The Contradictions of Capital and Mass Transit: Chicago, USA

Abstract

The development of the mass transit system in Chicago, Illinois, USA, over the past 150 years illustrates the contradictory forces operating at the intersections of the technical features of mass transit, capital accumulation and the capitalist state. Capitalism degrades and distorts the urban mass transit system in a manner that is favorable for the accumulation of capital via a privileging of exchange-value over and against the use-value of satisfying people's need for an effective and efficient means of urban transportation. This use-value/exchange-value contradiction of mass transit has developed in interaction with the Taylorist, Keynesian and neoliberal regimes of accumulation. Although urban mass passenger transit has taken different forms in relation to the prevailing regime of accumulation, it is the capitalist context in which the Chicago Transit Authority operates which generates the inefficiencies and inequalities at work in Chicago's mass transit system.