John McCartin

2 October 2014
Brenner - History & Theory
Capital Will Eat Itself: The Spiral of Devaluation in the Built Environment
David Harveys The Urbanization of Capital lays out a compelling narrative of rational
capitalist exchange continually (re)shaping the landscape in its image, subject to certain
historical preconditions.1 Yet Harvey is constructing more of a broad-strokes framework,
sometimes acknowledging but never fully grappling with small-scale uneven geographical
development. For instance, Harveys description of the forces underpinning of the mid-20th
Century Urban Crisis is surprisingly weak: The attempt to use the urban process as a vehicle
of redistribution ran up against the realities of class structure, income differentials, and minority
deprivation. The strong processes of spatial reorganization of consumer landscapes left behind
growing pockets of abandonment and deprivation, for the most part concentrated in inner
cities.2 How these inner city spaces were left behind is never fully sussed out, and theyre
more or less bracketed from the wider argument. Theyre the products of political economic
realities outside the processes of overaccumulation and its resolutions, rather than a function of
such processes. The realities Harvey names are no doubt significant, not least minority
deprivation and the racial & ethnic politics involved.3 That said, locating neighborhood-level
uneven development within Harveys wider framework of overaccumulation and its resolutions
is possible.

1 Harvey, David. The Urbanization of Capital. The Urban Experience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1989.
2 Harvey, pp. 40.
3
C.f. Antero Pietila, Not In My Neighborhood, for a vivid account of racial and ethnic discrimination and
exploitation in Baltimores real estate markets.

John McCartin
2 October 2014
Brenner - History & Theory
Situations can arise and even persist...in which surpluses of one sort cannot be absorbed
because surpluses of another sort are not present in the requisite quantities and qualities. Under
contemporary conditions, this means that either capital or labor power are devalued, but not
both.4 Harvey goes on the to explain that under contemporary conditions, capital shortage and
labor surplus are the most likely outcome, resulting in labor power devaluation.

But as a resolution to the endemic tensions of capitalism, labor power devaluation significantly
affects the moment of consumption in the circulation of capital. As Harvey states: The
circulation of capital, when viewed in aggregate, presupposes the continuous expansion of
effective demand in order to realize in the marketplace the value created through production.5
One source of this effective demand is wage goods for workers,6 and indeed stoking demand
from workers through redistributive policies was (simplistically) the Fordist accumulation
strategy. In the absence of such redistributive policies, workers selling devalued labor power
who receive less payment (or perhaps no payment) in the form of money (qua means of
exchange) with which to buy commodities will necessarily consume less, disrupting the
moment of consumption. Underconsumption seemed to be, and in a sense was, the reverse side
of the coin to overaccumulation.7

4
Harvey, pp. 25.
5 Ibid, pp. 21
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., pp. 34

John McCartin
2 October 2014
Brenner - History & Theory
This has two potential results with regard to capital: (a) capital flight, or (b) capital devaluation.
For instance, steel plant layoffs are one form of labor power devaluation. In this case, capital
avoids less-than-competitive US steel plants, creating a shortage of capital vis-a-vis the number
of workers needed for production, and thus those workers are laid off. Those workers are then
unable to spend money at area retail stores. A given retail store can (i) ship its overstocked goods
to an affiliate elsewhere, (ii) heavily discount goods so that they can be sold to cash-strapped
households, or (iii) let the goods sit on the shelves until the business goes under. Choice (i) is
roughly equivalent to (a) capital flight (though shipping goods may cost a great deal, so that
capital flight would itself be an act of devaluation). Choices (ii) and (iii) both constitute direct
capital devaluation.

Spatially this same process has even more stark and spiraling effects. The built environment,
being itself fixed capital, has no option of (i) capital flight (setting aside the crucial detail of
financialized real estate, which is too complex for this response). Devaluation of the capital
embedded in the built environment is thus the only outcome when labor power is devalued. In a
time of labor power devaluation, a foreclosed home will enter into a short sale or it will be
boarded up. And in either case, the process of capital destruction does not end there. Capital
devaluation here serves as a precondition of conspicuous devalorization, its twin process of value
destruction.8 Devalorization is, simplistically, the destruction of value through use. Quite
8
The relationship between devaluation and devalorization needs to be better theorized, and perhaps has
been. An unpublished Neil Smith essay from his doctoral studies at Hopkins (which Ive been trying to track down
for some time) may be the best starting point. Smith, Neil, 'The Concepts of Devaluation, Valorization and
Depreciation in Marx: Toward a Clarification', unpublished, Department of Geography and Environmental
Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University (1981).

John McCartin
2 October 2014
Brenner - History & Theory
different from machines, apparel, or other commodities, the built environment is always in use;
devalorization of the built environment is perpetual. To prevent perpetual devalorization, a
routine input of capital is required. But where the built environment is devalued as a function of
devalued labor power, such capital injection is an uneconomical and fruitless affair. Houses and
storefronts with no windows, their faades falling apart, their foundations sprouting trees. This is
the (consumable) built environment amidst devalued labor power. The real estate commodity
being relational that is affecting and affected by nearby real estate devaluation and
devalorization at one property results in devaluation and subsequent devalorization at an adjacent
property.

And still the spiral unfolds: devalued labor power is unable to reproduce itself, causing flight,
devaluation, and devalorization of capital, including of the build environment. Within this
environment thats increasingly insufficient for reproducing labor, labor power figuratively
devalorizes workers here become less hireable, even within markets that are growing.

Harvey notes that [a]lthough the industrial city was a centerpiece of accumulation and surplus
production, it has to be seen as a distinctive place within the spaces of the international division
of labor, a mere element within a...capitalist system of uneven geographical development.9 The
same is obviously true for these spaces of capital destruction within the Fordist and post-Fordist
city. This model of spiraling, expanding destruction of capital is of course not endless. Indeed,
its historical emergence within the Fordist and post-Fordist eras is anomalous considering the
9
Harvey, pp. 30.

John McCartin
2 October 2014
Brenner - History & Theory
rest of the spatio-economic scene. The models anomalous nature is also economically and
politically functional. First, it ensures a reserve army of labor. Next, it constructs a terra sacer
around which to frame spatial expansion and disciplinary state action. Finally, it is also a
mechanism whereby capital embedded in the built environment can be (relatively) quickly
destroyed, enabling new waves of investment (as seen in the turn towards supply-side
urbanization in the 1970s forward).10

+ great job

10 Harvey, pp. 44-45; cf. Neil Smith's The New Urban Frontier