Search results

Capital represents our dissatisfaction with the world we live in, what we have and what we don't have, and is therefore hope and desire embodied. "Pathology of the Capitalist Spirit" is about capital and about the economic system that bears its name. In this humanist look at capitalism, Levine explores the meaning of capital as a social reality connected to fundamental human aspirations. The link between capital and the pursuit of a hoped-for state is especially important in light of the stubborn insistence on the part of its critics that capitalism exists to serve the material interests of those whose vocation is to own capital. This misunderstanding ignores what is essential about capital, which is its link not to interests but to hope, especially the hope that by accumulating capital the individual can achieve an attachment to the good. It is this hope that blocks tolerance of any notion that there is something unfair in the capitalist's acquisition of wealth and that fairness can be achieved through its redistribution to others. It is also this hope that animates the capitalist system as a whole. And in that sense, this hope is the spirit of capitalism. To develop this theme, Levine calls on the ideas and writings of major theorists involved with understanding modernity and capitalism: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Joseph Schumpeter

This paper is a presentation of a paper given at the 1988 Social Science History Association Conference in Washington DC in which some of the limitations of parish register demography were outlined. This is followed by a postscript describing some points that might be deployed against the assertion in the 1988 paper that the future of parish register demography was 'desiccated'.

"Hopeful" is part of David Levine's larger project about unsolicited submissions. As presented in 2009 at Galerie Feinkost in Berlin and Cabinet in new York, it comprises the first phase of a multidisciplinary and multi-year project of gathering, analyzing, and archiving unsolicited submissions in every field of cultural endeavor. After ten years of collecting discarded unsolicited submissions, Levine intends to take the amassed material, compost it into a sculptural entity, and erect it as a public monument to cultural aspiration, preferably in new York or Los Angeles. All images appear courtesy of the artist and Galerie Feinkost, Berlin.