A THEORY OF CAPITALIST URBANISATION: DAVID HARVEY

ERCAN GUNDOGAN, (2009, VDM Verlag), ISBN 3-639-17686-3, ISBN 978-3-639-17686-5

A THEORY OF CAPITALIST URBANISATION: DAVID HARVEY

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First little gift for Nesrin and Özgür

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PREFACE

During my bachelor and master studies between 1990 and 1999, when I studied urban and regional

planning and urban policy planning and local governments at Middle East Technical University, I

witnessed powerful and destructive postmodern and liberal tendencies apart from already powerful

social democratic lines in academia among other intellectual places. Even so called Marxist and

socialist scholars and intellectuals seemed to be under the influence of these tendencies. As a

critical reaction to these variants of right shifts, I prepared this study and modestly tried to show that

Marxist and Leninist theory was not only valid and powerful but also creative and meaningful to

understand and change the world in a socialist direction.

However, the work was just a small contribution to the tradition of socialist criticism.

The ideas and insights this work has come from David Harvey’s own works. Nonetheless, as much

as I could, I tried to reveal something new from David Harvey and tried to improve some ideas

about Marxist social space theory in other studies. Some of my works, for example, “Conceptions

of Hegemony in Antonio Gramsci’s Southern Question and the Prison Notebooks”, (2008, New

Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry, Vol.2, No. 1, November) and my

recently published book, Marxian Theory and Socialism in Turkey, A Critique of the Socialist

Journal Aydinlik (13 March 2009, VDM Verlag), included some attempts to theorize several

formulations as regards the spatial aspects of Marxist theory. Especially in the second study, I

recognized that spatialisation of Marxist theory has not always positive results but may also imply a

backward attempts as seen in the Gramscian and Maoist lines. In these types of spatialisations, on

one side culturalism and exaggerated identity politics, on the other side, nationalism immediately

appears.

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Also let me inform me the reader that this work covers David Harvey’s studies until 1999.

However, since its subject matter is the formation of Harvey’s Marxist urban space theory, this is

not a drawback or shortcoming. It can be argued that Harvey’s urban space theory was already

completed until these years.

For this study, I was supported by Tarik Sengul, Cagatay Keskinok and Galip Yalman from METU.

However, without Nesrin and Ozgur, I could not have completed it.

I dedicate the work to Nesrin and Ozgur.

Dr. Ercan Gundogan

29 June 2009

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE…………………………………… ………………………………………3

CHAPTER

1.INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 7

2.MARXISM AND QUESTION OF SPACE ........................................................... 15

2. 1. Question of Space in Marx and Engels........................................................... 15

2. 2. Question of Space in Recent Marxist Approaches ......................................... 17

3.A GENERAL OVERVIEW OF DAVID HARVEY’S WORK ............................. 28

3.1 David Harvey’s Academic Career .................................................................... 28

3. 2. Harvey’s Main Books and Articles................................................................. 30

4.LIBERALISM TO MARXISM.............................................................................. 41

4. 1. Harvey’s Methodological Inquiry................................................................... 41

4. 1. 1. The Nature of Theory: ............................................................................. 41

4. 1. 2. The Nature of Space ................................................................................ 42

4.1.3. The Nature of Social Justice...................................................................... 43

4. 1. 4. The Nature of Urbanism.......................................................................... 44

4. 2. Inequality and the City: Liberal Formulations................................................ 45

4. 2. 1. How real income distributed?.................................................................. 45

4. 2. 2. Group interests and the political processes ............................................. 47

4. 2. 3. Social Values and the Cultural Dynamics............................................... 49

4. 3. Social and Spatial Justice................................................................................ 51

4.3.1 Some Principles for Justice: ....................................................................... 52

4.3.2. Territorial and Social Justice:.................................................................... 56

4.4 Proclamation of a Marxist Revolution in Geographic Thought ....................... 57

4 .4.1. Searching for an Epistemology: Marxist Dialectic .................................. 60

4. 4 .2 A Select case to differentiate theories: The Ghetto formation ................. 61

4 .4. 3 Harvey’s further comments:..................................................................... 66

4 .5. City Society and the Mode of Production....................................................... 69

4. 5. 1. The mode of production and the City:..................................................... 70

4 .5. 2. Market Exchange:.................................................................................... 72

4. 5. 3. Cities as a product of surplus product: .................................................... 74

4. 5. 4. Surplus and the Contemporary Urbanism: .............................................. 78

4. 5. 5. Urbanised space economy: ...................................................................... 81

4. 6. Relational Meanings of Urbanism: ................................................................. 81

4 .7. Monopoly Capitalism and Metropolitan Urbanism:....................................... 82

4. 8. Concluding Remarks on Marx’s Method ....................................................... 86

4. 9. Harvey’s Use of Marx’s method in Social Justice and the City:.................... 86

4. 10. Harvey’s self-evaluation of the internal evolution in Social Justice

and the City:........................................................................................................... 94

4. 11. Harvey’s Reflections on Lefebvre’s Urban Revolution thesis: .................... 96

5.POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SPACE ................................................................. 103

5. 1. A Marxist Critique of Liberal Urban land Use Theory:

First Marxist Formulations ................................................................................... 103

5. 2. “Cuts” in the Marxian Theory of Crisis........................................................ 114

5. 2. 1. The ‘First-cut’ Theory of Crises: Overaccumulation and Devaluation. 116

5. 2. 2. The ‘Second-Cut’ Theory of Crises: Production, Money and Finance. 119

5. 2 .3. The ‘Third-cut’ Theory of Crisis: Spatial Aspects of Crisis Formation:124

5 .2. 3 .1. Circuits of Capital .......................................................................... 124

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5 .2. 3. 2. Circulation of Capital as a whole:.................................................. 127

5. 3. The forms of crisis under capitalism: ........................................................... 127

5. 4. Overaccumulation and Long Cycles in Investment

in the Built Environment: ..................................................................................... 128

5. 5. Role of Land Rent, Landed Property within the Logic of Capital................ 132

5. 5. 1. Contradictory Role of Ground Rent and Landed Property.................... 134

5. 6. The Production of Spatial Configurations and Built Environment .............. 135

5. 6. 1. The Mobility of Commodity Capital:.................................................... 137

5. 6. 2. The mobility of variable capital and labour power: .............................. 139

5. 6. 3. The mobility of money capital ............................................................. 141

5. 7. The location of production processes: .......................................................... 142

5 .8. The territoriality of social infrastructures: .................................................... 147

5. 9. Crisis in the Space Economy of Capitalism ................................................. 149

5. 9. 1. The search for a spatial fix: ................................................................... 152

5. 10. The Urbanised Capital................................................................................ 157

5. 10. 1. Capitalist Urbanisation:....................................................................... 158

5. 10. 2. Metamorphoses of capital: .................................................................. 158

5. 10. 3. Urban Origins of Capitalism: surpluses: ............................................. 161

5. 10. 4. Industrial Form of Urbanisation: ......................................................... 162

5. 10. 5. From Fordism to Keynesian City: ....................................................... 164

5. 10. 6. Post-Keynesian Transitions:................................................................ 169

6.POLITICS OF SPACE.......................................................................................... 174

6. I. Class Structuration and Residential Structure .............................................. 174

6. 2. Class Struggle and Built Environment ......................................................... 180

6. 3. Urban Politics ............................................................................................... 191

6. 4. Structured Coherence in the Urban Regional Economy:.............................. 201

6. 5. Class-alliances and Urban Politics: .............................................................. 203

6. 6.To Cut the Gordian Knot: .............................................................................. 205

6. 7.Abstract Forces and Urban Consciousness.................................................... 207

6. 7. 1. Political Confusions: ............................................................................. 213

6. 7. 2. Consciousness of Urbanised Capital..................................................... 214

6. 7. 3 Urban social and political conflicts:....................................................... 220

6. 7. 4.Political Dilemma:.................................................................................. 222

7.CONCLUSION..................................................................................................... 223

BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................... ......................... .... .230