The Spatiality of The Limits to Capital

Abstract

In The Limits to Capital, David Harvey (1982) sets himself three goals. First, he offers a dialectical reading of Das Kapital, together with Die Grundrisse (Marx 1972; 1983), replicating the spirit of Marx’s own analysis in opposition to the more analytical and methodologically individualist readings of rational choice Marxism prevailing at the time (Barnes and Sheppard 1992). Second, he extends Marx’s analysis to pay explicit attention to space, in order to demonstrate that the geographical nature of capitalism fundamentally shapes its evolution. Third, he seeks to explain why capitalism cannot transcend its own limits, despite its flexibility and inventiveness (hence the book’s title). With respect to the first goal, he succeeds brilliantly. Of the many accounts of Capital that I have read, Harvey comes closest to replicating the spirit and scope of Marx. It is a sad commentary on radical political economy, and on the status of economic geography among economists of all ideological persuasions, that the book never received the attention it deserves outside geography. 1 His geographical extension of Marx has been enormously influential, however, among geographers and others interested in the geographical dynamics of capitalism. A whole lexicon of concepts, now widely used and discussed, is articulated for the first time in Limits. These include uneven geographical development; the spatial fix; the built environment as a barrier to capital accumulation; the three circuits of investment capital; territorial regulation; space–time compression; local entrepreneurialism and inter-place competition; the production of place, space and scale; finance, fixed and fictitious capital; rent and urban redevelopment; and the instability of the capitalist spaceeconomy. When I sat down to re-read Limits for this symposium, I was surprised to find him developing concepts that received little attention until even a decade later. This prescience is further tribute to how much the efflorescence of radical geography owes homage to Harvey, also among those who have become vocal critics. In this brief essay, I seek to summarize how Harvey spatializes Capital; to assess this achievement in light of subsequent research