Provisional theses
1. Worldview
2. Capital
3. Class
4. State
5. Imperialism
6. Internationalism
7. Political strategy
The following theses elaborate a critique of architecture in relation to capitalism.
As every commodity produced in capitalism, architecture is invariably subservient to the realisation of surplus value. This objective reality is almost always concealed by architectural discourse, first and foremost by liberal architects whose stated ambitions are to challenge the capitalist status quo. While desiring change is a valuable intention, it is incorrect to think that a commodity like architecture can have a transformative effect on the social and economic parameters that characterise its production. On the contrary, this belief effectively channels every impulse to transform society away from the real motor of change: class struggle. In this sense, attempts to affect the capitalist status quo through architecture lead in the opposite direction towards its perpetuation.
To remain afloat in spite of this, architectural ideology only promotes the discipline’s agency over spatially or socially limited domains, unable to encompass its full material basis. For example, although financial considerations rigidly motivate the design, construction, and circulation of architectural projects, architects remain preoccupied with how buildings serve communities, fight the climate crisis, or promote democracy and diversity. But such considerations become insignificant if architecture’s function in the process of capital valorisation is ignored. This partial outlook only serves the political misrepresentation of architecture, as the celebration of its limited agency distracts from its role as a material and ideological instrument of the bourgeoisie.
We developed the following provisional theses to outline the direction of HMARG's future research. By writing and circulating them, we aim to contribute new insights that challenge current architectural discourse. We consider each of the theses a starting point for future scientific and collective clarification.
1. Worldview
The basis of our worldview is historical materialism, the philosophical framework which sees the development of productive forces as the driving force of human history. Productive forces exist only in the social context of particular production relations, with which they form a dialectical unity, known as the mode of production.
Productive forces and production relations are inseparable, as it is through production relations and within their limits that productive forces can develop into a higher form. However, as productive forces develop they become increasingly incompatible with production relations and come into conflict with them, a process which in capitalism finds concrete expression in the class struggle. This contradiction finds resolution in the re-organisation of society’s production relations, and thus the revolutionary transition to a new mode of production.
Architecture is neither the product of an individual genius nor of spontaneous, anonymous masses, but the historical expression of the epoch’s mode of production as it affects the organisation of space. Historical materialism is the only scientific method to fully understand architecture historically as the concrete expression of social and economic forces.
2. Capital
Capitalism is the economic system which currently organises the production, circulation, and consumption of value worldwide. Capitalism is grounded in the exploitation of the working class, which in the labour process valorises capital, i.e. creates surplus value, which is then appropriated by the bourgeoisie. For the production and the realisation of this surplus value, capitalism has to rely on commodities, goods created to act as material carriers of value and to be sold on the market. A commodity has a dual, contradictory nature: on one hand, it has a use value, which serves to fulfil a human need; on the other, it has an exchange value commensurate with the amount of other commodities or money it can be exchanged with. In capitalism, the fulfilment of human needs is secondary to the realisation of surplus value – in other words, production and exchange take place primarily to realise exchange value, not use value.
As every object produced under capitalism, architecture is a commodity with a dual nature. Its use value satisfies human needs, either as means of production (a farm or a factory) or as means of consumption (a house or a school), and its existence is invariably functional to the realisation of surplus value.
Future research should examine the different ways architecture acts as means of production and consumption, and, in turn, how this creates surplus value or revenue.
3. Class
We live in a capitalist society, defined by an antagonistic relation of production between a working class and a capitalist class. While the former produces all wealth, the latter, by owning all means of production, accumulates it. The contradiction between bourgeoisie and working class cannot be reconciled within capitalism, let alone by architecture.
Ownership of the means of production allows the bourgeoisie to design and build architecture. This is why no working-class architectural alternative is possible, and why, in turn, any architecture claiming to be ‘working class’ necessarily supports the preservation of bourgeois power. A class perspective on architecture recognises class as a foundational character and a necessary category to analyse all other cultural and ideological features of architecture.
The material and ideological relationships between architecture and class should be better understood, exploring, for instance, how different layers of the bourgeoisie have affirmed their material and ideological hegemony by means of architecture.
4. State
A capitalist state is not a class-neutral state. It is designed to protect the interests of the bourgeoisie, balancing the conflicting interests of its different factions and securing its capital accumulation. Representing the interests of an ideal collective capitalist, the state cannot be used by the working class for its own political aims.
State-funded housing and infrastructure reflect this class character, displaying a contradictory quality. On the one hand, they constitute desperately needed improvements to the condition of the working class; on the other, they provide a political instrument to absorb class antagonism in the present and prevent it in the future. Though public housing should be fought for, it is necessary to acknowledge that on its own it cannot change the exploitation and the deprivation embedded in the capitalist system.
Further research should understand how the state construction (and privatisation) of key infrastructure responded to bourgeois political and social needs: in the case of housing, absorbing periods of intense working class struggle; in the case of circulation and communication networks, providing necessary infrastructure which could not be build by hitherto unconcentrated private capital.
5. Imperialism
For more than a century capitalism has been in its imperialist phase. Imperialism is a world system in which capitalism is no longer dominated by free competition but by financial monopolies striving to export capital. No country is excluded from this hierarchical system, in which every state is compelled to economically and at times militarily compete against each other. In the form of better salaries or better public infrastructures, the profits of imperialism serve to buy off the better-off sections of the working class, feeding short-term, opportunistic opposition to revolutionary organisation.
Architecture cannot but reflect this development. Countries at the top of the imperialist system import cheap building materials and labour force, while exporting pricey building technologies and investing in development projects. Imperialist profit is also reinvested at home: the most celebrated 20th and 21st-century British buildings have been financed with the profits of imperialism, from the Lloyd's of London Building to Camden Council's housing estates.
Future inquiry should investigate to what extent the profits of imperialism are used to fund architecture, as well as the economic and political implications for the better-off sections of the working class.
6. Internationalism
Capitalism and imperialism aim to divide workers along chauvinist lines. This must be challenged by internationalism, the unity and solidarity of the working classes across nations.
Current efforts to ‘decolonise’ architecture and make its history more ‘global’ without a clear class perspective cannot but reinforce this chauvinism. With the apparently progressive aim of doing away with Eurocentrism, this agenda encapsulates an idealist position that fetishises economically underdeveloped societies merely for being non-European, while overlooking their social and material contradictions. However, separating oppressors and oppressed according to geographical lines conceals the foundational class structure of exploitation and oppression. This is an expression of bourgeois ideology wherein a social and material process, such as colonisation, can be reversed through the cultural and ethical goodwill of academics and practitioners.
A historical materialist approach should inquire how the diversity of architecture across geography and history is the result of the different but interconnected class struggles.
7. Political strategy
Capitalism and imperialism can only be overcome by a politically organised working class guided by its vanguard and fighting for social revolution. Attempts to achieve progressive change, though valuable, are destined to be either absorbed into the status quo or reduced to marginality if they do not recognise the necessity of this critical, revolutionary step.
For the reasons outlined in the other theses, architecture cannot have a direct role in the revolutionary process. Architects who see it as their primary duty to fight capitalism should acknowledge this self-evidence and adopt a historical materialist approach in their work. This does not mean abandoning the profession or changing the way they practise architecture, which in capitalism is bounded by socio-economic constraints. Rather, it will mean relinquishing any bourgeois notion that developing social or technical alternatives to capitalism using architectural skills can fulfil their political ambition. For those with greater capacity, it would mean, on the one hand, undertaking the much-needed work of scientifically investigating the capitalist and imperialist features of the present architectural context and developing a working class critique of it; on the other, striving to become the most conscious elements of the working class movement by participating in its vanguard organisation.