mind) after reading Studwell.
Inline links: David Harvey