An Introduction to Marxist Geography

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Abstract
Geography is a part of scientific knowledge devoted to the study of two fundamental relations of human life: relations with the natural world and relations across space. These relations do not exist in isolation but are merely aspects of life as a whole. They must be understood and taught as parts of a total theory of human existence. Marxism is such an attempt to holistically understand the world. It is also, however, an attempt to change the world. Although Marxists recognize that capitalism has yielded enormous technical and material benefits for a minority of the world's people, we now find other competing purposes rising to primary positions in the list of urgent societal tasks. These purposes include equalizing living standards, finding jobs for the present doomed generation of children, removing the economic and social tensions underlying dangerous military antagonisms, and achieving a stable, managed relation with the natural environment. For purposes like these, Marxists consider capitalism outdated as a form of social and economic organization. Most Western Marxists are also critical of the centralized socialism of the Soviet Union. Socialism in the Soviet Union has achieved a modest standard of living for its working class. But the Soviet Union has yet to begin an approach towards a true model of socialism in the sense of decentralizing economic and political power directly to the mass of the people. Because we live in capitalist countries however, the focus of this critique is capitalist, rather than Soviet-style socialist society.