The urban process under capitalism: a framework for analysis

Harvey, 1978

 

Within the framework of capitalism, I hang my interpretation of the urban process on the twin themes of accumulation and class struggle. 

 

The class character of capitalist society means the domination of labour by capital. 

Profit arises out of domination of labour by capital. accumualation for accumulation's sake, production for production's sake. 

 

The collective effects of individual entrepreneurial activity can seriously endanger the social basis for future accumulation. 

 

고정자본=기계+생산을 위한 건조환경

We can usefully distinguish between fixed capital enclosed within the production process and fixed capital which function as a physical framework for production. The latter I will call the built environment for circulation. 

 

소비기금=소비내구재+소비를 위한 건조환경

We should note that some items in the built environment function jointly for both production and consumptioin-transport network, for example-. Fixed capital in the built environment is immobile in space in the sense that the value incorporated in it cannot be moved without being destroyed. Investment in the built environment therefore entail the creation of a whold physical landscape for purposes of production, circulation, exchange and consumption. 

 

1. Overproduction of comodities-a glut on the market.

2. Falling rates of profit(in pricing term, to be distinguished from the failing rate of profit in value terms which is a theoretical construct).

3. Surplus capital which can be manifest either as idle productive capacity or as money capital lacking opportunities for profitable employment.

4. Surplus labour and/or rising rate of exploitation of labour power. One or a combination of these manifestations may be present at the same time. 

 

A general condition for the flow of capital into the secondary circuit is, therefore, the existence of a functioning capital market, perhaps a state willing to finance and guarantee long-term, large-scale projects with respect to the creation of the built environment. 

 

The whole apparatus of cost-benefit analysis and of programming and budgeting, of analysis of social benefits, as well as notionsregarding investment in human capital, express this commitment and testify to the complexity of the problem. 

 

And at the back of all of this is the difficulty of determining an appropriate basis for decision-making in the absence of clear and unequivocal profit signals. Yet the cost of bad investment decision (investment which do not contribute directly or indirectly to accumulation of capital) must emerge somewhere. 

 

Crisis

As regards fixed capital and the consumption fund, the crisis takes the form of a crisis in valuation of assets. Chronic overproduction results in the devaluation of fixed capital and consumption fund item. crises in social expenditure, in consumption-fund formation(housing) and in technology and science.  In each cases the crisis occurs because the potentiality for productive investment within each of these spheres is exhausted. 

 

The problem is, then, to discover how capital flows into the construction of this built environment and to establish the contradictions inherent in this process. 

 

We also know that the built environment is long-lived, difficult to alter, spatially immobile and often absorbent of large lumpy investment. 

 

... the state does not take a leading role in promoting vast public works programmes ahead of the demand for them. Individual capitalists, when left to their devices, tend to under-invest in the built environment relative to their own individual and collective needs at the same time as they ten to overaccumulate. 

 

The  eighteenth century in Britain was characterized, for example, by a capital surplus much of which went into built environment took place primarily for financial rather than use-value reasons-investors were looking for a steady and secure rate of return on their capital. Investment in property, in turnpikes, canals and rents as well as in state obligations were about the only option open to rentier.