Flexible accumulation pt. 2 (temporal and spatial fixes)

Harvey sees an inadequacy of reaction to the Fordist-flexible accumulation transition from theorists. Halal supports innovation (Fordism and Keynesianism were “unfortunate interludes”); Lash and Urry see inevitable disintegration as leading to a “powerful collective working-class politics”; and Swyngedouw emphasizes “changes in the mode of production and of industrial organization,” located within Marxism while “accepting the regulation school's language.” (175-176) Harvey supports Swyngedouw and wants a return to Marx, who highlighted the inherent contradications of capitalism.

The contradictions are: 1. Capitalism is growth-oriented and growth-dependent (lack of growth is crisis). 2. Growth depends on labor salary being less than the value of labor output. 3. Capitalism is inherently dynamic and such change (growth in its ideal form) is seen as necessary. These three combined create a “crisis-prone” system that “overaccumulates.”

Overaccumulation is dealt with via “temporal and spatial displacement.” Temporal: focusing on future uses instead of current use, you can speed up turnover time to absorb excess capacity. Spatial: absorbing excess capital and labor in geographical expansion. But both these tactics are problematic, short-term solutions.

Just as Harvey sees conservative-value countereffects to postmodernism, he sees in new technologies and organizations the “revival of domestic, familial, and paternalistic labour systems.” (187) We didn’t say much about Harvey’s own value system: he seems to cast himself in the role of an anti-postmodernist who sees little value in fragmented identities (he would like a “return to origins” in a sense) but he lambastes the conservative nature of new-technology and organizational practices that rely on tradition and established structures to implement change. He has a very selective nostalgia for individual identity formation that is not tied to now-traditional modes of capitalism.