The capitalist production of space

The theme of increasing polarization between the social classes is writ large in Capital. In the "general law of capitalist accumulation", Marx shows that the necessary consequence of the real processes at work under capitalism is the reproduction of "the capital-relation on a progressive scale, more capitalists at this pole, more wage-workers at that". Furthermore these processes also produce a "relative surplus population", a "reserve army" of unemployed "set free" primarily through technological and organizational change. This reserve army helps to drive wage rates down and to control workig-class movements and is, therefore, a "prime lever" for further accumulation. The net effect, as Marx puts it, invoking imagery deeply reminiscent of Hegel, is that the "accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, Ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital".