Space, Class, and Revolutions

Sammanfattning: This essay connects to an ongoing discussion and debate on the usefulness and accuracy of the theories and the conceptual apparatus developed by the French theorist Henri Lefebvre. From an analytical reading of Lefebvre’s book The Urban Revolution, I make an original interpretation of Lefebvre’s arguments by tracing them back to Hegel’s syllogism and Marx’s two departments of social reproduction. Also, I claim that the dialectical understanding is able to explain the movement of history, and results in a concept of freedom that is constantly transcending into a higher phase. Thus, dialectics as a method and analysis, fundamentally opposes structuralist and essentialist approaches. The essay turns our attention towards space in general, urban and suburban issues in particular, and discusses the importance of an analysis of spatial domination. The usefulness and accuracy of Lefebvre’s works is best demonstrated in the widened horizon it opens for a transcendence of the present social system into a higher phase.