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Towards a Framework for Alternative Regional Development Theory and Practice : A First Approach

• Χατζημιχάλης, Κωστής

Uneven regional development remains in Greece a key problem of national development despite all efforts and resources that are mobilized to reestablish spatial equilibria. In the last few years traditional theory and practice of regional development has increasingly been challenged. On the one hand, it has become clear that the causes of regional inequality are deeper and more complex than those suggested in neoclassical selfbalance models and in liberal-reformist improvements of the state apparatus. On the other hand, regional development has been separated from traditional sectoral planning, approaching space not as a physical container of things, but as an element of social relations of production. Thus, regional development since the 1970 s became one of the newly formulated fields of political struggle. In Greece, this became evident since 1974, when regional development from a marxist point of view, became a tactical target for democratization, decentralization, and mass mobilizations at the regional level. The proposed framework for alternative regional development theory and practice consists of a series of linked propositions which could serve as a summary of the major theses of the paper. A first proposition is that the key to understanding the emergence and significance of the present regional problem in Greece, lies not in vague speculation about ««foreign dependency», «monopoly capital», «the evil of EEC», etc., but in using a broader historical framework to account for the economic, political, ideological/cultural and spat al foundations of the problem The political dimension of the problem highlights the importance of spatial organization in the reproduction of capitalist social relations, at the regional and urban level. Not only does accumulation shape geography, but the historically evolved geographical space in turn influences the course taken by capital accumulation. A second proposition is that the basic underlying mechanism that produces and reproduces uneven regional development in the capitalist mode of production is based on differentially localized accumulation (DLA), and thus represents the spatially differentiated impulses towards capitalist expansion and realization of super profits. The end result of the operation of the mechanism is the geographical transfer of value (GTV), the real location of part of the surplus value produced by workers in peripheral sectors and regions of a social formation, to the pockets of capitalists in the core, whose firms acquire a number of characteristics such as high capital intensiveness, monopoly, higher wages, shorter turn-over time of capital, etc. The GTV as a concept arises from the analysis of the realization process of surplus value in the context of capital accumulation. When all surplus value produced in a region cannot be realized locally, the part of non-realized value is not lost in the thin air It has to go somewhere, and this «somewhere» involves a sectoral and geographical transfer, usually from peripheral to core sectors and regions. The mechanism is identifiable historically, has both a social and a spatial structure, and must be viewed as part of the process of capitalist competition itself. A third proposition is related to the key role of the state State apparatuses do not create the condition of uneven regional development nor the GTV, but the contribute to them and so contribute to their reproduction and regulation. The intervention of the state submerges in the short term the negative effects of uneven regional development (which would undermine its territorial existence) through a number of policies. In fact the modern state replaces in part the capitalist market mainly through the production of regional space, a process that in previous phases of capitalist development was the outcome of the free play of market forces. This very process of state intervention generated serious political problems in terms of what N. Poulantzas (1978) calls «deterritorialization»: a process which follows the separation of the direct producer from his means of labor, and assimilates and homogenizes spatial segments by shifting their internal frontiers. This last point brings us to the third proposition, that of regional social movements. Regional social movements arise from both objective conditions of uneven regional development and subjective conditions of rising regional consciousness. There are however, many forms of regional mobilizations as well as conflicting explanations of their origin and importance. By regional social movement I mean a certain type of organization of social practices at a regional level, the logic of whose development: a) has a territorial and multiclass base, b) contradicts the institutionally dominant social logic,i.e. it is against central state and monopoly capital, and c) challenges conditions of uneven regional development, i.e. it is against the distinction between aggregate economic growth and territorially adapted development. In this respect regional social movements constitute a critique of both the model of capitalist development and the capitalist state. They are specific reflections of the growing antithesis between the deterrKorialized state and the territorial community. The forth proposition is about a leftist ecological consciousness as a necessary element of regional social movements. This leftist ecological consciousness-in distinction to a rightwing «small-is-beautiful» type- is concerned not only with environmental protection, but also challenges the very ideals of productivity at all cost, rationality and economic efficiency as the dominant indicators of regional development In this respect it is opposing both bourgeois and soviet-type regional approaches.Another important contribution of the leftist ecological consciousnesses its critique and practice against technological neutrality which has been a vehicle of past regional development practice. Without being an advocate of «going back to pre-capitalist formations», I believe it is equally wrong, and simplistic that a certain technology is good or bad depending on who is in command. Thus, a section of the Greek left is favoring dangerous nuclear energy projects in backward regions, with the view that when it comes to power it could control it better. These four propositions are a first approach towards a framework for alternative theory and practice in regional development. They need further elaboration and above all a daily intervention by regional social movements. Alternative regional development is not of course synonymous with socialist social relations, but rather the latter influence the former. But as H. Lefebvre could say and as A. Kopp has argued: «no one social revolution could succeed without a revolution in space and in spatial organization».

• Social and economic geography

• Κοινωνικές επιστήμες

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