The Territory of Struggle: a Political Geography of Revolution.

In revolutionary situations a new political power must develop new ideas and social relations, but must do this within a material setting that may be relatively slow to change. Traditional analyses of political power have tended not to consider material factors. This is true both of Marxist social science, despite its explicitly materialist assumptions, and of political geography, which tends to focus on normative political forms. Marxist political thought has focussed on abstract political relationships; this has been important in the processes of revolution. Successful Marxist revolutionary movements have all had to deal with the material reality of power--the problem of how to run a state--yet Russia, China, and Cuba all show the influence of an ideology which has an essentially spaceless and non-material concept of political relations and the use of resources. In Russia, territory functioned as an arena, a backdrop to politics. When the Bolsheviks had to deal with such political geographical issues as the form of the new state and divisions between city and countryside, they found it difficult to h and le these issues politically. Leninist Marxism developed a distinction between political (state) and non-political (administrative) problems which allowed many political geographical issues to be dealt with bureaucratically rather than politically. The Cubans saw territory as an object of political struggle, but they saw it in topographical rather than political terms. They did not attempt spatial or political decentralization of power. The Cubans have, however, tried to overcome some distinctions between town and countryside. The Chinese developed an awareness of the political geography of revolution and of territory as a political tool. From early in the revolution the Chinese Communists experimented with forms of power and administration and had a rural orientation. The ultimate aim of the revolution, however, was central, city-based power, and rural policies aimed at this. The Chinese Communists h and led many political geographical problems bureaucratically rather than politically. The three revolutions show the extent to which an ideology can affect responses to material problems. Marxism's lack of a fully materialist concept of power and the state shaped the nature of revolutionary states.PhDGeographyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/158649/1/8204668.pd