An Intellectual Historical Study On The Theory Of David Harvey’s Historical Geographical Materialism

David Harvey is a very famous Marxist theorist with a global perspective and complex,deep ideas.He is known well not only by the West scholars,but also by Chinese scholars recently.David Harvey’s research involves in the Spatial Turn Theory,Literary Criticism,Aesthetics Theory,Human Geography,Urban Sociology,Political Economics and the concrete arguments on the New Imperialism.He also applies some methods,such as Dialectics of Social Space,Temporal Compression Method and overall Space Research Path etc..They all are followed by the different scholars.It could be said that Harvey occupies the unique position in radical political discourse today.Harvey promotes the Element Theory of Social Theories on the basis of space,especially endeavors to upgrade the Historical Materialism into the Historical Geographical Materialism.From the perspective of Marxism,Harvey exceeds Karl Marx and expands the influence of Marxism on the topics.Specifically,Harvey applies and explains Marx’s theory comprehensively starting from space and contemporary urban problems.Only according to this point,there is no doubt that Harvey is one of the most important pioneers.Furthermore,Harvey reconstructs Das Kapital written by Karl Marx from the viewpoint of geographical space and publishes The Limits to Capital.In one sense,Harvey also develops Marxist Critique of Political Economy.Most importantly,Historical Geographical Materialism as one of the Space of theoretical discourse is Harvey’s question to Historical Materialism on the basis of problems of his own ages and comprehension and reconstruction to Historical Materialism.In fact,Historical Geographical Materialism is not only the arguments of adding the geographical dimension into Historical Materialism,but one of new style ideas.Moreover,geography that surfaces again as one of concepts of space means the fundamentals of knowledge basis refreshing continuously.As one case,Harvey’s efforts that endeavors to upgrade the Historical Materialism to be the Historical Geographical Materialism supplies useful inspiration for people thinking urban and problems of world urbanization under the context of globalization at present.Most importantly,it supplies a different kind of thinking for us to understand developing Marxism in contemporary China.The author of this dissertation thinks Harvey’s reconstruction to Historical Geographical Materialism includes theoretical construction and knowledge practice.As the former,Harvey undertakes Marx directly,and also takes Lefebvre’s Theory of Production of Space.Harvey explores the dialectics of social space and analyzes uneven historical geographical development of capitalism from the spatial perspective.Harvey seeks the hidden logics of capital which are covered by the appearance on the basis of analysis to the concrete manifestations of capital logic in the concrete context of history.As for the latter,it reflects completely Marxist theoretician’s objective that could reform the world by theoretical knowledge.It also tries to surpass the homogeneity target which is shared by contemporary neo-liberalism and Dogmatic Marxism and expresses his deep space utopian impulse around "possible world".All in all,Harvey’s analysis for the change logic of capitalist history and geography in the narrow sense of historical Materialism are vey accurate.He points out the motivation of political economy that is concealed by uneven historical geographical development and the logic of creative destruction of capital.At this point,Harvey always shows us his appearance of Marxist Theoretician.On the other hand,Harvey doesn’t break away from the thinking logic of Western Marxist Theoretician because of his pursuing the ’possible world’ on the basis of antagonistic particularism,especially,on what he points out from his pursuing approaching Utopia on the basis of Ethical Dimension(or Humanism).As what most of the reviewers of Harvey find,although His analysis to the reality of capitalism is effective and very profound,how to change this problem in reality appears powerless,and often being recourse to humanism simply.Of course,it is not one of the testimony of Harvey’s weak point.On the contrary,in one sense,this is one difficulty that every Marxist has to face up to today.Although there is some Utopian nature in Harvey’s ideas,it makes up of one advantage of Marxism in contemporary global capitalism circumstance.To demonstrate above viewpoints,the author of this dissertation studies the related works of Harvey on the method of textual research on the basis of using for reference of and criticism of academic research results and tries to study the Theory of Historical Geographical Materialism of Harvey from the perspective of basic construction and objective of traditional Historical Materialism.Based on this reflection,this article consists of five parts.’The context of Historical and Geographical Materialism’ is discussed in the first part of this dissertation.The author of this article thinks there are the following three aspects including in the direct context that Harvey upgrades the Historical Materialism into the Historical Geographical Materialism.The First one is the problem on the proletariat revolutionary context among the nation states at the global level.The second one is the rise of Urban Sociology of Marxism that Lefebvre was one representative in 1970s.And it initiates some scholars to think the problems on urban and revolution.And they points out that urban become the main places of proletariat’s revolution in developed capitalism countries.The last one is the importance of direction with Harvey as representative in the process of revolution.They disclose the issues of revolution from the viewpoint of development of space and place.Of course,the Theory of Historical and Geographical Materialism proposed by them should become bound together with the revolution of proletariat in 20th century.Harvey as a Marxist is mainly discussed in the second part of this dissertation.The author thinks the Theory of Historical and Geographical is produced as the result of methodology in the process of Harvey reconstructing Marxist Theory.For strengthening the vigor and power of Marxist Theory,Harvey tries to combine the geography with the Marxism and to upgrade the Theory of Historical Materialism into the Theory of Historical and Geographical Materialism from the perspective of space and urban,after he was affected by French scholars such as Lefebvre,Custer and Foucault etc.,in the 1970s."Spatical Dialectics" is mainly discussed in the third part of this dissertation.The author thinks Harvey admits that his Element Theory is a kind of Dialectical Cognitive or Dialectic Discourse of social process constructed by the key words of "circumstance,Space-time,Location and Righteousness" based on the geography imagine.On the one hand,Harvey reads the Dialectics of the Element Theory around the category of"Relation and Totality".On the other hand,he treats the analysis of capitalist production of spatial configuration as the pivotal link when dialectics is implemented in history,and then is melt the dialectical relations between the society and circumstance,space and time into the Element Theory of social process of temporal structure."Reading to capitalist geographical change" is mainly discussed in the fourth part of this dissertation.The author of this dissertation considers capitalist spatial production and spatial planning raises a series of problems and conflicts in the accelerating process of capital globalization.It makes the Historical Materialism have to review a series of problems that is brought by it again.Harvey demonstrates that Marx’s Theory of Value as one kind of the scientific methodology reveals the law of capital movement,and the dynamic capital accumulation in contradictory ways shaped the contemporary space in the condition of the continuous intense competition."Political potential power:hopeful space and rebel city’ is discussed in the fifth part of this dissertation.The author thought that spatial Utopia is expressed by the "possible world" as the center and combines social process and spatial circumstance.So,it is what emancipatory politics wants really to seek.For Changing and generating of space is one historic event.So,in one sense,we could say urban space has not only unnatural character but also pseudo natural character.By reconstructing urban rights and constructing local knowledge,Harvey calls on people to be"rebel architects" and rebuild "rebel city" as one kind of the tactic of antagonizing globalization discourse.