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The Capitalization of Space and CulturalResistanceChe Yuling aa Center for Chinese Urbanization Studies and Department of Philosophy , SoochowUniversity (Suzhou)Published online: 02 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Che Yuling (2010) The Capitalization of Space and Cultural Resistance, Social Sciences in China,31:4, 165-176, DOI: 10.1080/02529203.2010.524387

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Social Sciences in ChinaVol. XXXI, No. 4, November 2010, 165-176

ISSN 0252-9203© 2010 Social Sciences in China PressDOI: 10.1080/02529203.2010.524387http://www.informaworld.com

SPECIAL ISSUE: SPACE PRODUCTION AND URBAN ORDER IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA

The Capitalization of Space and Cultural Resistance Che Yuling

Center for Chinese Urbanization Studies and Department of Philosophy, Soochow University (Suzhou)

中国的城市化建设正在飞速进行。与经济进步相伴随，出现了众多的问题，如大

城市中的交通拥堵、空气污染、资源浪费与匮乏并存等——这只是可见的表面问题。

从长远的角度看，在城市化过程中，空间的资本化使用导致了城市文化、城市样态、

自然环境等差异性的丧失，这将使人的存在更为物化、功能化与功利化。本文认为，

指导空间生产的价值观念是促使上述问题出现的根本原因；只有改变以往的以“技术

和资本增殖”为核心的消费社会的价值观念，建构新的“以人为本”的价值观念，才

能对抗空间生产的资本化洪流。

关键词：空间生产 城市化 资本 价值观念

Urbanization is proceeding at full speed in China. Economic progress has been accompanied by enormous problems in our big cities, such as traffic congestion, air pollution, the coexistence of resource abuse and scarcity, etc.—and these are merely the problems visible on the surface. The capitalization of space in the course of urbanization has meant loss of diversity in urban culture and configuration and in the natural environment. In the long run, this will make human existence more objectified, functional and utilitarian. This paper argues that the fundamental reason for these problems lies in the value concepts guiding the production of space. Only when we abandon the existing values of consumer society, which revolve around “capital and technology appreciation,” and establish new values “putting people first” will we be able to withstand the mighty torrent of capitalized space production.

Keywords: space production, urbanization, capital, values

The term “space” is nothing new to us. But when it comes to the “space production,” most people will go on to ask what this is and how “space” can be “produced.” Our theoretical

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research has lagged behind the headlong pace of reality. Over the past six decades since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, Chinese cities have soared in number from 86 to 660 and the urbanization rate has gone from 19% in 1980 to 47% in 2010. China’s rapid urbanization is actually the greatest in human history. In itself, this process involves the re-segmentation, integration and construction of space. The meaning of “space” has evolved in the course of this process, so that it can no longer be adequately understood in the traditional geographical sense as the stiff, rigid and static existence described by Foucault. Nowadays “space” has become circulating capital, commodities, symbols, etc.; and it is being “produced.” It is easy to grasp the implications of “space production” if we look at the cities we live in, where “an inch of land is worth an inch of gold.” It used to be said that “time is money;” now we can say that “space is money.” Space can be planned and sold as a commodity that may appreciate in value—this is the most straightforward definition of “space production.” As Lefebvre clearly stated in The Production of Space in 1974, production in modern society has been transformed from “production of objects in space” or “production in space” to “production of space.”

Cities, as the most immediate products of space production, are developing at an amazing speed. In Shanghai, for example, the Pudong New District, in its twenty years of history, has already been administratively allocated a planned area of over 1,210 square kilometers, more than twice as much as initially planned. In the demolished and reconstructed old inner city, almost all traces of the original inhabitants have been thoroughly erased, including the Tianhou Temple, a site with historical and cultural value for a port city. It has been replaced by the “delocalized” replicable model of space production, marked chiefly by flyovers, freeways, business districts, skyscrapers and high-class residential areas. Shanghai has become a successful role model in terms of urban construction and has been zealously copied by other cities. Some scholars think that a “great leap forward” situation has emerged in China’s urbanization process, which tallies with the author’s observation. In the face of this crazy reality, we need to reflect rationally upon the following questions: if urbanization is just the visible outcome, what then are the inner driving force and operational logic of space production that give rise to that outcome? What effect has the transformation from producing “objects” to producing “space” itself had on our previously constructed theories of historical materialism? What yardstick should we use for the rapid development of space production in order to genuinely serve the fundamental goal of realizing man’s happiness and all-round development? And what impact does space production have on culture, ideology and our ways of being?

This paper argues that as a promising new form of production, space production has capital appreciation as its innermost driving force, leading to the capitalization of space and to materialism of personality. Targeted at consumption and profit, space production has yielded a myriad of identical new city forms. What’s more, this uniformity in external space has been internalized, rendering people “one-dimensional.” In the face of the turbulent and

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unprecedented onrush of “everything for capital,” this paper attempts to explore this problem, examine contemporary scholars’ thoughts on the subject and offer the Chinese government realistic possible solutions.

I. The Capitalization of Space and the Spatial Turn of Historical Materialism

In the same way as breathing is necessary for human survival, “space” is naturally a necessity for the existence of the human race and all other animate or inanimate beings. Without space, all that exists would be deprived of the most fundamental condition of existence. It can be said that in the past, for thousands of years, people never thought about “space” in the way we do today. In the modern age, space is no longer, as it was before, merely a passive and inactive geographical environment or a necessary precondition for existence, and of course it is no longer a territory that is the subject of political strife; instead, it is now endowed with an entirely new meaning. In modern times, space acts as an important tool of capital and been turned by capital into a commodity and a fundamental means of obtaining appreciation of value. Capitalism maintains itself by occupying space and integrating it into capitalist logic.1 In other words, the transformation of space taking place in modern times is a result of the developmental logic of capital itself. Capital comes into the world with a mission of “appreciation;” this is its instinct. In the period of liberal capitalism, it took the production of “objects” in space and the relations of production as its major means of obtaining appreciation. However, Lefebvre has pointed out that as capitalism evolves into its late stage, capital will finally and inevitably go beyond the bounds of producing objects in physical space and engage in the production of space itself. Space production, the new pathway capital has found for appreciation, relieves capital’s inherent conflicts and provides new stimulus for the development of capitalism.

When space is produced as a commodity and becomes a major means of increasing profits, it not only has all the characteristics of capital, but contains the reproduction of capitalist production relations. As the basic component of capitalism, capital necessarily involves the fundamental relations of capitalism. Space is similarly subject to capital and its logic; thus the reproduction of space is essentially the reproduction of capitalist production relations, and the continuous expansion of space production means that capitalist relations permeate all domains. “Capitalism is maintained by the conquest and integration of space. Space has long since ceased to be a passive geographical milieu or an empty geometrical one. It has become instrumental.…The reproduction of the relations of production cannot be localized in the enterprise.…Reproduction (of the relations of production, not just the means of production) is located not simply in society as a whole but in space as a whole.”2 In this sense, space production gains a political coloring and the space produced has politicized implications.

1　Henri Lefebvre, La révolution urbaine, p. 262.2　Peter Saunders, Social Theory and the Urban Question, pp. 157-159.

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Against the background of globalization, the global advancement of space production has become a means by which capitalism can go beyond territorial limits to realize self-expansion. In other words, capitalism no longer achieves expansion through violent means such as war, as did traditional forms of rule. Space production as a political instrument has secured a “neo-colonialist space.” Moreover, with ever deepening globalization, this kind of development, with capital appreciation as its aim, and its mode of economic liberalization have become the dominant value that overwhelms all others.

What, then, are the meaning and intention of the extensive urban (re)building and new urban spatial order constructed by high-class residential developments? Development is clearly the point of construction; but if development regards economic progress as its fundamental goal, it will stray yet further from man’s initial calling. China’s urbanization has witnessed the emergence of cities with various themes: historical and cultural cities, resource-rich cities, Red cities, ecological cities, etc. However, it is “capital” that plays the more important role in the construction of these cities; specific local elements are skillfully maneuvered only to obtain commercial value. In fact, the outflow of indigenous residents and inflow of a large non-native population means that so-called reconstruction areas with local characteristics are already empty shells, as urban (re)construction is premised upon the departure of long-standing residents. Reflection on these issues is necessary for it serves to warn us, in the course of the space-reconstruction process of urbanization, to adjust our direction in a timely fashion and steer clear of mistakes. This is not only a theoretical necessity, but, from the view of the “whole man” of Marx, an urgent practical issue that demands attention.

Obviously the production of space has engendered fundamental changes in some of our basic concepts. Firstly, space itself is no longer a passive, naturalized and silent container-like existence; it is also a means of production, a capital that may appreciate, a political tool, as well as the means and goal of the reproduction of capitalist production relations. These new features of space prompt us to reflect on and develop the previous theory of historical materialism. According to Chinese scholars’ understanding of historical materialism, production refers mainly to the production of “objects”; the production of space itself is hardly mentioned. Put another way, our understanding of history has been “de-spatialized.” Such being the case, the “spatial shift in historical materialism” proposed by Western scholars in the second half of the twentieth century can stimulate our thinking.

These Western scholars argue that in our contemporary age, “space” possesses ontological meaning. On this basis, Edward Soja advocates the establishment of a “profoundly spatialized historical materialism.” He argues that “…something else has been happening since 1980 alongside the initial calls for an historical and geographical materialism from within Marxist geography.…it is becoming increasingly clear that the insertion of space into historical materialism and into the wider framework of critical theory is not just a matter of simple incremental adaptation, the incorporation of still another new variable or model into the old

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and unquestioned master narratives.”3 He believes that only the introduction of space into dialectics and historical materialism will remedy the gap in Western Marxism and critical theory in this regard. At the same time, “…the long delayed encounter between Modern Geography and Western Marxism is now threatening to become mutually transformative.”4 This is an important route to establishing historico-geographical materialism and Marxist geography. In fact, this view of Soja’s bears a marked imprint of Lefebvre’s thinking. In his later years, Lefebvre attempted to replace “socio-historical dialectics” with “spatial ontology,” or in other words to give historical dialectics a “spatialized” direction. He put forward the concept of “trialectics”: to the social and the historical, he added a third dimension, the spatial. According to Lefebvre, Marx’s reproduction was merely the “production of objects” in space; he failed to see that in post-industrial society, production would go beyond the limits of space, reproduction would extend to the “production of production relations” and space production would occupy the dominant place. Evidently, Western scholars are ahead of us in thinking about these issues. Whatever we may think about their views, one point is indubitable: the development of practice makes it inevitable that we enrich or revise our previous concepts of historical materialism. We should go beyond dogmatic and simplistic historical determinism and keep pace with the times; only when will we genuinely be able to bring theory to life.

Again, the direct cause of the transformation from “space” to “space production” is that capitalist society has evolved into a new stage. In this stage, surplus capital needs to find a way out for itself, and “it is one of the central ways in which capitalism has been able to supersede its limitations, through the production of the world, of the world as market.”5 In this way capital breaks through the restrictions of territory, state, nation and religion and potentially controls the whole world. Western Marxists referred to this stage of capitalism as developed industrial society, or, later, as late capitalist or post-industrial society. Subsequently, it was understood as “consumer society.” In fact, “consumption” has become a major driver of urban development, with “demand” being manufactured. In such a society, production is no longer dominant and consumption becomes the center of social life. Marcuse, a leading figure of the Frankfurt School, pointed out in the 1950s the central place of consumption in developed industrial society; the British sociologist Bauman and the French philosopher Baudrillard then further argued that today what is consumed is not the object itself but the symbol people assign to the object. Symbolic consumption also has the function of constructing identity, differentiating social strata and indicating difference. As the fundamental feature of our era, consumption has left an indelible impression on all arenas including the human spirit. Space production has assumed consumerist characteristics and has become a major means of sustaining consumer society. Meanwhile, since the capitalist relations of production are reproduced through the utilization of space, space production itself has developed into a new

3　Edward William Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory, p. 69.4　Ibid., p. 70. 5　Stuart Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre, pp. 233-235.

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form of rule, one that Lefebvre calls a “hierarchical society controlled by consumption.” Obviously this view is an extension of Western Marxism’s critical social theory. The form of governing in contemporary developed capitalist societies has changed from coercion-based “rule” to “control,” which seems milder but essentially permeates everyday life more widely. That is to say, space has assumed consumerist characteristics which are reflected in people’s daily lives.

In brief, as a new vehicle for capital, space production has, by its identification with consumer society, become a basic means of maintaining the normal functioning of consumer society, as well as playing a political role in supporting existing rule. Nowadays, space that is produced exists mainly as a commodity; furthermore, it steps into the consumer sphere and becomes circulating capital. This semantic extension of production must inevitably encourage traditional historical materialism to reconsider the historical role of “space production.”

II. Space Production and the Loss of Diversity

Space has directly entered the realm of circulation as capital, as can be seen almost everywhere in today’s cities. The crazy housing prices and large number of vacant speculative properties in Beijing, Shanghai and other first-tier cities suggest that the commodity of space has become an important domain for investment and appreciation. It is undeniable that urban development has brought about unprecedented prosperity. Nevertheless, the most developed metropolises in China, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, are plagued by “serious diseases.” Longstanding problems such as traffic congestion, air pollution and garbage overflow are still out of control and getting worse. And these are only the problems visible on the surface. From the point of view of human existence, culture, nature and people themselves have been reshaped and absorbed into consumption’s commercial orbit. Clearly, people were originally inspired to build cities not by commercial motives but because they had an innate need to live in groups. In these first cities, people enjoyed a sense of social belonging while maintaining their harmony with nature. As cities assumed more functions and became centers of politics, culture, industry, business and capital, however, they seem to have left behind their original purpose, for man’s heart can find no place to rest.

Specifically, the consumerism-dominated model of space production is being replicated and spread in an unbridled frenzy. Its products are either concrete, like real estate, roads, airports and transport, or they are abstract and invisible like banking, information, technology and business services. It is undeniable that such space is a manifestation of the progress of human civilization and constitutes a major stimulus for urban development. However, as more and more space is divided, produced and sold, a manufactured world has risen straight from the ground. In this world, everything is a commodity, even what is under the ground and air, water and sunlight. This space operates though modern technologies and in accordance with the laws of the market economy, gradually giving rise to homogeneous commercial space

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from which all differences have been erased and in which all elements are interchangeable. Eventually, this will lead to nature, urban culture and even our modes of existence being identical.

First of all, the richness and diversity of nature have been effaced; one could even say that the natural world itself has been smothered by space production. After Nietzsche’s declaration that “God is dead,” nature too is gradually withdrawing from us. Lefebvre draws a distinction between the outcomes of natural and human production, calling the former “work” and the latter “product.” The difference between them is that work is unique and irreplaceable while product can be reproduced and replaced. Increasingly we are substituting product for work. It is in this sense that Walter Benjamin, a thinker of the Frankfurt School, referred to our era as the “age of mechanical reproduction.” Today we are witnessing various “anti-natural” things such as consumerism, capital, symbols, networks etc., occupying ever more important positions in human society; space is being incessantly reproduced, and steel rods and cement have overwhelmed and strangled the vitality and creativity of nature. As a result of ever expanding space products, the distinctiveness of natural works will be more often replaced by products, and people will have to face a manufactured and produced, replicable, man-made nature in which there are no differences.

Another result of space production is the formation of a de-localized urban space development model and the emergence of undifferentiated urban culture. To put it another way, the previous diversity of social life and particularity of urban culture in a given space have been disrupted and subverted. On the one hand, space production has accelerated the process of urbanization and satisfied the daily needs of the urban population; on the other, it has more thoroughly internalized consumerist logic into urban space planning. This kind of space utilization, guided by consumerism, attaches primary importance to the economic value of space. The historical and cultural implications of a space may attract some attention, but it is clear that its inherent commercial opportunities and market value get more emphasis. The production of new urban space is based on the large-scale demolition of old urban districts whose integrity is damaged or destroyed. For example, the old city of Beijing has been destroyed on various pretexts; the old city walls are almost completely gone; heritage buildings are being demolished one after another, like Lun Beise’s Palace, the last prince’s palace at Wangfujing; and whole areas, like the Old Gulou neighborhood, are facing wholesale demolition and rebuilding. Shanghai confronts similar problems. In the upscale and fashionable multi-million dollar business district of Xintiandi (New Heaven and Earth), we have no sense of the distinctively Shanghainese Shikumen architectural setting in which the First National Congress of the CPC was convened (in Xintiandi). In this way history and culture have made way for overall urban planning. At the same time, the demolition undertaken in old urban districts implies the departure of the indigenous residents and the disintegration of their previous way of life. Accordingly, the distinctive flavor and memories of the original buildings and their residents must also disappear. The production of new urban

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space lays more emphasis on degree of modernization and convenience of consumption than on culture and history. The new urban districts around us are surprisingly similar, all equipped with high-class residential buildings, express highways, business districts, green areas, neon lights, etc. Outward appearance gives no clue to any cultural differences among regions. This external homogeneity of urban space in fact reflects cities’ loss of cultural diversity. The symbolic significance of architecture no longer lies in culture and history or regional differences, but in differences among social strata and in each stratum’s social status and purchasing power. It can be said that the discourse of modern urban architecture conveys the most thoroughgoing essence of consumerism.

However, space is produced by people and embodies their externalized views and thoughts. A space production model that denies local characteristics in fact exposes man’s intellectual convergence and even homogeneity. People’s hearts and minds are controlled by consumption and wholly colonized by the consumer spirit; consumerism has created a new social form. As early as the twentieth century, Western Marxism had already begun its critique of popular culture and had coined the idea of the “cultural industry” to refer to the entertainment industry system that uses modern technology for the large-scale reproduction and dissemination of cultural products. The cultural critique of thinkers of the time includes, as it were, a reflection upon technological rationality. In contemporary times, the concept of consumer culture has been proposed as a further development of the twentieth century cultural critique, one that bears the imprint of our own times. By virtue of technology and the mass media, consumer culture stirs up people’s psychological hunger for commodities in a more naked and effective way; consumption is its sole goal. It is in this sense that Fromm declared that “In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.”6 Consumption has become the soul of man and commodities the ultimate goal; man as a functional element of the social system has lost his uniqueness and turned into “one-dimensional man.” The principles of the production and operation of space products, a completely new field of consumption with limitless potential, are imbued with the consumer spirit. Space products with no local character mirror the way man has become formulaic and functional, a functionalism that will in turn be strengthened by living in this kind of consumer space. The two are interpenetrating and together construct an object-filled objective world.

In conclusion, space production is affecting and changing nature, culture and people’s way of life. To let space surrender to capital and to plan people’s lives through the control of space has almost become the norm in space production. The modern way of life is more associated with high-density housing, traffic congestion, large business districts, internet communication, etc. We are not only submerged by objects in space, but also overshadowed by space itself. The urban prosperity created by space production has undoubtedly brought us convenience and affluence. However, the profit-oriented urbanization process has stripped away the original meaning of space. As a result, man has lost the sense of belonging that should exist

6　Eric Fromm, The Sane Society, p. 370.

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in his relations with society and nature; in the forest of skyscrapers, he has nowhere to rest his heart. This must necessarily give rise to a prevailing nihilism and hedonism.

III. Constructing New Values: Resistance against Space Production

Space production, consumer society, globalization and so on are in fact all externalizations of the same values, namely the externalized technology-centered values of Western consumer society and the generalized principle of quantifiable instrumental rationality. Therefore it is only by proposing and constructing new values and ceasing to take economic processes as the only criteria for evaluating social civilization that we will be fundamentally able to curb the frenzied expansion of space production and its negative consequences. As early as the late twentieth century, before the American financial crisis, V. S. Stepin pointed out that if the technology-based model of Western consumer civilization kept going, the human race would be faced with self-destruction. “I claimed and wrote,” he says, “that modern global problems will probably only be solved when civilization makes the transition to a new type, one based on a value system different from that embodied in technological civilization.”7 In fact, a voice other than that of consumer culture did emerge in the twentieth century, though it was not heard by many in consumer society. With the emergence and intensification of all kinds of real-world problems, such as the financial crisis, the environmental crisis, loss of belief and rampant materialism, thinkers have paid increasing attention to a different path and cultural model, one that would counteract capital’s endless expansion, the formation of undifferentiated space and man’s functionalized existence. In practice, the consequences of unbounded space production have been keenly felt by everybody living in big cities; and a “low-carbon lifestyle” has been put forward in a conscious effort to resist the current way of life. What’s more, the Chinese government has now rectified the previous development model and development criteria. The change from “development is the absolute principle” declared in the early reform period to the “sustainable development view” and then to the “scientific concept of development” proposed at the Seventeenth National Congress of the CPC, makes it plain that the government has set “man’s all-round development” as its top development objective. President Hu Jintao expounded the implications of the scientific concept of development in November 2004. He said, “Practice shows that the concept of development adopted by a country usually has a major implication on the way it develops. Different concepts often lead to different results. Given the conditions of the modern era, we should put people on top of our priority list and strive to achieve a comprehensive, balanced and sustainable development.”8 The people-oriented scientific concept of development is evidently a correction of the capital-dominated view of development.

As a matter of fact, thinkers have long sought new values that would counterbalance

7　An Qinian, Marxist Philosophy in the Eyes of Contemporary Scholars: Russia, p. 194.8　Hu Jintao, “Advancing Win-win Cooperation for Sustainable Development,” p. 3.

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the capital-centered values of capitalist civilization. From the mid-twentieth century on, the developed capitalist countries have seen the rise of many schools of thought including ecological Marxism, ecological socialism, process philosophy and new religion. All of them reject the previous development model that takes economic progress as its criterion and attempt to find a possible alternative. Regardless of the specific differences and even conflicts among them, they are unanimous in taking the man-nature relationship as their focus of attention. These thinkers argue that ecological crises and the calamity looming over nature are the direct ill effects of the consumer society; the human race will be doomed to destroy itself if it sticks to its present path. They have undertaken analyses from a variety of perspectives. For example, the ecological Marxist J.B. Foster has explored the causes of a series of crises from the point of view of the capitalist system. He believes that more serious than the financial crisis is the threat posed by the deteriorating ecology of our planet, a deterioration that is precisely the outcome of the capitalist system’s inability to coordinate the metabolism of nature and that of society. In this sense, the capitalist system is a failure. Process philosophers believe that only when nature is regarded as a “divine” subject will we be able to prevent its collapse and restore the original meaning of space and only when space is treated as a spiritual subject will we be able to overcome homogeneous space suffused with commercial behavior. Advocates of new religion emphasize that after “the death of God,” people should secure their salvation by believing in the divinity within, because man’s innate capitalist tendencies can only be overcome if “spirituality” resumes its position in his existence. In a word, what concerns these thinkers is finding a solution to the various disasters resulting from capital’s limitless expansion. They believe that only a completely different cultural ideology and value system will extricate the human race from this series of crises. It is clear that China’s putting forward the scientific concept of development is a realistic effort with the same objective.

We can see that these thinkers are attempting to find a viable theoretical alternative. In the end, however, this is just a call for action sounded by cloistered philosophers. As space products and the consumer society join forces, where can a realistic opposition come from? In fact, Marx had foreseen that capital would be the fundamental force in the destruction of capital itself and all its variants, because “the universality towards which it irresistibly strives encounters barriers in its own nature, which will, at a certain stage of its development, allow it to be recognized as being itself the greatest barrier to this tendency, and hence will drive towards its own suspension.”9 As the eruption of the American financial crisis proves, Marx’s foresight in this respect has been borne out by reality. Lefebvre has reached the same conclusion, observing, “Is there not a danger that the economic sphere, fetishized as the world market, along with the space that it determines, and the political sphere made absolute, might destroy their own foundation—namely land, space, town and countryside—and thus in effect self-destruct?”10 That is to say, by producing space, capitalism reproduces the capitalist

9　Karl Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1857-58, p. 394.10　Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 326.

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relations of production and consolidates its rule. As that process accelerates, space production itself becomes the center of a multitude of contradictions and a gathering point for the forces that are breaking down capitalism. As an ancient Chinese saying goes, “extremes breed their opposites;” the moment when something reaches its apogee is the moment when it begins to die. It is the same with capital. When the logic of capital is applied in every domain, its evils will be fully exposed and will be turned against it, so that capital will become its own grave-digger.

Some scholars optimistically believe, therefore, that the advent of the post-industrial society has laid the foundation for the birth of a new social form, and the beginnings of a new form of socialism have already come into being in the space produced by capital. This is determined by the characteristics of post-industrial society. These characteristics, generally speaking, include the following main aspects: a shift in the center of gravity from material production to service and information industries; the change from repetitious to creative work; the tendency toward de-materialization of the means of production; and the shortening of work time. These changes in the basic factors of production will bring to an end the previous “economic”-centered social forms and give rise to new ones. In other words, Marx’s theory of social forms should be regarded as involving both economic social forms and the subsequent communist social forms. Post-industrial society has already taken on the characteristics and conditions of non-economic social forms and so is homogeneous with communism. We can even say that the advent of post-industrial society has to some extent verified Marx’s theory of social forms. For Marx, “In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production.…The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.”11 The rise of post-industrial society means the end of economic social forms and marks society’s conscious development towards communism. It is in this sense that Marx’s thought will provide the theoretical basis for constructing a new value system distinct from that of consumer society. Some people call these possible new social forms neo-socialist, and believe that an embryonic neo-socialism is already developing in contemporary capitalist society, because the emergence of post-industrial society marks the beginning of the decline of economic social forms.

Undeniably, space production plays a crucial role in the development of urbanization. However, if capital, with space production as its vehicle, continues its unfettered expansion, so that economy rides roughshod over political, cultural, legal and moral restraints and becomes the yardstick of development, this will inevitably be disastrous for nature, culture, ecology, urban construction and human survival, and “our original ideals” will be left further behind. Such being the case, we should, especially when urbanization and space production are growing like wildfire, reflect upon what aims and criteria our newly produced urban space

11　Karl Marx, preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 33.

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should have if it is to achieve man’s comprehensive development and establish a “harmonious society” through the coordination of humanity, the environment and resources.

Notes on Contributor

Che Yuling is Professor and Ph.D. Supervisor of the Center for Chinese Urbanization Studies and the Department of Philosophy, Soochow University (Suzhou). Her research focuses on overseas Marxism, Russian religious philosophy and urban culture. One of her representative works is “Another View of Truth: The Subversion of Objectivity” (别一种真理观：对客观性的颠覆, World Philosophy 〔世界哲

学〕, 2008, no. 5). Address for correspondence: School of Politics and Public Administration, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, China. E-mail: lingziche@163.com.

References

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克思主义哲学：俄罗斯学者卷). Beijing: Beijing Normal University Publishing Group, 2008.Elden, Stuart. Understanding Henri Lefebvre. London and New York: Continuum, 2004.Fromm, Eric. The Sane Society. Trans. Sun Kaixiang. Guiyang: Guizhou People’s Publishing House,

1994.Hu, Jintao, “Advancing Win-win Cooperation for Sustainable Development” (推进合作共赢, 实现可持

续发展). In Selected Statements on the Scientific Concept of Development (科学发展观重要论述摘

编). Beijing: Central Party Literature Press and Party-Building Books, 2009. Lefebvre, Henri. La révolution urbaine. Paris, Gallimard, 1970.Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.Marx, Karl. Economic Manuscripts of 1857-58. In Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works,

vol. 46 (I). Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1979.Marx, Karl. Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. In Karl Marx and Frederick

Engels, Selected Works, vol. 2. Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1995.Saunders, Peter. Social Theory and the Urban Question. London and New York: Routledge, 1986. Soja, Edward William. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory.

Trans. Wang Wenbin. Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2004.

—Translated by Li CunnaRevised by Sally Borthwick

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