The Space Isn’t Fixed with Flows
Both Harvey and Castells discuss the relationship between space and socioeconomics. Harvey approaches the question through the lens of Marx’s spatial fix, examining the potential of using imperialism as a means to resolve systemic failures in capitalism. Castells considers the question by adding time to the mix of space and production, and analyzes how technology has fundamentally altered historic processes and relationships. Ultimately, Castells’ analysis provides a current picture of Marx’s predictions as they are unfolding: that is, Castells’ space of flows is the manifestation and process of Marx’s spatial fix deconstruction.
Harvey’s (2001) discussion of the “spatial fix” is derived from an evolving tenet first put forward by Hegel in Philosophy of Right. Hegel asserts that in the confluence of a degraded moral state of “universal egoism” (Harvey, 2001, 285) and the consuming hunger of the bourgeoisie, a foreseeable economic and civil imbalance occurs. Direct production by a labor class inherently results in overproduction within a capitalist system, because of the relationships among wages, non-producers, supply and demand. Overproduction, in turn, results in lowered valuations of labor that creates poverty, since some producers can never value their labor sufficiently in this context to generate a living wage that would allow them to also consume (p. 286-7). Hegel proposes that one solution to this surplus problem is imperialism – a spatial fix, in so many words – although according to Harvey, Hegel makes this proposal and then immediately fails to expand the idea (p. 288).
By Harvey’s (2001) continuing description, von Thünen appears to take up Hegel’s notion, and echoes many of Hegel’s assumptions about the moral failing of the invisible hand of capitalism. Von Thünen expounds on Hegel’s colonialism tease and uses the frontier as both a literal and metaphorical mechanism to calculate a formula that represents the perfect fulcrum between production interests of investors and producers (p. 291). Von Thünen’s valuation method relies upon the existence of free land into which a nation could expand, and free movement of capital and labor: otherwise, such expansion could lead simply to one nation yoking another for exploitation (p. 292-3). However, he does understand that this concept of a frontier wage is temporally finite, disappearing with increased density; therefore, he applies this frontier wage construct to non-frontier conditions, which may necessitate a “societal reconstruction” (p. 293). Thus, what Hegel asserts as a literal spatial fix becomes a constructive spatial fix in Von Thünen’s re-thinking.
Harvey (2001) brings the contributions of Hegel and Von Thünen into the light of Marx, who both integrates some of their arguments and rejects others. In sum, Marx generally rejects the notion of a spatial fix. He counters Von Thünen’s idealistic framing of capital’s discipline and neutral purpose with the factual frontier, where capital violates market “law” to control both supply and demand by flooding the labor market with new categories of workers, restricting access to free land, or other manipulations. Thus, the utopian dream of power equity between capital and labor is not resolved at the frontier, but rather exposed for the intentional system that it is (p. 298). Further to Hegel’s casual assertion of a spatial fix, Marx counters that new markets only reproduce the capitalist system in which the fatal flaw exists in the first place: therefore, colonialism can provide a short reprieve from the inevitable overproduction crisis, but does nothing to resolve the inherent flaw and further perpetuates it (p. 299-300). Harvey follows Marx as he chases one possible escape from the capitalist maze after another, only to find dead ends. Marx sees that population growth can spur changes in wage labor and consumption, and this “growth” can be achieved through new territory, but it still results in eventual labor surplus or capital devaluation, so the problem remains, even if ameliorated for a time (p. 304-5). Marx explores the idea of new growth markets which are operationally not capitalist, thus potentially able to absorb surplus import: but, again, he concludes that this unilateral trade is limited in duration (p. 301-2). With each potential resolution extrapolated from a spatial fix, Marx concludes that all are only temporary reprieves from what is an underlying structural fault in capitalism, and therefore, at both best and worst, all attempts at a spatial fix merely seed the system at a larger scale (p. 307).
Castells also considers the questions and effects of capitalism, but unlike Marx’s cast of capitalism as primarily a social relationship between production and capital, Castells frames capitalism’s primary relationship in terms of space and time (Parker, 2010, p. 111). Castells agrees that social organization and relationship between labor and management are involved, but “contends that ‘spatial proximity is a necessary material condition’” (p. 111) for capitalism’s predicate, the innovation process, within historical technological constraints. Because “space is the material support of time-sharing social practices” (Castells, 2002, p. 344) and “space brings together those practices that are simultaneous in time” (p. 344), historically the confluence of time and space was required to create the literal and proverbial container for “the capacity to spatially concentrate the proper ingredients for inducing synergy” (p. 327). This relationship of space, time, proximity and production comprises the space of places.
However, Castells (2002) goes on to observe that as technology emerges and changes the relationship between space and time – with spatial dispersal and discontinuity no longer functioning as a constraint on time – the relationship, too, between space and production changes. Many spatial decouplings are noted, such as the necessity for (professional) workers to live near a particular work site (p. 330), the functional linkages between raw material deposits and manufacturing facilities (p. 328), and even local engagement with spatial cohorts that are deemed “functionally unnecessary” (p. 337). Networks over vast spans are enabled, fostering the creation of a nodal spatial relationship rather than a contiguous one. This creates a certain kind of production efficiency, in that it allows for sourcing of any component in its extant or optimal location, rather than trying to optimize any one place for co-location of multiple components. This change reflects a space of flows.
Castells’ space of flows is both an interesting fulfillment and failure of Marx’s analysis. To the extent that Marx acknowledged various spatial fix strategies could perpetuate capitalism through ameliorating its internal conflict, it has occurred through Castells’ space of flows. Trade with China has been made possible through technology, both in the ability to move trade information quickly through electronic networks and goods through improved transportation options: this has fulfilled Marx’s notion that using a non-capitalist society to “absorb the excess capital” (Harvey, 2001, p. 301) could buffer falling profits for a time. However, just as Marx also predicts, trade relations with communist countries have a finite duration without the trade direction turning. The same forces which create Castells’ space of flows have also made it cost effective to use Marx’s other spatial fix strategies of exporting capital for production abroad and expansion of the proletariat, including “conversion of state powers into a form of state capitalism” (p. 305). International “development” is the primary mechanism through which these forms of “fix” are achieved, and “development” policies both require states to mobilize new labor into a commodified market as well as provide a new consumer base for global services (especially telecommunications) and manufactured goods. Also, by focusing on exporting capital to foreign production sites and implementing stark immigration policies, the confluence of state and corporate interests have suppressed what Marx anticipates would be the proletariat benefit of free labor mobility. Immigration policies and exported capital for production have further strengthened capitalists’ control of both demand and supply of labor, thus exacerbating falling wage values and controlling working-class movements to such an extent that, in the U.S., labor unions have been virtually destroyed. Additionally, major state-sponsored conflict has been waged almost continuously for over 100 years, fulfilling the war mechanism of capitalism that “Marx nowhere anticipates, but Lenin emphasizes” (p. 310).
So, Marx asserts that the spatial fix cannot work and, more, he regards space of places as an entrenched power base for the proletariat, where “urbanization concentrates productive forces as well as labor in space, transforming scattered populations and decentralized systems…into massive concentrations of political and economic power” (Harvey, 2001, p. 374). This power concentration applies as much to the working class as to any other, as it makes them aware of common proletariat interests which are then expressed through formal power mobilizations, such as trade unions (p. 374). For this reason, Harvey states that “production of spatial organization is not neutral with respect to class struggle” (p. 380), and thus “workers’ movements have been better at commanding power in places and territories rather than in controlling spatialities” (p. 381). What Marx hopes from globalization of place-based labor power is a “proletarian internationalism” founded in critical consciousness of “working-class suffering” (p. 309). Thus, Marx may believe that with nowhere to go for a spatial fix and the inevitable globalization of labor resulting in increasingly organized, empowered labor, the future of social equity is certain. Instead of this becoming true, Castells’ global cities are spaces of flows that enable bourgeoisie spatial manipulation, resulting in labor organization “being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves” (Harvey, 2001, p. 381). Therefore, rather than Marx’s sweeping vision of a unified universalist working class, the “upper professional strata” (Castells, 2002, p. 332) have become the unified global class, leveraging their original higher mobility in the space of flows to create an amplified mobility for cosmopolitan elites whose external global networks allow them to disconnect from the concerns of place, thus increasing local social stratification (p. 336-7). This has transformed place-based centers of proletariat power into fetishized places of status and entertainment (p.321) for the “dominant, managerial elites” (p. 347). This has also had the effect of largely removing the ability for local working-class mobilization, because “function and power…are organized in the space of flows” (p. 359), constituting a proverbial terrain overlayed onto the local landscape which then changes social codes, constructively barring access to the power structure (p. 348).
What can truly be said about the relationship between Harvey’s presentation of Marx’s spatial fix critical thought and Castells’ analysis of current globalization dynamics is that Marx brilliantly anticipates nearly all that has come to fruition. Even without directly addressing the economic tactic of war emphasized by Lenin or anticipating the specific levels and kinds of technology discussed at length by Castells, Marx understands the geopolitical nature of capitalism. More, while seeing a possibility for labor organization, Marx understands with precision the manifestations of flows Castells is documenting. Indeed, it would be difficult to say with certainty if the following observations are from Marx or Castells: “The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every county” (Harvey, 2001, P. 374); “in one word, it creates a world after its own image” (p. 375). Therefore, in spite of Castells’ flippant remark that “’capitalism is alive and well in spite of its social contradictions’” (Parker, 2005, p. 110), he would do well to recall Marx’s clear deconstruction of why the spaces of flows – which is naught but a spatial fix in action – is bound to eventually fail.
References
Castells, M. (2002). The Castells reader on cities and social theory. I. Susser (Ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Harvey, D. (2001). Spaces of capital: Toward a critical geography. New York: Routledge.
Parker, S. (2005). Urban theory and the urban experience: Encountering the city. New York: Routledge.