GEOGRAPHY OF NEOLIBERALISM AND SPATIAL FIX

Abstract

This paper emphasizes the consequences of economic inequality, the roots of which lie at the heart of capitalism. It was explained by Marx (1867), and a modern interpretation was offered by Harvey (1982, 1985, 1987, 2013b) through the term spatial fix, which connects the development of capitalism and urbanization. In this global process, inequalities arise that can be illustrated numerically: the net worth of the world's 358 wealthiest people in 1996 was equal to the total income of the poorest, which makes up 45% of the world's population or 2.3 billion people. This fact of economic inequality, most convincingly written about by Piketty (2016) and Chancel (2020), became even more critical during the Covid-19 pandemic. The gap between the richest and the poorest widened. The period in which several significant changes in global economic policy took place was called neoliberalism (Harvey, 1989, 2013a; Dušanić, 2016) and led to the establishment of a new economic system that significantly determined the further directions of geography. Understanding these processes implies an interactive approach to their study because the capital/labor relationship defines the global framework for developing urbanization and demography, and thus geography (Mutabdžija, 2020, 2021).