Contenu du sommaire : L'espace du capitalisme

Reinventing Geography. In this interview with the British journal New Left Review, David Harvey summarises the main stages of his trajectory, from his first works, which were positivistic in inspiration, to his conversion to Marxism and from his fieldwork to his theorisation of urban space, to his reflections on postmodernity and the transformation of contemporary capitalism, particularly in its global aspects. It is this latter perspective, analysed via the prism of imperialism, which is at the centre of Harvey's current research and which has political conclusions which relate to the contemporary meaning of the socialist project.

The Urbanization of Capital. This article analyses the creation of capitalist urban space during the socalled « Keynesian », or « Fordist », epoch and the transition from this epoch to the era of so-called « post-Fordism » which we are currently experiencing. The production of a spatial fix which is specific to each phase of development is, for capitalism, both a means of managing its internal contradictions, thus ensuring its survival, and of displacing these contradictions onto a new terrain. This terrain is the result notably of the tensions and constraints inherent in the spatial fix inherited from the previous period and remodelled by the constant transformation of the mode of production. The Keynesian urban space, constituted by cities oriented towards demand, and moulded by the joint intervention of state planning and credit-based finance, is succeeded by the post-Fordist city, which is reshaped by intensified interurban and interregional competition, and by the exacerbation of the polarisation of, and separation between, social classes. The reproduction of social relations by and through space poses new problems, at the same time that it opens new possibilities, for class struggles and alternative socialist projects.

The « New'imperialism » : Accumulation by Dispossession. It is possible to distinguish throughout the long history of capitalism at a world scale two principal forms of capital accumulation : that based on expanded reproduction, the extraction of surplus-value by means of purely economic constraint, and that based on forms of extra-economic coercion, on violence, predation, expropriation, which illustrates the moment of « primitive accumulation ». This moment, which is characterised as « accumulation by dispossession » is not simply a passing phase of early capitalism, but is rather a permanent modality by which it seeks to resolve its contradictions and to extend its ascendancy over new terrain on a world scale. The current period, marked by neoliberal hegemony, is precisely one in which accumulation by dispossession once again has the upper hand over expanded reproduction, thereby outlining the contours of a « new imperialism », dominated by US power.

Preventive War, Pro-Americanicanism and Anti-Americanism. Protests against the war in Iraq or against American support for Israel have led to the accusation that there now exists an Anti-Americanism of the left that is virtually indistinguishable from an Anti-Americanism of the right. D. Losurdo points out that the United States was actually endowed with a certain fascination for Marx, Engels, Lenin, Boukharin or Gramsci, and that the indignation which they voiced concerning the regime of white supremacy was not unmitigated. In contrast, an American Herrenvolk democracy met with widespread admiration in the leading circles of the Hitlerian regime, while American racial theorists such as Ford and Stoddard received a warm welcome in Berlin. The current celebration in the US of the imperial presidency on the part of fundamentalist Christians, along with the contempt recently shown toward America's « allies », stems from an exclusivist nationalism which harks back to this tradition.

The Case for a Critique of the Category of Totalitarianism. In this article Domenico Losurdo sketches a history of the category of totalitarianism, rehearsing the various shifts it has been subject to since the October revolution. While the roots of the notion are to be located both in the violence inflected by the colonial enterprise upon indigenous populations and the violence exercised at the very heart of the capitalist metropolis, upon the poor and the outcast, such violence did take on a number of unprecedented characteristics in the twentieth century phenomenon of total war. The imperatives of the cold war were subsequently to lead western liberals to the formulation of a strange indictment of the revolutionary

Nietzsche's Anti-revolutionary Stance : Some Remarks on the Book by Domenico Losurdo, Nietzsche, Il Ribelle Aristocratico, biografia intelletuale et bilancio critico, Bollati Boringhieri, Turin, 2002, 1168 p.
Facing the flood of contradictory interpretations of Nietzsche's writings, is it still possible to assert anything positive about the political and intellectual stance of the author of « Zarathoustra » ? In his massive study, Domenico Losurdo, Professor of Philosophy at the university of Urbino, argues that Nietzsche's thoughts, even the most provocative, such as his defence of slavery or eugenics, should not be read as simple metaphors or innocent speculations aiming at the moral improvement of man, but constitute a specific, agressively aristocratic, response to what, according to Nietzsche, is the main threat of his time : the rise of revolutionary ideals, and global democratisation of society.