An economic system based on private property and private enterprise, with a major proportion of economic activity carried on by private profit-seeking individuals or organizations, and other material means of production largely privately owned. Capitalism never stands still. Its central imperative—the search for profit and wealth creation—‘drives a perpetual process of economic flux’ (Boschma and Martin (2007) J. Econ. Geog. 7, 5). This flux is powered by innovation: ‘the production, acquisition, absorption, reproduction, and dissemination of knowledge is seen by many as the fundamental characteristic of contemporary competitive dynamics’ (Gertler (2003) J. Econ. Geog. 3).

‘Innovation and growth are at the heart of the capitalist system…As new large-scale technologies develop; new forms of firm and factory organisations result in increasingly global value chains producing for global market’ (Kaplinsky (2008) Geog. Compass 2, 1). See also Metcalfe et al. (2006) Camb. J. Econ. 30, 7–32. Accumulation is at the heart of capitalism—Buck (2007) Antipode 39, 4 notes the periodic crises of over-accumulation. A feature of advanced capitalism is the possession of capital by fewer and fewer owners.

Capitalism is not uniform: ‘nation-states have different trajectories of capitalist development, in which there is considerable variation in the role of markets’ (J. Hollingsworth and R. Boyer 1997). Peck and Theodore (2007) PHG 31, 6 note ‘the persistence of…real institutional differences—and the instituted space-economies with which they are associated’ and Soskice (1997) Indust. & Innov. 4 argues that different national institutional frameworks support different forms of capitalism. See H. Wai-Chung Yeung (2006) and Buck (op. cit.) on Chinese capitalism; E. M. Wood (2003) on English capitalism, M. Wiener (1985) on British capitalism, ‘enervated by gentry values’; and Clarke (2007) TIBG 32, 1 on British capitalism ‘that conceals its destructive effects under the cloak of oldness’. Colas (2005) Contemp. Polit. 11, 2–3 explains that capital constantly searches for fresh markets, leading inevitably to ‘spatial expansion, as new lands, peoples and resources are exposed to the “law of value”’. ‘Spatial differentiation is the fundamental building block of capitalism’ (Clark (1985) Econ. Geog. 61, 3). Vagabond capitalism is an increasingly global capitalist production that can discard many of its commitments to place: ‘at worst, this disengagement hurls certain people into forms of vagabondage; at best, it leaves people in all parts of the world struggling to secure the material goods and social practices associated with social reproduction’ (Katz (2001) Antipode 33, 4).

D. Harvey (1985) holds that the inner contradictions of capitalism are expressed through the formation and re-formation of geographical landscapes. Cox, Ohio State U., picks up on this: ‘instead of towns organized around cathedrals we have towns organized around “central business districts”. Capitalist societies are characterized by extraordinarily differentiated geographic divisions of production.’ Similarly, Clark (op. cit.) claims that ‘the longue durée of a capitalist development trajectory diverted Britain away from the path bequeathing continental European cities their particular flavour in favour of a voracious, London-centred colonial capitalism’. Brown (2007) PHG 32, 4 sees enclosure—the appropriation and privatization of previously common, public or open access resources—as promoted by global capitalism, and commodification and capital.

‘Capital reproduces the peaceful civility of the private contract amongst seemingly free and equal individuals so long as the exploited party accedes to its own subordination—once there is significant resistance to the terms and conditions of the contract, the hidden hand of the market becomes the visible fist of the state’ (Colas, op. cit.). I. Boal et al. (2005) go further: ‘war is virtually synonymous with the capitalist state.’ ‘Urban transformation processes are largely the outcome of space wars, in that deliberate and systematic creative destruction is part of the logic behind current capitalist space economy. These spatial struggles have often been staged in city streets’ (Hansen (2008) Liminalities 4, 1).

Buck (2007) Variant 28 doesn’t believe that human-induced global warming will finally destroy capitalism: ‘while capitalism may survive, this is not to say that we can safely embrace rosy visions of utopian futures.’ See Peck and Theodor (op. cit.) and Faulconbridge (2008) J. Econ. Geog. 8, 4 on varieties of capitalism.