A theoretical enquiry into social and spatial inequalities : an urban-regional political economy perspective

Economic development under capitalism is uneven, both socially and spatially. The existing literature, both mainstream social sciences and Marxist political economy, generally separates social inequality (inequality among classes and class-fractions) from spatial inequality. It also pays insufficient attention to how capitalist accumulation and the capitalist state together produce social and spatial inequality. What is needed is an integrated perspective that examines three mechanisms. First, how capitalism dispossesses small-scale producers and exploits wage-labour, and in the process develops productive forces. Second, how capitalism thus produces impacts which are unequal between classes/class-fractions and between places, within an urban region and between urban regions. Third, how capitalism's unequal impacts are mediated by the capitalist state and the collective agency of classes. Such mediation in the context of an urban region implies that the latter becomes not only the theatre of capital but also a terrain of political action of urban and rural workers.