Despite its role in causing friction in social reproduction, Salvador Medina Ramírez argues that traffic actively reinforces capital accumulation by disciplining labor, creating new investment opportunities, and fostering automobile dependency.
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This depoliticizing effect is linked to urban expansion and workers’ housing. It is no longer like in the days of the Industrial Revolution, portrayed by Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England, when workers used to live very close to the factories and in the same neighborhoods, which allowed for ongoing coexistence and the creation of stronger social ties. Today, workers’ housing is scattered and distant in cities (with different forms of home ownership or rental), creating a wide variety of routes and distances to travel to work. Thus, traffic and urban expansion and dispersion create a physical barrier that hinders class organization and solidarity. Simultaneously, the denser the traffic, the more it generates street-level environments (due to noise, pollution, etc.) that reduce local community ties.[5] These situations create adverse material conditions for social, community, and proletarian organization.
