> From: "Mark Jones" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> All talk of articulated modes etc, simply misses the point;
> and this is why we insist on (a) uneven and combiend development as the
> characteristic dynamic, the key word being *development* and the key
> descriptor being *imperialist*.
I think that's exactly right. I finished the piece posted yesterday
with this reference to Neil Smith, whose PhD under David Harvey is
still, I think, the main theoretical work on unevenness.
...while uneven development dates to the time of
"primitive accumulation and the opposition of
capital against pre-capitalist societies," modern-
day global capitalism retains a "dichotomous
form. But today it is less an issue of the
`articulation of different modes of production,'
more an issue of development at one pole and
development of underdevelopment at the other"
(Smith, 1990, Uneven Development, Oxford, Basil
Blackwell).
More in the same spirit.
"Uneven Development"
in P.O'Hara (Ed) (1999), The Encyclopaedia of
Political Economy, London, Routledge.
A useful summary of the process of uneven development, as a
necessary aspect of capitalism, comes from volume one of
Marx's Capital (ch 27, paragraph 15). Here he states that a
major contradiction of capitalism is the simultaneous
emergence of concentrations of wealth and capital (for
capitalists), on the one hand, and poverty and oppression
(for workers), on the other. This "general law of capitalist
accumulation", as Marx termed it, highlights capital-labor
conflict, and is one way to ground a theory of uneven
development. But thinking about uneven and combined
development dates further back, at least to Marx's
Grundrisse (1857-58), where unevenness represents the
condition for a transition from one declining mode of
production to another rising, more progressive mode. In
general terms, then, uneven development can relate to
differential growth of sectors, geographical processes,
classes and regions at the global, regional, national, sub-
national and local level.
The differing conceptual emphases are paralleled by
debate surrounding the origins and socioeconomic mechanisms
of unevenness. Neil Smith (1990:ch 3) rooted the
equalization and differentiation of capital -- the
fundamental motions of uneven development -- in the
widespread emergence of the division of labor. Ernest Mandel
(1968:210) searched even further back, to "private
production" among different producers within the same
community; insisting that "differences of aptitude between
individuals, the differences of fertility between animals or
soils, innumerable accidents of human life or the cycle of
nature," were responsible for uneven development in
production.
Political Implications.
Ultimately, it is less the definitional roots of the
concept, and more its political implications and
contemporary intellectual applications, for which uneven
development is known. Leon Trotsky's theory of combined and
uneven development -- established in his book Results and
Prospects (1905) -- served as an analytical foundation for
"permanent revolution". Given the backward state of Russian
society in the early twentieth century, due to structured
unevenness, both bourgeois (plus nationalist or anti-
colonial) and proletarian revolutions could and must be
telescoped into a seamless process, led by the working
class. (See Howard and King 1989.)
In more measured, less immediately political terms, the
debate was revived when Marxist social science regenerated
during the 1970s. Here the phenomenon of uneven and combined
development in specific (peripheral or semi-peripheral)
settings was explained as a process of "articulations of
modes of production". In these debates, the capitalist mode
of production depends upon earlier modes of production for
an additional "superexploitative" subsidy by virtue of
reducing the costs of labor power reproduction (Wolpe 1980),
even if this did not represent a revolutionary or even
transitional moment. Smith (1990:156.141) insists, however,
that "it is the logic of uneven development which structures
the context for this articulation", rather than the reverse.
That logic entails not only the differential (or
"disarticulated") production and consumption of durable
goods along class lines (de Janvry 1981). It also embraces
the disproportionalities (Hilferding 1910) that emerge
between departments of production _ especially between
capital goods and consumer goods, and between circuits and
fractions of capital (see CIRCUIT OF SOCIAL CAPITAL). For
example, the rise of financial markets during periods of
capitalist overproduction crisis amplify unevenness (Bond
1997:ch 1). Or as Aglietta (1976:359) remarks: "Uneven
development creates artificial differences in the apparent
financial results of firms, which are realized only on
credit. These differences favour speculative gains on the
financial market." Tendencies towards sectoral unevenness
are manifest periodically in financial crisis.
In spatial terms, unevenness has been associated with
theories of unequal exchange and forms of core-periphery
dominance. This is in part because of their grounding in
progressive Third World nationalism. Such debates have had
the effect of over-emphasizing interstate relations and
under-emphasizing the flows of capital and social struggles
that have more decisively shaped local "underdevelopment".
But as David Harvey (1996:295) has argued, historical-
geographical materialism entails a consideration of the
process of unevenness in more general ways. The fulcrum of
geographical unevenness is the differentiated return on
investment that creation and/or destruction of entire built
environments -- and the social structures that accompany
them -- offer to different kinds of investors with different
time horizons. Meanwhile, different places compete endlessly
with one another to attract investment. In the process they
tend to amplifying unevenness, allowing capital to play one
local or regional or national class configuration off
against others.
Conclusion. Comprehending the uneven development of
sector, space and scale is ambitious enough. But there must
be, as well, future opportunities to explore systematic
unevenness in spheres as diverse as the production and
destruction of the environment, social reproduction, and
human domination along lines of class, gender and
race/ethnicity. Can the theory of uneven development move
from political economy through politics and culture, all the
while stressing the social damage associated with uneven
capitalist development? Uneven development analysis can
inform activists intent on reversing unevenness, not because
-- as Smith (1990:159) points out -- "our goal is some
rigidly conceived `even development'. This would make little
sense. Rather, the goal is to create socially determined
patterns of differentiation and equalisation which are
driven not by the logic of capital but genuine social
choice."
See also: convergence and social capability; business
cycles; development and underdevelopment; urban and regional
political economy; hegemony in the world economy;
comparative advantage and unequal exchange; distribution of
income; environmental and ecological political economy;
development political conomy.
Selected References
Aglietta, Michel. (1974) A Theory of Capitalist Regulation.
London: New Left Books, 1979.
Bond, Patrick. (1998) Uneven Zimbabwe: A Study of Finance,
Development and Underdevelopment. Trenton: Africa World
Press and Harare: University of Zimbabwe Press.
de Janvry, Alain. (1982) The Agrarian Question and Reformism
in Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Harvey, David. (1996) Justice, Nature and the Geography of
Difference. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hilferding, Rudolf. (1910) Finance Capital. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981.
Howard, Michael; and John King. (1989) A History of Marxian
Economics. Volume 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mandel, Ernest. (1962) Marxist Economic Theory. Volume 1.
London: Merlin Press, 1968.
Smith, Neil. (1990) Uneven Development. Second Edition.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Wolpe, Harold. (1980) (Editor) The Articulations of Modes of
Production. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
