Li Shule: Space and Capital: Homogeneity and Heterogeneity in Lefebvre's and Marx's Spatial Thought
In recent years, influenced by the "spatial turn" in Western Marxism, academia has worked on the one hand to unearth the spatial discourse implicit in Marx’s logic of capital, striving to deepen the exploration of the intrinsic links between space and capital. On the other hand, scholars have attempted to clarify the lineage of spatial thought from Marx to figures such as Lefebvre through a historical surveying of Western Marxist spatial theory. Regarding existing research, scholars have tended toward "homogeneity studies" of spatial thought from Marx to Lefebvre. Their discussions of the relationship between space and capital have, to a certain extent, obscured the heterogeneity between the two due to an over-interpretation of the commonalities in their respective spatial ideas. Re-reading and interpreting the heterogeneity between Lefebvre’s and Marx’s spatial thought requires excavating, organizing, and clarifying the generative logic, intellectual context, and theoretical landscape of both, as well as the narratives on relevant themes within their classical texts. Only through a deep surveying of this classical domain, combined with the theoretical propositions and intellectual achievements of contemporary domestic and foreign scholarship, can we creatively effect a modern transformation of Marx’s spatial thought and graft Marxist spatial theory onto the practice of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the development of Chinese Marxist philosophy in the New Era.
I. Space and Capital: The Generative Logic of Lefebvre’s and Marx’s Spatial Thought
How do we identify Marx’s spatial thought? In fact, a specialized concept or category of "space" does not appear or find use within Marx’s theoretical system. From a contemporary academic perspective, Marx’s spatial thought largely runs through his work in the form of metaphors. From the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 to Capital, he formed the basic thread of his spatial thought by scientifically revealing the essence of capital. Contained therein are rich and substantial resources for modern spatial thought. In exploring the formation and developmental trajectory of Marx’s ideas, it is not difficult to find numerous connections between Lefebvre’s and Marx’s spatial thought. In reality, Lefebvre’s early critique of everyday life reflects the penetration and influence of space by the signs and consumer imagery created by capitalism; this remains within the logic of Marx’s spatial thought. However, by the time he proposed the theory of the production of space, Lefebvre explicitly stated that in modern society, capital no longer achieves the goal of accumulation merely by penetrating space with its own logic, but by reproducing the "abstract space" of its own existence. It was at this moment that Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space began to exhibit its unique theoretical connotations. It is evident that in the generative logic of both men’s spatial thought, the relationship between space and capital is the primary intellectual thread running throughout.
(1) The logical starting point: How the domination of space by capital becomes possible
Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 began criticizing capitalist society based on the facts of national economy [1]. He focused on analyzing how the capitalist system broke with and thoroughly reconstructed the feudal system, which is precisely the starting point for the generation of his spatial thought. Because modern landed property and the old form of landlord ownership follow two completely different logics, the capitalist system relied on capital to deconstruct the "fixity" of land; moveable property displayed the miracles of industry, eventually establishing capitalist social relations. From then on, capital achieved universal dominance not only over labor and its products but also over the land. "The final result is that the distinction between capitalist and landowner disappears, so that in the population there remain broadly only two classes: the working class and the capitalist class. The sale and purchase of landed property, the transformation of landed property into a commodity, signifies the final collapse of the old aristocracy and the definitive formation of the money-aristocracy." This marks Marx’s preliminary raising of the question of how capital's domination of space is possible.
Lefebvre’s spatial thought emerged endogenously from his critique of everyday life, aiming most directly to reveal the ways in which modern capitalism controls daily existence. In the second volume of Critique of Everyday Life, space had not yet emerged as the decisive category for the survival of modern capitalism; it served only as the field of everyday life and the medium through which capitalism realized its control over daily life—that is, by constructing everyday life through the signs and imagery that seeped into space. However, the penetration of everyday life by capitalism depends on the spatial conditions of modern society. In the second volume of Critique, these conditions are presented only through the vague expression of "re-privatization," thereby constructing a specific mechanism of alienation in modern capitalism. Based on this, it can be argued that the question of how these spatial conditions are formed leads to the inquiry of the theory of the production of space; subsequently, the question of how the domination of everyday life by capital is possible is transformed into the question of how capital’s domination of space is possible.
(2) Logical unfolding: Urbanization and universal urbanization
The initial process of urbanization reflected the spatial relationship between the city and the countryside. Under the dominance of the logic of capital, urban development and planning deprived people of their living space and rights, causing a dislocation of human existential space. Although Marx did not treat urbanization as an individual problem, he consistently viewed the urban-rural dichotomy as an inevitable phenomenon of the development of the logic of capital. Therefore, the key to solving urban-rural issues lies in the question of capital. In his view, the modern large industrial city is predicated on the separation of agriculture from industry, labor from the land, and the resulting separation of town and country; the city becomes the vital carrier of capitalist relations of production. In the early stages of urbanization, capitalist production relied on the squeezing of human existential space by capital to obtain the maximum social necessary labor time, thereby ensuring the creation of surplus value. Precisely for this reason, Engels paid particular attention to urbanization problems such as irrational urban planning, crowded housing, pollution emissions, environmental degradation, and the high incidence of disease. Thus, "the separation of town and country can also be seen as the separation of capital and landed property, as the beginning of the existence and development of capital independent of landed property—the beginning of property based merely on labor and exchange."
Looking at Lefebvre’s corpus, his research on urban issues is situated precisely between the critique of everyday life and the construction of the theory of the production of space. In particular, the universal urbanization process of Western capitalist countries since the 20th century provided the historical background for Lefebvre’s study of the relationship between city and capital. "The urban crisis is the most central and fundamental crisis of advanced capitalism, because the struggle over the use of space and the control of everyday life is at the heart of the conflict between capital and social needs." Lefebvre consciously distinguished his work from the industrialization stage occupied by Marx and Engels, critically pointing out that through a worldwide network of banks, modern capitalist spatial production has achieved the "deterritorialization" of surplus value, thereby completely dissolving the problem of the urban-rural dichotomy. Consequently, the urbanization issues since the 20th century are actually problems of uneven regional development caused by universal global urbanization, marking the transition of modern capitalism from an industrial society to an urban society. Therefore, the solution to urban problems is to seek "differential space" from outside capitalism through urbanistic imagination and practice. Advancing from the "city" to the "urban" around the critique of everyday life, Lefebvre revealed that differential space is the key to breaking the homogenization of modern capitalist spatial production.
(3) Logical orientation: Spatial metaphor and the production of space based on the logic of capital
In Capital, Marx already launched a discussion on the "spatialization of capital" and the "capitalization of space" based on the logic of capital, preliminarily completing the construction of his spatial thought. In recent years, the main achievements of the domestic academic study of Marx's internal relationship between space and capital have been reflected in the thesis regarding the spatialization of capital, the capitalization of space, and their mutual transformation. This thesis is based on the inherent attributes of capital—namely, the material and relational attributes that capital itself possesses. It is manifested in three aspects: first, the spatialization of capital; second, the capitalization of space; and third, the mutual transformation between the two. From this, a spatial metaphor based on the logic of capital was constructed.
From the book The Production of Space, it appears that Lefebvre’s move from the production of "things in space" to the "production of space itself" emphasizes that the relationship between space and capital has moved from the entanglement of Marx’s time toward integration. "The production of space as a whole, just as it corresponds to the level of productive forces, possesses a certain rationality. Therefore, the problem is no longer to introduce form, function, and structure in isolation, but to master the whole of space by integrating form, function, and structure according to a certain concept of integration." According to this assertion, the production of space is clearly not generated based on the logic of capital alone, but is rather a holistic logic in which the logic of capital and the logic of space are coupled; simultaneously, this holistic logic of spatial production in turn reconstructs modern capitalist space. Thus, Marx’s ideas on the spatialization of capital and the capitalization of space are vital sources for Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space, while the theory of the production of space pushes the study of the relationship between space and capital to a new height on the foundation of Marx’s ideas.
II. The Criteria for Judging the Homogeneity and Heterogeneity of Lefebvre’s and Marx’s Spatial Thought
If the generative logic of Lefebvre’s and Marx’s spatial thought is the prerequisite for discussing homogeneity and heterogeneity, then defining these two must involve establishing certain criteria for judgment.
(1) The logical prerequisite of the theory of the production of space
Marx’s critique of capitalist society lay, on one hand, in using historical materialism to expose that capitalist society is merely a stage in the historical development of human society, thereby arguing that it will eventually be replaced; on the other hand, it lay in using political economy to reveal the essence of the bourgeoisie’s exploitation of the proletariat’s surplus value, thereby arguing that it will eventually perish. Lefebvre was deeply in agreement with this. Thus, before elaborating on the connotations of his theory of the production of space, he performed the same work as Marx regarding the history of spatial production. First, Lefebvre pointed out horizontally that "every mode of production has its own specific space, so the transition from one mode to another necessarily requires a new production of space." The mode of production of a given society determines the spatial configuration of that society, which establishes the foundation of historical materialism for the theory of the production of space. Second, he emphasized vertically that "the space of capitalist production is itself caused by the pressure of the world market and capitalist relations of production," thus making a "political economy of space" possible. He further emphasized the necessity of returning to Marx’s political economy and "saving it from its past state of bankruptcy by providing it with a new object—the production of space." Here, Lefebvre pointed out that the revival of the critique of political economy would prove how the political economy of space coincides with the "self-representation of space," further explaining that this self-representation of space is the global medium ultimately established by modern capitalism. He believed it is through this medium of space that modern capitalist society reproduces itself. The spatial order actually plays a vital role in connecting and controlling the internal contradictions of capitalism, relating to the fundamental interests of the ruling class.
From this, it can be argued that the logical premise of the theory of the production of space serves as the basis for studying the homogeneity between the spatial thought of Lefebvre and Marx. Lefebvre first established the theoretical foundation for the production of space through historical materialism, and subsequently identified the production of space as a critical junction in the development of capitalism through political economy. In his view, the history of the production of space is a process leading from absolute space to abstract space, where the key to this spatial transformation lies in the formation of a space for capital accumulation. However, as seen from the discourse above, Lefebvre consistently emphasizes that the production of space is a "new object," precisely because it is through this process that modern capitalist society reproduces itself. Conversely, the production of space did not appear in the original frameworks of capitalism and political economy; how, then, did Marx critique capitalist abstract space from the relationship between space and capital?
In Marx’s work, capitalist abstract space centers on the internal attributes of capital, forming the "spatialization of capital," the "capitalization of space," and their mutual transformation. The spatialization of capital allows capitalism not only to achieve expansion in a geographical sense but also to prompt the expansion of the contradictory internal relations of capital, eventually making space dependent upon capital. The capitalization of space, meanwhile, achieves the liquidity of real estate by distinguishing between fixed capital and the ownership of fixed capital; this further leads to the separation of the ownership of space’s natural attributes from its social attributes, thereby deconstructing the natural attributes of space and ultimately making the spatial needs of human beings subordinate to the needs of capital valorization. Thus, it is evident that when discussing the relationship between space and capital, Marx had already provided a preliminary analysis of the connections and distinctions between the spatialization of capital and the capitalization of space. This precisely proves that Marx developed reflections on space based on the logic of capital. Of course, at this stage, Marx only formed spatial metaphors based on the logic of capital. Viewed this way, merely analyzing the logical premise of Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space can only grasp the homologies in the two men’s spatial thought; it is insufficient to explain the production of space itself, or the extent to which the production of space is distinguished from Marx’s spatialization of capital and capitalization of space. The answer to this can only be sought from the specific connotations of the theory of the production of space.
(2) The Specific Connotations of the Theory of the Production of Space
In Lefebvre's view, modern capitalism has become entirely heterogeneous to the capitalism critiqued by Marx. Its emergence is closely related to the reality of urbanization and the total planning of urbanism. The transition from the old generation (capitalism) to the new generation (modern capitalism) reflects the fact that abstract space, by means of urban planning, forms an oppressive rule over everyday life, and the essence of this realization is precisely the production of space itself.
Distinguishing the logical premise of the theory of the production of space from its specific connotations is the dividing line in the study of the homogeneity and heterogeneity between Lefebvre’s and Marx’s spatial thought. In this sense, the specific connotations of the theory of the production of space contain all the mysteries of the development of modern capitalism. First, the production of space itself has replaced the production of things in space to become the dominant mode of social production. The production of space "is not a certain secondary concrete feature or spectacle of capitalist society appearing at a certain stage of development, but rather serves as the fundamental existential basis for the various parts of capitalist productive forces, relations of production, the [economic] base, and the superstructure." Consequently, all social contradictions in modern capitalism present themselves as contradictions of space.
Second, the production of space emphasizes the decisive significance of reproduction in modern capitalist society. This manifests as a threefold relationship: the reproduction of life (the family), the reproduction of labor power (the working class), and the reproduction of social relations of production (the reproduction of the social relations that constitute capitalism). As modern capitalist production advances, it relies increasingly on the reproductive capacity of the production of space to construct a spatial order subordinate to bourgeois interests, which ultimately relates directly to whether the internal contradictions of capitalism are kept under control. This is an important manifestation of the self-awareness of the production of space.
Third, the production of space has led to a radical change in the mode of rule in modern capitalism. Modern capitalism transforms social space through strategic urban construction. Through financial investment, urban construction (land and the urban built environment) allows space to be commodified and turned into "moveable" property [2], thereby becoming the most liquid form of wealth. This is the customary trick used by capitalism to solve the decline in the average rate of profit in ordinary commodity production. On a deeper level, the formation of rule by abstract space is the realization logic of the production of space. The abstract space of modern capitalism constrains the material existence of other commodities and social relations by continuously reconstructing various social relations. From then on, "urban planning and urbanism became nothing more than strategic tools for the contemporary capitalist state to manipulate fragmented urban realities and control the production of space."
Finally, the politics and class struggle toward which the theory of the production of space points are also entirely different. In the context of the production of space in modern capitalism, human liberation manifests as the liberation of space. Lefebvre identifies that the social space of modern capitalism has been constructed by commercial images, signs, and products; this is a form of alienation more profound than the fetishism identified by Marx. The object of the struggle for spatial liberation is precisely the rule of abstract space in modern capitalism. The key to the problem lies in whether a new form of dialectical understanding can be distilled from urban society—that is, the proposal of a new radical political possibility for the future prefigured by the "urban revolution." This must be achieved by deconstructing the hegemony of abstract space in modern capitalism to restore the spatial dimension of everyday life, eventually countering homogenized total planning with "differential spatial practices" and using "differential space" as the spatial order to replace the rule of abstract space.
As stated above, the production of space essentially possesses a problematic and a framework that transcends Marx’s spatialization of capital and capitalization of space. It is worth noting that current discussions in Chinese academia regarding the capitalization of space often introduce the ideas of Lefebvre, Harvey, and others as supporting evidence. Superficially, this mode of argumentation allows Marx’s spatial thought to unfold within a broader horizon, thereby providing a basis for the logical consistency between Marx’s spatial thought and later spatial theories. However, it is precisely this mode of argumentation that has caused research into the heterogeneity between Marx’s spatial thought and later spatial theories to become blurred and laggard.
III. Heterogeneity Analysis of the Spatial Thought of Lefebvre and Marx
The misunderstanding in previous research lies in focusing solely on the consistency between the logical premise of Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space and Marx’s spatial thought, thereby directly equating the production of space with the capitalization of space, and ignoring the specific connotations possessed by the former theory. In Lefebvre’s view, the holistic logic of the production of space has replaced the logic of capital to become the fundamental reason for the survival of modern capitalism. It is precisely based on the analysis of the specific connotations of the theory of the production of space that a clear heterogeneity exists between Lefebvre’s and Marx’s spatial thought in at least three aspects: the discourse modality of space, the form of spatial construction, and the power architecture. Based on this, a heterogeneous spatial discourse—distinct from homogeneity studies—can be developed.
(1) Heterogeneity of Spatial Discourse Modality
Clearly, based on different historical conditions, even when facing the same field of inquiry, many internal differences exist in the analytical frameworks Lefebvre and Marx used to approach problems. This leads to a marked heterogeneity in their spatial discourse modalities. Marx believed that capital created the myth that everything can be commodified, thereby thoroughly breaking all spatial forms that existed prior to capitalism. The movement from the separation of land and labor to land becoming "landed property" provided the basis for the liquidity of space. Thus, the activation of space once became an important means for capital's global race; from then on, "all that is solid melts into air." Concurrently, at a deeper level, it re-solidifies space. On one hand, through the spatialization of capital, it greatly expands capitalist relations of production, drawing non-capitalist areas into the capitalist vortex. On the other hand, through the capitalization of space, it dissolves the natural attributes of space, causing the human need for space to succumb to the need for capital valorization. In the transition from "solidifying space—activating space—re-solidifying space," space serves as evidence of the power of capital. This led Marx to feel the power of capital deeply and to realize that only by deconstructing capital at its essence could the proletariat become the "true grave-diggers" of the bourgeoisie.
In Lefebvre's view, however, the power of capital is not evidenced by capital's "rule over space"; rather, space itself becomes the tool through which capital realizes its rule, thereby constructing a holistic spatial discourse. In his view, spatial discourse was already latent in Marx’s thought, but these discourses were scattered and belonged only to a certain level. More importantly, Marx’s critique of political economy possesses the potential to turn toward spatial research, and with the development of capitalism, this potential gradually becomes a necessity. By introducing the production of space as a new object and adopting the critical method of Marx’s political economy, Lefebvre found "social space"—that concrete abstraction—in the depths of history. The final result is that "starting from a history conceived in this way, historical materialism will be greatly expanded and confirmed; it will undergo a serious transformation." Here, he is actually reducing Marx's scattered and metaphorical spatial discourse to a grasp of social relations and reconstructing them holistically. This construction endows social relations with a spatial existence—that is, "social relations of production project themselves into a certain space; while they produce this space, they also inscribe themselves within it."
(2) Heterogeneity of the Form of Spatial Construction
Marx’s spatial thought preliminarily raised the core issues of capitalist spatial construction, while Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space expanded the connotation of space and advanced the exploration of the forms of capitalist spatial construction at a level of heterogeneity. In Marx's view, the spatial construction of capitalism is grounded in modern landed property. The entire value of land is determined by the totality of institutional relations of ownership produced by labor capacity, which is controlled by the social framework and relations of production. Initially, by analyzing the capitalist economic system and critiquing the "trinity formula" (the "capital-profit, land-ground rent, labor-wages" triad) of bourgeois economics, Marx revealed that the ability of land itself to produce value was merely an illusion of capitalist production: land value is a specific relation of capitalist production. Once land is sold as a commodity and subsequently enters production as a factor of production, the value-form of land is stripped of all concrete attributes, leaving only the abstract attribute of a productive factor. Here, capitalist spatial construction serves nothing more than the cycle of capitalist production. However, in Capital and the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx repeatedly refers to the "trinity formula," the most important reason being that he had by then altered his understanding of the concept of land. "Marx treated natural forces as a constituent element of productive forces and incorporated natural resources into the concept of ‘land’." The re-emergence of the issue of land and its ownership indicates that Marx noticed the importance of land for capitalist spatial construction had risen from a general material carrier to the heights of a political strategy for controlling spatial capacity. Lefebvre keenly captured this shift in Marx and pointed out that the significance of the "trinity formula" is by no means limited to exposing the secrets of ground rent and profit; it is reinterpreted with a stronger emphasis on the importance of land, revealing the constructive forms of capitalist space within the context of the production of space through a mode of dialectical movement. In Lefebvre's view, land not only serves as a factor of production organized into the capitalist production process but also, by means of the reproduction of the relations of production, reacts back upon and restricts the production process itself. Consequently, through the manipulation of land development by monopoly power, the form of modern capitalist spatial construction has been completed, and urban construction centered on the reproduction of urban land has become one of the most critical concerns in the process of modern capitalist urbanization. Lefebvre emphasizes that the production of space is concentrated in the real estate sector formed by modern capitalism's control over land. For Marx, real estate was still a "subordinate sector and backward branch of industrial and financial capitalism," and land value existed only as an ordinary form of capital; for Lefebvre, real estate leads the globalization of the world market in an "uneven" [3] manner, and land value becomes the value-form for maximizing capital accumulation. Real estate speculation not only becomes a major source of surplus value for capital formation but also manages and regulates the use of space. As a spatial commodity, it possesses its own market; as an industrial commodity, its viability is a function of space itself. The production of space can even control urban markets, thereby triggering uneven development patterns and requiring state intervention to open up land in order to obtain greater investment returns. It is evident that there is a clear heterogeneity between Lefebvre’s and Marx’s space in terms of constructive forms; this marks the replacement of the production of things by the production of space, while also reflecting the different levels of importance space holds in the thought of these two thinkers.
(III) Heterogeneity of Spatial Power Architectures
From the metaphors of Marx’s spatial thought to the self-consciousness of Lefebvre’s production of space, space has been transformed into the primary political instrument of the modern capitalist state. In the sense of power frameworks, modern capitalism demonstrates an initiative to actively construct space. In Marx’s spatial thought, the power architecture of liberal capitalist space is centered on the logic of capital, initially restricting and fixing the living space of individuals through the division of labor. Through the dual movement of the "spatialization of capital" and the "capitalization of space," capital realizes the compression and plundering of individual space, thereby making the appropriation and distribution of individual space subordinate to capital space. The bourgeoisie utilizes the inequality of spatial appropriation and distribution to appropriate the labor of others to accumulate and valorize capital, ultimately forming a spatial domination suited to liberal capitalism. Thus, according to Marx’s theory of revolution, breaking the power architecture of capitalist space must be achieved through violent revolution to realize spatial restructuring. However, in Lefebvre’s view, the power architecture of modern capitalist space constitutes a complete system. First, spatial organization is the foundation of the power architecture. Modern capitalist society achieves the organization, management, and control of space by homogenizing, fragmenting, and hierarchizing abstract space, which further leads to the "specialization" of everyday life (abstract space evicting everyday life). "Power aspires to control space as a whole, so it maintains space as a ‘shattered unity’ [4]; it is simultaneously fragmented and homogenized—power divides and rules space." Second, spatial design is a political tool for modern capitalism to control everyday life, used by the state to further obtain managerial interests. Modern capitalism creates an "abstract space" through intellectual practices such as urban planning and bureaucratic political practices. Spatial design, on the one hand, unifies the use of space with the control of everyday life, making everyday life more dependent on capitalist organization; on the other hand, it provides support for the power architecture of the social control alliance to further oppose the working class’s use of space in everyday life. Finally, state intervention is the top-level design of the power architecture. The destruction of space stems from inalienable human existential needs; it is realized through the dominance of abstract space and masked by ideological planning to cover up state intervention. Lefebvre identifies a contradiction in state intervention in space: on one hand, modern capitalism constructs an abstract social space through the production of space to hide everyday life; on the other hand, while modern capitalism attempts to use state intervention to mask the everyday life of the people, it also destroys the construction of its own social space, causing everyday life to be exposed instead, thereby more thoroughly exposing the abstract nature of its social space.
Conclusion
Contemporary spatial issues have become one of the focal points of discussion in domestic and international academic circles. Time and space, as basic categories of materialist dialectics, are the fundamental modes of human existence. From Marx’s scattered spatial metaphors to Lefebvre’s holistic logic of the production of space, we see a reflection of the transition of capitalist spatial construction from unconsciousness to self-consciousness. Benefiting from Lefebvre’s heterogeneous discourse, not only has the deep-level critique of modern capitalist spatial production been advanced, but the potential directions for socialist differential space and socialist revolution have also been pointed out. However, when he considered in the preface to The Production of Space whether socialism had ever created its own space, he stated that the socialist mode of production has thus far lacked its own concrete form. The reason Lefebvre answered this way was that the decisive "problematique" [5] has shifted from industrialization to urbanization; the spatial form of the future must be built on the foundation of an urban society, and current socialism has not developed according to this direction. Although he proposed many useful conceptions regarding the production of socialist space and socialist differential space, he did not truly conduct an in-depth, concrete analysis within socialist countries regarding their socialist systems, modes of production, modernization paths, and the actual conditions of their spatial form construction. Taking China as an example: against the historical background of the former struggle for absolute space between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Chinese-path modernization has from the very beginning focused on the development of its own social contradictions. Consequently, the spatial strategy it adopted was to carve out a relative space for its own development within absolute space. It is grounded in the recognition of differential forms of space, transcending increasingly absolute ideological prejudices, thereby shifting the focus of development onto the value pursuits of socialism. Over the 40-odd years of reform and opening up, China has encountered problems such as excessive capital accumulation, over-urbanization, and land speculation due to the introduction of capital markets during the urbanization process; this precisely reflects the wrestling match between the socialist system and the market formed on the logic of capital. The superiority of the socialist system lies precisely in its adherence to a people-oriented approach within the production of space, actively guiding the direction of capital market development to satisfy the people’s aspirations for a better life. The production of space in socialism with Chinese characteristics has grown from nothing to something, and from passive response to active development. "Different forms of spatial practice are precisely the salient marks of different modernization schemes."