The Urban Process Under Capitalism: a Framework for Analysis
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THE URBAN PROCESS UNDER CAPITALISM Chapter 14 culation, exchange and consumption. The sively on the processes governing invest- first point of contact, then, is to consider ment in the built environment. the manner in which this built environment The system of production which capital The Urban Process under Capitalism: is produced and the way it serves as a re- established was founded on a physical sep- source system - a complex of use values - aration between a place of work and a A Framework for Analysis for the production of value and surplus place of residence. The growth of the fac- value. We have, secondly, to consider the tory system, which created this separation, consumption aspect. Here we can usefully rested on the organization of cooperation, David Harvey distinguish between the consumption of division of labour and economies of scale in revenues by the bourgeoisie and the need the work process as well as upon the appli- to reproduce labour power. The former has cation of machinery. The system also pro- a considerable impact upon the urban pro- moted an increasing division of labour cess, but I shall exclude it from the analysis between enterprises, and collective econ- because consideration of it would lead us omies of scale through the agglomeration into a lengthy discourse on the question of of activities in large urban centres. All of bourgeois culture and its complex significa- this meant the creation of a built environ- tions without revealing very much directly ment to serve as a physical infrastructure My objective is to understand the urban highly complex. The essential marxian in- about the specifically capitalist form of the for production, including an appropriate process under capitalism. I confine myself sight, however, is that profit arises out of urban process. Bourgeois consumption is, system for the transport of commodities. to the capitalist forms of urbanization be- the domination of labour by capital and as it were, the icing on top of a cake which There are abundant opportunities for the cause I accept the idea that the `urban' has a that the capitalists as a class must, if they has as its prime ingredients capital and productive employment of capital through specific meaning under the capitalist mode are to reproduce themselves, continuously labour in dynamic relation to each other. the creation of a built environment for pro- of production which cannot be carried over expand the basis for profit. We thus arrive The reproduction of labour power is essen- duction. The same conclusion applies to without a radical transformation of mean- at a conception of a society founded on the tial and requires certain kinds of social investment in the built environment for ing (and of reality) into other social con- principle of `accumulation for accumula- expenditures and the creation of a con- consumption. The problem is, then, to dis- texts. tion's sake, production for production's sumption fund. The flows we have cover how capital flows into the construc- Within the framework of capitalism, I sake'. The theory of accumulation which sketched, in so far as they portray capital tion of this built environment and to hang my interpretation of the urban pro- Marx constructs in Capital amounts to a movements into the built environment (for establish the contradictions inherent in cess on the twin themes of accumulation careful enquiry into the dynamics of accu- both production and consumption) and the this process. and class struggle. The two themes are inte- mulation and an exploration of its contra- laying out of social expenditures for the We should first say something about the gral to each other and have to be regarded dictory character. This may sound rather reproduction of labour power, provide us, concept of the built environment and con- as different sides of the same coin - differ- `economistic' as a framework for analysis, then, with the structural links we need to sider some of its salient attributes. It is a ent windows from which to view the total- but we have to recall that accumulation is understand the urban process under capit- complex composite commodity comprising ity of capitalist activity. The class character the means whereby the capitalist class re- alism.... innumerable different elements - roads, of capitalist society means the domination produces both itself and its domination canals, docks and harbours, factories, of labour by capital. Put more concretely, a over labour. Accumulation cannot, there- Overaccumulation and long waves warehouses, sewers, public offices, schools class of capitalists is in command of the fore, be isolated from class struggle.... in investment in the built and hospitals, houses, offices, shops, etc. - work process and organizes that process environment each of which is produced under different for the purposes of producing profit. The Accumulation and the Urban conditions and according to quite different labourer, on the other hand, has command Process The acid test of any set of theoretical prop- rules. The `built environment' is, then, a only over his or her labour power which ositions comes when we seek to relate them gross simplification, a concept which re- must be sold as a commodity on the The understanding I have to offer of the to the experience of history and to the prac- quires disaggregation as soon as we probe market. The domination arises because urban process under capitalism comes tices of politics. In a short paper of this kind deeply into the processes of its production the labourer must yield the capitalist a from seeing it in relation to the theory of I cannot hope to demonstrate the relations and use. Yet we also know that these com- profit (surplus value) in return for a living accumulation. We must first establish the between the theory of accumulation and its ponents have to function together as an wage. All of this is extremely simplistic, of general points of contact between what contradictions on the one hand, and the ensemble in relation to the aggregative pro- course, and actual class relations (and rela- seem, at first sight, two rather different urban process on the other in the kind of cesses of production, exchange and con- tions between factions of classes) within an ways of looking at the world. detail which would be convincing. I shall sumption. For purposes of exposition we actual system of production (comprising Whatever else it may entail, the urban therefore confine myself to illustrating can afford to remain at this level of gener- production, services, necessary costs of cir- process implies the creation of a material some of the more important themes which ality. We also know that the built environ- culation, distribution, exchange, etc.) are physical infrastructure for production, cir- can be identified. I will focus, first, exclu- ment is long-lived, difficult to alter, DAVID HARVEY THE URBAN PROCESS UNDER CAPITALISM spatially immobile and often absorbent of this we can see the logic of Marx's state- as well as urban property markets, indi- space is still there, however, even though large lumpy investments. A proportion of ment that periodical devaluations of fixed cated very early on that returns were by the building that houses it has been de- it will be used in common by capitalists capital provide `one of the means imma- no means certain and that investments valued and is now judged a non-earning and consumers alike and even those elem- nent in capitalist production to check the had to be productive if they were to suc- asset. The history of devaluations in the ents which can be privately appropriated fall of the rate of profit and hasten accumu- ceed.' ... built environment is spectacular enough (houses, factories, shops, etc.) are used in lation of capital-value through formation When, precisely, the tendency towards and fits, in general, with the theoretical a context in which the externality effects of of new capital'. overaccumulation became the main agent argument.... private uses are pervasive and often quite Since the impulses deriving from the ten- producing surplus capital and when the Marx's extensive analysis of fixed capital strong. All of these characteristics have im- dency to overaccumulate and to under- `long waves' became explicitly tied to over- in relation to accumulation reveals a cen- plications for the investment process. invest are rhythmic rather than constant, accumulation is a moot point. The evidence tral contradiction. On the one hand, fixed The analysis of fixed capital formation we can construct a cyclical `model' of in- suggests that by the 1840s the connections capital enhances the productivity of labour and the consumption fund in the context of vestment in the built environment. The had been strongly forged in Britain at least. and thereby contributes to the accumula- accumulation suggests that investment in rhythm is dictated in part by the rhythms By then, the functioning of the capital tion of capital. But, on the other hand, it the built environment is likely to proceed of capital accumulation and in part by the market was strongly bound to the rhythms functions as a use value and requires the according to a certain logic. We presume, physical and economic lifetime of the elem- imposed by the development of industrial conversion of exchange values into a phys- for the moment, that the state does not take ents within the built environment - the capitalism.... ical asset which has certain attributes. The a leading role in promoting vast public latter means that change is bound to be And what of the devaluation which inev- exchange value locked up in this physical works programmes ahead of the demand relatively slow. The most useful thing itably results? If the devaluation is to func- use value can be recouped only by keeping for them.