Abstract
Bibliographies of recent studies on the regional problem are not notable for their reference to Marx. There may be a variety of reasons for this. One undoubtedly is the extent to which many ‘regional economists’ take their theoretical terms of reference (like their professional training) from mainly neo-classical sources. Another may be the extent to which Marx’s classic works stay in the library of the great unread (much, one suspects, like some of Keynes’s own masterpieces, which are so damning in their indictment of the self-adjustment assumptions transferred from classical to neo-classical theory). Thirdly, Marxist economists themselves have been mainly concerned with aspects of Marx’s economics other than spatial or regional resource allocation in a national economy. The spatial and regional dimension is there, but mainly in terms of its international application and the theory of imperialism.
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References
Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, 3rd edn ( Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961 ) p. 657.
Ibid. pp. 368 and 322. (Cereal manufacture). Capitalist production for Marx also, of course, is intrinsically linked with the alienation of the surplus value of the worker over and above his socially necessary subsistence value. But, as he says himself (Capital, vol. I, p. 235) capital has not invented surplus value, which previously was alienated from workers (e.g. under feudal service) in a different form.
Ibid. p. 380.
Ibid. pp. 380–6.
Ibid. pp. 395, 443–5. However, Marx comments in addition that ‘the place occupied by these (entirely new) branches of production is, even in the most-developed countries, far from important’, p. 445.
Ibid. pp. 635–8 and 642.
Ibid. p. 352.
Ibid. p. 353. As examples he gives the specialisation of fine cloths in Somerset, coarse in Yorkshire, long ells at Exeter, silks at Sudbury, crapes at Norwich, linseys at Kendal, blankets at Whitney, and so on.
Ibid. p. 352. The relevance of such an internal-economy approach to planned industrial growth complexes is developed in the criticism of the Isardian industrial complex analysis in Chapter 7.
Ibid. pp. 352–3. In Grundrisse Marx gives an extensive analysis of the mechanism of improved transport communications in relation to the need to reduce time and costs in the distribution of commodities–mainly in international trade. Cf. Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Okonomie (Dietz Verlag, 1953) pp. 419–35.
Ibid. p. 430 (own italics).
Ibid. p. 678.
Ibid. pp. 638, 682.
Ireland, having during the last twenty years reduced its population by nearly one half, is at this moment undergoing the process of still further reducing the number of its inhabitants, so as exactly to suit the requirements of its landlords and of the English woollen manufacturers.’ Ibid. p. 444. Cf. also pp.687–712.
Cf. in particular the analysis of Mrs Vera Lutz in inter alia, Italy: a Study in Economic Development, criticised in Chapter 5.
Marx, Capital, vol I, pp. 673–98.
Ibid. p. 638. This amounts to a ‘cobweb’ effect of the kind to which Brown refers in the post-war British context. Cf. A. J. Brown, The Framework of Regional Economics in the United Kingdom (Cambridge University Press, 1972) p. 234.
Ibid. p. 639. The concept of wage restraint through high availability of labour during periods of exceptional expansion therefore clearly antedates both Phillips and Kindleberger. Cf. further, Chapter 4.
Ibid. p. 642. This dependence of labour under modern industrial conditions on the location of manufacturing is contrasted by Marx with the handicraft-manufacturing period in which manufactures ‘change(d) their locality from one country to another with the emigrating or immigrating worker’. Ibid. p. 368.
Ibid. p. 642.
Ibid. p. 643.
Ibid. pp. 643–4.
Ibid. pp. 663ff.
Ibid. pp. 658–9.
Ibid. p. 657.
Ibid. pp. 657–8.
Ibid. p. 659.
Ibid. p. 622.
Ibid. p. 644.
South-East Joint Planning Team, ‘Strategic Plan for a South-East Framework’, Regional Studies, vol. II (1971). It is of some interest that the team working on this project frequently referred to the lack of an overall theoretical framework capable of explaining the persistence of the inner London problem. Ibid. pp. 18, 35 and 41.
Gunnar Myrdal, Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions, (London: Duckworth, 1957) and An American Dilemma ( New York: Harper & Row, 1944 ).
Myrdal, Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions, pp. 26–27.
Ibid. pp. 17 and 26.
Ragnar Nurkse, ‘Some International Aspects of the Problem of Economic Development’, American Economic Review (May 1952).
François Perroux, ‘La Notion de Pôle de croissance’, Economie Appliquée, nos 1–2 (1955)
François Perroux, ‘Les points de développement et les Foyers de Progrés’, Cahiers de l’I.S.E.A., 94 (November 1959)
François Perroux, ‘La Firme Motrice et la Région Motrice’, Actes du colloque international de l’Institut de Science Economique de l’Université Libre de Liége (Brussels, 1961)
other essays reprinted in Perroux, L’Economie du XXe siècle, (Presses Universitaires de France, 1964).
J. Milhau, ‘Théorie de la Croissance et l’Expansion Régionale’, Economie Appliquée, (1956),p. 361.
Albert, Hirschman, ‘Investment Policies’, American Economic Review (September 1957) pp. 554–5
Albert, Hirschman, The Strategy of Economic Development (Yale University Press, 1958) p. 183.
Cf. Francesco Parillo, Teoria della politica Economica e Pianificazione Regionale (1963) p. 67.
Cf. J.-R. Boudeville, Problems of Regional Planning (Edinburgh University Press, 1966 ).
Cf. Stuart Holland, ‘Regional Under-Development in a Developed Economy: the Italian Case’, Regional Studies, vol. 5, no. 2 (1971).
J Paelinck, ‘La Théorie du Développement régional polarisé’, Cahiers de l’I.S.E.A., no. 15 (March 1965) p. 47.
Niles Hansen, ‘Development Pole Theory in a Regional Context’, Kyklos, vol. XX, fasc. 3 (1967) p. 725.
Cf. A. Kuklinski, Criteria for Location of Industrial Plant, Economic Commission for Europe (1966).
In the U.S. case, Hansen has recommended concentrating on expanding cities, in particular in the 250,000 to one-million range. Cf. Niles Hansen, Rural Poverty and the Urban Crisis (Indiana University Press, 1970) p. 252.
For more on the chronic nature of downtown ‘core’ areas in the United States, cf. Chapter 3.
J R. Meyer, ‘Regional Economics: A Survey’, in Surveys of Economic Theory, vol. 2 ( London: Macmillan, 1965 ) p. 266.
J. G. Williamson, ‘Regional Inequality and the Process of National Development’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol. 13 (1963).
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Holland, S. (1976). Theories of Regional Imbalance. In: Capital Versus the Regions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15773-0_2
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