Abstract
Marxist studies of urban problems often remind me of a children’s game I used to play with friends in the summer. We lay on the beach looking at the big, lazy clouds in the sky. We had to give them names, according to the images they evoked in each one of us. “It is a lion’s head.” “Nooo... they are two interlaced giants.” “Come on. It is a beautiful woman—the sleeping beauty.” All of us saw different things and argued very strongly in favor of the image we thought was the right one. We usually were bitterly divided over interpretations, and skillfully dialectic in defending them. At the same time, and this is what I remember best, our imagery developed according to a common paradigm. Images were taken mostly from the animal world, either human beings or beasts. We stuck to these very rigidly. While we were bitterly divided over interpretations, and very smart in pointing out how wrong others were, all of us were very loyal to our common standard. A cloud never was a big walnut tree, a medieval castle, or a Spanish galleon.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
W. Harvey, Social Justice and the City(London: Edward Arnold, 1973);H. Lefebvre, Du rural à l’urbain(Paris: Éditions Anthropos, 1970; La révolution urbaine (Paris: Gallimard, 1970); Le droit à la ville (Paris: Éditions Anthropos, 1972); La production de l’espace (Paris: Éditions Anthropos, 1974).
J. Borja, Movimentos sociales urbanos (Buenos Aires: Ediciones SIAP-Planteos, 1975); J. Benington, Local Government Becomes Big Business (London: CDP Information and Intelligence Unit, 1976 )
The process of “commodification” of the space and the theoretical problems related to it are analyzed by Harvey, Social Justice chap. 5.
It is impossible, of course, to summarize in a few pages the intellectual processes that have mobilized vast human resources, have generated many theoretical debates, and have produced great, and often tragic, political confrontations. I also leave out several important aspects of Marxist research on territorial problems, for example, Mao Zedong’s and the Chinese views on the town–country problem—(L. Hoa, Reconstruire la Chine: Trente ans d’urbanisme, 1949–1979 (Paris: Editions du Moniteur, 1981); the extremist Cambodian theories about deurbanization; and the more pragmatic approaches by the Vietnamese—(Nguyen Duc Nhuan. Hoa, Reconstruire la Chine: Trente ans d’urbanisme, 1949–1979 (Paris: Editions du Moniteur, 1981); the extremist Cambodian theories about deurbanization; and the more pragmatic approaches by the Vietnamese—(Nguyen Duc Nhuan, “Désurbanisation du développement régional au Viet Nam Internation,” Journal of Urban and Regional Research 2 (1978): 330–350.
K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (London: Lawrence and Wishart [1848] 1943 ), p. 8.
Marx and Engels, Manifesto; Marx, Capital, A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, 3 vols. (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House [1867–1894] 1961); Marx, Grundrisse, Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin [1857–1858, 1953] 1973); Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell [1845] 1958); Engels, The Housing Question ( Moscow: Progress Publishers [1872] 1975 ).
V. I. Lenin, The Development of Capitalism in Russia (London: Martin Lawrence, 1936–1938).
Lenin, Selected Works,12 vols. (London: Martin Lawrence, 1936–1938), p. 56.
Lenin, Die Agrarfrage und die “Marxkritiker” in Werke, 5 vols. ( Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1955 ).
Ibid., p. 149.
Ibid.
Quoted in La costruzione della citta sovietica, 1929–31 ed. P. Ceccarelli (Venezia: Marsilio, 1970), 20.
Quoted in J. S. Stalin, Les problèmes économiques du socialisme en URSS (Moscow: Éditions en Langues Étrangères,1952), p. 7.
H. Chambre, L’aménagement du territoire en URSS (Paris: Mouton, 1959).
H. A. Miliutin, Sotsgorod: The Problem of Building Socialist Cities (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press [1930] 1974); A. Kopp, “Changer la vie, changer la ville,” De la vie nouvelle aux problèmes urbains—URSS 1977–1952 (Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions, 1975); Kopp, Town and Revolution: Soviet Architecture and Cite, Planning 1917–1935 (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1970); M. De Michelis and E. Pasini, La città soeietica 1925–1937 (Venezia: Marsilio, 1976).
L. M. Sabsovic, L’URSS clans dix ans (Paris: Bureau d’Éditions [1929] n.d.); S. G. “Problema Socialisticeskich Gorodov Planovoe Khoziaistvo,” in Ceccarelli, La Costruzione della Cittn Sovietica.
La révolution urbaine, p. 56
P. Baran and P. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966),studied the new form of monopoly capital; M. Kalecki, Theory of Economic Dynamics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1954),explained recent economic trends in advanced capitalism and how they related to politics; and P. Sraffa, Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961),reformulated crucial concepts in the Marxist economic theory. New approaches to the problems of the capitalist state were suggested by R. Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1969) ; and new explanations of the origins and the development of capitalism were provided by the historical studies of K. Polanyi, The Great Transformation, The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957); E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Victor Gollancz, 1963),and E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, Europe 1789–1848 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1962). “Unorthodox” Marxist thinkers were also rediscovered: K. Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy (London: New Left Review [1923] 1970); G. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1923); E. Pashukanis, General Theory of Law and Marxism in Soviet Legal Philosophy by V. I. Lenin et al. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press [1929] 1951),and Allgemeine Rechslehre und Marxismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp [1929] 1966); and especially A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks,ed. Q. Hoare and G. N. Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971),whose contributions to the analysis of the modern state, power coalitions, and class relationships opened a wide debate.
L. Althusser and E. Balibar, Reading Capital (New York: Pantheon, [ 1965 ] 1972 ), p. 180
Cambridge: M.I.T. Press [ 1972 ] 1977.
lbid., p. 166.
M. Castells and F. Godard, Monopolville, l’entreprise, l’état, l’urbain ( Paris: Mouton, 1974 ).
Paris: PUF, 1977.
Les promoteurs immobiliers: Contribution à l’analyse de la production capitaliste du logement en France ( Paris: Mouton, 1974 ).
E. Preteceille, M. Pencon, P. Renda, and M. Chantrein, Équipements collectifs. Structures urbaines et consommation sociale (Paris: CSU, 1975).
Les nouveaux embarras de Paris (Paris: Maspero, 1978).
Political Power and Social Class (London: New Left Books, 1973 ), and Classes in Contemporary Capitalism ( London: New Left Books, 1975 )
Sociologie des mouvements sociaux urbains: Enquête sur la région Parisienne (Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1974).
Movimentos sociales urbanos.
A. Daolio, Le lotte per la casa in Italia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1974); G. Della Pergola, Città e conflitto sociale, Inchiesta al Garibaldi-Isola e in altri quartieri periferici di Milano (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1973); P. Ceccarelli, “Venice: Urban Renewal, Community Power Structure and Social Conflict,” in The Conservation of European Cities, ed. D. Appleyard ( Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1979 ), pp. 52–64.
Agnoli, Überlegung zum burgerlichen Staat (Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 1975); Offe, Strukturprobleme des Kapitalistischen Staates ( Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975 ).
Some Problems of State Interventionism,“ in State and Capital,ed. J. Holloway and S. Picciotto (London: Edward Arnold, 1978).
The State Apparatus and Social Reproduction: Elements of a Theory of the Bourgeois State,“ in Holloway and Picciotto.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973.
Captive Cities Studies in the Political Economy of Cities and Regions, ed. M. Harloe ( New York: Wiley, 1977 ), p. 20.
Szelenyi, “Regional Management and the Changing Class Content of the Urban—Rural Dichotomy in the `Transition to Socialism.’ The Case of pre-and post-
Castells, The Urban Question, p. 438.
London: Martin Lawrence, [1916] 1936–1938.
New York: Monthly Review Press, (1948) 1957.
See S. Amin, Unequal Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976); A. Emmanuel, Unequal Exchange (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972); A. G. Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967); C. Furtado, Economic Development of Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); I. Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
Santos, Aspects de la géographie et de l’économie urbaines des pays sous-développés (Paris: Centre de Documentation Universitaire, 1969), and “L’urbanizzazione dipendente in Venezuela,” in L’urbanizzazione dipendente in Venezuela, ed. M. Castells et al. (Milan: Mazzotta, 1972); Quijano, “Dependencia, cambio social y urbanizacion en America Latina,” in Urbanizacion y Dependencia en America Latina, ed. N. Schteingart (Buenos Aires: SIAP, 1973); P. Singer, Economia politica de urbanizacao ( Sao Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1975 ).
References to different contributions by Latin American Marxists to the study of urban problems can be found in J. L. Coraggio, T. Noyelle, and M. Schteingart, “Spatial Organization, Social Processes and Community Struggles in Capitalist Socio-economic Formations,” in Reading List in Radical Political Economics ( New York: Union for Radical Political Economics, 1977 ).
Dependent countries continue to be strongly differentiated, despite their forced integration into the capitalist system. This phenomenon is the result of substantial original differences and of differences in the domination that colonial and postcolonial powers have imposed on them. Strongly different national and regional histories, societies, and economies result from these original differences. In turn, equally differentiated political systems emerge. When differences and inconsistencies in developing countries are examined, one must also take into consideration the specific circumstances that differentiate metropolitan countries. The existence of discontinuity and fragmentation in the developing world brings into question the use of “pure” paradigms to explain advanced societies.
Schmitter, Interest Conflict and Political Change in Brazil (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1971), and “Still the Century of Corporatism?” The Review of Politics 36 (1974): pp. 85–131.
What is more, the study of marginality in less developed societies has also led to the examination from a different viewpoint of the existence of similar facts in more advanced societies. Analyses of the labor market structure in developing countries have, for instance, been helpful in formulating recent theories of the dual and segmented labor market in mature capitalist societies. It has underlined the need for a more careful, problem-oriented approach to social movements and forms of the economy. There is no need to remember how important the contributions by U.S. social scientists who have worked in developing countries have been in the study of unemployment and poverty in North American cities.
Quoted by F. Lamarche, “Property Development and the Economic Foundations of the Urban Question,” in Urban Sociology, Critical Essays, ed. C. Pickvance ( London: Tavistock Publications, 1976 ), p. 86.
Szelenyi, “Regional Management.”
Ibid., p. 12.
Ibid., p. 13.
Ibid., p. 13
Ibid., p. 14.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1984 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ceccarelli, P. (1984). Ex Uno Plures. In: Rodwin, L., Hollister, R.M. (eds) Cities of the Mind. Environment, Development, and Public Policy. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9697-1_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9697-1_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-9699-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-9697-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive