Class, Division of Labour and Employment in Space

Abstract

Class is arguably the single most crucial axis on which human life turns in the modern world, yet is at the same time one of the most difficult of social facts to grasp. Marx provided a powerful conception, rooted in the mode of production, with which to understand the class character of capitalist societies. This theory remains subject to doubt, however, because of persistent failure of vision in the face of a social reality that does not conform to tidy conceptual systems. Space is another fundamental dimension of human life, yet the geographic element in the social sciences has atrophied for want of a way in which spatial relations might comfortably be integrated into social theory. Fortunately, the recent revival of philosophical discourse in the social sciences, which seeks to conjoin ‘theoretical realism’ with so-called ‘structuration theory’, has rekindled the spirit of inquiry once known as dialectical materialism, while contributing much in the way of clarity and systematic development of basic tenets. This mode of thought offers a way out of the dead-ends to which class analysis and geography have come, although the refined tools of philosophy need to be fitted into the powerful machine of Marx’s theory of capitalism in order for the analytic work to proceed.