ABSTRACT
The need to accelerate the circulation of capital has necessitated an economic transition, or qualitative shift, and Harvey seeks to explain this in terms of the regime of capital accumulation, a central tenet of Marxist enquiry. The key, and perennial, question is how best to deal with the over-accumulation of capital and how it can be ‘expressed, absorbed or managed’ (Harvey, 1989b: 131). Reflecting the post-Fordist debates discussed above, Harvey contends that in terms of production the problems encountered in achieving satisfactory productivity increase and the intense competition faced from, for example, ‘newly industrialising countries’, has forced the transition (in the First World) to a more flexible mode of accumulation in the post-1970 period, a ‘new dynamic phase of capitalism’ as he terms it (1989b: vi). At the heart of this change lies flexibility. As Figure 2.3 demonstrates, a capitalist system based upon a Fordist
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Dawn is breaking in the Costa Rica rainforest. Above me, a white hawk flits silently through the treetops. A pale-billed woodpecker alights softly on the side of a soaring trunk. The branches are swathed in mosses, ferns and orchids, and hung with a triangle of vines and lianas. The Braulio Carrillo National Park is less than an hour from the capital, San José, but it could be in another world.
