The Geographical Transfer of Value: Notes on the Spatiality of Capitalism

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Abstract
Marxist research on the geographical unevenness of capitalist development remains highly heterogeneous. Although virtually all Marxists agree on certain general concepts, such as capital accumulation, agglomeration in space, spatial division of labor, capital mobility, the role of the state, etc, there is strong disagreement on how these processes operate and on the nature of their impact on various places. In this paper, a critical evaluation of two dominant lines of thought, the autonomous or semiautonomous development thesis and the transfer-of-surplus-development thesis, is presented, A third approach, based on the notion of the geographical transfer of value, an attempt to use the labor theory of value in geographical terms, is also introduced. This view is further elaborated by focusing first on the articulation of production and circulation, second on state and local state intervention in this articulation, and third on the contradiction between equalization and differentiation. Throughout the paper, a special emphasis is given to the determinant role of class struggle and to the absence of any ‘iron laws of motion of capitalism’.

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