On Marx’s Thought Of The Social Space

Historical materialism contains abundant thoughts of the social space. Marx and Engels analysed the activities of "reality person" with the space and the time as its coordinate, which was a reliable guarantee for exploring the survival conditions of the working class and the complete liberation of human beings. In the argument of the basic law of the development of human society, they interpreted the theory that the interaction between human production practice and social communication promoted the change of society and the development of history. Through the phenomenon of the global expanding of capital, they revealed that the essence of the capitalism production was pursuing surplus value limitless and monopolizing the excess profit insanely. And they proposed the thought that the social space of human would be optimization in the future communist society, which are organic parts of historical materialism and enlighten the spatial theoretical explorations after 20 century. So it is still an important project which deserves study deeply.This dissertation is divided to 3 parts:The first part analyses and defines the connotation, basic dimensions and main features of the social space. The social space is the result that human humanizes the original natural space through practice as to satisfy their needs of existence and development; it is the spatial place of human practice activity, the platform for the rank of position and sequence, and the representation of logic, network and relationship. The social space is a unity of two dimensions which are the physical space and the communication space. It is characterized with sociality, subjectivity, the nature of class, activity, liquidity and reality.The second part concentrates on the basic content of the thoughts of Marxist social space. Human practice produces, develops and changes the social space, which is its essential implication. The development of production and social communication is the basic power of the spatial transformation from the original unified space to the distorted broken space to the expanded gathered space and finally to the organic unified space; In the era of capitalism of 19th century, the capital whose fundamental attribute is pursing value appreciation drives the European capitalist class to break through the limits of nation and region, develop the international trade, progress overseas colonial plunder and occupy the global market. The global expanding of capitalism brings about the alienation of the social space; the living and developing space of the working class deteriorates increasingly. To eliminate the capitalist mode of production through revolution is the only way to sublate the alienation, realize the free and comprehensive development of human beings, and promote the organic harmony of human and space.The third part is concerned with the contemporary significance of Marx’s thoughta of the social space. It has very important academic value to study Marx’s thoughts of social space for us not only to know Marx newly and understand in the round of the system info of historical materialism, but also to evaluate the space turn and the spatial criticism of the present capitalism of the western new Marxist. Achieving a theory is determined by the real need of a country. Many discussions about the social space by Marx have deep enlightenment and urgent meanings to solve the contradictions and problems in the background of modern globalization, urbanization and networking. It enlightens us that we should set people-oriented as the goal of development, play the intergration function of technology to space effectively and optimize the environment of the social development.