Li Shule: The Four Dimensions of Foreign Left-wing Scholars' Spatial Critique of 21st-Century Capitalism
Capitalism, by virtue of its conscious construction of its own space, reproduces an abstract space that sustains its own development, ultimately concealing the "space of order" within the "order of space." This is not only the foundation upon which capitalism establishes its spatial dominance but also a significant reason for its survival. In response, scholars such as Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, Edward W. Soja, and Manuel Castells have taken the production of space as a central axis, using social space as the research baseline for the spatial critique of capitalism. In the transition from the production of capitalist space in the 20th century to the production of global space in the 21st century, previously well-defined levels of social space have come to exhibit a complex state of mutual penetration, combination, and superposition. Consequently, the scalar characteristics of social space hidden within capitalist spatial forms have become increasingly apparent. Although Lefebvre also attended to the issue of scale [1] from local politics to the state and even the global level, the scalar characteristics of capitalist social space had not yet fully revealed themselves at that time. Since the 1990s, scholars like Harvey, Neil Smith, and Doreen Massey began preliminary explorations into the political-economic significance of spatial scale. Entering the 21st century, foreign left-wing scholars have formed a new perspective on the spatial critique of capitalism by revealing the production mechanisms and internal correlations of different spatial scales under new capitalist forms. Harvey and Smith, in particular, regard the "production of spatial scale" as the key to understanding the capitalist world of the 21st century.
The production of space in the past was based on the reality of universal urbanization; however, with the development of dynamic modes of global capital accumulation, capital has increasingly concentrated in specific urban spaces. Through the reorganization of urban spatial scales, capitalism has formed a unique territorial configuration: the global city. To maintain the stability of global cities, capitalism utilizes the transmutation of the state spatial scale to form a "new state space" that consolidates the spatio-temporal relations of capital accumulation. For the sake of continuous capital accumulation, capitalism extends from the reorganization of urban spatial scales and the transmutation of state spatial scales to the reconstruction of the global spatial scale, elevating original micro-level spatio-temporal relations into a macro-level and asymmetrical spatial order, thereby constructing a new world system. To make the global spatial scale serve capital accumulation, capitalism must obtain new modes of value production by creating hierarchical differences in the scale of the body [2], using these to adjust the global deployment of capital. It is precisely based on these new changes and characteristics of 21st-century capitalism—from universal urbanization to global cities, from state space to new state space, from the world system to the new world system, and from the disciplined body to the production of the scaled body—that foreign left-wing scholars have formed a fourfold critique: the dimension of global city critique, the dimension of new state space critique, the dimension of new world system critique, and the dimension of body-space critique.
I. The Dimension of Global City Critique
Entering the 21st century, regional metropolises based on "Fordist-Keynesian" mass production have gradually transformed into strategic nodes of global and European financial networks. Capitalism has integrated metropolitan cities into the cycle of global capital accumulation, making them the economic engines of national prosperity. As urban problems evolve into scalar problems, cities and their regions have become strategic sites for regulatory experimentation, institutional innovation, and socio-political struggle. "Scale is no longer equivalent to a unified social function... but is rather seen as the concrete manifestation of diverse and overlapping political-economic processes." The concept of the "Global City" proposed by Saskia Sassen points out that capitalist spatial production has formed a model that is spatially dispersed but organizationally integrated. New forms of capital mobility and concentration have turned a small number of global cities into transnational economic spaces, specialized technological spaces, and highly professionalized workspaces for the operation of domestic and foreign firms. The global city itself possesses a unique spatial configuration, internal dynamics, and social structure; it is essentially a spatial unit of capital driven by both internal and external forces, with New York, London, and Tokyo being the typical examples. The 2008 global financial crisis precisely revealed that "global cities" have become the most significant sites where spatial contradictions intensify and erupt. It is evident that 21st-century capitalism, with the global city as the source [3], shapes new scalar spaces from the outside in, further exacerbating spatial differentiation and the exploitation of urban residents. Consequently, foreign left-wing scholars have taken the critique of the global city as an important dimension of the spatial critique of 21st-century capitalism, analyzing and examining it through the two aspects of the global urban landscape and the geographic networks of power of global cities.
- Critique of the Global Urban Landscape
The urban landscape is a microcosm of social relations in time and space, and the production of the global urban landscape highlights the trend of merging local and global scales. Oriented by competition between global cities, capitalism uses the production and consumption of landscapes as a means to maintain economic vitality. Traditional spaces, such as residential and administrative districts, as well as new spaces like ethnic or racial enclaves and slums, have all become tools for capital segregation and class differentiation. As a new scalar space and order, the global urban landscape represents the highest stage of 21st-century capitalism’s planning of all urban space to conform to its own interests. Foreign left-wing scholars aim to reveal the constantly changing global urban landscape and thereby critique the various modes of exploitation within it.
Capital, government, media, and consumer tastes jointly drive the renewal and reconstruction of the urban landscape, giving rise to "the urban dweller's longing for authentic origins." Sharon Zukin pioneeringly redefined "authenticity" as the cultural right of all people to live and work in the city, using it as a powerful weapon in the struggle against the power of capital to control urban space. However, capitalism has seized the right to interpret "authenticity," reducing it to a carefully selected lifestyle or performance. The ecosystem of the "local shopping street," which serves as a site for the construction of authenticity, is gradually destroyed by "gentrification" and "hipsterification" during the process of building global cities, causing low-income locals, transnational immigrants, and ethnic minorities to progressively lose their sense of spatial belonging. Thus, the spatial contradictions between nations and races, between the Global North and the Global South within global cities, and between the hyper-diversity of globalization and the authenticity and spatial belonging of local socio-ecological structures are precisely the results of capital power’s violent seizure of human spatial rights. The global city has become a "hidden site" for the exploitation of cultural and emotional value.
Capitalism continuously carries out "creative destruction" within the global city, simultaneously updating the urban landscape based on consumption and desire. Through an analysis of a century of development in New York’s Times Square, Marshall Berman points out that the symbols, culture, and ideology spawned by the logic of consumption and desire—with the aid of modern information technology—manifest as a diversified urban consumption landscape. It traverses spatio-temporal distances in the geographical sense to achieve a permanent presence in Times Square, ultimately abstracting the process of mutual integration between global and local social spaces. Berman calls for people to actively participate in the construction of the urban landscape through the "right to the city," resisting the global urbanization and spatial production of capital to reproduce more vibrant modern cities.
Furthermore, the new round of "glocalization" [4] strategies and their scalar reorganization triggered by the global urban landscape have further exacerbated the differentiation and territorial inequality of core nodes within the urban network system. Based on Sassen’s definition of the new characteristics of global cities, Mike Davis, in discussing the birth and polarization of the "slumscape," points out that the emergence of "planet of slums" is a manifestation of the failure of modern urbanization. Global cities as a whole exhibit characteristics of inequality and instability. From Rio de Janeiro to Mumbai, slums have become the new normal of the global urban spatial order. The extreme expansion of the 21st-century global urban poverty landscape has led to serious economic, social, political, and environmental consequences. Therefore, it is necessary to launch resistance movements against capitalist spatial production centered on the slums, which will become an emerging force against the capitalist global urban landscape. This assertion resonates with Smith’s "revanchist city" [5] movements and Harvey’s perspective on "opening up the city for anti-capitalist struggle."
- Critique of the Geographic Networks of Power in Global Cities
Global cities are the technological, specialized, and transnational financial spaces of capital, and their internal industrial structures and spatial forms indicate that "these cities need to be fed." As the "internal space" of capital, the global city is the core of the spatial production and consumption system, extending trade and production networks to the peripheral non-metropolitan world through its influence. Through this, First World cities engage in asymmetric exchange, exploitation, and dominance over Third World cities and rural areas. Meanwhile, the non-metropolitan world feeds the global cities—the key organizational nodes in the network of world economic life—and is forced to rely on such unequal relationships and complex global city networks to solve its own sustainability issues. Along with the continuous concentration of the political economy in global cities, they have reconstructed previous geopolitical and power patterns, gradually becoming the engines of global spatial production.
Centered on global cities, 21st-century capitalism has shaped a new round of global spatial order from the inside out. The primary function of global cities is to promote the economic development of surrounding regions or nations through "competitive attachment" within the fluid global space. In other words, starting from the interior, the global city realizes a macro-global scale by gluing together its own "pan-regions." Sassen not only analyzes the basic characteristics and operation of global cities from the perspective of capital accumulation but also emphasizes that the economic power possessed by global cities in banking, finance, and professional services determines their dominance over the global city network. Massey developed Sassen’s argument, understanding the global city as the center of a geographic network of extensive social power relations. "The key 'centers of command' in the network are today’s 'global cities,' and these cities 'rule the world'." Through the asymmetric exchange of wealth and power, capitalism increasingly concentrates within global cities, thereby shaping a highly hierarchical geographic network of capital power. However, such geographic networks of power are not stable and unchanging; "every city tries to climb up its own hierarchical network or the direction best suited for its future development." Consequently, competition between regions, states, and cities for developmental capital has become more acute, increasingly manifesting as "excessive" urbanization construction worldwide, which ultimately results in worldwide "deterritorialization" and the "de-agriculturalization" of state policies. Therefore, the geographic networks of power in global cities, as a significant mirror of new means of spatial exploitation and spatial dominance, have become a core issue in the 21st-century spatial critique of capitalism.
II. The Dimension of New State Space Critique
The spatial production of global cities and the global city system constructed around them drive the spatial change of state forms through globalization. In this process, the state becomes globalized even as it fractures. In his theory of the production of state space, Lefebvre pointed out that one should not assume a unidirectional relationship between the economic base and the superstructure; rather, the spatial characteristics of the state should be understood through the dialectical relationship between different scales—local, regional, national, and global. In response, Neil Brenner further pointed out that "Lefebvre’s analysis of the state mode of production can be widely applied to analyze the state restructuring in 'neoliberal' forms that unfolded on a global scale in the last two decades of the 20th century." Based on this, Brenner proposed that the production of new state space is a reconfiguration of the old state spatial layers, an interactive transmutation of new boundaries and new scales. In the 21st century, "one of the most important geographical impacts of the globalization of capital is that accumulation, urbanization, and state regulation are no longer concentrated at the national scale, but are rising in new sub-national and supra-national territorial spaces." Based on the critique of new state space, foreign left-wing scholars not only point to the fact of geopolitical critique triggered by state spatial reorganization but also reveal the changes in the scale of new state space.
- Geopolitical Critique Triggered by State Spatial Reorganization
The state is no longer a fixed, pre-given "container," but a dynamic, multi-dimensional spatial form. It is constantly reconstructed through regulatory strategies and socio-political struggles across different domains and scales, attempting to construct a new state space by employing territorial logics and methods of sovereignty analysis that transcend the traditional state space. If previous capital accumulation, urbanization, statization, and even globalization centered on the scale of the state space, then the new state space of 21st-century capitalism will no longer possess a spatial scale held in a privileged position. Regarding the new state space, it is undergoing a dynamic "internal-external" deformation—that is, its external boundaries bring about intense geopolitical conflicts while its interior stimulates struggles over social power.
The political boundaries of capitalist state space are undergoing a profound restructuring, specifically manifested as "the (territorial state) re-replicating external boundaries in the form of 'internal borders'" and reproducing new spatial boundaries. However, this process is essentially a spatial representation of the outward expansion of capital power. On one hand, capitalism has partially opened state borders to absorb migrant workers to meet the practical needs of capital production; on the other hand, it reintroduces old colonial legacies into the political space, promoting the "re-colonization of migrants." This includes spatial segregation, institutionalized discriminatory violence, nationalistic ideological violence, and measures to hunt down undocumented immigrants. Regarding this, Étienne Balibar points out that the capitalist state vacillates between choices of old and new spatial frameworks, causing the relationship between exclusion and inclusion to become extremely strained. Such a community is not only unable to truly achieve totalization but is "a massive negation of the idea of the citizen community... the state and citizenship contradict each other as never before. This is not merely a question of a general and almost fictional opposition." [6] Consequently, the border issue is no longer a marginal issue of politics; it "affects every dimension of the civic space: not only the geographical space where civic life unfolds but also the symbolic and institutional spaces"—the social space of human existence and life. This necessitates the construction of truly "democratized borders" to overcome the complex geopolitical contradictions triggered by capitalist state space.
Differing from Balibar’s perspective, Neil Davidson emphasizes that, unlike traditional territorial states, the unique function of the new state space lies in maintaining the "most basic links of competitive commodity accumulation" while simultaneously "regulating competing capitals to prevent market relations from degenerating into a 'war of all against all.'" Therefore, the capitalist state must possess clear boundaries. This boundary is essentially a spatial limit of accumulation, determined by the "structural coherence of production and consumption within a specific space." In this way, he unifies the competition upon which capitalism relies for survival with the geopolitical competition of states, arriving at the conclusion that "the trajectory of geo-economic competition ultimately ends in geopolitical competition."
2. Critique of the New State Spatial Scale
Building on Harvey’s spatial theory, Bob Jessop initiated a critique of 21st-century new state spatial scales by introducing the concepts of "spatio-temporal out-casting" and "spatial scale." In his view, capitalism "naturally possesses such a necessary temporal structure... involving a cyclical dynamic equilibrium between self-stabilization, continuous self-transformation, and reconstruction induced by occasional crises and other forms of change. These factors are often associated with new modes of time-space distantiation and time-space compression, and frequently with changes in the dominant spatio-temporal perspective and the dominant space of accumulation." New time-space distantiation and compression have disrupted the previous spatial order centered on the state scale; regarding the question of "which spatial scale will become primary in the future of capitalism, and which scale will serve as the mediator articulating other scales, etc., a continuous struggle will unfold."
On this basis, Brenner analyzed the predicament of the universal imbalance of capital accumulation, state governance, urbanization, and socio-political struggle faced by capitalism at the scale of state space. He pointed out that although capitalism can respond to these crises through three strategies—the re-territorialization of the state, the re-bordering of the state, and the rescaling of the state—it is difficult for the first two strategies to fundamentally resolve the inherent contradictions of capitalist state space. Only through rescaling can capitalism adjust the relational structure of social-spatial forms and achieve a dynamic balance between the scaling of social processes, rescale reorganization, and highly asymmetrical social power relations. It is evident that the new state space of capitalism is a social space "characterized by the deployment of state apparatuses to regulate social relations and influence their locational forms, possessing territorial, local, and scale-specific properties." The new state space, on one hand, accelerates capital circulation in specific regions and achieves the reproduction of labor; on the other hand, it "creates a geography and structure of inclusion/exclusion and dominance/subordination." Thus, it modifies the relational structure of specific social-spatial forms and stipulates the relative position of social-spatial forms within the system of uneven spatial development of global capitalism. However, 21st-century capitalism cannot limitlessly carry out "spatial fixes" to shape new state spatial forms, because any concrete spatial order and spatial regulation cannot escape reliance on existing paths. This process is not a "simple transition from one stable regulatory framework to another; they are processes of path-dependent layering." This suggests that the socio-political struggle of the proletariat triggered by the critique of the new state spatial scale will become the realistic path for shaping the differential spaces of socialism.
III. The Critical Dimension of the New World System
With the adjustment of internal spatial production strategies in capitalism, sub-national and supra-national scales have seized the ability of the unitary state to construct world order. This is because the traditional state-centered system is gradually being replaced by a more decentralized, networked power structure; this power is no longer restricted by national borders but unfolds through a global network of social space. The new power structure blurs the boundaries of the radiation of state sovereignty, producing "a world defined by a new, complex regime of difference, homogeneity, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization," which heralds the picture of a New World System. As Soja said, the "three-dimensional supra-national global political-economic distinction, together with its inherent geographical structure of power, is replacing the old international division of labor of the First, Second, and Third Worlds, as well as the popular metaphors of core and periphery: the North-South divide." The New World System is neither the "state scale–world system" proposed by Immanuel Wallerstein, nor the "global scale–world system" understood by scholars such as Kenichi Ohmae, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri. Rather, it is "a multi-scalar restructuring of the capitalist social architecture, paired with a reorganization of deep-seated scalar hierarchies, leading to an entirely new geography of capital accumulation, state regulation, and uneven development." Therefore, one must grasp the characteristics of the New World System from the dual tension between the global scale and the state scale.
1. Critique of the Uneven Geographical Environment
When capital diffuses from closed territorial states into global space, the logic of capital inevitably drives the territorial logic to achieve a dual expansion of the space of capital power and the space of production. Harvey points out that the leap of capitalism from the state scale to the global scale "inevitably arises from the molecular process of capital accumulation in time and space." Consequently, one cannot ignore the impact of the uneven geographical environment on the world system. This is because "the uneven geographical environment is not merely caused by the uneven distribution of resource endowments and the advantages or disadvantages of geographical location; more importantly, it is caused by the increasing concentration of wealth and power itself in certain regions through asymmetrical exchange." On this basis, Harvey emphasizes that the core of the New World System lies in exploiting the uneven geographical environment and utilizing the "asymmetrical" relationships necessarily generated by spatial exchange to carry out capital accumulation, including "accumulation by dispossession," "spatio-temporal fixes," and the "reconstruction of geographical landscapes" across global space. Building on Harvey, Smith emphasizes that through spatial production, capitalism integrates many external geographical spaces into spaces for capital production and accumulation, seeking means of production, exploiting cheap labor, and developing new materials therein. Through such spatial exploitation, capitalism produces spaces of "'underdeveloped development' at the heart of uneven development" and establishes a global spatial order by relying on its own "spatial advantage." Therefore, the New World System of capitalism links the differences of uneven geographical environments at different scales through the global spatial scale to construct a new power architecture of global space.
Establishing a New World System under rescaling is an inevitable product of global spatial production, as well as a product of the internal contradictions and crises of capitalism. Using the 2008 financial crisis as a dividing line, neoliberalism failed to successfully overcome the contradictions that led to the collapse of long-term prosperity and the subsequent persistent crises. The transnational capitalist class no longer regards the "Washington Consensus" as a common ideology, turning instead to localism to oppose globalization and to populism to resist the global flow of population. The anti-globalization and anti-capitalist movements in late-developing or peripheral countries have severely impacted the global spatial order under the New World System. Regarding this, Alex Callinicos, based on "uneven and combined development" in geography, points out that the "spatially concentrated economic complexes produced by capitalist development create very powerful centrifugal forces that will strongly maintain the political division of the world into territorial states." However, due to uneven development across geographical space, the New World System possesses the essential characteristic of a "globally uneven distribution of the relative power of states." Under the context of the relative decline of US economic strength, this distribution pattern may be constrained by diversified spatial forces within the capitalist system, and it may also face challenges from the resistance of late-developing countries against the global spatial order dominated by the logic of capital.
2. Critique of New Imperialism
Admittedly, capitalism has broken away from the state scale, but "the infinite accumulation of capital must be built upon the infinite accumulation of power... the process of infinite capital accumulation requires the political structure to possess a 'process of infinite accumulation of power' to protect continuously growing wealth through the power to maintain growth." The result is that the New World System inevitably gives birth to a global form of new imperialism. Building on Giovanni Arrighi’s dichotomy of the logic of capital and the logic of territory, Harvey points out that "new imperialism" is the product of combining "the politics of states and empires" with the "molecular process of capital accumulation in time and space." Callinicos further emphasizes, "I prefer to conceptualize capitalist imperialism as the intersection of economic and geopolitical competition." This point not only reveals the fact that capitalism competes for dominant positions on a global spatial scale but also deepens the dialectical relationship between the logic of capital and the logic of territory. Furthermore, slightly different from Harvey is Ellen Meiksins Wood. In her view, for transnational capital to achieve the leap from the state scale to the global scale in the context of globalization, it must construct "a global system of multiple local states" in geographical space. This emerging political power architecture centers on protecting the interests of the "empire of capital": on one hand, it promotes the globalization of market laws through spatial units such as sovereign states and supra-national organizations to construct a global order dominated by economic power; on the other hand, it establishes forms of hegemony through the mode of "infinite war." Essentially, this new imperialist model, which Wood calls "capitalist imperialism," is formed within the dual tension between the state spatial scale and the global scale. The long-term turmoil and instability of the New World System are precisely profound representations of the contradictory and irrational nature of capital's spatial domination of the world.
However, this mode of analysis has met with criticism from Neil Davidson. He argues that Arrighi, Harvey, and Callinicos "all start from different territorial and economic logics to arrive at very similar conclusions... this is a more realistic perspective... but this analytical path does not allow for any deeper internal relations." In this regard, if one does not view this issue from the theoretical perspective of the "production of scale," it is easy to fall into the cage of Davidson's critique. It must be clarified that the new world system of capitalism is neither a "completely balanced and smooth space" nor a simple reversion to old-style state spatial configurations. In its essence, the new world system is a spatio-temporal framework capable of accommodating plural spatial forms and multi-level spatial scales. Within this framework, the tension between the logic of capital and the logic of territory reflects a complex process of reorganization and reconfiguration of state and global spatial scales, while new imperialism summarizes the spatial order and power logic that capitalism attempts to create during this process. Therefore, the analytical approach of the logic of capital versus the logic of territory, far from dissolving the deep-seated internal logic of the new world system, further activates the theoretical vitality of spatial critique. Based on this, Theotonio Dos Santos, after a systematic analysis of imperialism and dependency, pointed out that "the contradictions within imperialism, its external contradictions with the proletariat and the socialist system representing the proletariat, and the high degree of concentration already reached by international relations within capitalism" are precisely the fundamental reasons for the constant geopolitical conflicts and contradictions in the contemporary world system.
IV. The Dimension of the Spatial Critique of the Body
Capitalism creates a spatial pattern of uneven development through the production of different spatial scales, thereby consolidating the spatio-temporal circulation mechanism of global capital accumulation. This process not only reflects how capitalism intensifies spatial contradictions across three scales—the reorganization of urban spatial scales, the transmutation of state spatial scales, and the reconfiguration of global spatial scales—but also shows how these ultimately land upon the ultimate logic of global spatial exploitation: the exploitation of the space of the body. The scalarization of the spatio-temporal structure of global capital accumulation causes the space of the human body to exhibit distinct scalar characteristics. The bodies of workers are differentially embedded into the multiple spatial scales of global capital circulation, whereby California-style labor-capital contradictions gradually become spatialized. To further seize greater space for the accumulation of surplus value, capitalism even integrates biopolitical mechanisms into its logic of exploitation, ultimately achieving all-around control from the space of the body to the production of life. In response to this issue, foreign left-wing scholars have opened a new dimension of capitalist spatial critique based on Lefebvre's assertion that "the production of space... begins with the production of the body." They emphasize that the history of the space of the body is a history of continuous vertical differentiation and re-differentiation, eventually forming a highly hierarchical network of social space. Through the production of the scale of the body, 21st-century capitalism reaps surplus value by creating hierarchical differences in body space while simultaneously strengthening scalar management and control. Furthermore, capital co-opts plural subjects through the internal space of the "Crystal Palace" [7] and creates a new "immuno-dilemma" at the expense of marginalized groups. Its sovereign mechanism of exploitation has transcended the control of passive body space found in traditional biopolitics and spatial discipline, turning instead toward the "communal exploitation" of discrete and plural spatial subjects.
- The Critique of the Political Economy of the Space of the Body
Precisely because the spatial production of the body constitutes the original starting point of all spatial production activities, "all of (social) space begins with the body... the roots of (spatial) order can only be explained according to... the order of the body." Through the production of spatial scales, 21st-century capitalism connects the most microscopic space of the body with the macroscopic space of "globalization." This not only leads to space's "forgetting" of the body but also triggers a radical rupture between space and the body, even to the point of ultimately dissolving the ontological value of the body's existence. Building upon Lefebvre's discourse on body space, Harvey further points out: "The body cannot be understood theoretically or empirically without an understanding of globalization." The spatial logic of capitalist globalization draws the bodies of individuals, originally situated at different spatial scales, into complex spatial reorganizations and scalar reconfigurations. "Those who sell their labor power... the uneven development of their bodily practices and sensibilities becomes one of the defining features of the class struggle launched jointly by capital and labor." This spatial difference internalized within the individual body not only determines the relative position of the laborer in the global circulation of capital but also causes them to suffer varying degrees of exploitation during the "production-exchange-consumption" cycle of variable capital. More crucially, capitalism, through "unemployment resulting from downsizing, the redefinition of skills and their remuneration, the intensification of labor processes and despotic supervision systems, the increasing despotism of minute divisions of labor, and the involvement of migrants... has contributed to the uneven geographical value of the individual laborer." From this view, capitalism produces value differentials of workers' bodies in different geographical environments through the production of space. This not only constitutes the basis for the spatial division of labor in capitalism but has also been developed into an important strategy for dividing the working class. Thus, Harvey emphasizes that 21st-century capitalism is no longer satisfied with exploiting the bodies of single individuals in fixed time and space; rather, it has constructed a "body-scale" system to measure value differentials, thereby achieving the communal exploitation of discrete and plural spatial subjects.
Neil Smith, inheriting Harvey's theoretical lineage, further deepened the intrinsic connection between the production of spatial scale and the unevenness of capitalist development, explicitly proposing: "The construction of scale is essentially a social process; it is both produced within social activities and in turn shaped by the structure of geographical-social interactions... the field of scale production often conceals intense political struggles." Among many spatial scales, the scale of the body plays a foundational role; it is the key link connecting all spatial scales. This means that capitalist manipulation of the space of the body has a dual aspect: it is both a reinforcement of the boundaries of various spatial scales and a core strategy for driving spatial differentiation. The capitalist system constructs the body by producing discourses of gender, race, and identity, and employs highly spatialized strategies to implement control and discipline over bodily boundaries. This logic of control not only penetrates micro-spatial scales such as the family and community but also extends to the realm of public space, imposing closed spatial configurations and bodily-based exclusion mechanisms onto what should be open public spaces. Smith take the phenomenon of "the homeless occupying public space" as an example to reveal the spatial exclusion mechanism by which their visibility is constantly erased by alien forces, and they are systematically transferred to shelters, outside buildings and parks, to poor neighborhoods, urban fringes, and other marginal spaces. Through this analysis, Smith profoundly elucidates how the space of the body, once integrated into the capitalist system of scalar production, achieves a holistic domination from the micro-scale of body space to the macro-scale of global space.
- The Critique of the Life-Ontology of the Space of the Body
On the basis of Lefebvre's meta-theory of body space, in addition to Harvey and Smith's critique of the political economy of body space, there exists a more "hidden" critical path—the critique of life-ontology. In Lefebvre’s view, although space is often regarded as an objective existence relative to the subject, this does not mean the subjective dimension is absent from space. "Each living body is space and has its space: it produces itself in space and it also produces that space." Here, life is regarded as the true ontology of body space; the life of the subject and space are directly identical. Peter Sloterdijk [8], through a series of imaginative spatial metaphors such as "bubbles," "globes," and "foam," developed and constituted the life-ontology critique dimension of body space.
Sloterdijk reinterprets the "body-space" relationship from the perspective of life-ontology. He places the body truly at the core of human spatial relations, revealing how humans continuously produce, expand, and reconfigure their own existence within micro and macro spatial structures. Based on the spatial imagery of "bubbles-globes-foam," he points out that globalization is not just the globalization of macro-globes, but the infinite proliferation of micro-bubbles. "A salient sign of the establishment of globality is the forced neighborhood with countless contingent co-existents." The meeting of bubbles causes foam to gradually "brew a state of existence most suitable for living organisms, a state of tranquility similar to that of a living being in the womb." The paradigm of this space is the "Crystal Palace"—it is the concentrated manifestation of capital's internal space. The Crystal Palace is a giant bubble where all commodities, money, symbols, and images converge. This "pampering space" (Verwöhnungsraum) [9] inevitably creates a diametrically opposed, darker, and more dangerous external space; those subjects and spaces cast outside the internal space of capital can only survive and live amidst risk. This is precisely a denigration of the authentic life-logic of human spatial production. "Exclusivity is a quality inherent in projects such as the Crystal Palace... the expression 'globalized world' only refers to the mobile facilities that serve as the 'life-world' for that portion of humanity possessing purchasing power," while "Other" spaces outside the mainstream (such as Third World countries and slums) are isolated in marginal zones.
V. Conclusion
The research shift among foreign left-wing scholars from "the production of space" to "the production of spatial scale" is not intended to negate the basic theoretical paradigms of the spatial critique of capitalism established by scholars like Lefebvre. Rather, it is to reflect the new morphological characteristics of the integration of multiple scales and spatial coexistence presented by 21st-century capitalism. In terms of theoretical lineage, they both inherit the methodological traditions of 20th-century spatial critique—especially Lefebvre’s production of space theory and Harvey’s historical-geographical materialism—and respond to contemporary issues such as spatial reorganization and the lack of spatial justice under the background of neoliberal globalization. The four dimensions of the spatial critique of 21st-century capitalism by foreign left-wing scholars constitute an interlocking logical whole: the global city critique dimension regards the global city as the source of global spatial production, constituting the logical starting point of spatial critique; the new state space critique dimension reveals the spatial differentiation triggered by global cities, causing capitalist regulatory mechanisms to break through the limitations of traditional state spatial scales, constituting a logical extension of the global city critique; the new world system critique dimension focuses on the new power structures formed by the dispersion of power within state space toward multiple scales, constituting a logical deepening of the new state space critique; and the body space critique dimension focuses on the communal exploitation suffered by discrete and plural spatial subjects, constituting the logical direction of spatial critique. The spatial critique of 21st-century capitalism by foreign left-wing scholars has made important theoretical contributions. It not only reveals the holistic essence and operational mechanisms of capitalist spatial rule across macro and micro scales but also deeply analyzes the deep-rooted causes of the dilemma of alternating capitalist political alliances and regional economic-political groups. Clearly, the left-wing movement can only establish its political demands and guide the direction of future radical politics by responding to these dilemmas at the level of spatial scale. However, there are also points open to debate in the spatial critique of 21st-century capitalism by foreign left-wing scholars: first, a failure to fully grasp the internal tension between the "production of spatial scale" and the "production of space," leaving the theory prone to the trap of "scalar-centrism"; second, a weakening of the core position of the Marxist method of class analysis, which reduces the theoretical force of their spatial critique; and third, a lack of an effective mediation connecting spatial critique with revolutionary practice, ultimately limiting the theory's ability to transform into reality. These problems precisely reflect the dilemmas and limitations existing in the theoretical development and innovation of foreign left-wing scholars' spatial critique of 21st-century capitalism.
(Institutional Affiliation: School of Marxism, Guangzhou University) Source: World Philosophy, Issue 3, 2025 Web Editor: Zhang Jian