The Problems In Cities And The Cities In Problematics

The Urban sociology, founded by Chicago school in the early20th century, is the main stream of urban research since half a century ago. It focuses on the multi-ethnic cultural integration and social integration problems, and studies the cities and the urban space from the theoretical paradigm of human ecology. It proposes the nature of cities is the product of human nature, and regards the urban development process as a natural process with balance as the ultimate point through invasion, dominance and succession. This research paradigm, the theoretical reflection of the urban problems in the free competition capitalism period, is essentially the academic consciousness to maintain the current situation of capitalism.Since the1960s, the theme of cities has transformed to the social conflicts from the social integration. The western developed capitalist society entered into a recession period after a long-term postwar stability and prosperity. The economic operation model of capitalist society-Keynes-Fordism, with mass production, mass consumption, mass suburbanization and a wide range of state intervention as the main characteristics came to a crisis overall. The industrial flight and the moving of the middle class to suburbs led to a decrease in the local tax resources and an increase in the local government budget deficit in the large industrial cities. The quantity and quality of urban social public service was falling and the originally prosperous city center became badlands of the lower class and minorities. Many social problems occurred:higher urban unemployment rates and crime rates, urban protests and chaos, and therefore the society was in great unrest.The transformation of the urban problems urgently requires the update of the research paradigm. The French Marxists are the first to bring the urban problems into the Marxist theoretical paradigm. They study the urban problems in stressing the framework of production mode and try to reveal the internal contradiction between the urban spatial development and the production mode of capitalist, and to discover the logic relevance of class struggles, based on which they created New Marxism city school. This school begins with Henri Lefebvre, founded by Castells, is further developed by an American-David Harvey later on.Castells inherits Lefebvre’s problematic consciousness of the urban Marxism, but abandons the theoretical standpoint of humanism Marxism. He starts with the standpoint of Lious Althusser’s structuralism Marxism the so-called "science", takes the social structure as a structure matrix consisting of the special connection of economy, politics and ideology system. The urban system is only a part of the entire social structure system. More specifically, a city is a system structure of city production, consumption, exchange, city regime organization and symbolic signs, whose concrete material embodiment is the city space. For the imbalance of the structure system, there is always an dominant element which decides the specific connecting relationship of other elements in this system, and furthermore determines the special effect of the whole structure. Producing requirements determines the city structure and the city is the center of industrial activities in the free completion capitalism period. But cities are not the producing and exchanging center anymore but mainly a "reservoir" of labor force in the developed capitalism period because the productive enterprises gradually spread into a wider area outside the city, and the free location selection resulting from the capital’s getting rid of the region restriction. Therefore, it is not the population nor the production activities nor administrative jurisdiction or culture but consumption. Consumption is a process of life (labor) reproduction on the basis of daily life, which mainly involves housing, hospital, community service, schools, recreational facilities, and cultural environment, etc. Therefore, there must be some space boundary. Based on these, Castells holds that the city cannot be defined accurately unless we turn the perspective from production to consumption, then the studying object of the urban sociology is built.Castells finds out that the form and nature of consumption has changed significantly in the stage of developed capitalism. Besides the traditional consuming form--individual consuming that workers directly buy the living material with the salary, collective consumption form, in which the nation provides integrate consuming goods without the market exchange, is more and more important in the city life. Nation provides the social security and welfare service, which is the main characteristic of the contemporary capitalism. The most important function of a city in not the producing center, but the most effective and convenient spatial organizing form for collective consumption. Different from Lefebvre who holds that spatial producing saved capitalism, Castells believes it is through the countries providing collective consumption to meet the needs of labor reproduction, save the cost for the private capital and resist the decline of profit rate, that the capitalism city can still remain and the capital accumulation can smoothly go on. But the state intervention in collective consumption doesn’t mean everything, because the nation invests large fund in developing collective consumption in the demand of both the labor and the capital, which eventually will cause serious financial crisis. The tremendous pressure of financial crisis makes nation have to cut down the financial expense a lot. And the decline of the quantity and quality of collective consumption will lead to the dissatisfaction of the urban residents. Castells holds that the conflict between the socialization of labor reproduction and the private control of the reproduction of the labor force is the basic conflict of the urban structure. As the conflicts between the huge demand and the lack of collective consuming goods’supply of labor reproduction becomes sharper and sharper, the cross-class urban social movements rise ceaselessly and the authority of the government suffers serious challenges. Such movements involving the reproduction of labor force are likely to consociate with the traditional working class struggles, thus bring a liberating opportunity to transform the whole capitalism social structure fundamentally.On the basis of collective consumption, Castells’ urban criticizing theory introduces the basic viewpoints and methods of Marxism into the city research field, incorporates the new urban problems and the contemporary issues to transform and complement Marxism theory, thoroughly criticizes the urban ideology of capitalist class, provides a brand-new perspective of understanding capitalism, deepens the cognition of capitalism contradiction, develops the capitalism crisis theories, and to some extent expands the discourse power of Marxism in the non-traditional field. It offers the important enlightenment for the urbanization construction and the urban study in China and the further development of Marxism in the new historical conditions. But the intolerance of the structuralism theory largely weakens its theoretical explanatory power. On the one hand, though Castells admits that the city is a complicated system determined by the economic, political and ideological elements, he just isolates the consumption problems out of the economic system under the concept of the dominant structure and ignores the importance of man’s initiative, the city community’s sense of identity and other unique variables in the urban process when defining the nature of cities and analyzing the urban process. On the other hand, the plural determinism generalizes Marx’s mode of production to a mix of economy, politics and ideology. It highlights the dominant structure. But it also reverses the basic idea of Marx that production decides consumption. The reaction of consumption in the capitalist mode of Fordism is expanded into an independent decisive effect. It obstinately uses consumption politics to replace the traditional Marxist production politics, while ignoring the inherent continuity and scalability of the capitalist mode of production, and therefore virtually removing the revolutionary base of Marxism.