Marxism, The State and The Urban Question

Since the late 1960s there has been a rapid growth of urban and regional studies with important contributions from economists, geographers, political scientists, sociologists and others ( Anderson, J., 1975 ; Eversley, 1975 ). A prominent place has been taken by new Marxist analyses which have principally been developed in North America and Western Europe (although there are strong links between some of this work and theories of dependent development in the Third World). 2 In Britain two studies have been particularly influential, Social Justice in the City published in 1973 (Harvey and La Question Urbaine , published in French in 1972 and recently available in a revised English edition ( The Urban Question )( Castells, 1977 ). The former is the work of the geographer, David Harvey, and charts his progression from a liberal formulation of urban analysis to a ‘socialist’ perspective. Harvey has since developed his work in a more clearly Marxist direction (1978; see also Harloe, 1977a ). However, his central concern has not been the details of urban politics and state urban and regional policies, for he has preferred to concentrate on key economic processes of capital accumulation, laying particular stress on the role of finance capital.

Capital (architecture) · Economic Justice · Marxist philosophy · Politics · State (computer science) · Urban politics · Work (physics) · Political Economy and Marxism

• Regionalism

  Open Access•Doreen Massey•Capital & Class•1978

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