![]() They envisage transformation of law without transformation of productive relations, evidencing a theoretical revolution. Despite similarities to Pashukanis, both arguments are post-Marxist. Lacey (1999) demonstrates the possibility of constructing a collective legal subject. Simultaneously, however, pragmatic use of law to achieve limited ends makes sense. Law's discourse calls forth both masculinized and feminized subjects. Smart ( 1989, 1995) argues women must challenge masculinist conceptions of the legal subject as a separated, abstracted, detached, decision maker (see also Thornton 1986). Ideologists of the women's movement have done better. Finally I argued that ‘professionalised law’ is of defensive but not offensive value for the oppressed (Cain 1985). In an attempt to resolve the conundrum that legal change is needed but law is not positioned to end oppression, I first followed Marx and Engels ( 1872/1957), seeing law as impotent (Cain 1972) then Hunt and I saw law's power as a staging post of struggle (Cain and Hunt 1979, Hunt 1981a, 1981b). But the problems of achieving change in a life by changing a law have been apparent since Marx discussed the workers' struggle for the 10 hour day (1867/1974, chap. Marxist theory develops in part because people need more than political instinct to steer by when they want to improve their situation. Cain, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001 5 The Place of Law Reform in the Struggles of the Oppressed This pattern of CC can be disturbed only by major technological (and perhaps other environmental) changes that reduce the value of scale in existing centers. Places lacking these external economies have lower returns to investment, despite their lower costs. Paul Krugman modeled economic location and trade based on increasing returns and path dependence, and concluded that as transportation costs fall, local specialization increases in centers that have developed requisite institutions, infrastructure, and supporting services. Most relevant to CC is the presence of increasing returns to production scale and economic agglomeration. Modern economic models place an emphasis on imperfect competition. The resultant spatial and temporal unevenness of economic development is problematic for people and social institutions that are attached to particular places. In geographic terms, this tension is manifested in capital's search for increased profit through (1) spatial divisions of labor that make use of low-cost locations for low-value-added activities and (2) continuous redeployment to more profitable (typically lower-cost) locations. Accumulation of profit requires some displacement of costs outside the economic accounting of capitalism: to parts of the natural world that have not been valorized, to future generations, and to particular places. ![]() Marxist theory recognizes a tension between the demands of capitalist accumulation and the requirements of social reproduction. Harrington Jr., in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2009 Similar Concepts in Marxist Theory and Modern Economics
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