On the necessity of uneven development

On the necessity of uneven development by Neil Smith

The onset of world economic crisis between 1969 and 1973, and the multitudinous political and economic responses to the crisis, have resulted in a dramatic and widespread transformation of geographical patterns at all spatial scales. The production of geographical space has always been integral to the economic expansion and development of the capitalist economy, but what is unique today is the sharpness and rapidity with which economic and political forces have expressed themselves in geographical change. In the nineteenth century, the geographical expansion of nation states, either by accumulating contiguous territory (e.g. Australia, Canada and the United States) or by colonial aggrandizement (the European pattern), was one central means to economic expression and capital accumulation. Between the mid-1 880s and 19 14, however, this absolute (external) expansion was foreclosed, and from the 1920s onward but especially after the great depression and the second world war, economic expansion came to depend more upon relative (internal) geographical expansion: i.e. intense capital investment in targeted ‘areas’ spearheaded the expansion of the world economy while other ‘areas’ were syste- matically deprived of capital.

This fundamental transformation in the ‘space economy of capitalism’ (Harvey, 1982) has led to an intensification of patterns of geographical differentiation. (This should not be taken to deny that a parallel process of equalization has been talung place; it certainly has but that is not our concern at the moment.) Thus in the last two decades or so, after a short gestation period, a whole array of geographical questions and issues have risen to prominence, suffused throughout larger economic, political and social questions. The list is considerable: the new international division of labour and the globalization of production; the temporary emergence of the ‘newly industrializing countries’ and the continued immiseration of the most underdeveloped areas (especially in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia); a widespread resurgence of nationalism and demands for local autonomy; the discovery of ‘the regional problem’ and the emergence of regional coalitions to compete for investment and oppose disinvestment (plant closures, cutbacks, etc.); renewed efforts at repatriating foreign workers and demands for tighter immigra- tion controls; the sudden discovery of the ‘inner-city problem’ along with hopes that either gentrification or government policy will provide a solution; the suburb-

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anization of service and administrative functions at the same time as a handful of ‘world cities’ have emerged with an unprecedented concentration of financial capital in their central business districts. Geographical space appears to be more firmly at the centre of the economic and political agenda than at any point in recent history.

If the changing regime of capitalism has been recognized in myriad competing theories, the spatial dimensions of the process and the centrality of geographical space have been acknowledged more slowly. Baran and Sweezy’s (1966) influential work on monopoly capitalism provided an important springboard for some of Harvey’s (1973) work on urbanization under capitalism (see also Gordon’s (1978) stage theory of urban growth); Aghetta’s (1979) implicitly spatial transformation from an extensive to an intensive regime of accumulation derives largely from Gramsci’s (1971) preliminary observations on Fordism; Lefebvre (1974; 1976) and Poulantzas (1978) have inspired a generation of theorists with analyses which in part attempt to incorporate space into discussions of the state, the ‘social factory’ and class struggle (see Soja, 1981); Giddens (1979; 1981), in his rewriting of sociological theory, has also stumbled rather unsuccessfully toward a comprehension of spatiality (Soja, 1983); the list is virtually endless. Many complex themes are involved in this rediscovery of space, and there are few common denominators in the work produced, but it is nevertheless evident that there is a broad front of interest in the role of geographical space. If we view this project in its broader context, then it is clear that an emerging interest in geographical space has in part fuelled a parallel interest in processes of uneven development. For very obvious reasons, these two issues are closely intertwined.

If uneven capitalist development has taken on an increasingly spatial character, it remains important to understand that the geographical dimension is only one ingredient in uneven development. Other admittedly interrelated events have con- tributed to the resurgence of interests in uneven development. First, there is the general resurgence of interest in marxist theory with influential authors such as Mandel (1962; 1975) and Althusser (1977) rehabilitating the general ‘law of uneven development’ from the classical tradition. Second, a spate of national revolutions in the third world since the 1960s, have posed over again the political and strategic questions which prompted the general ‘law of uneven development’ in the first three decades of the century (Lbwy, 1981). Third, the uneven fates of different sectors of the economy during the crisis of the 1970s and 1980s has prompted a search for the origins of unevenness.

The problematic of this paper is the intersection between questions of geographical space and those of uneven development. This has obviously been the locus of considerable debate in the last 10 years but since much of that debate was not committed to paper, theoretical progress has itself been very uneven. The debate began with a critical assault on traditional geographical methodology which tended to treat geographical space as an autonomous realm of human experience and reality; spatial structures, systems and relations - in general, spatial problems - are conceived as ontologically separate from social structures and problems. The major

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thrust of the early critique was an attack on this ‘spatial fetishism’ (Anderson, 1973). This led some researchers to dismiss geographical space as essentially irrelevant, a non-category. Geographical unevenness was thereby conceived as a contingent byproduct of deeper social forces, as epiphenomenal, and therefore of only passing significance. The major focus of research, the argument went, should be on the social, economic and political forces, over which geographical unevenness was merely a faithful veneer. Against this ‘reverse fetishism’, other researchers, especially marxists with a geographical training, attempted not to cast geographical space aside, but to integrate social and spatial questions in a single theoretical framework. This involved a number of complex debates ranging from specific arguments about urban, regional and international patterns of development (e.g. Mandel, 1976; Castells, 1976; Markusen, 1979) to arguments over the organization of research from a marxist perspective, under constraint from the established academic division of labour (Eliot Hurst, 1973; Smith, 1981; Peet, 1981).

These various engagements have helped to develop more sophisticated treatments of geographical space, and this progress can clearly be traced simply by tracing the work of theorists such as Harvey, Soja, Lipietz and Peet. I would argue that uneven development theory has taken an increasingly central role in these efforts at an integration of space and society. The debate has moved beyond the methodological opposition of spatial fetishism versus ‘reverse fetishism’ toward a more concrete investigation of the functional role of uneven development in the capitalist mode of production. It is perhaps for this reason that John Browett settles on ‘uneven development’ as an appropriate vehicle for his dismissal of geographical space.

Browett’s recent (1984) article in this journal represents a retrograde step which, if taken seriously, will drag the debate back to its starting point of 10 years ago. In his anachronistic and confused polemic arguing the irrelevance of geographical space, Browett does not comprehend many of the debates that have ensued and the progress that has been made. The object of this paper, then, will be to critique Browett’s arguments and in so doing to produce a more contemporary if certainly individual view of the role of geographical space in uneven development. Because this is such a large topic and so much has already been written, this contribution will be highly schematic in places and will involve a number of theoretical short cuts which, while necessary to present the main argument, may themselves be con- tentious.

Before proceeding to a presentation and critique of Browett’s argument Section 11), I want to differentiate the present treatment of uneven development from that implied by the ‘law of uneven development’ in the classical tradition (Section I). This is particularly important because beyond as well as within the debate on the importance of geographical space, there is considerable confusion concerning how the present debate on uneven development relates to the classical ‘law’. In Section 111, I shall conclude with a consideration of Marx’s expectations for capitalism in the light of contemporary patterns of uneven development.


I Is there a ‘law of uneven development’?

When the discussion of uneven development resurfaced in the 1960s and 1970s it was in response to contemporary changes and features of the world economy. Mandel was one of the earliest to comment, claiming that the ‘law of uneven development, which some have wished to restrict to the history of capitalism alone, or even merely to the imperialist phase of capitalism, is . . . a universal law of human history’ (Mandel, 1962, 91). In a similar but more cosmic vein, Althusser claimed that the ‘law of uneven development . . . does not concern imperialism alone, but absolutely ‘everything in this world’ . . . (U)neven development , . . is not external to contradiction, but constitutes its most intimate essence’. It ‘exists in the essence of contradiction itself (Althusser, 1977,200-13).

If it was real events which led to the refocusing of attention on uneven development, it was an old debate whch set the pattern of response, especially the claim that uneven development was a universal law of existence. Thus even today the ‘law of uneven development’ is widely invoked in ad hoc fashion as if quite unproblem- atic; differences are said to exist ‘because of uneven development’. This rather vacuous treatment of a profound set of forces and processes in capitalist development can be traced back to the political fight between Trotsky and Stalin in the 1920s and early 1930s. Although rarely mentioned today in the context of uneven development theory, the salient outlines of this debate still pervade the present discussions as something of a dull but enduring hangover. Thus on the issue of universality, Mandel (a leader of the trotskyist Fourth International) and Althusser (a reconstructed Stalinist and erstwhile intellectual leader of the European com- munist parties) find themselves in basic agreement despite their heritage on opposite sides of the debate. In 1924, when Stalin first proposed the policy of socialism in one country, he attempted to justify it as an instance of the ‘law of uneven development’. Trotsky seized on this remark claiming the opposite, that if anything, the law of uneven development demonstrated the impossibility of socialism in one country. To ’uneven’ he continually added ‘combined’ development: ‘The law of uneven development is supplemented throughout the whole course of history by the law of combined development’ (Trotsky, 1973, 300). In the extended polemics surrounding the isolation and the defeat of the left opposition, the ‘law of uneven (and combined) development’ was thrown back and forward; its heritage was variously traced to Lenin, Engels and Marx, and in support of their case, both sides elevated it to a universal philosophical law. Almost entirely inaccurate, these claims and counterclaims nevertheless codified an orthodox interpretation of uneven development. The immediate inspiration for Althusser’s comment above, for example, was Mao, who tried to trace the concept’s heritage to Lenin’s philosophical work (Mao, 1971), but who also sided unstintingly with Stalin against Trotsky.

I want to argue strongly, not that the Trotsky/Stalin debate is irrelevant - it remains today of considerable political importance - but that the depiction of uneven development as universal, a depiction inherited from this polemic, should

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be abandoned. A ‘law’ which purports to explain all instances of unevenness in human experience, across time and space, is so all-embracing as to explain nothing. If unevenness is the rule of the day then there is supposedly nothing peculiar or problematic about uneven geographical development under capitalism; it is merely an unexceptional instance of a universal law. After his early waltz with Hegelian and non-Hegelian philosophies, Marx worked consistently against such philosophical universals, arguing that philosophy separate from science was mere speculation and metaphysics, and claiming that science ought to begin from real and existing historical conditions. The subtlety of this position and its pivotal role in Marx’s materialist method were lost on Stalin, promoter if not author of the distinction between dialectical materialism (philosophy of marxism) and historical materialism (science of marxism), and also on Trotsky, at least in the polemics over uneven development.

If we are to understand the contemporary uneven development of capitalism, it is important that we dismiss the so4alled ‘law of uneven development’, with its universal overtones. What we are seeking, rather, is a rheory of uneven development as it operates under the specific historical conditions of capitalism. Having said this, there is a second aspect of- the classical marxist treatment whch is important. With the resurgence of interest in marxism in the 1960s and 1970s, uneven development was generally interpreted in its political sense. It referred primarily to uneven advances of the proletariat toward socialist revolution. Its more economic connotations were not denied but were generally not mentioned. This was certainly true of the Trotsky/Stalin polemics but the political interpretation can probably be traced back to the aftermath of the 1905 revolution and Trotsky’s Results and prospects. Previous to this it was the economic interpretation which dominated - the idea of an uneven development of the forces of production. It was indeed Lenin who was most explicit about the process, but not in his philosophical writings which were mediocre at best. Rather, it was in his concrete economic analyses, especially m e development of capitalism in Russia, that he pioneered the investigation of uneven development. What Trotsky did was to trans- late this idea into the political context. Ironically, while the polemically drained concept of uneven development persists today, most recent discussion has involved a return, however unwittingly, to Lenin’s more economic and explicitly geographical conception.

This is appropriate. If the uneven occurrence of political revolts is of enduring and ultimate importance, it is vital to understand the economic processes which set the stage for political unevenness. This should not at all be interpreted as an econ- omistic assumption that political revolt is a mirror image of economic ups and downs, but rather that patterns of economic development and underdevelopment, expansion and crisis, do contribute in complex ways to the conditions which pro- voke or blunt revolt.

In what follows, we return to a specific focus on the geographical dimensions of this process. The function of this section has been to clarify the difference between the so-called law of uneven development in the marxist tradition and the contemp-


orary project of searching for theories of uneven development. In the process we have provoked the question of the relationship between the geographical and political dimensions of uneven development, as for example in regional coalitions against plant closures or struggles over protectionism. Given the limited object of this paper, it will not be possible to pursue these questions here.

II Spaceblind reductionism: Browett’s reverse fetishism

In a recent article explicitly designed to sharpen the discussion of uneven development, John Browett argues against the claim that uneven geographical development is a necessary and inevitable feature of capitalism. His major thesis is this (1984, 156,170):

inequalities in the spatial organization of society . . . are not necessary to, nor systemtic consequences of, the logic of the capitalist mode of production. . . . Uneven regional development, as a condition or a process, is not a requirement of the logic of accumulation in the capitalist mode of production. The uneven progress of capitalist social relations space may be produced, modified or taken advantage of in the process of capital restructuring, but it is not necessary to it.

Browett proposes to dismiss geographical space as a significant theoretical category, and while careful to deny that it is simply a ‘container’ for social activity, he concludes that space is merely a ‘contingent factor’ which ‘may need to be taken into account in the analysis of social processes’ (p. 170).

If Browett’s essential conclusions are distilled and presented here in rather crisp fashion, this hardly does justice to the confusion of his analysis. Nonetheless, it is necessary to try and sort out where he goes astray in order to restore the debate to a more contemporary footing. He begins with two themes which are more entangled than interrelated. The first is spatial fetishism, or spatial separatism which, he claims, has a long academic tradition and which dominates contemporary treatments of uneven development. The second is the ‘dependency paradigm’ which, he claims, dominates the research on processes of development and underdevelopment. He correctly observes that dependency theory owes its origins to a critique of bourgeois development theories which held that growth and moderniza- tion would diffuse from centres of highly developed production. Equally, he is correct about the implicit spatial fetishism of the dependency paradigm which began from a given static geographical division of the world into ‘core’ and ‘periphery’. He might also have added that the fetishism of this approach was bared for all to see when Wallerstein (1979) felt compelled to overcome the binary mech- anicism of ‘core and periphery’ by inserting between them a ‘semi-periphery’.

About all of this there is no dispute. Browett also draws the appopzate con- conclusion that within the constraints of capitalism, ‘regional policy’ is merely ti-nd-modifying. Because such policies treat underdevelopment, industrial decline, unemployment, poverty and so forth as spatial problems rather than social, political and economic ones, they never advance beyond superficial prescriptions. Or in

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Browett’s vivid image, ‘by focusing upon symptoms rather than causes’ these regional policies ‘suffer from an unfavourable comparison with rearranging deck chairs on the titanic (sic)’ (p. 169). If these conclusions are hardly new, either in theoretical or practical terms (see, for example, Community Development Project, 1977), they do bear repeating. But the real problem arises when he attempts to break fresh ground. It is here that Browett is forced to dabble in tortured reductionism in order to get where he wants to be.

There are three major strands to this reductionism. The first is Browett’s ‘space- blindness’ which results from his reduction of every discussion of space to an example of spatial fetishism. If Browett is to be believed, all and every analysis of geographical space is an indulgence in fetishism; fetishism or silence, there is barely a middle ground. The second gross reductionism in Browett is his subsumption of all uneven development theory under the ‘dependency paradigm’ and ultimately under the ‘diffusionist perspective’. Third, to accomplish this argument, Browett treats all uneven geographical development in terms of regional inequalities. Unevenness is reduced to a one-dimensional regionalism with little or no recognition of the different processes operating at different scales. T h s at least is consistent; if space is irrelevant, spatial scale could hardly be less so. Having thus col- lapsed the complexity of geographical questions into a resounding non-category, the conclusion follows that uneven development can only be contingent, not necessary. The ‘necessities’ of capitalism could hardly express themselves through a ‘non- category’. We get here a glimpse of the idealist vision responsible for Browett’s space blindness.

Before embarking on a more detailed critique of each of these reductionist arguments, it will help if the counterconclusions are laid out in advance. First, there is a very fertile middle ground between the extremes of spatial fetishism and reverse fetishism, one which we refuse to plough at our own peril. Second, uneven geo- graphxal development must be comprehended outside of a dependency and diffusionist paradigm, and indeed this is precisely what has developed in the last 10 years. Third, if there are some general processes involved in uneven development, there are also specific differences in the way the process operates at different spatial scales. Reopening the theoretical terrain in this fashion is a vital first step to arguing the question of necessity which Browett raises.

About his spatial reductionism, Browett is quite blunt. Echoing the debate in urban sociology of 10 years ago, concerning whether ‘the urban’ is an identifiable object for analysis (Castells, 1976iSaunders, 1979) Browett asserts that neither ‘the urban’ nor ‘the regional’ are significant as theoretical categories. Generalizing, he denies any active role to geographical space: ‘It must be remembered that there is simply no general problematic of ‘the spatial’ (p. 169). The most Browett can say about the active role of space is that ‘the existing created spatial structure may and can exert either negative or positive influences upon the subsequent patterns and paths of capital accumulation’; as a ‘contingent’ process, ‘uneven regional development is not, therefore, something which can be known in advance on the basis of theory’ (pp. 165-66, 170). Apart from the obvious misconstrual of Sayer’s


(1979) distinction between necessary and contingent forces, the most striking feature of this argument is its similarity to the spatial fetishism he would critique. If in the fetishist argument, space is a separate and important realm, for Browett it is separate and unimportant - a ‘reverse fetishism’.

This is essentially where the debate stood in the early 1970s when researchers questioned whether ‘space’ should be written off or whether an integration of space and society (in the language of the day) should be sought. Beginning to comprehend the cul-de-sac of reverse fetishism - an enforced silence - a number of researchers set off to find a means of integration. This work has progressed from the positing of fairly crude links (e.g. Harvey, 1973) to more sophisticated and more concrete analyses from which new categories do indeed ‘arise as the outcome of (the) analysis’ (Browett, p. 163; see for example, Harvey, 1975; 1978; 1981; 1982; Soja, 1981, 1985; Smith, 1984; Harris, 1983; Massey, 1981). In general this work has been more successful than the disoriented attempts of social theorists such as Giddens to incorporate space into social analysis (Soja, 1983). It has also been accompanied by the powerful recognition that one cannot understand the patterning of geographical space under capitalism without a theoretical ground in how capitalist society operates and evolves (see, example, Harvey’s (1984) appeal, albeit somewhat populist in tone, for grounding geographical theory in social theory). In short, the discovery that geographical space is ‘the product of socioeconomic processes’ should lead not to the dismissal of space but to a recognition of its importance. Space is not a dead ‘factor’, but comes alive neither as a separate thing, field or container but as an integral creation of the material relations of society.

Between the abyss of fetislusm on one side and that of reverse fetishism on the other, the path is not always very wide of course, but the important thing, having risen from the errors of fetishism, is to try and negotiate t h s path rather than to continue over the other edge into reverse fetishsm. In going over the edge, Browett attempts to cushion his fall with a gratuitous attack on geographers. Thoroughly misconstruing Lebas (1981, xi) he contends that ‘one of the reasons for social scientists not pursuing their earlier aim of developing a political economy of space . . . is a distrust of geography as a discipline’ (p. 163). This is quite extraordinary; it is as if space were merely a geographers’ plot. A distrust of geography us u discipline is quite appropriate in so far as it is one pigeonhole in the bourgeois division of academic labour (see, for example, Sack, 1974; Click, 1983; Eliot Hurst, 1973, 1980; Smith, 1981), and it is a distrust which should presumably be encouraged and also applied by marxists to other ‘disciplines’. But the use of this argument to justify the dismissal of geographical space as a worthy focus for study, reveals the desperation of Browett’s overall argument. Presumably a distrust of sociology us a discipline should lead us to deny the importance of studying capitalist society in favour of, say, marxist economic theory; preposterous, of course. It was never geography as a discipline which pursued a ‘political economy of space’, but a broad grouping of marxists, some of whom had a geographical training, and although Browett seems unaware of it, the pursuit continues. It is disappointing to see him

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taking cover behind disciplinary boundaries in this way; such disciplinary protectionism might be expected in liberal circles but hardly among marxists.

The second locus of reductionism involves the simplistic conflation of uneven development theory (indeed most underdevelopment theory) with dependency theory. This is particularly unfortunate because it is a tactic generally associated with rightwing attacks on marxism (e.g. Reitsma, 1982). Today there are many approaches to underdevelopment, not all of which are consistent with a theory of uneven development (Brewer, 1980; Smith, 1982), and only a small minority of marxists now subscribe to dependency theory. The same applies to Emmanuel’s neo-Ricardian theory of unequal exchange to which Browett also tries to reduce uneven development theory. The critical rejection of these analyses is largely due to a number of critiques, not least of which is by Browett himself (1981). The argument against dependency theory, therefore, should not be confused for a critique of uneven development theory, nor can it be used against the thesis that geographcal unevenness is necessary to the development of capitalism. These questions have to be considered on their own merits and not by subterfuge. As regards dependency theory itself, the rapid industrialization of some underdeveloped countries in the 1970s and the resulting debt incumbrance and extreme f r a a t y of the world financial system could be cited to support the argument that it is the centres of capital which are dependent on certain parts of the periphery, not vice versa. Precisely this ‘dependency’ has enabled a ‘cartel of debtors’ to threaten non-repayment .

Of course,the question is much more complex than this, but we cannot embark on a critique of dependency theory here. The central point is simply to decouple Browett’s reduction of all uneven development theory to dependency theory. This should be sufficiently obvious today to need no further elaboration.

The third strand of reductionism emerges when Browett confronts directly the question of necessity. His refutation of the necessity thesis hinges on showing that uneven development at the regional scale is not necessary, thus dissolving any differences in the way uneven development might occur at different scales. His focal argument here, apart from a further spurious attempt to reduce uneven development theory to a theory of unequal exchange, is that there is nothing in the logic of capitalism requiring a regional (or any spatial) concentration of the ‘reserve army of labour’. Where this does occur it is a contingent byproduct of deeper patterns of capitalist development. In support of this argument, he cites the internationalization of capital, the spread of international migratory labour markets (hence the ability of capital to alternate the location of the labour reserves it exploits), and the breaking down of old regional boundaries in general. While referring to contemporary changes in regional structure, however, he misses one of the key character- istics of regional restructuring.

Browett’s vision of the regional division of the world closely resembles an old Roman mosaic. Each regional piece is made of very durable material, and once laid in place, it survives for a long time; the surface of each piece is continually rubbed and polished over the years by continual comings and goings, but the embedded


pattern remains virtually unchanged. The point about contemporary regional restructuring is that it is akin to digging up the regional mosaic of past years and completely recasting a new pattern with new pieces made of different material and of different sizes (generally larger). In short, it is not just a matter of breaking down regional boundaries but rather of transforming the very basis on which regions develop, their function, and the scale at which they exist. The difference between these two visions is the difference in practice between a spatial fetishism (reverse or otherwise) in which social forces gloss an underlying spatial foundation and a view of geographical space as genuinely plastic in the hands of socioeconomic processes.

The dimensions of this transformation are not difficult to illustrate. Where today is the Lancashire cotton region or the Yorkshire woollen and worsted regions, the Midland lace triangle, all staples of midcentury geography textbooks? In the US context, where are the separate shoemaking, leather and textile regions of New England, or the steel triangle of Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Youngstown. The point is not just that these old regions have disappeared; in every dimension they have been rendered obsolete by the specific patterns of capital investment and circulation. In its size, the regional scale has expanded; the steel triangle is now part of a larger single region that stretches from Chicago into New England. In its function, the regional scale has also been transformed. The regions of traditional regional geography were rendered coherent by the commodity or group of commodities they produced. This was often strongly influenced by environmental, locational and resource issues. Today, however, the coherence of separate regions is determined less by their products than by their labour costs. The old fragmented regional mosaic has given way to the large deindustrialized regions of the American northeast and the British north and west. On the other side lie the so-called sunbelt and the English southeast. Thus as Peet (1984, 45) concludes: ‘The change in employment location during the 1970s and early 1980s can therefore be explained as a move from ‘frostbelt’ to ‘sunbelt’ only as long as ‘frost’ and ‘sun’ refer to the social conditions for profit making’. These are the processes primarily responsible not just for creating new regions but a new regional scale, a new territorial division of labour, which is far more systematic than the one it is replacing.

The general point again is that Browett remains bound, if not gagged, by the fetishism he wants to escape. The experience of regional transformation and the internationalization of capital and of labour markets are all real, but without undue reductionism they hardly add up to the ‘insignificance’ of the regional. Rather, they point to the profound integration of geographical space with social and economic processes. As the international economy entered a phase of profound restructuring @erhaps ‘destructuring’ is still more accurate) since the early 1970s, it is no accident that the old regional structures have been shattered. Far from becoming irrelevant, geographcal space is on the agenda as never before; in a real sense geographical space has moved closer to the centre of the social and economic problematic.

The argument here has focused on refuting Browett’s space-blind reductionism.

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His dismissal of geographical space is achieved more by subterfuge than serious argument, and this is turned to service in denying any link between uneven geographical development and the logic of capital accumulation. I have alluded to the generally unrecognized importance of spatial scale (see Taylor, 1981), and this question must lie at the heart of attempts to refine our comprehension of uneven development. In direct opposition to Browett, and I can only assert it here (see Smith, 1984), I would argue that uneven geographical development at different (and differing) spatial scales is a necessity of the logic of capital accumulation. Unless this is recognized, we will remain with Browett in the cul-de-sac of spatial fetishism (reverse or otherwise) wherein the very real problems of geographical space are dismissed by an academic sleight of hand.

Attempts to emerge from this cul-de-sac have focused on the mutually opposing forces tending toward the geographical differentiation and equalization of conditions and levels of production (Palloix, 1977; Harvey, 1982; Smith, 1984; Soja, 1981). More generally, the most promising work has taken seriously Lefebvre’s (1974; 1976) insight concerning ‘the production of space’ and put the labour process between space and society as a means of integrating them. This is precisely how the integration is achieved in practice, after all: through the performance of social labour which produces geographical space in specific identifiable and dynamic patterns. This provides one possible basis for a materialist rather than a philosophical integration.

The next logical step would be to present a theory of uneven geographical development, providing a positive alternative to Browett and the critique of his thesis. This material is difficult to summarize in several pages, however, and space constraints forbid a longer exposition (Smith, 1984). Rather, I want to conclude first by suggesting the way in which a theory of uneven development fits into the marxist tradition, and second by demonstrating the importance of geographical space in the context of the current restructuring.

III The current restructuring - is geographical space on the agenda?

Marx anticipated what he called in a now famous phrase ‘the annihilation of space by time’ (Marx, 1973,524). More concretely, this means that he expected, albeit in rather guarded terms, that the ‘backward’ nations of the period would develop fully blown capitalist economies more rapidly than the pioneers of capitalism in Europe; just as the United States had caught up with British industrialization, so too could India (Marx, 1974). Now clearly this did not happen. Marx was led to this expectation by the belief that the incorporation of the so-called backward nations into the world capitalist system would be accomplished fust and foremost by the expansion of the world market. This certainly had been the pattern for much of Europe where the incursion of the market prepared the ground for the bourgeois revolutions and the emergence of capitalist social relations of production. And in the nineteenth century, indeed, the ‘backward’ nations had been


pulled into the capitalist systems as providers of raw materials for the world market. If this was to continue there would be a relative equalization of levels of development, according to Marx’s logic. In fact, the equalization process he perceived so sharply has been frustrated at every turn by a tendency toward differentiation. Luxemburg (1 968) expressed the logical conclusion to Marx’s argument more crudely; when the expanding capitalist mode of production ran out of pre- capitalist societies to conquer, capitalist expansion itself would end. Geographical expansion marked the limits to economic expansion, argued Luxemburg in the days immediately preceding the first world war. Taking up the same question, however, Lenin (1975) argued somethmg rather different. He accepted the link between geographical patterns of expansion and the survival of capitalism, but recognized that the essential limit to geographical expansion had already been reached, and that far from equalization, imperialism had resulted in even greater differences between developed and underdeveloped nations. He continued to talk about the ‘backward’ nations, but his imperialism is important for introducing into marxist theory the notion that underdevelopment was functional for the large capital trusts of the developed world. India was not so much backward as underdeveloped, an active rather than passive process.

Yet Lenin also expected to see a considerable equalization of levels and conditions of production. This would be achieved by the large-scale export of capital from the developed to the underdeveloped world which .he detected prior to the Great War and which he expected to increase afterward. This too did not transpire as expected. The war was followed by a brief period of expansion in Europe and North American, and then by the depression in which the capital flow to the underdeveloped world was reduced to a trickle. The major component in the overall economic and political equation which solved the crisis of the 1930s was the second world war, which devalued through physical devastation the economies of Germany, Japan and parts of the rest of Europe from Poland and Russia to France. When the postwar expansion finally began in 1950 it was spearheaded by American capital but not in the form of exports to the ‘third world’, as it came to be known in thls period. Rather, expansion was achieved in two ways: first, by an ‘intensive regime of accumulation’ (Aglietta, 1979) in which scientific management practices led to continued increase in productivity, and virtually guaranteed wage increases provided a mass consumption market; second, by the export of capital to Europe and Japan (and from the 1960s onward a reverse export of capital back to the US) which led to the unprecedented integration of these economies at the core of the world system.

The export of capital to the underdeveloped world remained at a lower level throughout this period, and in fact the differentiation between the developed and underdeveloped world increased considerably. This period also exposed the fiction of ‘backwardness’. Prevented from accumulating large amounts of capital internally because of competition from the work market, the underdeveloped countries were also denied access to the necessary quantities of capital on the world market. They experienced not a passive lack of development but the ‘development of under-

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development’ (Amin, 1974). During the boom, at least, it appeared that the problem of the absolute geographical limits to expansion had been solved by an increased ‘internal’ differentiation of geographical space. We have looked only at the international scale here, but a parallel process should be readily recognizable at the national/regional and urban scales, setting the stage for deindustrialization, gentrification, and so forth.

With the advent of world economic crisis in 1973-74, this pattern changed remarkably. There began a considerable movement of capital to the underdeveloped world where it was invested not in raw materials but in manufacturing capacity, much of which was in immediate competition with industries located in the developed industrial world. Low labour costs, declining transportation costs and massive increases in petroleum prices led a number of ‘third world’ countries toward a rapid export-oriented industrialization in the 1970s just when the developed world was largely in slump or at best stagnation. A ‘rim’ of ‘newly industrializing countries’ (NICs) strove to join the ranks of the developed world - Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Poland, Hungary, to name the clearest cases (Lipietz, 1982; Harris, 1983). However partially, these economies began to be integrated into the world economy.

Lipietz has argued that the rise of the NICs must lead to a reconsideration of theories of underdevelopment: ‘The spectacular success of Brazil, South Korea and Mexico in the 1970s drove a gaping hole through the ‘development of underdevelopment’ theory. The periphery is able to industrialize, to achieve economic growth, and to compete with the center even in the most modern branches of manufacturing industry’ (Lipietz, 1984, 76). In an otherwise incisive discussion of third world industrialization, this theoretical conclusion represents an overly narrow view of uneven development. In the first place, beyond the NICs, the majority of third world countries experienced an intensification of underdevelopment during the 1970s. It is not the periphery per se which has industrialized. Rising oil prices led to a reversion to wood fuels, massive deforestation and erosion, and the expendi- ture of disproportionate hours of labour in carrying fuel. Disasters have increased steadily, from the Bangladesh and Sahel famines of 1974-75 to the present famine unfolding over most of Africa (Franke and Chasin, 1980; New York Times, 31 July 1984). The utter bankruptcy of countries like Tanzania, Togo and Guinea Bissau is rarely reported in the western press because to their great misfortune they have only minor debts to western banks and governments.

In more theoretical terms, the partial industrialization of the third world rim only presents problems for the ‘development of underdevelopment’ thesis if a rigid line is drawn between a developed and underdeveloped world and if, moreover, nation states are perceived as the basic building blocks of the world economy. At the international scale this is reminiscent of the Roman mosaic vision of the world. But uneven development is not an extraneous process which swoops down on static geographical blocks; rather it is the continual struggle of opposed tendencies toward differentiation and equalization. The balance of these forces changes depending on the changing rhythm of accumulation making it not only possible but likely


that certain underdeveloped areas will experience development. The real question is whether this development will be permanent or merely temporary, and whether the answer to th is question will be different for different spatial scales. The point is that the industrialization of the NICs was a response to crisis at the international scale; in fact it was the rapid expansion of the NICs which carried the world economy in the mid and late-1970s according to Harris (1983, 81). To the extent that the MCs were integrated into the core of the world system in this short period, the underdevelopment of the rest of the third world had to be relatively more severe. The incorporation of new patches of the world economy in the core - their equalization within it, however partial - necessitates a more vicious differentiation from the remainder of the world economy in the absence of sustained and widespread growth.

This mix of geographically expanded equalization and sharpened differentiation represents the real solution adopted by capital to the dilemma recognized by Luxemburg. Thus, in so far as it implies no illusions about the sanctity of national boundaries and no assumptions that world capitalism is a zero-sum game rather than continually dynamic, the notion of ‘development of underdevelopment’ is quite consistent with a theory of uneven development and need convey nothing of a ‘diffusionist’ perspective. If anything it is supported by the third world experience of the 1970s, and especially the demise of third world industrialization in the early 1980s. Lipietz himself (1984) proves one of the most specific analyses of the ‘choking’ of third world industrialization with the onset of the second slump, the mushrooming of debt to the NICs and the caving in of the world market for manu- factured goods from the newly industrialized countries (see also Harris, 1983). At best there has been a partial integration of new economies at the immediate periphery of the more developed core.

This is the first sense in which we can argue that geographical space is ‘on the agenda’. The course of crisis has led to a restructuring of national economies within the world economy. At the very least there has been a significant transformation in the definition of developed and underdeveloped areas. But there is a second more trenchant case which we must consider. Below the level of the international economy, the response to crisis has involved a retreat into geography; according to Nigel Harris the slump has driven old capital ‘back into its territorial corners’ (Harris, 1983, 58). Or as Harvey puts it, devaluation is always ‘place specific’. Forced onto the defensive by economic contraction local, regional and national ‘capitals’ attempt to protect their access to markets, materials and labour. Just as important is the defence of value immobilized in productive facilities, roads, housing and infrastructure of every sort. Capital, which during the boom was philandering around the world and denying any long-term ties to one place, returns home seelung protection from the state in the shape of import controls and a strengthened military. The fluid geography of expansion, dominated by equalization, gives way to the hardened geography of crisis dominated by differentiation. However, the spatial patterns which crystallize in one crisis are not those of previous crises; there is a progressive restructuring.

Neil Smith 101

This geographical hardening of the economy adopts an obvious political mani- festation at the international scale, where today a new cold war is on the agenda, and to a lesser extent, perhaps, at the regional scale. The American northeast and the sunbelt have achieved a regional political identity only as a result of the present crisis, however much in reality they are the product of longer-term capital move- ments (see Rifkh and Barber, 1978). And North Sea oil or not, it is unlikely that Scottish nationalism would have risen so dramatically in the 1970s were it not for the disproportionate effects of economic slump on most of Scotland. Thus the ideology of crisis has a strong geographical foundation in localism at any scale. The working class is implored to tighten its belt and the villain is identified as foreigners abroad or foreigners at home: the Russians, the Japanese, Asian immigrants; blacks and affirmative action programmes; Turkish and Ghanaian gusfarbeiters in Germany and Nigeria. Geographical difference becomes not just a surrogate for personal and social difference, but an excuse for victimization and geopolitical conflict.

And yet it is important that we understand the limits to this geographical hardening and the renewed significance of space. The same developments have a political significance whxh overshadows their spatial dimension. The increased competition between states has already provoked a rapid acceleration of the arms race, skirmishes of different sizes in Grenada, the South Atlantic, Afghanistan, and a sharpening of war rhetoric. The danger here is that a world war will force the ultimate ‘equalization’ of the world economy in a heap of rubble - that the tendency of the capitalist world economy to ‘cannibalize itself’ (Harvey, 1982, 438), and to indulge in selective ‘haemorrhaging’ (Harris, 1983, 162) will become total. As Tom Nairn (1977, 345) once put it, ‘ ‘uneven development’ is a politely academic way of saying ‘war’ ’.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Ed Soja for very useful comments on a first draft.

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Dans un article recent, John Browett soutenait le point de vue qu’un developpement inkgal Ctait une eventualit6 et non pas un resultat necessaire de la logique de I’accumulation de capital. Une telle conclusion pourrait seulement ttre corroboree en rtduisant une dr ie de questions complexes h des propositions simplistes. A la fin, la tentative de Browett visant h demontrer la non pertinence de I’espace geographique en tant que problhatique theorique a le dtmerite contraire d‘ttre empreint de fktichisme, d‘ob s’en suit son rejet de la thCorie du dtveloppement inbgal. Dans Ie present papier, je critique I’analyse de Browett en demontrant que d’importantes recherches conduits au cours de ces dix dernibres anntes ont perrnis une integration plus elaboree de I’espace et de la sociCt6 et que I’argumentation de Browett renvoie h un debat qui n’a plus grand intCrtt depuis dix ans. PlutOt que d’essayer de resumer les raisonnements complexes prouvant la nCcessitC du dtveloppement geographique inbgal, le present expod tente de refuter les arguments de Browett en replacant la thtorie du developpement inegal dans le contexte de la tradition marxiste et de la restructuration contemporaine de I’espace geographique.

In einem kiirzlich erschienenen Artikel vertritt John Browett den Standpunkt, da6 die ungleiche Entwicklung mehr ein zufilliges als notwendiges Resultat der Logik der Kapitalakkumulation war. Diese Folgerung lie6 sich nur aufrechterhalten, indem eine Reihe komplexer Fragen zu simplistischen Aussagen reduziert werden. Browetts Versuch zu zeigen daf3 geographischer Raum als theoretisches Problem unbedeutend ist, leidet letztendlich an umgekehrtem Fetischismus, und seine Ablehnung der Theorie der ungleichen Entwicklung folgt hieraus. In diesem Papier kritisiere ich Browetts Analyse dahingehend, da6 in den letzen 10 Jahren umfangreiche Forschungen den Weg bereitet habeen fiir eine differenzierte Integration von Raum und Gesellschaft, und da6 Browetts Position diese Debatte um 10 Jahre zurirckwirft. Statt zu versuchen, die komplexen Argumente, die die Notwendigkeit der ungleichen geographischen Entwicklung demonstrieren, zusammenzufassen, versucht dieses Papier Browetts Standpunkt dadurch zu entkraen, indem die Theorie der ungleichen Entwicklung in den Kontext der marxistischen Denkweise und der gegenwartigen Restrukturierung geographischen Raums gestellt wird.

En un reciente articulo, John Browett afirrnaba que un desarrollo desigual era un resultado contingente m h que necesario de la 16gica de la acumulacidn del capital. Esta conclusidn s610 podria sostenerse reduciendo una sene de complejas cuestiones a proposiciones simplistas. Al final, el intento de Browett de demostrar la insignificancia del espacio geogrhphico como problemhtica te6rica padece por fetichismo inverso, y su recham de la teoria del dessarrollo desigual es una consecuencia de esto. En esta comunicacidn, yo critico el anhlisis de Browett, sugiriendo que en 10s dltimos 10 afios, una notable investigacidn ha abierto el camino a una integracidn mhs sofisticada del espacio y la sociedad, y que el argumento de Browett pone la disfusidn 10 ailos atrh. En lugar de resumir 10s complejos argumentos que demuestran la necesidad del desarrollo geografico desigual, la presente comunicaci6n trata de refutar el argumento de Browett poniendo la teoria del desarrollo desigual en el context0 de la tradici6n marxista y la reestructuraci6n contemporhnea del espacio geografico.

Documents

On the necessity of uneven development