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(Lenin, 1916), whether as the coercive extrac-
tion of surplus through colonial states (Fanon,
1967 [1961]), through unequal exchange
(Arrighi and Pearce, 1972), or through the
imperial operation of transnational banks and
multilateral development institutions (the
World Bank and theinternational monetary
fund). The so-called ‘anti-globalization’
movement (especially focusing on institutions
such as the World Trade Organization) and
the ‘sweatshop movements’ (focusing on
transnational firms such as Nike) are contem-
porary exemplars of a politics of exploitation
linking advanced capitalist state andtrans-
national corporationswith the poverty and
immiseration of the globalsouthagainst a
backdrop ofneo-liberalismand freetrade
(Harvey, 2005; Starr, 2005).
It is axiomatic that there has been enormous
controversy over the operations, the merits
and the costs of the capitalist system since
the nineteenth century. Much ink has also
been spilled attempting to provide periodi-
zation or classifications of actually existing
capitalisms and the origins of capitalism in
the transformation from feudalism. The plur-
alization of the word capitalism – capitalisms –
highlights enormous geographical, temporal,
institutional and cultural diversity of what
is now a global and integral form of political
economy. The originary question hinges in
large measure on engaging with Marx’s
account ofprimitive accumulationsand the
Britishenclosures, and the extent to which
the feudal system was transformed by the cor-
rosive effects of the markets and/or urban-
based merchants, by demography or by
internal contradictions within the feudal sys-
tem (reflections in class and other struggles
between tenants, lords, the Church and mer-
chants). The periodization of capitalism turns
on similar theoretical tensions: Was ‘early’
capitalism characterized by expansionary
trade and the dominance of merchants’ cap-
ital? Was this early mercantile capitalism actu-
ally in the business of inventing new systems of
capitalism production (e.g. theplantation)?
What was – or is – the relation between forms
of unfree labour (some of which still exist,
although not as organized mass slavery) and
the development of industrial capitalism? To
what extent were the accumulations associated
with differing phases of the development of the
world system –slavery, informal empire, and
the first age of empire – integral to the rise of
industrial capitalism in Britain or elsewhere in
Europe? These questions have produced a vast
body of scholarship and theorizing. What canbe said, with some trepidation, is that while
the trajectories of capitalism ineuropeand
elsewhere have some substantive diversity,
there is some agreement that the rise of indus-
trial manufacture in Britain in the eighteenth
century, the growing concentration of capitals
(and the linking of industrial and bank capital)
at the end of the nineteenth century, the insti-
tutionalization of a sort of Keynesian capital-
ism in the wake of the First World War, and
the genesis of a resurrected ‘liberal capitalism’
(dubbed neo-liberalism, echoing the late nine-
teenth century) as a force driving the post-
1945 globalization of transnational capitalism
are key moments – or watersheds – in the long
march of modern capitalism. The national and
local forms in which the great arch of capitalist
development has been institutionalized –
sometimes theorized as systems of regulation
or social accumulation (see regulation
theory), sometimes as national capitalisms,
sometimes as models or cultures of capitalism- has generated a very substantial and sophis-
ticated body of work over the past three to four
decades, including an important dialogue over
the differences between the first and ‘late’
developers (e.g. the so-calledasian tigers).
Geographers, particularly since the 1970s,
have been especially concerned to address the
relations betweenspace, environment and the
reproduction of the capitalist system. The
most elaborated account in the English lan-
guage is the body of work of David Harvey
(1999 [1982]) – but one might easily point to
an equally expansive and synoptic account in
the work of Henri Lefebvre (2003 [1970]).
Harvey’s work began as a critical account of
the city in the advanced capitalist states, but
quickly developed into a magisterial re-reading
of capital in which the friction of space – and
what he termed the ‘spatial fix’ – provided a
key theoretical ground on which to understand
the circuits of capital (see figure) and the built
environment, the changing geography of
capitalist accumulation and the environmental
costs of – and, more recently, the relations
between – american empire and primitive
accumulation (what he callsaccumulation by
dispossession). Other geographers have natur-
ally contributed to the space–nature–capital-
ism triumvirate: Doreen Massey on spatial
divisions of labour, Neil Smith onuneven
development, Richard Walker on regional
and agrarian capitalism, Ash Amin onindus-
trial districts, Gillian Hart on trajectories
of capitalism, Stuart Corbridge and Richard
Peet on neo-liberalism and development,
and so on.
Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 62 31.3.2009 9:45pmCAPITALISM