In Harvey’s view Marxism provided the corrective for one other aspect of the existing status quo geography,
an issue fundamental to the “normative” turn. As he states, following Marx directly, “positivism simply seeks to
understand the world, whereas Marxism seeks to change it” (see p. 18). In pursuing this orientation, Harvey
argues strongly that not only is status quo (and, even more extremely, counter-revolutionary) theorizing unlikely to
lead to progressive change, it actually contributes to oppressive conditions. It accomplishes this important
legitimizing function by supplying support, if only tacitly, to existing circumstances. The kind of evidentiary work
being carried out at the time by most mainstream geographers (and other social scientists), even when working
on crucial social issues, in Harvey’s view, provided a sense that “bleeding heart liberals” were contributing to
solutions when, in fact, they were merely perpetuating the problems themselves. Since the underlying causes
of these problems reside in the capitalist system itself, and since that system was never a subject of analysis,
Harvey argues that mainstream scholars were constantly doomed to treating symptoms and missing the underlying
issues entirely.