Urban Thought in the Perspective of Marx’s Social Reproduction and Its Contemporary Development

As is well known, the relationship between Marxism and the city, and its theorization, is closely linked to the research of Western urban Marxists such as Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and Manuel Castells. They reinterpreted and elaborated Marxism with the city as the theme, further activating the political-economic method of Marxism. However, in their view, Marx and Engels merely regarded the city as a “site of production” and “the most effective, profit-maximizing way of organizing capitalism,” without elaborating on the city as an object and theme. In fact, for Marx and Engels, the city is not only an expression of certain social relations and an internal mechanism of the movement of a certain mode of social production, but also a manifestation and externalization of the internal contradictions of certain social relations. Therefore, research on the city must be examined from the overall perspective of social reproduction. Marx’s analysis of the contradictory movement of the capitalist mode of production provides a basic analytical framework and research path for theoretical research on the city from an overall perspective. The key to exploring Marx and Engels’ urban research lies not in simply excavating the discussions related to urban issues in their works, but in delving into the deep logic of their research on capitalism, re-examining the theoretical generation of urban issues and the possibility of their contemporary extension. In other words, the key lies in using the urban theme to continuously concretize Marx and Engels’ theory of the modern capitalist mode of production. This means that we need to apply the method of “ascending from the abstract to the concrete” to explore how the city, as a concrete totality of the capitalist mode of production, continuously objectifies and enriches itself in the movement of capitalism’s internal contradictions, presenting itself as a “historical totality” and a “social totality,” thereby laying a historical-materialist theoretical foundation for the study of urban issues in the context of Chinese-path modernization.

众所周知，马克思主义与城市的关系及其理论化，与亨利·列斐伏尔、大卫·哈维、曼纽尔·卡斯特等西方都市马克思主义者的研究密切相关，他们以城市为主题对马克思主义进行重新解释与阐发，进一步激活了马克思主义的政治经济学方法。但是，在他们看来，马克思恩格斯只是将城市看作一个“生产场所”和“组织资本主义的最有效的、利益最大化的方式”,并没有将城市作为一个对象和主题加以阐述。事实上，在马克思恩格斯那里，城市不仅是一定社会关系的表达，是一定社会生产方式运动的内在机制，而且也是一定社会关系内在矛盾的彰显与外化。因而关于城市的研究必须从社会再生产的总体性视角来审视。马克思对于资本主义社会生产方式矛盾运动的分析，为从总体性视角对城市展开理论研究提供了基础的分析架构与研究路径。探究马克思恩格斯城市研究的关键不在于简单挖掘其著作中与城市议题相关的论述，而在于深入其资本主义研究的深层逻辑中，重新审视城市议题的理论生成及其当代延展的可能性。换言之，关键在于借助城市主题不断将马克思恩格斯关于现代资本主义生产方式理论具体化。这也就意味着，我们需要运用“从抽象上升到具体”的方法，探究作为资本主义生产方式的具体总体的城市，如何在资本主义内在矛盾的运动中不断对象化与丰富化，呈现为“历史的总体”和“社会的总体”，从而为中国式现代化语境下的城市问题研究奠定历史唯物主义的学理性基础。

I. The City as a Historical Totality: The Historical Genesis of the Capitalist City

一、作为历史总体的城市：资本主义城市的历史性生成

In *Social Theory and the Urban Question*, Peter Saunders roughly divides the methodologies of urban research into three categories: the first is the Émile Durkheim-style empirical approach, emphasizing empirical observation and analysis of the city; the second is the Max Weber-style method, which analyzes cities under all socio-historical forms by summarizing an “ideal type”; the third is the dialectics emphasized by Marx and Engels, which Marx later summarized in *Capital* and his manuscripts as the method of “ascending from the abstract to the concrete,” intended to reproduce the historical genesis and transformation of the city at the level of thought. Although all three analyses of the city attempt to incorporate the city into a more overarching analytical category and study the social relations behind the city, only dialectics truly achieves this, revealing the essence of the mode of production behind the city and the internal contradictions of its social relations. As Lefebvre stated: “The urban phenomenon, considered as a whole, cannot be understood through any specialized science.” For Marx and Engels, both the Durkheim-style empirical method and the Weber-style formal-logical method can be classified as formal-rationalist methods. Using such methods can at most summarize the commonalities of the development of things, but cannot penetrate the contradictory essence of their development, thus possessing inherent limitations.

彼得·桑德斯在《社会理论与城市问题》中，将城市研究的方法论大概划分为三类：第一类是埃米尔·涂尔干式的经验主义的研究，重视对城市的经验式观察和分析；第二类是马克斯·韦伯式的方法，通过归纳总结出一种“理想模型”，来分析所有社会历史形式下的城市；第三类则是马克思恩格斯所强调的辩证法，马克思后来在《资本论》及其手稿中将其概括为“抽象上升到具体”的方法，意在思维层面再现城市的历史性生成及其变化。虽然这三种关于城市的分析都力图将城市纳入更为总体性的分析范畴之中，研究城市背后的社会关系，但只有辩证法才真正实现了这一点，揭示了城市背后的生产方式本质及其社会关系的内在矛盾。正如列斐伏尔所言：“被视为一个整体的都市现象不可能通过任何一门专业科学获得理解。”在马克思恩格斯那里，无论是涂尔干式的经验主义的方法，抑或是韦伯式的形式逻辑的方法，都可以归为形式理性主义的方法，运用这种方法最多只能概括事物发展的共性，而无法深入事物发展的矛盾性本质，具有内在的局限性。

Specifically, in the view of Marx and Engels, the formal-rationalist method is a method of “external reflection.” It knows only abstract general principles and is satisfied with grasping the external world and objective objects through such general abstract principles, without penetrating into the specific content of things. This is the case with the realist and reductionist understanding of space. This method views space as three-dimensional space in the Newtonian-Cartesian sense. This method of understanding space is actually the mathematical and geometric method established by Galileo, Newton, and others, used as a precise scientific tool, treating space as space calculated by three-dimensional formulas. If this method is used to understand space, then spaces under different social forms in history would appear as an undifferentiated unity; all spaces could be reduced to spatial models calculated by length, width, and height. If this method is used to understand the city, it can only develop an empirical definition of the city described by concepts such as population size and regional scale. The city thus becomes a natural, fixed, unchanging physical space, and both human practice behind the city and the rich social relations disappear. Consequently, urban space becomes a fixed, unchanging natural entity; people lose all agency within this space, and space and the subject are completely severed. It is on this basis that Lukács, in *History and Class Consciousness*, closely linked the formal-rationalist method with bourgeois ideology. The result can only be the recognition, adaptation to, or submission to the existing bourgeois society, making it impossible to form a view that changes things and bourgeois society, thus giving rise to a universal reified consciousness that hinders the formation of proletarian class consciousness.

具体而言，在马克思恩格斯看来，形式理性主义的方法是一种“外部反思”的方法，它只知道抽象的一般原则，并且满足于用这种一般的抽象原则去把握外部世界和客观对象，而不深入事物的特定内容之中。实在论、还原论对于空间的认识就是如此。这种方法将空间看作牛顿—笛卡儿意义上的三维空间，这种对于空间的认识方法其实就是由伽利略、牛顿等人所确立的、被当作精密科学工具的数学和几何学方法，将空间看作用三维公式所计算的空间。如果用这种方法去认识空间，那么历史上不同社会形式下的空间就会呈现为一种无差别的统一，所有的空间都可以被还原为由长宽高所计算的空间模型。如果用这种方法去认识城市，那么发展出的只能是一种以人口数量、区域规模等概念所描述的实证化的城市定义，城市由此成为一个自然的固定不变的实体空间，无论是城市背后的人的实践抑或是丰富的社会关系都消失不见了。由此一来，城市空间成为固定不变的自然存在物，人们在这种空间中失去了任何能动性，空间和主体完全被割裂开来了。正是在此基础上，卢卡奇在《历史与阶级意识》中将形式理性主义的方法与资产阶级的意识形态紧密联系在一起，其所导致的结果只能是对现存资产阶级社会的认识、适应或服从，无法形成改变事物和资产阶级社会的观点，由此形成了普遍的物化意识，妨碍了无产阶级阶级意识的生成。

Hegel was the first to criticize and transcend the formal-rationalist method. In his view, the formal-rationalist method is an “external reflection,” and external reflection is a category of finitude. Using this method, one can only know the parts of things but cannot reach the thing-in-itself, which forever remains on the other side of knowledge. His way of overcoming this external reflection was to propose a logic of “becoming,” emphasizing that things and problems must be studied within history, and that subject and object must be seen as a process of historical becoming. To this end, he regarded reason as an all-encompassing, self-generating concrete totality, and the historical process as the process of the generation and development of absolute reason. Initially, Marx was critical of Hegel’s myth of reason, but with the deepening of his political-economic research, Marx came to realize that the totality thought in Hegel’s speculative reason was merely the conceptual reflection of real social relations and their contradictory movement. After stripping away its mystical form, Marx gradually discovered its “rational kernel within the mystical shell” [1]1 A phrase used by Marx in the Afterword to the second edition of *Capital*, Volume I, to describe what he took from Hegel’s dialectic after inverting it., that is, always studying things within history, studying them in their becoming and origin, viewing them as historically generated and organically unified wholes. Applying this dialectical method to the city means viewing the development of the modern city from the perspective of social relations and historical genesis, exploring the continuous actualization of the relationship between the city and the countryside and the constant change and development of its forms. Thus, for Marx and Engels, the city is precisely the internal mechanism of the movement of a certain mode of social production, the externalization and manifestation of the internal contradictions of social relations. The relationship between the city and the countryside constitutes the carrier of production changes, providing them with storage, conditions, sites, and environments. Based on the contradictory movement of real social modes of production, they examined the urban spaces of ancient society, medieval society, and modern bourgeois society.

黑格尔首先对形式理性主义的方法进行批判和超越。在他看来，形式理性主义的方法是一种“外部反思”，而外部反思是一种有限性范畴，用这种方法只能认识事物的局部而无法通达物自身，物自身永远只能停留在知识的彼岸。他克服这种外部反思的方法是提出了一种“生成”逻辑，强调必须将事物和问题放在历史中加以研究，将主体和客体看作历史生成的过程，为此，他将理性看作一个无所不包、自我生成的具体总体，将历史过程看作绝对理性的生成和发展过程。起初马克思对黑格尔的理性神话是持批判态度的，但伴随其政治经济学研究的深入，马克思认识到，黑格尔思辨理性中的总体性思想其实不过是现实的社会关系及其矛盾运动的观念反映。剥去它的神秘形式之后，马克思逐渐发现其“神秘外壳中的合理内核”,即始终将事物放在历史中去研究，放在生成和起源中去研究，将其看作历史地生成和有机统一的整体。运用这种辩证方法去看待城市，也就意味着从社会关系和历史生成的角度出发看待现代城市的发展，探讨城市与乡村这一关系的不断现实化以及其形式的不断变化和发展。因而，在马克思恩格斯看来，城市正是一定社会生产方式运动的内在机制，是社会关系内在矛盾的外化与表现。城市与乡村的关系构成生产变迁的载体，为其提供了贮藏所、条件、场所和环境。立足现实社会生产方式的矛盾运动，他们考察了古代社会、中世纪社会以及现代资产阶级社会的城市空间。

First, the “undifferentiated unity” of town and country in ancient society. In ancient society, land was a “great experimental field” and “arsenal,” providing both the means of labor and materials of labor, as well as the dwelling place of the community; it was the foundation of the community. Production was mainly centered on land and the countryside, and meeting people’s needs and use-values was the primary purpose of production; the countryside and the city presented more of an “undifferentiated unity.” Due to the limited level of people’s material production, “the narrowness of their relationship to nature determines their narrow relationship to one another, and their narrow relationship to one another determines their narrow relationship to nature.” [2]2 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, *The German Ideology* (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), p. 43. [Translator’s note: The English translation of the Marx-Engels quote follows the standard English edition.] Understanding of space and the city was more concrete and empirical. For the indigenous inhabitants of ancient society, they were very familiar with the concrete content of specific spaces—for example, they were very familiar with the course of a river, but if asked to draw a map of that river and its different tributaries, it was impossible, because they could not abstractly generalize space, but rather relied more on empirical intuition. The same applies to the understanding of city and countryside: people lived in communities, taking land as their means of subsistence and livelihood; the city and countryside appeared as an “undifferentiated unity,” so the concepts of either city or countryside did not exist for them; these concepts were closely linked to natural factors such as land.

第一，古代社会城乡“无差别的统一”。在古代社会，土地是一个“大实验场”和“武库”,既提供劳动资料和劳动材料，还提供共同体居住的场所，是共同体的基础。生产主要围绕土地和乡村进行，满足人们的需要和使用价值是生产的主要目的，乡村与城市更多呈现为一种“无差别的统一”。由于人们物质生产水平的有限性，“人们对自然界的狭隘的关系决定着他们之间的狭隘的关系，而他们之间的狭隘的关系又决定着他们对自然界的狭隘的关系”,对于空间和城市的理解更多呈现为一种具象化和经验性的理解。对于古代社会的土著居民来说，他们对于特定空间中的具体化内容是十分熟悉的，比如对于河流的流程十分熟悉，但是如果让他们画一张该河流及其不同流向的地图，则是不可能的，因为他们无法将空间抽象地加以概括，而更多是一种经验性的直观。对于城市与乡村的理解也是如此，人们生活在共同体之中，以土地为其生存资料和生活资料，城市与乡村表现为一种“无差别的统一”，因而无论是城市还是乡村的概念对他们而言都是不存在的，这些概念与土地等自然因素紧密联系在一起。

Second, the opposition and conflict between town and country in medieval society. With the development of social material production and the division of labor, agricultural labor began to separate from industrial and commercial labor, and production for the purpose of exchange began to emerge. The separation of agriculture from industry and commerce simultaneously brought about the separation of the countryside from the city, the latter constituting “the foundation of every developed division of labor mediated by commodity exchange.” The history of the Middle Ages (the Germanic era) prominently manifested this opposition and conflict between town and country. In the view of Marx and Engels, this opposition and conflict between town and country in medieval society actually reflected the antagonistic relationship between the emerging commodity economy and feudal ownership: on the one hand, the growing commodity economy of the urban economy, i.e., the urban guild system of ownership; on the other hand, the natural-exchange rural economy, i.e., the feudal lordship system based on land possession. At this time, the separation of city and countryside not only meant the separation of agricultural labor from industrial and commercial labor, but also the separation of mental labor from manual labor, and spiritual labor from material labor. The city, as a space shaped in opposition to the original natural space, represented a socio-historical space or “second nature” opposed to natural spaces like the countryside. It is on this basis that Lefebvre pointed out: “The city, in the course of history, becomes a crucible in which relations of production are forged and the contradictions between relations of production and productive forces are brought to light.” [3]3 Henri Lefebvre, *The Urban Revolution*, trans. Robert Bononno (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), p. 15. [Translator’s note: The English translation follows the published English edition.]

第二，中世纪社会的城乡对立与冲突。伴随社会物质生产和劳动分工的发展，农业劳动开始与工业劳动、商业劳动相分离，以交换为目的的生产开始出现。农业与工商业的分离同时带来了乡村与城市的分离，后者构成了“一切发达的、以商品交换为中介的分工的基础”。中世纪（日耳曼时代）的历史就突出表现了这种城乡之间的对立和冲突。在马克思恩格斯看来，中世纪社会的这种城乡之间的对立冲突，其实反映的恰恰是新兴的商品经济与封建所有制之间的对立关系：一方面是商品经济与日俱增的城市经济，即城市的同业公会所有制；另一方面则是自然交换的乡村经济，即以土地占有为基础的封建领主制。在这个时候，城市与乡村的分离不仅意味着农业劳动与工商业劳动的分离，而且意味着脑力劳动与体力劳动的分离、精神劳动与物质劳动的分离，城市作为与原初的自然空间相对立而塑造起来的空间，代表的正是与农村等自然规定性空间相对立的社会历史性的空间或“第二自然”。正是在此基础上，列斐伏尔指出：“城市在历史的进程中成为一个熔炉，在其中，生产关系被制造出来，生产关系和生产力的矛盾得以凸显。”

Third, the industrialization of agriculture and “rural urbanization” in modern capitalist society. If the relationship between town and country in the Middle Ages appeared as one of opposition and conflict, the development of capitalist industry brought about “rural urbanization,” the destruction and occupation of the countryside by the city, with the countryside being framed according to the needs of the city. This is mainly manifested in the following two aspects: On the one hand, because the city is most conducive to the concentration of means of production and labor power and to market exchange, it replaced the countryside as the “great experimental field” of social forces. The development of large-scale capitalist industry caused large industrial cities to spring up like mushrooms, and all “naturally formed cities” and “naturally formed relations” were destroyed; it made the city ultimately triumph over the countryside. On the other hand, with the universal development of large-scale capitalist industry and commodity exchange, the countryside was incorporated into “the production not of use-value but of exchange-value” and also became a precondition for large-scale capitalist industry. Along with the industrialization of agriculture, agriculture was no longer a self-sufficient independent industry; machine manufacturing, foreign trade, exchange, etc., gradually became “necessary needs” of agricultural production, and agriculture increasingly became merely an industrial sector dominated by capital.

第三，现代资本主义社会的农业工业化与“乡村城市化”。如果说中世纪的城乡关系呈现为一种对立与冲突的关系，资本主义工业的发展所带来的则是“乡村城市化”，是城市对于乡村的破坏和占领，乡村按照城市的需要被座架起来。这主要表现为以下两个方面：一方面，城市由于最有利于生产资料、劳动力的集中与市场交换，因而取代农村成为社会力量的“大实验场”，资本主义大工业的发展使得大工业城市如雨后春笋般得以兴起，一切“自然形成的城市”与“自然形成的关系”都被消灭了，它使城市最终战胜了农村。另一方面，随着资本主义大工业和商品交换的普遍发展，农村被纳入“不是使用价值而是交换价值的生产”,也成为资本主义大工业的前提。伴随农业的工业化，农业不再是自给自足的独立产业，机器制造业、对外贸易、交换等逐渐成为农业生产的“必要的需要”，农业越来越变成仅仅是由资本所支配的一个工业部门。

As described above, through his analysis of different modes of production and social relations, Marx presents the historical development of the city from a space of natural determination to a social space with richer connotations, and the historical transformation of the town-country relationship from “urbanization of the countryside” to “rural urbanization,” revealing the fundamental transformation of the social mode of production behind the historical changes in the town-country relationship. In the historical process from ancient society, through medieval society, to bourgeois society, the city continuously sheds its natural attributes and becomes a place where social relations gather, acquiring increasingly rich and specific connotations. The modern city developed along with the process of capitalist industrialization. This mode of industrial production differs from the previous agricultural production based on a natural economy; natural ties no longer occupy a dominant position, but rather “social, historically created factors predominate.” Capitalist industrial production creates a huge intermediary system composed of an exchange system; everything must be realized through exchange. Exchange-value and money replace use-value as the general form of wealth, constituting universal and comprehensive social relations among people. Thus, through this industrial production and practical activity, people break free from the constraints of natural time and space, creating a social space different from natural existence, and the city is the concentrated expression of this space. This social space is no longer a substantive material existence, but a non-substantive relational existence created by human practical activity. From a broader perspective of human history, this precisely indicates that with the development of large-scale capitalist industry and cities, human society has moved from the previous stage of “relations of personal dependence” to the stage of “personal independence founded on objective [sachlicher] dependence,” [4]4 Karl Marx, *Grundrisse*, trans. Martin Nicolaus (London: Penguin, 1973), p. 158. [Translator’s note: The English translation follows the standard English edition.] and the city is the concrete manifestation of the spatiotemporal mechanism of the stage of “personal independence founded on objective dependence.”

如上所述，马克思通过对不同生产方式和社会关系的分析，呈现了城市从自然规定性的空间向内涵更丰富的社会空间的历史性发展，城乡关系从“城市乡村化”到“乡村城市化”的历史性转变，展现了城乡关系的历史性变迁背后社会生产方式的根本变革。在从古代社会、中世纪社会到资产阶级社会的历史性进程中，城市不断摆脱自然的属性而成为社会关系得以聚集的场所，具有了越来越丰富与具体的内涵。现代城市是伴随资本主义工业化进程发展起来的，这种工业生产方式不同于以往以自然经济为主的农业生产，自然联系不再占据优势地位，而“社会、历史所创造的因素占优势”。资本主义的工业生产创造出一个由交换体系构成的巨大的中介系统，一切都必须通过交换而得以实现，交换价值和货币取代使用价值成为一般财富的形式，构成了人们之间普遍的和全面的社会关系。因而，通过这种工业生产与实践活动，人们摆脱了自然的时间与空间的束缚，创造了一种不同于自然存在的社会空间，城市就是这种空间的集中表现。这种社会空间不再是一种实体性的物质性存在，而是由人的实践活动所创造的非实体性的关系存在。从更宽广的人类历史的视野来看，这正是表明：随着资本主义大工业和城市的发展，人类社会从以往“人的依赖关系”迈向“以物的依赖性为基础的人的独立性”的阶段，而城市正是“以物的依赖性为基础的人的独立性”阶段的时空机制的具体表现。

Thus it can be seen that Marx and Engels’ understanding of the city consistently adhered to the method of “rising from the abstract to the concrete.” The abstraction of the city by formal rationalist method is merely a “general abstraction,” i.e., abstracting the general principles of the city and applying them to the analysis of any city; the abstraction of the city emphasized by Marx and Engels is a “concrete abstraction.” In their view, “the most general abstractions arise only in the midst of the richest possible concrete development, where one thing appears as common to many, to all.” [5]5 Karl Marx, *Grundrisse*, p. 104. [Translator’s note: The English translation follows the standard English edition.] In other words, although cities existed in pre-capitalist societies, it is precisely with the development of industrial capitalism that “this category, as the most modern society’s category, appears as actually true in this abstraction.” Of course, if in the early stages of capitalist development the city more often served as the medium and background for industrial capitalist development, the city more often continuously developed as the site for the production, realization, and distribution of capital’s surplus value; with the further development of the mode of production in contemporary capitalist society, due to a series of “implosion-explosion” factors such as urban concentration, rural population exodus, expansion of urban organizations, and the complete subordination of the countryside to the city, the urban began to present itself as a “subject.” The modern city no longer appears as the passive existence of the industrial capitalist period, but has become the necessary site for the development of modern capitalist relations of production, and has further developed into an urban form. It is on this basis that Lefebvre and others further highlighted the importance of the urban problematic, emphasizing that the problem of the reproduction of relations of production must be raised to a certain height and studied together with the urban problematic. [6]6 Henri Lefebvre, *The Urban Revolution*, p. 15. [Translator’s note: The term “problematic” (problématique) is used in the Althusserian sense of a theoretical framework or set of questions.]

由此可见，马克思恩格斯对城市的认识始终坚持“抽象上升到具体”的方法。形式理性主义的方法对于城市的抽象只是一种“一般抽象”，即抽象出城市的一般原则，并将其运用于任何城市的分析之上；马克思恩格斯所强调的城市的抽象则是“具体的抽象”，在他们看来，“最一般的抽象总只是产生在最丰富的具体发展的场合，在那里，一种东西为许多东西所共有，为一切所共有”。换言之，虽然说在前资本主义社会就已经存在城市，但正是伴随工业资本主义的发展，这个“作为最现代的社会的范畴，才在这种抽象中表现为实际上真实的东西”。当然，如果说在资本主义发展的初期，城市更多地表现为工业资本主义发展的媒介和背景，城市更多是作为资本剩余价值的生产、实现与分配的场所得以不断发展；伴随当代资本主义社会生产方式的进一步发展，由于都市集中化、农村人口外流、都市组织的扩张、乡村完全从属于城市等一系列“内爆—外爆”的因素，都市开始作为一个“主体”加以呈现。现代的都市已经不再表现为工业资本主义时期那种消极的存在，而是成为现代资本主义生产关系发展的必然场所，进而发展为一种都市形式。正是在此基础上，列斐伏尔等人进一步凸显了都市问题的重要性，强调必须将生产关系再生产的问题与都市总问题式提到一定的高度加以研究。

II. The City as a Social Totality: The Continuous Reproduction of Capitalist Social Relations

二、作为社会总体的城市：资本主义社会关系的不断再生产

For Marx and Engels, society was always the subject and object of their research, but the society they spoke of was not an abstract society, nor an abstract concept or category of society, but society under specific social modes of production and relations of production. In other words, each social organism has its own specific laws; because they are at different stages of development, their entire structures are also different, and what constitutes the essential content of a particular society is precisely its “essential difference” from the general. Applied specifically to the analysis of contemporary capitalist relations of production, capital plays a dominant role as the “illuminating light” and the “special ether,” so the city under capitalist conditions is by no means a fixed and rigid material entity; as an expression of capitalist social relations, it presents the production and reproduction of capitalist relations of production. More concretely, the city is precisely the dialectical unity of the premise and result of the continuous production and reproduction of capitalist relations of production. In contrast, positivist and empiricist understandings of the modern city dissolve the contradictory nature of the social relations behind it; space thereby appears as a seemingly pure, neutral existence, and social relations also appear on the surface as balanced and harmonious social relations. This so-called scientific understanding of the city and its scientific concepts are a deliberate simplification: “the systematic intentionality is concealed under the appearance of the ‘objective’ nature of the scientific object,” thereby used to consolidate a certain power, authority, and model.

在马克思恩格斯那里，社会始终是其研究的主体与对象，但是他们所说的社会不是抽象的社会，也不是关于社会的抽象概念和范畴，而是在一定的社会生产方式与生产关系下的社会。换言之，每一个社会机体都有其特定的规律，由于所处的发展阶段不同，它们的整个结构也不一样，构成特定社会本质内容的正是其有别于一般的“本质的差别”。具体到对当代资本主义生产关系的分析中，资本作为“普照的光”和“特殊的以太”发挥着主导性的作用，因而资本主义条件下的城市决不是固定僵化的物质存在物，其作为资本主义社会关系的表达，呈现的正是资本生产关系的生产与再生产。更具体而言，城市正是资本主义生产关系不断生产与再生产的前提和结果的辩证统一体。与之不同，对于现代城市的实证主义和经验主义的理解则消解了其背后的社会关系的矛盾性，空间由此成为一种貌似纯粹、中立的存在，社会关系也在表面上呈现为一种平衡与和谐的社会关系。这种对城市的所谓科学认识及其科学的概念是一种有意的简化，“系统的意向性被掩饰在科学对象的‘客观性’本质的外观之下”,由此用来巩固某种权力、权威和模式。

Marx and Engels, by contrast, emphasized that the production and reproduction of social relations is an indivisible totality. Each particular society is not a fixed, static entity but a complex organic whole constituted by the production and reproduction of specific social relations, in which different elements interact with each other. Marx defined society as “the sum of those connections and relations in which individuals stand to one another,” stressing that society is neither an organic aggregate of individuals nor a simple collection of various relations, but their organic unity. Only by grasping the totality of the sum of relations among individuals in a given society and their interactions can one arrive at a systematic, concrete understanding of society. The social reality as a totality is not a simple collection of social facts or some abstract totality, but manifests as the dominant production under a specific social form and the social relations determined by that production. As Korsch later emphasized, Marxism “is a theory that grasps social development as a living whole.” The “real world” that Marx and Engels always sought to explain and change is the “sum of material relations of life” generated by human practical activity. The “sum of material relations of life” in each particular society manifests as a total process of production, including not only the production of material means of subsistence but also the production of social relations, the production of human beings, the production of ideology, and other aspects.

马克思恩格斯则强调，社会关系的生产与再生产是一个不可分割的总体，每一个特定的社会都不是一个固定静止的实体性存在，而是由特定的社会关系的生产与再生产所构成的一个复杂的有机整体，不同要素之间存在着相互作用的关系。他将社会定义为“个人彼此发生的那些联系和关系的总和”,强调社会不是单个人的有机集合体，也不是各种关系的简单集合，而是它们的有机统一。只有对一定社会中的个人之间的关系的总和以及它们之间的相互作用进行总体性把握，才有可能达到对社会的系统、具体的认识。作为总体的社会现实，不是社会事实的简单集合或某种抽象总体，而是表现为特定社会形式下占统治地位的生产以及这种生产所确定的社会关系。正如科尔施后来所强调的，马克思主义“是一种把社会发展作为活的整体来理解和把握的理论”。马克思恩格斯始终意图解释和改变的“现实世界”，是人类实践活动所生成的“物质的生活关系的总和”。每一个特定社会的“物质的生活关系的总和”表现为一个总体性的生产过程，不仅包括物质生活资料的生产，而且包括社会关系的生产、人的生产、意识形态的生产等多方面的内容。

The study of the city is likewise. To study the city from the perspective of the critique of political economy, one cannot understand the city merely from its appearance but must place it within a totalizing vision. The modern city, as an expression and externalization of capitalist social relations, reflects precisely the production and reproduction of capitalist social relations. This production of the city is not only the production and reproduction of capitalist economic relations but also includes the production and reproduction of political relations centered on power and rights, and of consciousness and ideas centered on customs, ideology, and spirit. Hence, analyzing the city means investigating how the practices of the economic system, the political system, and the ideological system, along with their interrelations, shape the urban space of a given society.

对于城市的研究亦是如此。在政治经济学批判视域下研究城市，不能仅仅从城市的表象理解城市，而是必须将其放在总体性的视野中加以研究。现代城市作为资本主义社会关系的表达和外化，其反映的正是资本主义社会关系的生产与再生产。这种城市的生产不仅是资本主义经济关系的生产和再生产，而且还包括以权力和权利为核心的政治关系和以习俗、意识形态、精神等为主要内容的意识观念等方面的生产和再生产，因而对城市的分析意味着要探究经济系统、政治系统和意识形态系统及其相互关系的实践如何塑造了一定社会的城市空间。

First, the development of large-scale capitalist industry and the establishment of the city’s dominant position. In modern society, the city is closely linked to capitalist industrial production; the city constitutes the ideal environment and important medium for the establishment, maintenance, and expanded reproduction of the capitalist mode of production. This is manifested in two aspects. First, in the process of the formation and development of capitalist relations of production, the city constitutes an important background and medium, while the countryside is either destroyed or urbanized. The emergence of capitalism did not occur at a single moment but was a dialectical process of development. As noted above, the medieval opposition between town and country reflected precisely the opposition between the feudal lord system and the new commercial economy; hence, here, “the separation of town and country can also be seen as the separation of capital from landed property, as the beginning of capital’s existence and development independent of landed property—that is, the beginning of a property system based solely on labor and exchange.” The medieval towns were originally “rebuilt by serfs who had won their freedom”; these towns constituted important bastions against the feudal mode of production. The capital in these towns initially appeared as “naturally formed capital” or “estate capital” rather than “capital” in the modern sense; however, with the emergence of the merchant class and the development of the division of labor between towns, the formation of manufacture promoted the generation and development of modern capital relations, creating the necessary conditions for the formation of the capitalist mode of production. At the same time, as the bourgeoisie used violent, legal, and other means to separate laborers from their means of production, more and more laborers were transformed into wage laborers who owned nothing and could only rely on selling their own labor power to make a living. On this basis, the capital in the towns, which was continuously expanded by commercial development, occupied the means of production and purchased laborers, reducing laborers to tools for the valorization of capital. In this process, the countryside more often manifested as a natural economy in which laborers were combined with the means of production, while the division of labor in the towns and the development of manufacture created the necessary conditions for the formation and development of capitalism. In other words, capitalism shaped a city according to its own requirements; it changed the feudal urban structure, absorbing and transforming it to serve capital itself. In this process, the countryside was either destroyed by primitive accumulation of capital or urbanized—that is, incorporated into capitalist production based on exchange value.

首先，资本主义大工业的发展与城市主导地位的确立。在现代社会，城市与资本主义工业生产紧密相联，城市构成资本主义生产方式得以确立、维系和扩大再生产的理想环境与重要媒介。这表现在两个方面：第一，在资本主义生产关系形成与发展的过程中，城市构成其重要的背景与媒介，而乡村则被破坏或城市化了。资本主义的产生并不是发生在某一个时刻，而是一个辩证发展的过程。如上所述，中世纪城乡对立背后反映的正是封建领主制度与新型商业经济的对立，因而在这里，“城市和乡村的分离还可以看做是资本和地产的分离，看做是资本不依赖于地产而存在和发展的开始，也就是仅仅以劳动和交换为基础的所有制的开始”。中世纪的城市最初是“由获得自由的农奴重新建立起来的”，这些城市构成了反抗封建生产方式的重要堡垒。这些城市中的资本最初表现为“自然形成的资本”或“等级资本”而非现代意义上的“资本”，然而随着商人阶级的出现以及城市之间分工的发展，工场手工业的形成推动了现代资本关系的生成和发展，为资本主义生产方式的形成创造了必要的条件。与此同时，随着资产阶级利用暴力的、法律的等手段将劳动者与其生产资料相分离，越来越多的劳动者转化为一无所有的、只能依靠出卖自身劳动力谋生的雇佣劳动者。在此基础上，城市中由于商业的发展不断扩大的资本，通过占领生产资料和购买劳动者，使劳动者沦为其价值增殖的工具。在这一过程中，农村更多地表现为一种劳动者与生产资料相结合的自然经济，而城市的分工以及工场手工业的发展则为其资本主义的形成和发展创造了必要的条件。换言之，资本主义按照自己的要求塑造了一个城市，它改变了封建的城市结构并将其吸收和转化，使其为资本自身服务。在这一过程中，乡村要么被资本的原始积累所破坏，要么被城市化，即乡村被纳入以交换价值为基础的资本主义生产之中。

Second, in the historical trend of capitalist expanded reproduction, urbanization constitutes an important way to alleviate the overaccumulation of capital. In the capitalist production system, the realization of surplus value is a key link. Only by converting commodities into money can capital continuously reproduce itself. Hence, the tendency of capital production is to constantly shorten circulation time to accelerate capital turnover, which simultaneously means that spatial agglomeration and concentration become important premises and conditions for the reproduction of capitalist relations of production, mainly manifested in the continuous expansion of urban space and the constant renewal and improvement of urban infrastructure. To alleviate the crisis of overaccumulation, capital on the one hand demands the continuous expansion of its circulation sphere, turning more locations into sites of capital production and continuously expanding the scope of the city; on the other hand, it invests surplus capital into fields other than production, such as circulation and consumption processes, to create and satisfy people’s needs and new needs, including investment in infrastructure for healthcare, sanitation, education, and the environment. Thanks to continuously improved infrastructure and credit systems, the city not only becomes a center of social production and exchange but also increasingly a center of social consumption and recreation; urban functions are continuously renewed and developed. In contrast, the peripheral areas appear more backward. From the perspective of the trend of capital spatial agglomeration, modern capitalism not only produces the contradiction between urban center and periphery but also produces an order system that regards center and periphery as the opposition of advanced and backward; this uneven spatial ordering is not only an inevitable result of capitalist relations of production but also their inherent requirement and inevitable tendency.

第二，在资本主义扩大再生产的历史趋势中，城市化构成缓解资本积累过剩的重要方式。在资本主义生产体系中，剩余价值的实现是其关键一环。只有从商品转化为货币，资本才能够不断再生产。因而，资本生产的趋势就是不断缩短流通时间以加速资本周转，这同时意味着空间集聚和集中成为资本主义生产关系再生产的重要前提与条件，主要表现为城市空间范围的不断扩大与城市基础设施的不断更新和完善。为了缓解积累过剩的危机，资本一方面要求不断扩大其流通范围，把更多的地点转化为资本生产的地点，不断扩大城市的范围；另一方面则将过剩资本投入生产之外的其他领域，例如转入流通和消费过程，用于创造和满足人们的需要与新的需要，包括对医疗、卫生、教育、环境等基础设施的投资。得益于不断完善的基础设施与信用体系等，城市不仅成为社会生产中心与交换中心，而且也日益成为社会消费与嬉戏中心，城市功能得以不断更新和发展；与之相对的边缘地区则表现得更为落后。从资本空间集聚的趋势来看，现代资本主义不仅生产出城市中心与边缘的矛盾，而且生产出将中心与边缘看作先进与落后的对立的秩序体系，这种不平衡的空间构序不仅是资本主义生产关系的必然结果，也是其内在的要求和必然趋势。

Second, the system of moral and legal codes marked by urban-rural imbalance and the reproduction of ideological forms are bound up with the production and reproduction of capitalist social relations. Under capitalist conditions, the dominant position of the city is determined not only by the development of capitalist industry and the economic structure, but is further established and developed through the unbalanced moral and legal systems and ideological forms of the urban and rural areas. With the development of commercial and industrial cities, infrastructure for production, consumption, needs, and enjoyment, as well as for education, medical care, transport, and communications, together with general political organs such as the military and the police, all began to tilt toward and concentrate in the cities. The urban lifestyle, once regarded as exceptional, became the standardized way of life in modern industrial nations, and for the first time the inhabitants were divided into two great classes: “the limited rural animal” and “the limited urban animal.” [11]11 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, *The German Ideology* (1845–46), in *Marx & Engels Collected Works*, vol. 5 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1976), p. 64. The quoted phrases are Marx and Engels’s characterisation of the division between town and country under capitalism. Complete conditions for a good life — education, medical care, infrastructure, and so on — together with forms of social intercourse based on freedom and equality, mould the city into an open, advanced spatial organization and order system; by contrast, the countryside presents itself as a closed and ignorant order system. Large numbers of people “swarm in like locusts,” becoming “the light infantry of capital” at capital’s arbitrary disposal, thereby creating in the city a “relative surplus population” and an “industrial reserve army” that ceaselessly reproduce the capitalist relations of production, i.e., the antagonistic relation between capital and labour. Concretely, this unbalanced spatial order between city and country manifests itself in the following two aspects.

其次，城乡不平衡的道德律法体系以及观念形式的再生产与资本主义社会关系的生产和再生产。资本主义条件下城市的主导地位不仅是由资本主义工业的发展和经济结构所决定的，而且通过城乡不平衡的道德、律法体系以及观念形式得以进一步确立和发展。伴随商业和工业城市的发展，无论是生产、消费、需要、享受，还是教育、医疗、交通、通讯等基础设施，以及军队、警察等一般政治机关都开始向城市倾斜和集中，以往被看作例外的城市生活方式，在现代的工业国家成为标准化的生活方式，居民第一次被划分为两大阶级，即“受局限的乡村动物”和“受局限的城市动物”。完备的教育、医疗、基础设施等实现美好生活所需的条件，以及自由平等的社会交往形式，将城市塑造为一种开放的、先进的空间组织与秩序体系，与之相反，乡村则呈现为一种闭塞和愚昧的秩序体系。大量的人“像蝗虫一样成群地拥来”，成为受资本随意调遣的“资本的轻步兵”,由此造成了城市中“相对过剩人口”和“产业后备军”的存在，不断将资本的生产关系即资本与劳动的对立关系再生产出来。具体而言，这种城乡不平衡的空间秩序主要表现在以下两个方面。

First, the unbalanced moral and legal systems of city and country. From the perspective of urban-rural relations, modern capitalism produces not only the dominance of industry over agriculture, but also the moral and legal systems of the modern city. The convenient transport and modern world market brought by the development of large-scale industry accelerate circulation and concentrate capital, so that modern large industrial cities spring up like mushrooms. Along with the development of industrial cities, a modern rational economic model, completely different from the organization of ancient cities, gradually establishes itself, and a new type of law and political form adapted to it also begins to appear. For example, Weber shows how rational law is drafted and implemented by an objectively neutral stratum that settles disputes by a set of “objective” standards rather than in the name of force or God, promoting the diffusion of general legal institutions in the city and thereby further consolidating commercial trade and ties among cities. On the basis of the development of industrial cities and civil society, the rudimentary form of democratic self-government also begins to be established, and the spirit of capitalism that Weber discusses is further consolidated and reinforced.

第一，城乡不平衡的道德与律法体系。从城乡关系来看，现代资本主义不仅生产出工业相对于农业的主导地位，而且生产出现代城市的道德与律法体系。大工业的发展所带来的便利交通和现代世界市场，使流通加速、资本集中，现代的大工业城市如雨后春笋般不断兴起。伴随工业城市的发展，与古代城市组织完全不同的现代理性经济模式逐渐建立起来，与此相适应的新型法律与政治形态也开始出现。例如，韦伯展示了理性的法律是如何由一个客观中立的阶层来起草与实施的，他们以一套“客观”标准而非武力或上帝的名义来解决争端，促进了一般法律机构在城市中的扩散，由此进一步巩固了城市之间的商业贸易与联系。在工业城市和市民社会发展的基础上，民主自治的初级形态也开始建立，韦伯所探讨的资本主义的精神得以进一步确立与巩固。

Second, the unbalanced consciousness and ideas of city and country. With the development of capitalist industry, commodity exchange and money become the important medium of people’s social relations; “each individual possesses social power in the form of a thing.” Individuals break free from particular communities and kinship relations; individuals in the city relate to one another as independent persons, and both their activities and the products of their activities appear as “exchange value, i.e., a general thing in which all individuality and all particularity are negated and extinguished.” Exchange value and money have a tendency toward depersonalization, generalization, and equalization, and therefore appear in people’s minds as the ideology of freedom, equality, and rationality. Since production based on exchange value and monetary exchange are concentrated in the city, the city becomes the concentration point of the ideology and knowledge sequence of freedom, equality, and rationality. The investments capital makes to alleviate overaccumulation and the illusion of a good urban life it creates further obscure the contradictory relation between capital and labour, thereby blocking the formation of proletarian class consciousness.

第二，城乡不平衡的意识观念。伴随资本主义工业的发展，商品交换和货币成为人们社会关系的重要媒介，“每个个人以物的形式占有社会权力”，个人摆脱了一定的共同体与亲属关系，城市中的个人作为独立的个人彼此发生关系，无论是人们的活动或是活动产品，都表现为“交换价值，即一切个性，一切特性都已被否定和消灭的一种一般的东西”。交换价值和货币具有去人格化、一般化与平等化的趋势，因而在人们的头脑中表现为自由、平等、理性的意识形态。由于以交换价值为基础的生产与货币交换集中在城市之中，城市成为自由、平等、理性的意识形态和知识序列的集中地。资本为了缓解积累过剩而进行的投资以及创造的城市美好生活的幻象，也进一步遮蔽了资本与劳动的矛盾关系，进而阻滞无产阶级阶级意识的形成。

“Whatever does not appear at the beginning of the process as its presupposition and condition cannot appear at its end either.” [12]12 Karl Marx, *Grundrisse* (1857–58), in *Marx & Engels Collected Works*, vol. 28 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1986), p. 208. The city, as an important medium and presupposition for the formation of the capitalist mode of production, is ceaselessly moulded in accordance with capital’s requirements in the reproduction of capitalist social relations, thereby presenting itself as a concrete totality. “This organic system itself, as a totality, has its own presuppositions, and its development into a totality consists precisely in subordinating all elements of society to itself, or in creating out of society the organs it still lacks. This is how the organic system becomes a totality in the course of history. Its becoming this totality is a moment of its process, of its development.” [13]13 Ibid., p. 208. With the continuous reproduction of the unbalanced moral and legal order systems and ideological forms of city and country, the superiority of the city over the countryside seems to become a self-evident presupposition; the city seems to become an eternal, natural form of spatial existence, as if, since human society began, social production and reproduction have revolved around the city. The city becomes the conscious mode and internal mechanism by which people produce their own life, and urban civilization becomes the stable spiritual pillar of the whole society. The city becomes an existence of rationality, freedom, and the good life, and the centrality of the city becomes a natural and self-evident social presupposition. In this way, the internal contradictions of the social relations of production that the city embodies are completely concealed. This is precisely the ideology of bourgeois “naturalness” embodied in the methodology of formal rationalism, and it is also the spatial fetishism criticized by Western Marxist scholars such as Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey.

“凡在过程开始时不是作为过程的前提和条件出现的东西，在过程结束时也不可能出现。”城市作为资本主义生产方式得以形成的重要媒介和前提，在资本主义社会关系的再生产中不断按照资本的要求被塑造出来，由此呈现为一个具体的总体。“这种有机体制本身作为一个总体有自己的各种前提，而它向总体的发展过程就在于：使社会的一切要素从属于自己，或者把自己还缺乏的器官从社会中创造出来。有机体制在历史上就是这样生成为总体的。生成为这种总体是它的过程即它的发展的一个要素。”随着城乡不平衡的道德与律法秩序体系以及意识观念的不断再生产，城市相比于乡村的优越性仿佛成为一个不言自明的前提，城市仿佛成为一种永恒的、自然的空间存在形式，仿佛自人类社会以来，社会生产与再生产就是围绕城市而展开。城市成为人们生产自己生活的自觉方式和内在机理，城市文明成为整个社会的稳定的精神支柱。城市成为一种理性、自由与美好生活的存在，城市的中心性成为一种自然而然的社会存在前提。由此一来，城市背后所体现的社会生产关系的内在矛盾就完全被掩盖了。这正是形式理性主义的方法论所体现的资产阶级“自然性”的意识形态，也是列斐伏尔、哈维等西方马克思主义学者所批判的空间拜物教。

III. The Contemporary Development of Marx’s Urban Thought by Western Urban Marxism

三、西方都市马克思主义对马克思城市思想的当代发展

The city, as a concrete totality integrating economy, politics, culture, and society, is the result of history and social production, and more concretely, the result of the production and reproduction of capitalist social relations. The modern city is essentially dominated by the relations of production of capital; the city itself is a dialectical unity of the result and the presupposition of the internal contradictions of capital’s relations of production. In other words, the city is not an independent entity, but can be regarded as a “vantage point” from which the salient features of the social process can be captured, or a “mirror” in which other levels of society are refracted. In this “mirror” of the city, we can see both how the internal contradictions of specific social relations are presented within it and how it constitutes an internal factor and necessary condition for the future historical process of society. If in Marx the totality of the city was more of an initial manifestation and a tendency, then in modern capitalist society this totality has become an unfolding reality. This is precisely the theme emphasized by Western urban Marxist scholars such as Lefebvre and Harvey, who, starting from the urban problematic, have reactivated and developed Marx’s method of political economy.

城市作为一个集经济、政治、文化、社会于一体的具体总体是历史和社会生产的结果，更具体而言，是资本主义社会关系生产与再生产的结果。现代城市本质上是由资本的生产关系所主导的，城市本身就是资本生产关系内在矛盾的结果与前提的辩证统一体。换言之，城市不是一个独立的实体，而可以被看作一个能够从中捕捉到社会进程中的显著特征的“有利的位置”，或是社会的其他层面在其中得到折射的“一面镜子”。在城市这面“镜子”中，我们既可以看到特定的社会关系的内在矛盾如何在其中加以呈现，也可以看到其如何构成了未来社会历史进程的一个内在因素和必要条件。如果说在马克思那里，城市的总体性更多的是一种初步表现和趋势的话，到了现代资本主义社会，这种总体性已经成为正在展开的现实，这也正是列斐伏尔、哈维等西方都市马克思主义学者所强调的主题，他们从城市问题出发重新激活和发展了马克思的政治经济学方法。

In the view of Lefebvre, Harvey, and others, in modern society the city is the concentrated expression and reflection of the internal contradictions of capital’s relations; the urban problematic has been placed on the agenda. As noted above, in Marx and Engels the study of the urban problematic was mainly based on the capitalist mode of production, with the city existing as an important condition and carrier of capital accumulation. Whether it is the production of the city’s economic relations and spatial ordering, the production of the city’s moral and legal order, or the production of urban culture and urban ideology, all are closely linked to the development of capitalist industrialization. However, in a new historical stage, in order to produce and reproduce its own social relations, capital has pioneered a unique mode: large-scale city-building activities, the renovation and revival of urban streets, and so on, thereby promoting the formation of a consumer society and an urban society. The city is no longer merely a product of the development of industrial capitalist society; it has acquired diverse functions, being “classified among the productive forces and means of production, among the social relations of production, and especially as part of their reproduction.” [14]14 Henri Lefebvre, *The Survival of Capitalism: Reproduction of the Relations of Production*, trans. Frank Bryant (London: Allison & Busby, 1976), p. 21. The reproduction of capitalist relations of production is no longer merely the production and reproduction of things within the city, but the reproduction of urban space itself; the city no longer merely constitutes a background and carrier for the reproduction of capitalist social relations, but becomes the core field onto which capitalist social relations are projected and planned.

在列斐伏尔、哈维等人看来，在现代社会，城市是资本关系内在矛盾的集中体现与反映，都市总问题式被提上日程。如上所述，在马克思恩格斯那里，对于城市问题的研究主要基于资本主义生产方式之上，城市作为资本积累的一个重要条件和载体而存在。无论是城市的经济关系与空间构序的生产、城市道德与律法秩序的生产，还是城市文化与城市意识形态的生产，都与资本主义工业化的发展紧密相关。然而，到了新的历史阶段，资本为了实现自身社会关系的生产与再生产，首创了一种独特的方式，即大规模的造城活动、城市街道的改造与复兴等，由此促进了消费社会和都市社会的形成。城市不仅成了工业资本主义社会发展的产物，而且具有了多样性功能，“被列为生产力与生产资料、列为生产的社会关系，以及特别是其再生产的一部分”。资本主义生产关系再生产不再仅仅是城市中的物的生产与再生产，而是城市空间本身的再生产；城市不再仅仅构成资本主义社会关系再生产的一个背景和载体，而成为资本主义社会关系投射和规划的核心场域。

Against this historical background, Lefebvre and others pointed out that if in pre-capitalist society the city was regarded as a superstructure relative to the mode of production, and in the capitalist society of Marx’s time the city existed entirely dependent on capital accumulation, being “encapsulated” into the logic of capitalist accumulation, then in modern capitalist society the urban has ceased to appear as the passive existence of the industrial capitalist period; industrial capitalist society has been dialectically transcended by urban society. Urbanization and the urban-rural problem are no longer merely a consequence of capitalist industrial development; the production of urban space and urban governance constitute important means by which capitalism reproduces itself. “The urban problematic has been placed before the world… Urban reality modifies the relations of production without being sufficient to transform them entirely. It becomes a productive force, like science. Space and spatial politics ‘express’ social relations, but also react back upon them. Clearly, if urban reality can manifest and prove its dominance, it can only do so through the urban problematic.” In other words, with the development of the internal contradictions of capitalism, production in contemporary capitalist society is no longer the production of things in space and the expanded reproduction of quantity, but rather manifests as the production of space itself. The appropriation and production of space have become important means for capital to reproduce itself, and space has also become an important site of proletarian struggle.

在此历史背景下，列斐伏尔等人指出，如果说在前资本主义社会，城市被看成是与生产方式相对的一种上层建筑，在马克思所处的资本主义社会，城市完全依赖于资本积累而存在，被“封装”进资本主义的积累逻辑之中，那么到了现代资本主义社会，都市已经不再表现为工业资本主义时期的那种消极的存在，工业资本主义社会被都市社会以辩证的方式超越了。城市化与城乡问题不再只是资本主义工业化发展的一个后果，城市空间的生产以及城市管治构成了资本主义再生产自身的重要方式。“都市总问题式摆在了世界的面前……都市现实改变了生产关系，但并不足以改造整个生产关系。它像科学一样成为生产力。空间和空间政治‘表现’了社会关系，但也反过来影响了它们。显然，如果都市现实能够自我显现和自我证明它的支配地位，那么它只能通过都市总问题式。”换言之，伴随资本主义内在矛盾的发展，当下资本主义社会的生产已经不再是空间中物的生产和量的扩大再生产，而是表现为空间本身的生产，对于空间的占有和生产成为资本再生产自身的重要方式，空间也成为无产阶级斗争的重要场所。

First, through urban planning and urban governance, capital is able to continuously reproduce its own social relations. Behind different forms of capitalist urban management lie the requirements of capital to reproduce its own social relations in different historical periods. In the stage of free-competitive capitalism, the city constituted the best site for the formation, maintenance, and expansion of capitalist production, and the urban-rural relationship manifested as an order system and conceptual form of civilization versus ignorance, advanced versus backward, expressed as the transfer and concentration of population, resources, infrastructure, etc., from the countryside to the city. After 1945, capitalism entered the stage of organized capitalism, also called the “Fordist” stage. The social productive forces and labor productivity of capital were greatly enhanced, and capital’s over-accumulation and the realization of surplus value became prominent problems requiring resolution. To achieve reproduction and solve the problem of capital surplus, capital needed to expand markets or stimulate new needs among people, thereby promoting suburban development and investment in various infrastructures. During this period, the suburbanization promoted by capitalist states in the name of balanced urban-rural development, as well as investment in fixed capital such as roads and communications, were important means for capital to alleviate over-accumulation. Their investment in social insurance, health, education, and the various welfare policies they advocated were also aimed at raising workers’ wages and stimulating workers’ consumption and needs, so as to ensure the maximum realization of capital’s surplus value. In this process, state intervention played an important role. The state’s urban governance and investment in collective consumption not only alleviated the problem of capital’s over-accumulation but also, by advocating a new way of life, continuously reproduced the “suitable” workers required by capital. With the crisis of Fordism, after 1973 capitalism entered the “post-Fordist” era. Large-scale, batch-organized production was transformed into flexible accumulation, advocating small-scale, individualized production and regional economies. Against this historical background, urban space itself became a key area of capital investment. Through the transformation, reconstruction, and revitalization of cities, capital found new fields for the production and realization of surplus value. Neil Smith later summarized this process of investment shifting back from the suburbs to the city as “gentrification”—the redevelopment of central urban areas into a bourgeois “playground,” “studded with quaint markets, renovated townhouses, rows of boutique shops, marinas, and Hyatt hotels.” In Smith’s view, this “gentrification” process, like urbanization itself, is by no means an accidental byproduct of capital but is rooted in the social structure of capitalism. It is precisely through the re-creation and restoration of urban space that capital extracts surplus value by relying on scarce natural landscapes and differentiated spaces, thereby achieving the continuous reproduction of social relations.

第一，通过城市规划和城市管治，资本得以不断再生产自身的社会关系。在不同形态的资本主义城市管理背后，呈现的都是不同历史时期资本再生产自身社会关系的要求。在自由竞争的资本主义阶段，城市构成资本主义生产形成、维系和扩展的最佳场所，城乡关系呈现出一种文明与愚昧、先进与落后的秩序体系和观念形态，表现为人口、资源、基础设施等从乡村向城市转移和聚集。1945年之后，资本主义进入了组织化资本主义阶段，也被称为“福特主义”阶段，资本的社会生产力和劳动生产率得到极大提高，资本的过度积累和剩余价值的实现成为资本需要解决的突出问题。资本为了实现再生产，解决资本过剩问题，就需要扩大市场或者刺激人们产生新的需要，由此促进了郊区的发展以及各种基础建设的投资。在这个时期，资本主义国家以城乡均衡发展为名推进的郊区化发展，以及道路、通讯等固定资本的投资，都是资本缓解过度积累的重要方式，其对于社会保险、卫生、健康、教育的投资以及所倡导的各种福利政策，亦是为了提高工人的工资、刺激工人的消费和需要，以确保资本剩余价值的最大实现。在此过程中，国家干预起到了重要作用。国家的城市管治和对集体消费的投资，不仅缓解了资本的过剩积累问题，而且通过倡导一种新的生活方式，将资本所需要的“合适的”劳动者不断再生产出来。伴随福特主义的危机，1973年之后，资本主义进入“后福特主义”时代，大规模的批量化组织化生产转变为灵活积累的方式，倡导小规模个性化的生产以及地域经济。在此历史背景下，城市空间本身成为资本投资的重点领域，通过对于城市的改造、重建与复兴，资本找到了剩余价值生产与实现的新的领域。尼尔·史密斯后来将这种投资的重点重新从郊区转移到城市的过程概括为“士绅化”进程，即城市中心区域被重新改造为资产阶级的“游乐场”，“遍布着古朴雅致的市场、翻修完毕的联排别墅、一排排的精品商场、游艇码头和凯悦酒店”。在史密斯看来，这种“士绅化”进程如同城市化一样，根本不是资本的意外副产品，而是植根于资本主义的社会结构之中。正是通过对城市空间的再造与修复，资本得以依靠稀缺的自然景观以及差异化的空间来谋取剩余价值，以此实现社会关系的不断再生产。

Second, through the colonization of every aspect of urban life, the social relations of capital achieve all-round penetration. Lefebvre pointed out: “The capitalist mode of production requires self-defense on a broader, more diverse, and more complex front, namely the reproduction of the relations of production. This reproduction of the relations of production is no longer synchronized with the reproduction of the mode of production; it is realized through daily life, through entertainment and culture, through schools and universities, through the expansion and proliferation of ancient cities, that is, through space as a whole.” Through the colonization of urban daily life, the social relations of capital achieve comprehensive spread and penetration. Castells further focused on the issue of “reproduction of labor power,” taking “collective consumption” as an example to show how, in the process of continuously reproducing labor power, capital reproduces the city increasingly as a total space integrating production, consumption, entertainment, ideology, and so on. Castells pointed out that since labor power as a commodity is a precondition for capitalist social relations, capital must continuously reproduce labor power to maintain its own existence. To continuously reproduce labor power, it is necessary to provide workers with basic food, housing, transportation, etc. Since the population is mostly concentrated in cities, these consumption items increase daily in urban areas. Industries such as education, healthcare, and housing security are often seen by private capital as unprofitable and are mostly managed and provided by the state, hence they are called “collective consumption.” Castells argued that because the concentration effect of cities reduces the cost of reproducing labor power, the city constitutes the most effective and convenient organizational form of collective consumption. The function of urban construction is no longer primarily characterized by political rule or production sites, but increasingly manifests as a site providing social security and welfare services, a site of collective consumption. State intervention in collective consumption closely links the city with power; urban collective consumption is no longer merely an economic issue but should also be regarded as a political-ideological issue.

第二，通过对城市生活的方方面面的殖民，资本的社会关系得以全方位渗透。列斐伏尔指出：“资本主义生产方式需要在一条更为广大、更为多样性、更为复杂的战线上进行自我防御，即生产关系的再生产。生产关系的这种再生产不再与生产方式的再生产同步；它通过日常生活来实现，通过娱乐和文化来实现，通过学校和大学来实现，通过古老的城邑的扩张和繁殖来实现，也就是通过整个的空间来实现。”通过对城市日常生活的殖民，资本的社会关系得以全面铺展与渗透。卡斯特则进一步聚焦“劳动力再生产”的问题，以“集体消费”为例，展现了资本在不断再生产劳动力的过程中，如何将城市越来越作为集生产、消费、娱乐、意识形态等为一体的总体性空间再生产出来。卡斯特指出，由于劳动力作为商品是资本主义社会关系的前提性条件，因而资本要维持生存，必须不断将劳动力再生产出来。为了将劳动力不断再生产出来，就需要为工人提供基本的食品、住房、交通工具等，由于人口大多集中在城市，因而这些消费项目在城市中日益增加。教育、医疗、住房保障等行业往往被私人资本看作无利可图，大多由国家统一管理和提供，因而被称为“集体消费”。卡斯特认为，由于城市的集中效应，减少了劳动力再生产的成本，因而城市构成了集体消费最有效和最方便的组织形式。城市建设的职能不再以政治统治或者生产场所为主要特征，而是更多表现为提供社会保障和福利服务的场所，表现为集体消费的场所。国家对集体消费的干预使城市与权力紧密联系在一起，城市的集体消费不再仅仅是经济问题，同时也应被视为政治—意识形态问题。

Building on the research of Lefebvre and Castells, Harvey further highlighted the intrinsic connection between the shaping of “urban ways of life” and “urban personality” and the mode of capital accumulation. In the early stages of capitalist development, the city existed more as a production center. Through the production of exchange value, the city presented an ideology of freedom, independence, and equality. In the “Fordist” period, the city no longer served merely as a production center but increasingly manifested as a consumption center. Through investment in infrastructure and fixed capital, it achieved capital accumulation and the reproduction of labor power. What capital shaped was necessarily a “new urban way of life” and “urban personality” different from before; consumption, entertainment, and leisure became important components of this urban way of life and urban personality. In the “post-Fordist” era, the pursuit of difference, uniqueness, and individuality became an important component of the urban way of life and urban personality. Thus, with the continuous development of capitalism’s internal contradictions, urban planning and governance are not merely about the transformation and reconstruction of urban space; what they reflect behind the scenes is a comprehensive penetration of a new social way of life and ideology into people’s production and daily life. Through the colonization of urban daily life, capital not only promotes the total production of all aspects of the city closely related to the reproduction of labor power but also, through the shaping of a new “urban way of life” and “urban personality” suited to capital accumulation, brings about comprehensive social transformation and change.

在列斐伏尔和卡斯特研究的基础上，哈维则进一步突出了“城市生活方式”和“城市人格”的塑造与资本积累模式之间的内在联系。在资本主义发展初期，城市更多作为生产中心存在，通过交换价值的生产，城市呈现出一种自由、独立、平等的意识形态。到了“福特主义”时期，城市就不再仅仅作为生产中心，而是更多表现为消费中心，通过基础设施和固定资本的投资，实现资本积累与劳动力再生产。资本所塑造的必然是一种不同于以往的“全新的城市生活方式”与“城市人格”，消费、娱乐、休闲成为这种城市生活方式和城市人格的重要组成部分。“后福特主义”时代，对于差异性、独特性和个性化的追求则成为城市生活方式与城市人格的重要构成部分。由此可见，伴随资本主义内在矛盾的不断发展，城市规划与管治不单单表现为对城市空间的改造与重构，其背后折射出的更是一种全新的社会生活方式和意识形态对人们生产生活的全方位渗透。资本通过对城市的日常生活的殖民，不仅促进了与劳动力再生产紧密相关的城市各个方面的总体性生产，而且通过对与资本积累相适应的全新的“城市生活方式”与“城市人格”的塑造，带来了全面的社会转型与变革。

Third, the city is the spatiotemporal field in which the proletariat continuously grows stronger and ultimately achieves its own liberation. As noted above, if for Marx and Engels urban contradictions and problems were more reflections of certain aspects of capitalist social relations, then in contemporary society, as the inherent contradictions of capitalism become prominent in urban space, the city itself represents the production and reproduction of capitalism’s inherent contradictions, constituting the concentration point of those contradictions. The city not only concentrates all the civilizational achievements brought by capitalist productive forces but also embodies the concentrated expression of the inherent contradictions of capitalist social relations. The city contains the negating force by which capitalism transcends itself, constituting an important site for the proletariat to surpass bourgeois society. It is precisely in the city that the proletariat “begins to feel itself a whole, a class; it becomes aware that, though scattered, it is weak, but that united it is a force. … The great cities are the birthplace of the workers’ movement; here the workers first began to consider their own condition and to struggle against it; here the opposition between proletariat and bourgeoisie first appeared … Without the great cities, without the social intelligence they promote, the workers would never have progressed to their present level.” [15]15 Friedrich Engels, *The Condition of the Working Class in England*, in *Marx & Engels Collected Works*, vol. 4, pp. 418-419. The quotation is slightly adapted from the standard English translation. If for Marx and Engels the discourse on urban liberation was more a description of the historical tendency of the social mode of production, then with the overall unfolding of capitalism’s inherent contradictions, the concept of the city has acquired a richer and more concrete content, and urban liberation and revolution have gained more realistic socio-historical foundations and social conditions. Lefebvre, Harvey, and others emphasize that the struggle for the right to the city and the realization of spatial justice must be taken as important dimensions of the proletariat’s self-liberation. To transcend existing capitalist social relations, it is necessary to construct a new urban space different from the modern bourgeois city dominated by capital, and to establish a completely new urban way of life.

第三，城市是无产阶级不断发展壮大并最终实现自身解放的时空场域。如上所述，如果说在马克思恩格斯那里，城市矛盾和问题更多是资本主义社会关系的某个方面的反映，那么在当代社会，伴随资本主义内在矛盾在城市空间中的凸显，城市本身就代表着资本主义内在矛盾的生产与再生产，城市构成资本主义内在矛盾的集中地。城市不仅集中反映了资本主义社会生产力所带来的一切文明成果，同时也构成了资本主义社会关系内在矛盾的集中体现。城市蕴含着资本主义超越自身的否定性力量，构成无产阶级超越资产阶级社会的重要场所。正是在城市中，无产阶级“开始感到自己是一个整体，是一个阶级；他们已经意识到，虽然他们分散时是软弱的，但联合在一起就是一种力量。……大城市是工人运动的发源地，在这里，工人首先开始考虑自己的状况并为改变这种状况而斗争；在这里，首先出现了无产阶级和资产阶级的对立……如果没有大城市，没有大城市推动社会智慧的发展，工人决不会进步到现在的水平”。如果说在马克思恩格斯那里，关于城市解放的论述更多是基于对社会生产方式的历史趋势的描述；伴随资本主义内在矛盾的总体性展开，城市概念具有了更加具体丰富的内涵，城市的解放和革命也具有了更为现实的社会历史基础与社会条件。列斐伏尔、哈维等人强调，必须将争取城市权利与实现空间正义作为无产阶级实现自身解放的重要维度。要对现存的资本主义社会关系进行超越，就必须建立一个不同于资本所主导的现代资产阶级城市的新的城市空间，建立一种全新的城市生活方式。

Thus, the urban analysis of Western urban Marxism further enriches and develops Marxist thought on the city. With the development of capitalist relations of production, the city increasingly becomes the totality in which people produce their own way of life. Unfolding the richer connotations of the modern capitalist city has therefore become a “pioneering contribution” by thinkers since the 20th century to understanding the reality of urbanization worldwide. At the same time, the limits of capitalist relations of production themselves and the negating forces they contain are further unfolded in this process. Exploring the historical conditions for the liberation of the proletariat and the realization of “spatial justice” has thus become an important epochal课题 [16]16 The Chinese term *keti* (课题) here means a major issue or task for theoretical and practical investigation. highlighted in contemporary society.

可见，西方都市马克思主义的城市分析进一步丰富和发展了马克思主义关于城市的思想。伴随资本主义生产关系的发展，城市日益成为人们生产自己的生活方式的总体，开显现代资本主义城市更丰富的内涵，也就成为20世纪以来的思想家为理解世界范围内的城市化现实所作的“开创性贡献”。与此同时，资本主义生产关系自身的限制及其蕴含的否定性力量也在此过程中得以进一步展开，探究无产阶级解放和实现“空间正义”的历史性条件就成为当代社会所凸显出来的重要时代课题。

In summary, through the study of Marx and Engels’ urban thought and the prominence given to urban issues by contemporary Western urban Marxism, we see the inherent tension and practical purport of Marx’s method of critique of political economy in relation to urban questions. Marx’s critique of political economy is not a closed system but one constantly open to history and reality; it must be continuously enriched and developed through practical expansion in the context of the times and concrete conditions. In Marx’s view, the historical movement of the capitalist mode of production has not ended, and its inherent contradictions have not been fully manifested. The critique of political economy, whose theme is the study of the capitalist mode of production, must constantly advance with the times and constantly move toward historical concreteness. The urban question is precisely a concrete manifestation of this theme. Ascending from the concrete perspective of the city to a contemporary interpretation of Marx’s critique of political economy and a theoretical elucidation of the internal logic of adapting Marxist urban thought to the Chinese context and the needs of the times, [17]17 This phrase renders the Chinese term *Zhongguohua shidaihua* (中国化时代化), which refers to the process of adapting Marxism to China’s specific conditions and to the demands of each historical period. and then extending to a theoretical demonstration of the form of human urban civilization, constitutes an important path for constructing an independent knowledge system of Chinese-path modernization of urban-rural relations.

综上，通过对马克思恩格斯城市思想的研究以及当代西方都市马克思主义对城市问题的凸显，我们看到马克思的政治经济学批判方法在城市问题上所体现的内在张力与实践旨趣。马克思的政治经济学批判不是封闭的体系，而是不断向历史和现实敞开的，必须在时代化与具体化的实践拓展中不断丰富与发展。在马克思那里，资本主义生产方式的历史运动并未终结，其内在矛盾并未充分彰显，以资本主义生产方式研究为主题的政治经济学批判，必须不断地与时俱进、不断地走向历史具体。城市问题正是对这一主题的具体呈现。从城市这一具体视角，上升到对马克思政治经济学批判的当代阐释与对马克思主义城市思想中国化时代化内在机理的学理阐发，进而拓展到对人类城市文明形态的学理论证，不失为建构关于中国式城乡关系现代化的中国自主知识体系的重要路径。

(The author is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Marxism, Xiamen University.)

（作者系厦门大学马克思主义学院教授、博士生导师）

Online editor: Ma Jingren

网络编辑：马京仁