Transportation in a Capitalist Space-Economy: Transportation Demand, Circulation Time, and Transportation Innovations

Abstract

Transportation, as the service of moving commodities between places, plays a unique role in a fully competitive capitalist space-economy. The commodity of transportation is consumed as a part of virtually every economic transaction, linking the production and consumption of a commodity; demand for transportation is derived from spatial configurations rather than being fixed by socially necessary techniques and real wages; and the circulation time taken in transportation is a deduction from capitalists' profits. The impact of circulation time on profits may be calculated precisely. The derived nature of the demand for transportation adds a level of uncertainty to the impact of cost-reducing technical change on profit rates. Given this, cost-reducing and time-reducing technical change in the transportation commodity is one of the few ways of ensuring an increased rate of profit for capitalists, ceteris paribus. The public nature of transportation improvements and the high investments in fixed capital that are required help to explain the central role of the state in capitalism in the improvement of transportation and thus in underwriting capital accumulation.