Focusing on the City's "Speaking Honestly":The Fieldwork of Historical Materialism—A Study of Lefebvre's Marxist Thought and the City
In The Urban Revolution,Lefebvre's approximation to historical materialism is still the result of the subtle influence of the practical research of capitalist urbanization.The book Marxist Thought and the Cityis the outcome of his in-depth fieldwork reading of historical materialism from many texts by Marx and Engels after 1845.This signifies an extremely important logical transformation.Especially in his close reading of Marx's Economic Manuscripts of 1857-1858,although he did not directly find specialized research or profound reflections on cities,Lefebvre truly experienced a baptism of historical materialism and its scientific methodology.It should be the first time that he had learned to reveal reality and concepts based on objective facts.This is a major methodological turn in his thought.Although he still retained the façade of humanist discourse,the critical humanist discourse starting from suspended values was totally deprived of the status of the master discourse.
LefebvreMarxist Thought and the Cityhistorical materialismproduction of space