New Imperialists : Ideologies of Empire

178 The New Imperialists
light of the continual drive to expand the spatial reach of capital, epitomized
in Marx’s evocative phrase of the tendency to “annihilate space
with time.” 24 Capitalism can be understood as a process of continual
movement in space and time, where an individual capitalist starts with a
sum of money, M, which is exchanged for commodities, C, (including the
commodities labour power, Lp, and means of production [raw materials,
factories, and so on], Mp). These are combined in the process of
production, P, to produce a commodity with an increased value C which
can then be exchanged for an increased M . 25 The circuit also captures
the basic capitalist social relation – workers are employed by capital in
order to produce a commodity C with a value greater than that of
commodity C.
M…C…P(Lp + Mp)…C …
If we take this representation of the processes driving the accumulation
of profit in space and time, the essential features of the neoliberal
economic ideology underpinning the current imperialism can be clearly
understood. Increased profits depend on maximizing the number of
commodities that undergo the transformation M C P C M
and on increasing the speed at which capital can move through this
circuit. Moreover, it is necessary to ensure the circuit remains unbroken.
The logic of the circuit can thus be summarized in four basic themes:
(1) maximizing the sphere of human activities encompassed by capitalist
social relations; (2) maintenance of a system of private property rights;
(3) minimizing any restrictions or barriers to the flow of capital; and (4)
the role of the capitalist state as a guarantor of capitalist social relations. 26
THE EVER-EXPANDING MARKET PLACE
Capitalism is a system driven fundamentally by the accumulation of
profit. The more human activities encompassed by the basic capitalist
social relation, the greater the profit. In his powerful work on the spatial
implications of capital accumulation, David Harvey points out that “the
tendency to eliminate spatial barriers becomes the key to understanding
the rapid dispersal of the circulation of capital across the face of the
earth.” 27 The expansion of capital to the Third World can be seen, as
Harvey describes it, as a “spatio-temporal fix” to the inevitable and