Yu Bin: Critique and Reflection on the Theory of Spatial Justice
I. The Clamor of Spatial Justice Research
Certain Western scholars have initiated the topic of spatial justice research, even doing so under the banner of Marxism, and many domestic scholars have followed suit. As of September 18, 2020, a search on CNKI reveals 457 Chinese academic journal articles with "spatial justice" as their theme, along with 152 postgraduate theses (including 25 doctoral dissertations), 26 domestic conference papers, 16 newspaper articles, 15 academic series, and 25 featured periodical articles.
Some argue that the purpose of Western scholars "conducting spatial research is to tangibly explore practical paths to transform the real world, construct a more rational spatial life, and establish spatial justice," in order to "'reduce oppression and inequality stemming from class, race, gender, and other sources of social power.'" They further posit that "in a context where inequalities in wealth and status are increasingly reproduced and manifested through spatial differences and segregation in housing, the disadvantaged in the socio-spatial structure can only realistically change the phenomena of spatial inequality and injustice through organized collective action." Regarding this, some believe that "as globalization and urbanization unfold with unprecedented intensity, breadth, and depth, a vast array of social fairness and justice issues are continuously focusing on space, forming a universal theoretical outcry and practical demand for spatial justice, driving people to deeply explore and analyze them from multiple angles." However, since these issues of social fairness and justice are merely focused on space due to historical development, spatial justice is merely the result of the development of these issues, rather than the cause of their emergence. Consequently, the demand for spatial justice is precisely a case of putting the cart before the horse—a vain attempt to eliminate the effect without eliminating the cause. Furthermore, if the disadvantaged can change the phenomenon of spatial inequality through organized collective action, why can they not similarly change the phenomenon of inequality between classes? And if inequality between classes is eliminated, is it even possible for spatial inequality to persist? If organized collective action by the disadvantaged cannot eliminate inequality between classes, can spatial inequality truly be changed?
The American scholar and world-renowned urban theorist Edward Soja proposed: "Spatial justice means that geography can be unjust or unfair; you could say this geography is more just than that one. For example, the geography of Suzhou is much more just than that of Beijing (because Beijing is more congested than Suzhou). This is what spatial justice is." Following this logic, since grinding wheat into flour and fermenting it to bake bread is much more troublesome than simply boiling wheat kernels for rice, wheat-rice is more "just" than bread; therefore, eating bread instead of wheat-rice would mean falling into "food injustice." If anyone finds the idea of "food justice" absurd, then the aforementioned spatial justice is equally absurd. If someone believes they can recognize spatial justice while also recognizing food justice, they would likely agree with capitalists lowering wages by feeding workers cheap potatoes instead of bread in the name of "food justice."
Soja also argued: "Justice is a legal term. If a person does something bad, how can we say they are just? That would be the erasure of justice. What legal scholars talk about as justice in a very broad sense is being fair, equal, and honest in judgment." But who is to judge whether a deed is good or bad, who is to judge equality, and thus, who is to judge justice? Historically, when the working class went on strike to demand a shorter working day regardless of legal regulations, they were doing something "bad" according to the laws of the time, and from the perspective of the capitalist, it was certainly not "just." However, the law eventually yielded; not only was the Ten Hours Act passed, but later the eight-hour workday was also legislated. Can we say the law’s concession, and thus the new legal regulations, were "unjust"? Regarding the spatial issue, Marx mentioned in Volume I of Capital that "the English doctors with one voice declared 500 cubic feet [of space] as the smallest space that must be allowed for each person for continued work." However, because of the fear that "the compulsory regulations of the law as to the space to be allowed to each worker in the workshop" would "undermine the foundations of the capitalist mode of production," "factory legislation therefore came to a halt before the 500 cubic feet. Sanitary authorities, industrial inquiry commissioners, factory inspectors, all again and again enforced the necessity of the 500 cubic feet, and again and again complained of the impossibility of wringing it from capital. They thereby, in fact, declared that consumption [tuberculosis] and other lung diseases among the workers are conditions for the existence of capital." Is this retreat of the law in the face of capital also "just"? What significance can spatial justice have when derived from Soja’s naive conception of justice?
Furthermore, in the workers' workplace, cramped space is not the only problem. In Volume I of Capital, Marx also pointed out: "The economy of the social means of production, which only matures as in a hot-house in the factory system, is at the same time, in the hands of capital, a systematic robbery of what is necessary for the life of the workman while he is at work, robbery of space, light, air, and of protection of his person against the dangerous and unwholesome accompaniments of the productive process, not to mention the robbery of appliances for the comfort of the workman." Therefore, if proponents of spatial justice can propose "spatial justice" in response to cramped space—and even posit a "Marxian thought on spatial justice" based on this—they should likewise propose "air justice," "sunlight justice," "personal safety justice," "health justice," and "welfare justice." However, I implore them not to propose "Marx’s thought on air justice" or "Marx’s thought on sunlight justice," just as with spatial justice; they should not attribute to Marx terms he never spoke.
Western spatial justice theorists believe they have made a major discovery, even imagining they can surpass Marx. "Lefebvre believed that Marx's critique of capitalism was built on the foundation of economic determinism, and that this critique lacked attention to the issue of spatial domination. Thus, he pushed Marx's historical liberation of man toward a spatial liberation of man, and moved his own spatial theory toward practice, proposing the claim of the 'Right to the City' [1] to practice his idea of spatial revolution—'The right to the city should claim open and fair participation in all activities that produce the process of urban space; utilize the advantages of urban life, especially the advantages of the city center, to avoid spatial isolation and restriction; and provide various urban services to meet basic needs (targeting not only workers, but also immigrants, marginalized people, and even the privileged).'" Here, the various targets of urban services—workers, marginalized people, and the privileged—are in fact subjects divided into different classes. Is it not absurd to talk about liberation, even spatial liberation, in a society where classes exist? Even setting class aside, focusing only on the "openness and fairness" of the right to the city while ignoring the existence of the urban-rural gap and failing to commit to the elimination of the "three great differences" [2], how can one surpass Marx's "historical liberation of man" which demands the total elimination of these differences? As for the spatial justice theorists' view that "the way our daily urban life operates produces unequal power relations, which in turn indicate that we are in a city where social resources are distributed with spatial inequality and injustice. Numerous socially disadvantaged groups caused by spatial inequality and injustice demand more social resources and social power," this is a thoroughly historical-idealist viewpoint. Socially disadvantaged groups are not caused by spatial inequality and injustice; they are caused by the capitalist mode of production. Modern cities are products of capitalist development, and the primitive accumulation of capital stems from the direct dispossession of laborers, some of which was completed even outside the cities. Unequal power relations are determined by the unequal ownership of the means of production and the means of subsistence, not produced by the operational mode of urban life. Does unequal power relation not exist outside the city?
Some Western scholars, such as Marcuse, have recognized that "it is very dangerous to focus solely on space: the roots of many spatial problems lie in the economic, social, and political spheres; space is only a part of the content." In fact, space has its material carriers. Space in the open fields uses land as its direct carrier, while space in buildings uses houses as its carrier; one cannot occupy the corresponding space without occupying the corresponding matter. Therefore, rather than speaking of spatial justice, it is better to discuss justice regarding the ownership of spatial carriers. As for Harvey’s claim that "those who dominate space may always control the politics of place, even if the control of a certain place first requires the control of space," it is merely a clumsy expression of the materialist conception of history, which states that those who own the means of production—those who are economically dominant—also dominate politically.
Some propose that to "revive" spatial justice, one must do various things. However, has spatial justice ever existed? If it never existed, how can it be "revived"? This person also selectively quotes Marxist classics, namely "the surrounding world must be so arranged that man in it may recognize and experience what is truly human, that he may recognize himself as man. ... the environment must be made human," and then claims, "this is the standard of the Marxist view of spatial justice!" Here, he first reduces the "world" to the "environment," and then reduces "environment" to "space." But the complete sentence he truncated is this: "If man's character is formed by environment, then the environment must be made human." Obviously, if one reduces "environment" to "space," then man's character is formed by space. Is there anything more absurd than this? The hat of "spatial justice" cannot be so absurdly forced onto the heads of Marxist classical authors.
Proponents of spatial justice argue that "developed capitalist countries are at the core of the global spatial production layout, while developing countries are at the periphery of the global spatial layout, and thus inevitably suffer exploitation and oppression by developed countries." However, Marx once pointed out: "A capitalist is not a capitalist because he is a commander of industry. On the contrary, he becomes a commander of industry because he is a capitalist." Similarly, developing countries do not suffer exploitation and oppression because they are at the periphery of the global spatial layout; on the contrary, they are at the periphery because they suffer exploitation and oppression from developed countries. It is evident that the way of thinking in spatial justice theory is a way of thinking that puts the cart before the horse.
Some quote Harvey saying: "The more general pursuit of differential rent generates geographical differences in the intensity of capital investment, often ensuring that well-funded areas become richer while poorly-funded areas become relatively poorer. In any case, the differential process is purely economic, while simultaneously being ecological and social." They then suggest that "the result of this spatial capitalization operation inevitably makes the original owners of real estate property even more super-rich, while forcing new citizens who enter the city for work to pay a higher price for living space, even becoming debt slaves to housing property for their entire lives." However, differential rent belongs to the landowner, not the capitalist; there is no such thing as a capitalist "pursuing differential rent." At most, one can say there is a portion of surplus profit that has not yet fallen into the hands of the landowner as differential rent, which capital can pursue. The consequence of various capitals competing for this is simply to drive up rent and eliminate the surplus profit, or rather, to convert the entirety of the surplus profit into rent. Clearly, Harvey does not understand that in capitalist society there exist three great classes—landowners, capitalists, and workers—and how the surplus value created by workers is distributed between the first two. The viewpoints of these Western scholars, whose grasp of Marxist theory is worrisomely poor, cannot serve as a theoretical basis.
Furthermore, Engels pointed out in the preface to the 1887 second edition of The Housing Question: "The essence of both the big bourgeois and petty-bourgeois solutions of the 'housing question' is that the worker should own his own dwelling. However, the industrial development of Germany during the last twenty years has put this question in a very peculiar light." Engels noted that the very idea that workers should purchase their own homes "is based upon that reactionary fundamental outlook of Proudhon [3] which we have already pointed out." Regarding the proposal to "buy out rented dwellings and transfer the ownership of the dwelling to the former tenant," Engels indicated that this "does not touch the capitalist mode of production at all"; "to propose this in the current state of development of large-scale industry and cities is both absurd and reactionary; to re-introduce individual ownership of each person in his own dwelling is a step backward." This demonstrates that the spatial justice advocated by those indignant over the plight of "house slaves" [4] is merely a Proudhonist, that is, a petty-bourgeois, proposition. The focus of Marxism has always been "the appropriation of all means of production in the name of society by the proletariat, which has risen to sole political dominance." In fact, were the capitalist mode of production abolished, the so-called spatial capitalization operations would naturally cease to exist. Yet spatial justice theorists do not even oppose capitalism: "Whether we conduct social movements or urban movements, the ultimate goal is not the pursuit of profit, but the construction of a livable environment, and profit is only a means to achieve this goal. This requires our urban theory to develop a more general principle around the 'right to the city,' [5] thereby expressing the more universal desire and demand of the majority for spatial justice." Here, profit represents capital; it is evident that spatial justice theorists hope that capital can serve as a means to achieve spatial justice. Soja [6] even said to Chinese scholars: "You will create a new capitalism. Perhaps you will make it more just."
II. Appealing to justice is not the Marxist way Some believe that Marx and Engels's "critique of the industrialization of urban construction and the capitalization of spatial production left us a scientific and profound intellectual path for investigating and clarifying spatial justice issues under the new situation." However, appealing to justice is not the Marxist way, especially not that of the Marxist classics. Engels pointed out in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific: "The ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in their growing insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch. The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that 'reason has become unreason, and bliss torture,' is only a proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping." Spatial justice is likewise merely a symptom—a symptom indicating that in capitalist society, the relations of production are no longer suited to the development of the productive forces. It can hardly be called a "scientific and profound intellectual path." Moreover, similar symptoms—such as the adulteration of food produced for the poor mentioned in the first volume of Capital (from which one could obviously derive terms like "food justice")—had already been revealed in the works of Marx and Engels.
When discussing his revisions to the Inaugural Address and the Provisional Rules of the International Workingmen's Association in a letter to Engels, Marx noted: "I was obliged to insert two phrases about 'duty' and 'right' into the Preamble to the Rules, ditto 'truth, morality and justice,' but these are placed in such a way that they can do no harm." Evidently, today some Chinese scholars and journals follow Western scholars in talking grandly about justice—and even the absurd "spatial justice"—which only allows the word "justice" to cause harm. For example, some believe that "the essence of the principle of social justice, in spatial production, is the dialectical unity of maintaining the majority and protecting the minority, emphasizing harmony and consistency while respecting individual freedom." However, in a class society, it is the majority who are exploited and oppressed, and the minority who exploit and oppress. The so-called maintenance of the majority and protection of the minority is actually the promotion of class reconciliation; the so-called respect for individual freedom is respect for the exploiter's freedom to exploit.
Some have suggested that "Marx's conception of justice holds that 'it is just as long as it corresponds to and is consistent with the mode of production; it is unjust as long as it contradicts the mode of production.' Based on such a principle of justice, whether in their critique of unjust phenomena or their analysis of their causes within the field of spatial justice, Marx and Engels firmly grounded themselves in considerations of whether the mode of production was progressive, to reveal the positive correlation or isomorphism between spatial justice conditions and the mode of production, paying particular attention to explaining the problem through the relationship between spatial human rights and spatial factor property rights." Two problems exist here. First is the misunderstanding of that sentence written by Marx. Second, even if that sentence were not problematic, justice would then only be related to the mode of production and have no direct relationship with human rights and property rights; one cannot derive a "particular emphasis" on human rights and property rights from it. In fact, the sentence preceding Marx's remark reads: "To speak of natural justice, as Gilbart does (see note), is nonsense." The sentence following it reads: "Slavery is unjust on the basis of the capitalist mode of production." This following sentence actually means that on the basis of the capitalist mode of production, the wage-labor system is just, and thus the polarized outcome inevitably led to by this wage-labor system, which is consistent with the capitalist mode of production, is also just. This is not criticizing capitalism but praising it, and it negates the earlier criticisms by some regarding the "spatial injustice" of the cramped living spaces of workers in capitalist society. Simultaneously, it indicates that on the basis of the slave mode of production, the capitalist system is unjust—exactly as the Southern slave plantation owners viewed the North during the American Civil War. Clearly, the aforementioned conception of justice is by no means Marx's own; in fact, it is merely Marx’s objective description of the "justice of transactions carried out between agents of production," that is, the agents’ own conception of justice, because "this transaction arises as a natural result from the relations of production." More importantly, this same person previously took "the environment must be made human" as the "standard of the Marxist conception of spatial justice"; no mention was made there of the issue of "corresponding to the mode of production." Does this not cause the so-called Marxist conception of spatial justice to contradict or exclude itself?
Marx pointed out: "To clamor for equal or even merely equitable remuneration on the basis of the wages system is the same as to clamor for freedom on the basis of the system of slavery. What you think is just or equitable is out of the question. The question is: What is necessary and unavoidable with a given system of production?" By contrast, this person believes that "the rights and interests of spatial production and enjoyment are unidirectionally gathered toward the powerful holders of capital; while the obligations of spatial production and the responsibility for the negative effects of spatial enjoyment are multidirectionally diffused toward the whole of society, forcing the vast number of non-beneficiaries to bear them together, forming an unjust fact of unequal spatial rights and obligations. This pattern of spatial interests departs from the principle of justice favoring the 'least advantaged' and forms an injustice concentrated toward the 'most advantaged.'" This view is also "out of the question." In a capitalist society where workers are exploited—or even in earlier slave and feudal societies where laborers were likewise exploited—has there ever existed a principle of justice favoring the "least advantaged"? Is it not unavoidable in an exploitative society that laborers suffer exploitation and hardship? Engels once wrote in the article "The Wages System": "There are many trades in the East End of London [7] where the labor is as hard and the skill required as great as in the case of the bricklayers and their laborers, but where the wages earned are not half as much. Why? Simply because a powerful organization enables one set of workers to maintain a higher standard of life as a measure for their wages, while the other set of workers, being unorganized and powerless, must not only submit to the inevitable, but also to the arbitrary encroachments of their employers; their standard of life is gradually lowered, they learn how to live on less and less wages, and their wages naturally fall to that level to which they themselves have learned to bring them down." Here, Engels said nothing about the East End of London being in a "marginal space," did not consider this spatial interest pattern of the East End to be unjust, and did not appeal to spatial justice. Instead, he proposed organizing the workers, emphasizing the significance of trade unions to workers: "Without the means of resistance of the trade unions, the worker does not even receive what is his due according to the rules of the wage-labor system. It is only the fear of the trade union before his eyes that forces the capitalist to pay the full market value of his worker's labor-power. Do you want evidence? Look at the wages paid to the members of the great trade unions, and at the wages paid in the numberless small trades in that pool of misery, the East End of London."
In the preceding analysis, we have found that spatial justice theorists, particularly Western ones, do not demand the overthrow of the capitalist system, but rather wish to alleviate certain phenomena of unfairness and inequality under capitalism, which is why they become entangled in spatial justice. This reformist proposition also reflects the spatial justice theorists' fear of the collapse of capitalism. Marx, in British Finances. — The Preston Strike, wrote regarding the Preston capitalists' use of trickery, the police and army, and the enactment of repressive decrees to lower workers' wages—which stirred protest meetings: "Most of the London press condemns the conduct of the Preston manufacturers, not out of a sense of justice, but out of [fear] of the consequences that might follow. These journals fear that the working class is now beginning to understand that the individual capitalist who oppresses them is backed by the whole [state] machinery, and that to strike at the former, the working class [must] punish the latter." Clearly, if spatial justice theorists were truly to speak of justice, they should, like the Marxist classics, call for the proletarians of the world to unite, overthrow the capitalist system, seize power, and thoroughly resolve the problem of the relations of production no longer being suited to the development of productive forces under capitalism.
III. The Marxist classics on space The Marxist classics also occasionally mentioned space; it is very beneficial to collect these discourses and compare them with the views of spatial justice theorists.
Marx wrote in Comments on the Articles from the "Allgemeine Zeitung" Nos. 335 and 336 on the Prussian Estates' Committees: "What new element can suddenly turn the representatives of provincial interests into representatives of national interests and give their specific activity the essence of a universal activity? Obviously, only the element of a common place of assembly. But can abstract space as such give a man of character a new character and cause a chemical decomposition of his spiritual essence? If we expect from space as such an organizing soul—especially since the existing separation of the estates is spatially recognized and expressed in the committee meetings—then we are advocating an extreme materialist mechanism." Evidently, to imagine that abstract space itself could bear values such as justice is like imagining that space itself possesses a soul; it is at most a type of extreme materialist mechanism, not Marxist dialectical materialism.
Beyond the issue of workers' workspace mentioned previously, the classical Marxist authors also noted the issue of workers' living space. Marx wrote in Volume I of Capital: "Every unprejudiced observer sees that the greater the centralisation of the means of production, the greater is the corresponding heaping together of the labourers within a given space; that therefore the swifter capitalistic accumulation, the more miserable are the dwellings of the workers." Based on this, some argue that "in the process of deeply excavating the root causes of the injustice of the production of space, Marx displayed the intuitive and acute characteristics of this phenomenon’s violation of human rights"; "in other words, in capitalist society, the more complete the transformation of spatial resources like real estate into property rights and the more powerful their capitalization, the worse the human rights situation regarding the dwelling space of the working class and the toiling masses." However, immediately preceding this sentence, Marx wrote: "The intimate connexion between the pangs of hunger of the most industrious layers of the working class, and the extravagant consumption, coarse or refined, of the rich, for which capitalist accumulation is the basis, reveals itself only when the economic laws are known. It is otherwise with the 'housing of the poor.'" Therefore, the most fundamental problem is the hunger and suffering of the workers, not the housing problem. In a footnote just before this sentence, Marx quotes Dr. Simon’s health report: "it must be remembered that privation of food is very reluctantly admitted, and that as a rule great poorness of diet will only come when other privations have preceded it. ... clothing and fuel will have been even scantier than food. ... there will be no adequate protection from cold; and ... there will be a very small collective room-space—a room-space perhaps so small as to offer the lowest accommodation at which health can be maintained or life continued. There will be nothing or next to nothing of any household furniture or utensil, and a cleanliness of person and dwelling will have been found nearly as hard to maintain as it is to purchase." We see that the problem of housing—that is, the spatial problem—ranks behind food, clothing, and fuel. To ensure the consumption of food, clothing, and fuel, workers can only sacrifice their living space. Even if theorists of spatial justice could use "spatial justice" to allow workers to live in larger rooms for free, these workers would still lack sufficient food, clothing, and fuel; moreover, maintaining cleanliness in such a larger space would be even more expensive and difficult to manage, such that it would only become a larger, filthy space. Clearly, if the theory of spatial justice is to hold, it is far from sufficient to speak only of spatial justice without speaking of "cleanliness justice," "furniture justice," "fuel justice," and "clothing justice."
Some cite Marx’s words—"Capital by its nature drives beyond every spatial barrier. ... It strives on the one hand to create the world market, and on the other to annihilate space by time"—to argue that "the 'space' being annihilated here refers to independent regional natural spaces that have not been artificially transformed." However, in the portion omitted by such authors, Marx wrote: "The more developed the capital, therefore, ... the more does it strive for an even greater extension of the market and for the greater annihilation of space by time. (If the distance $L$ is to be $\dots$)" and "The creation of the physical conditions of exchange—of the means of communication and transport—the annihilation of space by time—becomes an extraordinary necessity for it." Clearly, if understood from the perspective of improving means of transport, then "space" here is not "independent regional natural space that has not been artificially transformed." In fact, according to Marx’s account in Volume II of Capital: "With the change in the means of communication, old centers of production decline and new ones rise. (In addition, long-distance transport is relatively much cheaper than short-distance transport.) Parallel with the development of the means of transport, not only the velocity of movement in space is accelerated, but also spatial distance is shortened in time." From this, we can understand that the so-called "annihilation of space by time" refers to the "shortening of spatial distance in time," rather than the artificial transformation of independent regional natural spaces.
Regarding the role of capital in "annihilating space by time," the classical Marxist authors were in agreement, viewing it as a positive effect of capital. For instance, the young Engels wrote in the Telegraph für Deutschland: "It is already foreseeable that it will take two weeks to reach New York from any part of Germany, two weeks to visit the sights of the United States from New York, and another two weeks to return home. A few trains and a few steamships can do the trick. Ever since Kant separated the categories of time and space from the intuitive forms of the thinking spirit, humanity has sought to liberate itself materially from these limitations." Thus, after socialism replaces capitalism, socialist society will also inherit this powerful productive force in transport. Since the inevitable consequence of such powerful productive forces is that human production and life will be relatively concentrated in certain cities or regions with certain—even long—distances between them, rather than being evenly distributed across every square kilometer of land, this uneven distribution is a state compatible with the development of productive forces. It cannot be negated by invoking "spatial injustice." The problem lies only in how to eliminate the urban-rural divide and the gap between industry and agriculture caused by this state under the capitalist system. Regarding this, Lenin once pointed out: "Social-Democrats are able to appreciate the historic services of the great centers of life and culture. They are proof of their firm opposition to tying any population, especially the peasants and agricultural workers, to one place. ... But the fact that we definitely recognize the progressive character of big cities in capitalist society does not in the least prevent us from including in our ideal (and in our program of action—for we leave 'unrealizable' ideals to the likes of Messrs. Struve and Berdyaev) the abolition of the antithesis between town and country. It is not true to say that this involves the abandonment of the treasures of science and art. On the contrary, this is necessary in order to bring these treasures within the reach of the whole of the people, in order to abolish the isolation from culture of millions of the rural population, which Marx so aptly described as 'the idiocy of rural life' [8]. At the present time, when it is possible to transmit electric power over long distances, when transport technique has reached such a pitch that it is possible (at less cost than at present) to carry passengers at a speed of over 200 versts an hour, there are absolutely no technical obstacles to the enjoyment of the treasures of science and art, which for centuries have been concentrated in a few centers, by the whole of the population spread more or less evenly over the entire country."
Some critics argue: "The homogenization of spatial shaping, the one-dimensionality of spatial patterns, the uniformity of spatial functions, and the consistency of spatial culture have led to an increasing convergence in the production of spatial products—high-rise buildings in global financial centers, residential buildings for ordinary citizens, plaza architecture for mass cultural life, and buildings for public activities." This issue must also be viewed dialectically. The assertion that "moderate differences in spatial production and habitation among different social subjects are the pluralistic manifestation of social ontology, the diverse expression of social consciousness, the multi-directional unfolding of social axiology, and the multi-dimensional revelation of social existence, and thus constitute the solemn demand for spatial justice in the unity of subject and object"—this demand, before the abolition of capitalist private ownership, can only be a demand to preserve class and urban-rural differences and to refuse the sharing of technological and cultural achievements among the entire population.
As we saw earlier, classical Marxist authors noticed the suffering inflicted on workers by capital when it economizes on the space for productive activity: "It is known how far the economy of space, and therefore of buildings, crowds the laborers into close quarters. In addition, there is the economy of ventilation. These two things, combined with the long working-hours, produce a large increase in diseases of the respiratory organs, and an increase in the number of deaths." However, the classical Marxist authors also noted the positive significance of "concentrating the means of production to a greater degree, and, in accordance therewith, collecting the laborers to a greater degree": "Even if many workers are only brought together in space without cooperating, these means of production take on the character of social conditions of labor or social conditions of labor, as distinguished from the scattered and relatively more expensive means of production of the isolated independent worker or small master." "On the one hand, cooperation allows of the extension of the spatial sphere of labor, and is, therefore, for certain processes of labor, rendered a necessity by the spatial connection of the object of labor; as in the case of drainage, embanking, irrigation, and the construction of canals, roads, and railways. On the other hand, while extending the sphere of labor, it also allows of its spatial contraction relative to the scale of production. This contraction of the spatial sphere of labor, while its sphere of action is extended, an economy of non-productive costs, is the result of the aggregation of laborers, of the coming together of different processes of labor, and of the concentration of the means of production."
Marx once mentioned that in ancient states, because productive forces were insufficiently developed, only a small amount of production could be achieved within a given space, which could not support a larger population. This led to population pressing against the productive forces, forcing migration: "it was this pressure of population on the powers of production, that drove the Barbarians from the high plains of Asia to invade the Old World. The same cause acted there, although under a different form. In order to remain Barbarians, they were forced to remain few in number. They were tribes of shepherds, hunters, and warriors, whose mode of production required a large space for every individual, like the Indian tribes in North America today. The increase of their numbers resulted in their crowding one another’s territory. Thus the surplus population was forced to undertake those adventurous great migrations which laid the foundation of the peoples of ancient and modern Europe." Therefore, since "space is an element of all production and all human activity," using space economically or improving its efficiency is an element in expanding human production and activity—a positive factor in the spatial problem—provided, of course, that it does not oppress the worker. Naturally, to maximize these positive factors and overcome the negative ones, it is only possible by abolishing capital and evolving from capitalist society to socialist society.
IV. Conclusion
Although appealing to "justice" is not a Marxist approach, after undergoing "decontamination"—that is, ensuring it does not distract people's attention from the primary problems—words like "justice," "truth," and "morality" are not entirely off-limits for Marxists.
Marx once pointed out: "Time is the room of human development." The "room" (space) here is not physical space or what some call natural space. It indicates that time is more important than space: "A man who has no free time to dispose of, whose whole lifetime, apart from the mere physical interruptions by sleep, meals, and so forth, is absorbed by his labor for the capitalist, is less than a beast of burden. He is a mere machine for producing Foreign Wealth, broken in body and brutalized in mind. Yet the whole history of modern industry shows that capital, if not checked, will recklessly and ruthlessly work to cast the whole working class into this state of utter degradation." Historically, the working classes of various countries have gone on strike to shorten the working day, but they have rarely fought for "spatial justice." This is not because they are less "well-informed" than Western intellectuals, but precisely because they have grasped the root of the matter. Today, the vast numbers of laborers in China are also struggling painfully and powerless to resist the "996" [9] working day imposed on them in violation of labor laws. Clearly, "temporal justice" is far more meaningful than "spatial justice." It is time to step away from the clamorous research into spatial justice.
(The author is a researcher at the Institute of Marxism Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) Online Editor: Bao Luo Source: Studies on Socialist Core Values, 2020, Issue 6