State, Space, World: Selected Essays

by Henri Lefebvre, Stuart Elden (Editor), Neil Brenner (Translator), Gerald Moore (Translator)

Overview

One of the most influential Marxist theorists of the twentieth century, Henri Lefebvre pioneered the study of the modern state in an age of accelerating global economic integration and fragmentation. Shortly after the 1974 publication of his landmark book The Production of Space, Henri Lefebvre embarked on one of the most ambitious projects of his career: a consideration of the history and geographies of the modern state through a monumental study that linked several disciplines, including political science, sociology, geography, and history. 

State, Space, World collects a series of Lefebvre’s key writings on the state from this period. Making available in English for the first time the as-yet-unexplored political aspect of Lefebvre’s work, it contains essays on philosophy, political theory, state formation, spatial planning, and globalization, as well as provocative reflections on the possibilities and limits of grassroots democracy under advanced capitalism.

State, Space, World is an essential complement to The Production of Space, The Urban Revolution, and The Critique of Everyday Life. Lefebvre’s original and prescient analyses that emerge in this volume are urgently relevant to contemporary debates on globalization and neoliberal capitalism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781452914442
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	03/24/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) was heralded in Radical Philosophy as “the most prolific of French Marxist intellectuals”; he was a sociologist, philosopher, activist, and public intellectual.

Stuart Elden is professor of political geography at Durham University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction. State, Space, World: Lefebvre and the Survival of Capitalism Neil Brenner Stuart Elden 1

Part I State, Society, Autogestion

1 The State and Society (1964) 51

2 The Withering Away of the State: The Sources of Marxist-Leninist State Theory (1964) 69

3 The State in the Modern World (1975) 95

4 Comments on a New State Form (1979) 124

5 Theoretical Problems of Autogestion (1966) 138

6 "It Is the World That Has Changed": Interview with Autogestion et socialisme (1976) 153

Part II Space, State Spatiality, World

7 Reflections on the Politics of Space (1970) 167

8 Space: Social Product and Use Value (1979) 185

9 The Worldwide and the Planetary (1973) 196

10 Space and Mode of Production (1980) 210

11 Space and the State (1978) 223

12 Review of Kostas Axelos's Toward Planetary Thought (1965) 254

13 The World according to Kostas Axelos (1986) 259

14 The Worldwide Experience (1978) 274

15 Revolutions (1986) 290

Further Readings 307

Publication History 309

Index 313