He is Professor Emeritus of the Economics of the City at University College London where in the 1980s he was Director for eight years of the Development Planning Unit at The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment.
Harris was, for a time, a leading member of the British Socialist Workers Party and edited their publication International Socialism.
National capital projects remain immensely attractive within countries, but run counter to the essence of capitalism—which in economic terms is both market-oriented and anti-national, with a normal condition of loyalty exclusively to making a profit.
[2] In political terms it had also undermined the 'national liberation' model that had dominated the anti-colonial struggles and the arguments in the immediate post independence decades.
But the fact that his analysis had emerged from a self critique from within the Marxist tradition meant that he was not taken up by mainstream globalisers despite the breadth and depth of his arguments.
Equally the fact that he now disputed the link between political and economic forms under capitalism meant that he was also something of an outcast amongst those whose views he had earlier shared.
But he did have an important supporter in David Lockwood who both wrote with him and has authored separate studies of Russia and India that reflected his influence.