Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.1, 2013

The Social Logic of Space: Reflections on Marx’s and Engel’s Theory of Space

(Abstract)

Hu Xiao

Space has witnessed a natural-social and physical-humanistic transformation in human practice. This requires us to reveal the mutual generation mechanism of spatial socialization and social spatialization on the basis of practice. Marx discussed the reconstruction of spatial socialization through an analysis of the dual reproduction of space by productive forces and productive relations in terms of the historical evolution of production means. He laid a special emphasis on the production, construction and modeling of living space brought about by different periods of human society and different states of substantial practice, so that history can be periodized according to the mode of living space. As far as the course of world history is concerned, the nature of the bourgeoisie “creating a world after its own image” is that capital logic brings production practices and space into the track of capital operation through the rigid force of global market economy, thereby providing the developed capitalist countries with global supremacy.