Study On The Theory Of Space Of "Capital" And The Mannuscripts

The factor of "spatial analysis" was applied to the theory of social criticism by the "spatial turn" movement which happened in the field of the humanitic and social science of contemporary western,and then it opened a great trend of thought of "spatial criticism". Compared to the traditional historical criticism, the theory of spatial criticism brought not only a visual impact but also a relocation of the thinking mode to people. However, it made the mistake of metaphysics in tracing the source of theory, that was to say, it believed falsely that the space was absent in Marx’s social critical theory. The defects of epistemology limited its view of Marxism, and this caused a crux of no stand firm when it faced to the diversity of post-modern capitalist at last.In fact, the structure of space and time in Marx’s social critical theory were dialectical existence, but the "shining" of the historical materialism covered the color of space just like the shining of lunar covers Venus. In Marx’s social critical theory, if time was a potent weapon against materialization, then space was a shield against time for capital. The dialectical relationship between them appeared a kind of confrontational power relationship here. So the historical materialism had taken advantage of time to against space to highlight the modernity discourse of Marx’s social critical theory. "Capital" was a master of this discourse, it used "rules (time) against space" as its most important logical axis. Marx’s critical theory of space ran through the logical axis in the "six volumes plan" of "Capital".The first volume of the plan was about capital, and the first part of it included commodity, currency and capital. We should know that Marx did not excluded from the spatial analysis when he studied those abstract economic categories, on the contrary, he set up the logical starting point of spatial criticism here when he said "our study should begin with the analysis of commodity". Marx studied the character of commodity from two aspects:one was usage value of commodity. He took usage value as a abstract materialized relation in space, this meaned that usage value was just a product of economic relationships in space which often be obscured by the nature character of its own. The other was value of commodity. He thought that value was contained in the concept of space in essence because "undifferentiated human labor" was refered to the category of homogeneous space. Moreover, value was determined by the space in quantity because the social necessary labor time was just the average working time in a certain range space. The commodity exchange promoted the emergence of currency. Currency was the product of the geographical space and the economic space firstly, then it performed differents functions of space. Currency existed not only as wealth but also as spatial relationship, so it would had a profound effect on the natural space, social space and psychological space. Marx thought that the space fulling of relations of currency was not free and the free space should abandoned the relations of currency. Capitalization of commodity and currency took the spatial criticism to climax. Capital took space as the condition of its accumulation and the shield against time by the capital spatialization and the spatial capitalization. Space became a important factor of easy existence of capital. The mystery of space fetishism and capital fetishism was same when they were reflected in the ideological field.The second and third volume of plan were about the system of the land ownership and the labor employment. Although Marx did not finish them, we could conclude that his spatial criticism logic was still throughout it. If we were anxious to know how his spatial criticism developped from abstract to specific stage, we had to pay more attention to the volumes of fourth, fifth and sixth, because there had three specific forms of space:nation, external trade and world market. In fact, city’s space was one of the space forms which be focused in "Capital". City’s space was not only a geographical space but also a social space, it beared too much social relations and problems which caused by accumulation of capital and was doomed to become the original place of social movements. The modern national space was a cultural political space and it fulled of the power of capital, the order of political and the identity of system. The national space was historic and its history showed that the cultural and political system would disappear after the crisis. Marx thought that the highest form of space was "world market". The world market was the vast space of the accumulation of capital, it contained all of the productive powder and relations of capitalist and formed the same space order by capital. However, the world market was also the limition of the capital spatialization, this meaned that the capital accumulation process would end. It eventually would lead the crisis to outbreak in the world market and collapse the legal foundation of the rule of capital. Atlast, Marx completed his logic system of the "spatial criticism".However, the existence of modern and postmodern capitalism showed that the end of capitalism was a historical process because the accumulation of capital had found a new growth point out of the produce of space. The second international Marxists devoted themself to "spatial criticism" following Marx from several aspects, such as the profits of monopoly by the financial capital and the imperialism, transfer surplus value from non capitalism system to capitalism system, unbalanced distribution of benefits for the international division of labor etc. The contemporary Western Marxists put more emphasis on the cultural politics of space, such as the "produce of space" was the produce and reproduce of the relations, "geographical and historical materialism"was about the unbalanced geography development of materialism, postmodern space was related to the cultural politics of space of postmodernism, discripted the geography of space of postmodern, about the micro political power of space, and refered to the cultural and political identity of space. The new Marxists continued the logic thinking and methods of Marx’s spatial criticalism, such as Lefebvre,Harvey and Jameson. and other post modern Marxist slide themself to the postmodernism centerless expression on the basic standpoint although they also used Marx’s theory to explain the problems of postmodern space consciously or unconsciously.The conclusion was:there had both dimension of spatial analysis and logic system of spatial criticism in "Capital". The theory about space in "Capital" and the manuscripts was not only suitable for the era of Marx’s, but also for the current era of ours.