What are the most fundamental causes of the current economic crisis?  Radical anthropologist David Harvey provides a lucid account of how this crisis and others are the result of  capitalism’s inevitable compulsion to expand itself into a state of collapse, and argues that the only sane thing to do is to join an anti-capitalist movement.   In this piece, Joe Clement introduces and presents parts of a lecture of Harvey's that explains in Marxist terms how we got into the mess we're in now.  

Check out the animated video that accompanies the lecture on Harvey's website, where you can also find a whole course devoted to Marx's Capital.