A Hierarchical Study Of The Spatial Ideas Of Marx's Economic Manuscripts Of 1857-1858

Space is the field where human practice unfolds.Like time,space plays a fundamental role in Marx's historical materialism and political economy.The spatial ideas in The Economic Manuscripts of 1857—1858(hereinafter referred to as The Manuscripts)reveals the natural attributes and the pluralistic social implications of space,which is both critical and constructive.By analyzing the main economic categories such as currency and capital,the spatial ideas of The Manuscripts reveal and criticize the nature and mechanism of capitalist exploitation,and constructs the free space theory which is opposite to the capitalist exploitation space and aims at individual development.Discussing the hierarchy of the spatial ideas in The Manuscripts is helpful to clarify the double logical relations between the criticism of political economy and the theory of social formation in The Manuscripts,which also explores the solution to the capitalist spatial crisis and promotes the construction of a reasonable space order.The production space,the social space and the free space of human beings constitute the three levels of spatial ideas in The Manuscripts.These three spatial levels have the inherent unity,and are linked and promoted in the dynamic spatial evolution,which reflects the development logic of the main theories of the manuscript.As the basic space in the history of human society,the production space carries the material productive forces and relations,which are the fundamental reasons for the social space to change.As a space for individuals to achieve all-round development,the free space of human beings is the ultimate direction of the construction of production space and social space.The production space manipulated by capital is the logical starting point for the criticism of The Manuscripts theory.Currency,as an intermediary in the field of circulation,breaks the transaction barrier in the regional production space and expands the exchange scale in the production space,but the third stipulation of currency makes the storage of it and the acquisition of wealth become the productive purposes of the capitalist production space.The transformation of currency from a "medium of exchange" to a "representative of wealth" allows it to dominate the sphere of circulation and gradually reversed the essential purpose of the production space.When currency is further transformed into capital,the goal orientation from "serving production" to "serving capital" becomes stronger,and the profit tendency of capital pursuing surplus value dominates the process of spatial production and reproduction,so that the development trend of capital logic becomes the inevitable trend of production space.The social spaces under the realistic situation of capitalism and the scientific assumption of communism are the logical development of the criticism of The Manuscripts.The capitalist society is the spatial reality in the same period of The Manuscripts.The social space under the capitalist system exploits the surplus value of workers,which shackles the factors of freedom.The communist society is a scientific assumption based on the criticism of the realistic space,and the social space under the communist system encourages the creation of the freedom factor by the development of the free nature of human beings.The relation between time and space in two kinds of social space is studied from the proposition of "time destroys space".The capitalist society takes the exploitation path of compressing free space,while the communist society takes the development path of creating free space.Constructing the free space of human beings is the final direction of the theoretical reform of The Manuscripts.The historical premise of the emergence of free space lies in two kinds of "new schema of the world".The first one is the process of globalization of material production from regional to world markets.The second one is the sharing pattern of human civilization from national history to world history.Under the new schema of the universal connection and development between material production and spiritual civilization,the construction of human free space still faces the dissimilation obstacle caused by the "collusion" between capital and space.The solution to the dilemma of alienation lies in enlightening people's rational critical consciousness of the mechanism of exploitation and dispelling the power of space by taking the production standpoint of human nature.The spatial ideas of The Manuscripts have a unique theoretical position in Marx's whole thought.From the perspective of Marx's critical theory,the spatial ideas of The Manuscripts are further criticism of the bourgeois political economics.They solve the theoretical problem about equivalent exchange between capital and labor which the bourgeois political economics can't answer.Through the critique of vulgar political economics of Bastiat and Carey,they break the harmony of illusion in the capitalist economic system.From the view of Marx's Construction theory,the spatial ideas of The Manuscripts advance the research of the future social construction and the "three forms" theory.Depending on the production power of machine and science and technology as well as the inevitable trend of historical limitations of capitalism,the spatial ideas supplemented the exposition of the internal conditions of transition to the future society,and initially established the concept of social form with the symbol of productive relations and social relations.The resultant force and movement of the three spatial levels in The Manuscripts is always open,developmental,historical and practical in Marx's overall thought.