I invite the good readers to think quickly about the wonderful city of Lahore
The fact is well-known that capital accumulation gives rise to unequal development. Unequal development is a condition in which certain regions, given specific natural, economic, social, cultural and technological endowments, on one hand, and political utilisation of these endowments on the other, tend to become more developed and powerful than the others. A classic case is the division of the world between more developed parts and less developed ones appearing geo-politically as sovereign nation-states which attempt to maximise their power and influence against each other. But the ambit of this law is not limited to inter-state relations alone. Several layers of this phenomenon can be identified such as: continental unequal development, between continents; regional unequal development, between various regions in a national economy; local unequal development, between neighbourhoods; and household-based unequal development. Since this structural asymmetry functions at so many levels, it comes to be accepted as the natural state of affairs, as how things have always been since time immemorial.
This eternalisation of a specific historical outcome, and its factitious maintenance in the form of the contemporary free market-based international order, tends to elude the critical cognitive grasp of most people. Negation by affirmation, defined in my last article for these pages as a pre-emptive strategy to manage dissent, neutralising resistance, and containing social change, plays a special role in promoting the misrepresentation of reality that sustains the law of unequal development. This is how they work together:
Objectively, unequal development assumes the form of a peculiar historical Darwinism and is represented as a case of neutral historical evolution favouring those who adapt well to epochal transformations by means of efficient resource allocation. This historical Darwinism has the effect of flattening all historical diversity on the plane of the theory of the survival of the fittest and blocks from vision the historical manufacturing of the fittest.
Inter-subjectively, the fact of unequal development lurks behind and is reinforced by the formal declaration of the fundamental equality of human beings and the constitutional enshrinement of universal human rights meant to show that this formal principle also exists substantively. Once this formal principle comes to be seen as the basis of human civilisation, unequal development is redeemed through a disingenuous emphasis on the natural difference of ability and talent amongst human beings. In other words, the idea of equality props up the brute fact of inequality. This means a constant struggle goes on between entities populating the various levels of unequal development. This struggle gives birth to networks of domination and collaboration across and within these levels but not without ideological disguise.
Whole cities are planned on the basis of the multiple circuits of capital which, through the division of labour, are inscribed in our bodies and psyches. To bring home this flow of capital through our lives, I invite the good readers to think quickly about the wonderful city of Lahore. A marvel of the beautiful blend of the traditional and the modern, it is also a place criss-crossed with myriad practices of inequality and domination. Urban capital accumulation in the city works by creating differential zones of capital concentration. These zones are articulated through discrete channels of capital circulation. The sites of the creation of capital are spatially distanced from the foci of consumption. These zones of capital concentration are legitimised through urban planning policies and manifested in the practices of urban housing.
As one goes from the north to the south of the city, there is a marked spatial shift from the older less privileged spaces like Shahdara, Sant Nagar, Sanda etc., to relatively new affluent neighbourhoods like Gulberg, DHA, Bahria Town etc. Middle to lower-middle class colonies like Samanabad, Iqbal Town, Gulshan-e-Ravi reflect their desperate desire for social climbing in their mock-palatial residential facades. Progressive colonisation of the semi-rural belt surrounding the city continues apace. The stark difference between the triad of consumption like the Liberty Market, Main Market, and Mini Market-cum- M. M. Alam Road, and those like Ichhra and scores of makeshift Sunday bazaars scattered across the metropolis, is a direct outcome of a sharp income apartheid enabled by the so-called natural phenomenon of the varying purchasing powers of different urban social groups inhabiting the city. The access to public utilities and civic institutions follows the same social lines of force as do the differential circulation of capital in the city. However, the remarkable fact is that we live with this quotidian creation and consolidation of inequality, exploitation, marginalisation, and exclusion in our midst mollycoddled by a sincere belief that all human beings are fundamentally equal and that there is no difference between the rich and the poor except that ordained by nature or the prudent utilisation of something called the freedom of opportunity.
The writer is a professor of economics at LUMS
