******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
A few days after I discovered that 1978 copy of Dissent, I did a big walk around the Hudson Yards development on Manhattan’s westside with my friend and former teacher, the Marxist theorist David Harvey. It was a soaking wet spring afternoon, chilly and grey, and we both tried our utmost not to let the weather, nor the awfulness of this project, a spillover from Michael Bloomberg’s mayoral years, dampen our spirits.
The twelve acre site, behind Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, had once been gritty rail tracks and storage yards for Long Island Rail Road trains. Now, a $20 billion mega-plan promises shingled blue-glass skyscrapers, with office space, deluxe condos and high-end retailing galore, to say nothing of an eco arts centre and bizarre pedestrian walkway. Talk about all that was solid melting into air! Completion isn’t destined until 2024; but much is already in place. Hooking up to the High Line and a revamped No. 7 subway station, Hudson Yards is set to symbolize the pride and joy of a post 9/11 Big Apple, a celebration of Michael Bloomberg’s bleeding edge: New York, Inc.
The bourgeoisie has torn away sentimental veils, Marx said in the Manifesto, and put in its stead “open, shameless, direct, bare exploitation.” In all this—in open, shameless, direct, bare exploitation—we are, at Hudson Yards, on familiar ground. The New York Times’ architectural critic, Michael Kimmelman, called the development “a super-sized suburban-style office park, with a shopping mall and a quasi-gated condo community targeted at the 0.1%.” It’s the largest private real estate venture in US history, and in the brazen world-leader of private real estate deals that’s saying a lot.
full: https://andymerrifield.org/2019/05/01/marx-at-his-limits/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
