Capitalist development and regional development

Abstract

This article is the initial chapter of a study on the formation and functioning of the spatial system of five «concelhos» (municipalities) in Alentejo, the other chapters of which - «Agriculture and regional development» and «Demographic analysis and regional development» - are to be published in a short while by the centre of Geographical Studies, within the scope of the results of a research coordinated by prof. Jorge Gaspar. The development processus has a spatial dimension. A development understood as the introduction of innovation into a spatial system changed by its structure. Under this perspective the present text analyses succeedingly : the question of the work reserve and its implications in the transfer rythm of the manpower stock in the traditional sector of subsistence for the urban-industrial sector; the change in the relations between industry and agriculture operated by the industrialization and urbanization processus; the increase in the concentration trend that, on account of the institutional measures, causes increasing marginal costs for the urban administration. According to the authors of this article, the enlargement of the State functions, since it has influenced the organization itself of private initiative, in an attempt to diminish the frequency and the amplitude of the capitalist crisis, offered new ways to the regional planning, which presents itself mainly as an intervention in the contradictions between the capital reproduction at the national level and at regional level.