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The article presents comments of the author on the article "Geographic Inequality Under Socialism," by Roland J. Fuchs and George J. Demko. This paper competently reviews the evidence for the persistence there of spatial inequalities. Their conception of Marxism and their generalizations about the effects of socialism on inequality, are very much subject to question, however. Essentially authors share a misunderstanding with most geographers concerning the nature of Marxist theory and the work of Marxist geographers-thus Marxism is assumed to consist only of a politics, defined narrowly as the advocacy of a certain form of socialist state, one which we are supposed to believe will solve all human problems within a short time.

The article presents a reply to the comment made by Jeanne Kay on the paper titled, The Social Origins of Environmental Determinism, written by the author in the September 1985 issue of the journal Annals. The author agrees with Kay that others have previously traced the relations among social Darwinism, racism, and environmental determinism. Thus, the main purpose of his paper was not to disparage racism, but to explain it from the perspective of a Marxian theory of ideology. His paper documents scientific avoidance, in the particular form of legitimation theory, which began as a search for truth but ended as the justification of imperialism.

Although we acknowledge the debt that mainstream behavioral geography owes to positivism, our central argument here is that much of that research tradition has now transcended its positivist roots and that we should preserve only those virtues of analytic discourse that appear to be of enduring value. In this paper we examine the strengths and weaknesses of analytic behavioral research and compare the perspective of this research with the viewpoints adopted by geographers espousing phenomenologist and Marxist philosophies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the diversionary procedure of Chouinard and Fincher to level their critique on the article "Structural Marxism and Human Geography." Poststructural work of the article that needs to be analyzed; Arguments on the structural Marxist geographers that talk about class struggle that could not be engaging in reification; Impoverished materialism that is a driving force of idealism in the vies of structural Maxism.

This paper assesses critically both the strong theoretical claims and the empirical work of a number of structural marxists in analyzing the geography of advanced societies. Such work offers a holistic mode of explanation that has important philosophical affinities with Hegelian idealism. In explanation reified entities such as capital ore treated as the formal cause while people are regarded as the efficient cause, the mere carriers of a structural logic This perspective raises a number of serious theoretical problems that are not resolved, including the status of individuals as a creative force in shaping events the ontological slams of structures the relationship between consciousness and structure and the tendency to functionalism and teleology in explanation. These shortcomings have severe consequences for empirical study. The fundamentally economic nature of the central categories provide at best a partial analysis and not a general comprehension of society as a whole. If applied literally, key categories such as the dichotomous class system, fit poorly with empirical events. However, if adjusted to march historical events, they depart markedly from the form of the theoretical structure. The result is a confused interplay between theory and empirical study, and a tendency toward the mystification of causal processes and the denigration of empirical study in order to sustain the integrity of the theoretical argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response of authors on comments made by scholar Richard Peet on their article "Geographic Inequality Under Socialism." Much of Peet's comment on our article is irrelevant to the substantive issues raised in the paper and is instead an attempt to publicize further, in the form of a commentary, Marxist views of histography. The latter are already the subject of an extensive literature to which little of import can be added here. Our comments will therefore focus on Peet's misinterpretations of our position and his attempts to evade the significance of our substantive finding.

Marxists have made conflicting claims about the political significance of residential segregation but the merits of each viewpoint have not been evaluated. Recent evidence from Kingston, Ontario indicates that segregation has had consequences that were actually contradictory for the development of local political activity. On the one hand, segregation promoted ignorance between classes, encouraging indifference and complacency on the question of class inequality and thereby sustaining political quiescence. On the other hand, it facilitated political mobilization in the form of local residents' groups and citywide organizations of tenants and the working and welfare poor. In Kingston segregation facilitated political activity outside the workplace. Some of this activity was parochial, leading to fragmentation of the working class; some transcended neighborhood boundaries and precipitated a temporary but broad political alliance among the poor, organized labor, and many middle-class people. The internal contradictions in arguments about the political significance of segregation are rooted in the contradictory political significance of the phenomenon itself. Chameleon-like, segregation reinforces existing tendencies in class politics, whether these favor apathy or mobilization. The political significance of residential segregation does not merely arise from its context. It is made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the article "Structural Marxism and Human Geography," by James Duncan and David Ley, about the Marxist work of geographers. Errors of omission in the Portrayal Marxist traditions; Neglect of the history of structural Marxism that leads the historical context of the Marxist geographical items; Failure of the authors in specifying the philosophical bases of various traditions in Marxist social science.

Marxists theorize that inequality and poverty are functional components of the capitalist mode of production: capitalism necessarily produces inegalitarian social structures social structures. Inequality is transferred from one generation to another through the environment of services and opportunities which surrounds each individual. The social geography of the city is made up of a hierarchy of community environments reproducing the hierarchical class structure. Change in the system results from change in the demand for labor. Continuing Poverty in American cities results from a continued system need to produce and reproduce an industrial reserve army. Inequality and poverty cannot be eradicated without fundamental in the mode of production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]