Thanks for posting this. I'm watching the first lecture now.
Online Lectures on Capital by David Harvey
I'm watching his lectures, they're pretty good.
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I have no idea who this guy is but I'll definitely have a look.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Harvey_(geographer) - the (geographer) bit is part of the URL, but for some reason it is not recognized as such..
His written a few interesting books, like the Condition of Postmodernity and Spaces of Hope. What's interesting about him is his geographical reading of Marx, an approach that I hadn't been exposed to before reading Spaces of Hope. In terms of practical stuff he comes off as a radical social democrat though.
his major work is The Limits of Capital (1982) - which I think those lectures are quite closely based on as well.
the lectures are very good - he makes capital volume 1 sound exciting!
you're right about his own politics, though - I mean he's definitely a communist in the sense of not foreseeing the possibility of reforming capitalism in the long run, and sticking pretty closely to a Marxist critique of capitalist society - but I think he does see a kind of run-of-the-mill social democracy (some kind of rejuvenated mainstream left) as an important step on the way to constructing a viable movement for communism.
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I mean he's definitely a communist in the sense of not foreseeing the possibility of reforming capitalism in the long run, and sticking pretty closely to a Marxist critique of capitalist society - but I think he does see a kind of run-of-the-mill social democracy (some kind of rejuvenated mainstream left) as an important step on the way to constructing a viable movement for communism.
Yeah, agree with that. He's into utopian thinking and his description of a future non-capitalist society in Spaces of Hope was pretty funny, but it was definitively communist. But in the same book he did go on about how the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a pretty radical document (food, shelter and edu for all and all that jazz), and as such could be a rallying point for the left.
Not sure if anyone's posted this up on libcom, but I came across this site recently - 'a close reading of Marx's Capital, Volume I', a series of lectures Harvey is giving this summer. I'm sure that libertarian communists can find things to disagree with in his interpretations but it's been very helpful in my own reading of Capital.
http://davidharvey.org/