David Harvey, geography and Marxism

Abstract

This essay engages with David Harvey: A Critical Introduction to his Thought by Noel Castree, Greig Charnock and Brett Christophers (CCC), the most panoramic, rigorous and insightful study of the leading Marxist geographer of the last half century. After underlining the impressive qualities of this book that make it an immensely rewarding reading for both experts and newcomers in the field of critical geography, the reading of David Harvey offered here deals in detail with three searching questions broached by CCC. How are we to comprehend Harvey’s incomparable contribution to geography and the consequent common sense in his discipline of not only his work but also Marxism? How could we make sense of Harvey’s original contribution to Marxism as a pioneer of radical geographical thought and his resultant reputation among the foremost Marxist critics of our time? How should we then assess the political significance of Harvey’s increasingly influential profile as a public intellectual beyond the confines of academic discourse? These and adjacent questions are addressed with close intellectual-biographical reference to Harvey’s own oeuvre, in order to highlight the most distinctive features of Harvey as a Marxist among other Marxists. Following a brief critique of the brief critique of Harvey penned by CCC, the essay concludes with the suggestion that the true potential of Harvey’s Marxism—his project to spatialise Marxism—lies in his revealingly unfinished and on-going appropriation of two indispensable and related philosophical concepts of Marxism: dialectics and totality.