David Harvey and Bob Jessop on Spatio-Temporal Fixes

David Harvey, one of the most preeminent Marxist theoreticians of the contemporary world revolutionized our thinking about the capitalist production of space while Bob Jessop, another leading Marxist theoretician, transformed Marxist state theory. While the two converge on many points in their analysis of the capitalist mode of production, they diverge on some methodological and theoretical arguments about how to analyze the concept of spatio-temporal fixes. While Harvey follows Capital and Grundrisse to adopt a value-theoretical approach that focuses on the circulation of capital, Jessop follows Poulantzas and the Regulation School to call for a more socio-political orientation towards capitalist social formations. Whereas Harvey concentrates on the inner contradictions and crises tendencies of capitalism and capital circulations in the creation of spatio-temporal fixes, Jessop pays more attention to political power relations and the state as modes of the extra-economic principles of societalization in producing spatio-temporal fixes. The present study, recognizing Harvey’s crucial contributions to the field, but following Jessop, argues for a more socio-politicized concept of spatio-temporal fixes. It recommends linking it with state power and socio-political power relations through the complex articulations of the economic, political, and ideological determinations of social totality.