![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
In the early 21st century global capitalism has gradually been falling into a huge structural crisis, prompting people to rethink the issue of establishing a new world system. The spatial political economy of socialism seeks precisely to explore how to break out of the capitalist world system, to transform the old space of world history, and correspondingly, to create a new space. The spatial political economy of socialism shows that space is an intrinsically important proposition of communism and socialism. Communism logically must inherit the global space of capitalism, while socialism in practice is the product of the uneven spatial development of the capitalist world system. The capitalist world system constitutes the starting point of socialism in practice, while the new world system (communism) is the destination of socialism in practice. Both revolution and construction reflect the law of uneven development of the transition to the world communist system. In the dialectical movement of history, socialism creates the Socialist Regional Economic Union as its instrument of spatial production and expansion, as well as the intermediary to the new world system. The Socialist Regional Economic Union will become an important element in the study of the spatial political economy of socialism.
Acknowledgements
This article was translated from Chinese by Dr. Dongyun Han at the Academy of Marxism, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Immanuel Wallerstein identifies two possibilities for the capitalist world system following the end of the Cold War: either it will continue to function according to its previous model, or else sustaining the old system will become increasingly difficult. “In such a situation, a systemic crisis or fragmentation would occur and would present itself as a period of systemic disruption, the outcome of which would be uncertain.” The period of systemic disruption is seen as occurring between 2000–2025 (see Hopkins and Wallerstein Citation2002, 246).
2 Analyzing “space” as an independent category cannot fully explain capitalism, and remaining at the empirical factual level of “space” means that revealing the essence of capitalism in any depth is still less possible. Space is not the essence of capitalism, but a dimension to be used in examining this essence. Meanwhile, space and time cannot be separated completely. For example, “world history” is itself a dialectical unity of time and space, and as a general development, the “world market” has not only a spatial but also a temporal logic. Therefore, the emphasis on “space” in this article does not mean that “time” is unimportant, and nor does the article use “space” to negate “time.”
3 The very term “sublation” suggests that communism is both the negation of capitalism and its inheritor.
4 It must be acknowledged that “The German Ideology” was written at a time when Marx and Engels’s conception of historical materialism had only just been established, and when their understanding and experience of the proletarian revolution was still immature. Consequently, their discourses on the “communist revolution” contained many ambiguities. In 1847, Engels in his work “Principles of Communism” divided the “communist revolution” into two steps: the “political revolution of the proletariat” and “social revolution” needed to occur simultaneously in at least the major capitalist countries, while the development and realization of the social revolution would not be synchronized from country to country (Engels [Citation1847] Citation2010). By 1850, Marx had explicitly recognized that the political revolution of the proletariat could break out first in relatively backward countries (see Marx [Citation1850] Citation2010).
5 The theoretical logic behind Lenin’s theory of the “triumph of socialism in one country” includes the concept of the “weak link in the chain of imperialism.” The uneven development of the imperialist countries made imperialist wars inevitable, along with the intensification, in the course of the world wars, of a range of further contradictions. The appearance of weak links in the chain of imperialism then enabled breakthroughs for socialist revolution, thus making it possible for socialism to emerge in a few countries or even in one country (see Lenin [Citation1915] Citation1974, [Citation1916] Citation1974). Bukharin (Citation2015, 136, 138), on the other hand, explicitly mentioned Russia as the weakest link in the capitalist world system.
6 “We can think of human societies as beginning to develop in isolation from each other, at mutually discrete points,” Li notes, going on to add:
On a global scale, human societies in eastern China and on the European, African, American and Australian continents were still at this time isolated from each other, existing at mutually discrete points, even though these points were as large as millions of square kilometers. It was not until after the 17th century, when the development of the productive forces under the capitalist system enabled human beings to connect every point on the earth, that the space for human social activities completely lost the character of mutually discrete points. (Li Citation2005, 399–400; translated from Chinese)
7 Marx and Engels did not provide a uniform, definitive statement concerning the specific social forms of pre-capitalist society. At various points they referred to “tribal property,” “the ancient communal and state property,” and “feudal or estate property” (Marx and Engels [Citation1845–Citation1846] Citation2010, 32–34). Marx also spoke of “Asiatic, ancient, feudal” societies (Marx Citation1859). The textbook version of the phrase “primitive society, slave society, feudal society, capitalist society” has its origins in Stalin’s generalization based on the thesis of Marx and Engels.
8 In historiography, whether or not a slave society existed in ancient Chinese society is a matter of great debate, since in China the slave mode of production was combined with other systems of ownership, for example, with the tribal system during the Xia Dynasty and with the system of enfeoffment under the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. A school of researchers thus exists who believe that the predecessor of feudal society in China was a clan society rather than a slave society, and that the Yin-Zhou period saw a transition from a clan society to a feudal society. Whether the social form established in China after slavery and the system of enfeoffment under the Shang and Zhou can be regarded as typical “feudal society” is also a controversial issue. The more influential viewpoints regard the seignorial economy of Western Europe and the landlord economy of China as two different forms of the feudal mode of production. It is not the intention of this article to deal with this aspect of the controversy, since the viewpoints concerned, whatever they may be, do not affect the conclusions of this article. It should be noted that Marx used the term “Asiatic mode of production” to refer to the rural commune mode of production in Asia (mainly in India); he regarded this mode as the basis of “Oriental despotism,” and sought to show that Oriental societies were different from the social formations of Western Europe. It is certain that in Marx’s view the “Asiatic mode of production,” “Oriental despotism” and the later “absolute monarchy” in Western Europe were in fact somewhat different from “feudalism.”
9 Many researchers believe that the marketization of cottage industry and the formation of a simple form of “market economy” in Britain and other parts of Western Europe began in the 13th century, well before the 15th or 16th centuries that we usually think of as the point where the transition to a (capitalist) market economy began (see Brodeur Citation1992, 89; North and Thomas Citation1999, 72–73; Xu Citation2008, 164–177).
10 Marx pointed out,
In the fully developed bourgeois system each economic relationship presupposes the other in a bourgeois-economic form, and everything posited is thus also a premiss, that is the case with every organic system. This organic system itself has its premisses as a totality, and its development into a totality consists precisely in subordinating all elements of society to itself, or in creating out of it the organs it still lacks. This is historically how it becomes a totality. Its becoming this totality constitutes a moment of its process, of its development. (Marx [Citation1857–Citation1858] Citation2010, 208)
11 The concept of the “producing nation” is linked to the national economy, and signifies “the state as the epitome of bourgeois society.” It thus emphasizes the special nature of the state as the embodiment of a unified national economy (Marx [Citation1857–Citation1858] Citation2010, 45).
12 In the original text, Marx and Engels posited the development of the productive forces as “an absolutely necessary practical premise” for communism, since “with want the struggle for necessities would begin again” and “all the old filthy business would necessarily be restored” (Marx and Engels [Citation1845–Citation1846] Citation2010, 49; italics in the original).
13 In his reply to the Russian female revolutionary Zasulich in February–March of 1881, Marx first suggested that Russia’s development could be achieved without passing through “the Caudine Forks of the capitalist system” (Marx Citation1963, 436). The conditions on which he based his argument were: the preservation of common ownership of land in the Russian rural commune, the complementarity of the Russian and Western European revolutions, and the application by Russia of the positive results created by the capitalist system to the commune (Marx Citation1963). Later Engels further clarified the prerequisites for the possibility of Russia to leap over the Caudine Forks, i.e., the victory of the proletarian revolution in Western Europe as well as the example and the active assistance it provides the Russian commune (Engels [Citation1893] Citation2010, [Citation1894] Citation2010).
14 For relevant literature on this debate within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks), see Bukharin (Citation1988), Stalin (Citation1963) and Zheng (Citation1986).
16 Trade and the division of labor can exist between socialist countries, between countries of the capitalist center, between socialist countries and developing countries, and among developing countries.
17 In a series of articles in the 1960s and 1970s Samir Amin pointed out that the industrialization strategy of “import substitution,” implemented by developing countries and aimed at achieving self-reliance, had failed to achieve a break from the unequal division of labor in the capitalist world system, and remained no more than a third stage in the evolution of the form of dependent development.
18 As a representative of the Gramscian School of international relations theory, Arrighi has done an effective job of analyzing the two sides of “hegemony” (see Arrighi Citation2001, 33–35).
19 Such views are more typical of the Western Left. See Harvey (Citation2010), Hart-Landsberg and Burkett (Citation2004), and Westad (Citation2007, 131–133).
20 Although the statement that an international average rate of profit has not been formed between countries and regions is in this case merely a theoretical abstraction, i.e., a qualitative conclusion, empirical studies support this judgment as well (see Feng Citation2016).
21 Although it is impossible to describe the planned economy of the future with any precision, both the discussion of “computer socialism” that began in the 1960s and the current discussion of “big data socialism” and “platform socialism” suggest strongly that the planned economy of the information society will bear little resemblance to the highly centralized planned economy that was once practiced in the 20th century.
22 In the classical Marxist view, the “demise of the state” means that the function of the state as an instrument of class domination withers away, and that the function of managing the society’s public affairs is carried out by the society itself without any special organ or bureaucracy. However, as long as nation-states (especially nation-states with different social systems) are divided by special interests, and the external functions of the state therefore cannot be abolished, the state as a political instrument cannot die out. The demise of the nation-state is thus a logical precondition for the demise of the state.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Renjiang Chen
Renjiang Chen is an associate researcher at the Academy of Marxism, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Her research focuses on the fundamental principles of Marxism and international political economy. Her main publications in Chinese include “The Basic Contradictions of the World System and the Collapse of the Soviet Union” (2021), “Analysis of Regional Economic Integration from the Perspective of World Market: Based on Marx’s World Market Theory” (2020), “After the Crisis: Returning to Industrial Capitalism?—Questioning a View of Financial Capital” (2018), “After Neoliberalism Is It Still Neoliberalism?” (2018), and “International Politics and Economy after the Financial Crisis” (2017).