Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 1987, volume 5, pages 27-38

An Interview with Henri Lefebvre

Interviewers Gallia Burgel, Guy Burgel, M G Dezes

Translated by E Kofman
School of Social Sciences, Middlesex Polytechnic, Enfield, Middlesex ENS 4SF, England
Interview date: none given

Henri Lefebvre was born in 1901 in southwestern France near the Pyrenees. He
studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and then taught philosophy. In 1928 he joined
the Communist Party. From 1930 the works of the young Marx were rediscovered,
and Hegelianism, dialectics, and the theory of contradictions were revived. However,
Lefebvre became increasingly dissatisfied with the separation between philosophy—
the most abstract of thought—and the concrete of everyday life.
The setting up of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in the late
1940s enabled him to move from pure philosophy to the study of social practices
and daily life, focusing in particular, on the issues of the peasantry, agricultural
production, and industrialisation. He travelled widely during the next ten years,
examining agrarian reform worldwide, although he also undertook a series of studies
into peasant communities in the southwest of France.
Although he had always worked for a more open Communist Party and a less
reductionist Marxism, he had remained in the Party and was their most influential
philosopher. However, the relationship with the Party became increasingly fraught;
in 1949 he was rebuked for referring to Marxism as sociology. From 1956 he
participated with a group, mainly composed of leading dissidents, in the journal
Arguments which had a strong impact on the new left in the 1960s. The final
break with the Party came in early 1958 with the publication of Problemes Actuels
du Marxisme, on the grounds of anti-Party agitation and activities leading to the
creation of factions.
In the early 1960s, Lefebvre's attention increasingly turned to the urban and, as
the interview indicates, the construction of the new town Lacq-Mourenx in the
Pyrenees-Atlantiques made a profound impact on him. His contribution to the
establishment of urban sociology was considerable, not just through his writings but
also through the setting up of the Institut de Sociologie Urbaine, which with the
Centre de Sociologie Urbaine founded by Chombart de Lauwe, was one of the first
permanent urban research units. It should be remembered that during the period
of its rapid growth from 1965 much French urban research was carried out by
research teams that depended on contracts from government departments and state
agencies (Huet and Sauvage, 1983). Lefebvrc was also one of the founders of the
journal Espace et Societes (1970). For Lefebvre, the urban does not simply
represent the transformation of space into a commodity by capitalism, but is also
the potential arena of play (festival).
In La Production de VEspace (1974) Lefebvre criticises the lack of rigour in the
use of the concept of 'space', for in France, espace now covers a wide variety of
terms which in English might be referred to by 'area', 'zone', or, even, 'territory'.

IF This interview with Lefebvre is translated from Villes en Pat allele (number 7, 1983) in an
issue on Marxisme et Geographie Urbaine.
28 An interview

By not problematising the shift from the epistemological to people's use of space,
we remove the collective subject. He argues that the state has fetishised space and
imposed permanence, but that the major social theorists, with the exception of
Nietzsche, have made the temporal the primary element. In De VEtat (1975 -1978),
Lefebvre further develops his ideas about the production of capitalist spatiality
through the state. Since the mid-1970s philosophy has again dominated his writing.
It is not surprising, given Lefebvre's wide-ranging interests, that there has been
no monograph on his work. Oddly enough, he is not even mentioned in the
French equivalent of Who's Who. His work is mainly analysed in books concerned
with an assessment of his position in French Marxism and his contribution to the
new left (for example, Hirsch, 1981; Kelly, 1982; Poster, 1975; Soubise, 1967).
Hirsch's is a more rounded and sympathetic appreciation, and discusses at some
length his writing on everyday life. Kelly is somewhat dismissive of Lefebvre as
one of the three philosophical stars (together with Garaudy and Althusser) of the
French Communist Party and is more interested in his relationship with and period
in the Party. His work on the urban and capitalist spatiality was, as Saunders
(1981) rightly pointed out, largely neglected because of Castells's (1977) criticisms
and Lefebvre's spontaneity and lack of formalism. His work has mainly become
known in Britain and North America through Harvey's (1973) mediation. However
in recent years, his writings on the production of space have received more
attention (Martins, 1982; Saunders, 1981; Soja, 1980; 1985).
The interview with Lefebvre was first published in a special issue of Villes en
Parallele (Universite de Paris X-Nanterre) on Marxism and urban geography. The
basic question was why urban geography in France has, until recent years, been
only weakly influenced by Marxism, whilst Marxist urban sociology was flourishing.
The two other interviews in the same set as Lefebvre's were of Yves Babonaux and
Michel Rochefort, both geographers who had been members of the Communist
Party in the 1950s, yet whose work on centrality and the urban hierarchy did not
incorporate Marxist concepts. Rochefort emphasises his ignorance of Marx's texts
in the days of Stalinist dominance. He only came to reject the technocratic and
functionalist methodology of his urban hierarchy research (which laid the basis of
the metropole d'equilibre policy in the 1960s) in the period 1966-67 when he
began working in the Third World.

Interviewer How did you come to urban research?

Henri Lefebvre The point of departure for me was the work of DATAR
[Delegation a l'Amenagement du Territoire et a l'Action Regionale], which I
followed very closely and which was not solely a descriptive scientific project but
one that involved accurate prediction. Something new was happening; an idea of
spatial planning and practice was born, where urban issues were viewed from a
certain perspective and with an eye to future developments, including some gigantic
plans for Fos-sur-Mer and Dunkirk. After all, the creation of new towns and the
redevelopment of existing ones was quite a new approach compared with the
classic descriptions of urban phenomena. However, my initiation was neither from
the point of view of philosophy, nor sociology, though these were present implicitly,
nor was it historical or geographical. Rather it was the emergence of a new social
and political practice. DATAR aimed to reorganise France from questionable,
sometimes catastrophic, perspectives. Certain persons, and I was one of them,
voiced criticisms. Yet it was certainly an original French phenomenon. I don't
know of many other countries that have gone beyond the stage of financial planning
in their budgets to actually planning their space. I really think this has been a
with Henri Lefebvre 29

French innovation. In Japan, for example, they were extremely impressed by the
idea of spatial planning, but said at the same time that it was impossible, since it
was chaos from Tokyo to Osaka.
Interviewer What seems totally specific in your case is your very different
development from that of certain geographers such as Michel Rochefort(1) who,
after completing his thesis at the beginning of the 1960s, was asked to undertake
the Metropoles d'Equilibre project for DATAR. As a result of this experience, he
came to question his previously descriptive work.
Lefebvre I'm not sure whether he has a very good idea of what Marxism is, since
there are numerous versions and tendencies. I have nothing in common with Lukacs,
but would be closer to Adorno who is not at all well known in France. Furthermore,
there is a Marxism specific to Latin America, as there is to China. I don't know if
Rochefort understands that Marxism is, above all, a method of analysing social
practices; it is not a series of assumptions, postulates, or dogmatic propositions,
although that is the way things are happening. By 1960 something extraordinary
happened which I wanted to explain as a Marxist. The Revolution had failed; it
had not taken place. There had been two World Wars. What had occurred in
Russia had given rise to Stalinism. Possibly a much more interesting experience
was that which happened in a country such as Yugoslavia. There was the enormous
massacre of the Second World War, and, with the Liberation, one expected a major
event and a renewal; but that did not happen either. So, by 1960, there was an
emptiness. The Reconstruction was complete, so what filled the gap?
The substitute for a social and political revolution was a scientific and techno-
logical revolution. You can't even call it a diversion. The social and political
revolution had failed in the Soviet Union, while the situation in China was very
uncertain, and, in 1960, something new emerged, which had considerable
consequences and arose for a number of reasons. First of all, there was this gap,
and then the rise of a new social class, that of the technocrats. And then the
advent of worldwide trade, that is, a world market after the period of industrial
capitalism. This world market became an immense force with consequences even
for the 'socialist' countries. In addition, there were considerable technological
discoveries, such as the mathematical theory of information in 1950. There was
thus an upheaval which is ideologically summarised by structuralism. In effect,
structuralism is a sort of false consciousness, a misrecognition of what is happening,
which is nothing other than the scientific and technological revolution, which itself
is produced as a replacement for the unfinished social and political revolution.
That is my Marxist analysis. It is not very well accepted. The technological
revolution was accompanied by a massive urbanisation and industrialisation which
gained pace from 1960, while the capitalist mode of production entirely appropriated
space. Before that, it had appropriated agriculture. Agricultural reforms had
considerably modified space, but these had been incorporated into capitalism. From
1960 the historic centres of towns began to be refashioned under capitalist hegemony.
It was at this time that projects such as the Beaubourg and the centre of Paris
began. It was at this time that there was a certain bursting forth of the urban
phenomenon: the disintegration of the historic centre and its redevelopment, the
expansion of the urban periphery, and, with it, all the planning projects. It is in this
context that I tried to introduce the concept of the production of space, space as a
(1)
Michel Rochefort was also interviewed in this issue of Villes en Parallele. In the
interview, he discusses his discovery of Marx's writing, even though he had been in the
Communist Party from after World War 2 until 1956, and his rejection of the type of
technocratic analysis he had carried out for DATAR in the 1960s.
30 An interview

social and political product, space as a product that one buys and sells. Housing
becomes a commercial object, even though the process is not yet finished. For
example, the quartier of Paris where I live, the Marais, remains linked with
production, and one observes processes both of proletarianisation and of cultural
elitism. Hence the full redevelopment of the centre of Paris, its clothes shops,
Beaubourg, culture, sex shops, and art galleries.
Interviewer As Jean Remy has said(2), the centres of cities are, after all, incubators
for play.
Lefebvre That is the evolution of the city centres. On the whole, part of the
bourgeoisie, the elite, and the middle classes have moved out to the country and
the periphery of cities, but there is now a return. It is a movement which is not
uniquely Parisian. It is worldwide and can be noted in New York, Chicago, and
Tokyo, for example.
Interviewer There is now a renewal of interest in the centre, including less prestigious
communes of Paris, such as Levallois-Perret.
Lefebvre Yes, there is a simultaneous movement to the periphery and return to
the centre. It is very difficult to make clear sense of what is going on, because
economic, social, and political processes intervene. I observe the changes in my
quartier by different means; there is direct observation and then the excellent
means of observation which is provided by the local cell of the Communist Party
because they know everything that is happening. The defeat of Jack Lang and
Claude Quin(3) at the last municipal elections was caused by the interaction of urban
phenomena. First, fear of crime to which one should add the physical deterioration
of the area. The best restaurants have been replaced by fast food. The Forum(4)
is frequented by young kids from the suburbs who come in on the RER [express
line]. I don't find anything wrong with that; what adds to the fear are the vigilantes
with their enormous dogs. At the same time, there is the Americanisation of the
quartier, for example, the underground supermarket. Thus, the Americanisation,
the degradation, and cultural elitism produce extremely contradictory tendencies.
Interviewer The analysis of your quartier is simultaneously rich and complex, yet
contradictory, which is the contrary of most Marxist sociologists whose interpretations
are highly reductionist. Furthermore, your development seems the inverse of that
of geographers such as Pierre George and Michel Rochefort.
Lefebvre Urban problems are quite new in relation to Marx's thoughts. He has a
few paragraphs on the relationship between town and country and the division of
labour, but that doesn't go very far, and even less far, to the extent that there was
an antiurban movement in Russia between 1920 and 1930. This tendency was
probably a result of the peasant origin of these revolutionary movements, which
were not particularly working class or proletarian. These were not revolutions in
advanced industrial countries. The antiurban movement was still in evidence after
Fidel Castro came to power—they wanted to destroy Havana. The town represents
corruption, the bourgeoisie, and imperialism. And then it produced the sheer lunacy
of Pol Pot who wanted to destroy Phnom Penh. It was quite extraordinary: Pol Pot
was a Marxist intellectual, dogmatic and rather fierce and manic. In China they
also favoured at one time middle-sized towns and were suspicious of large cities,

W See Remy and Voye (1981) and Remy et al, (1978).

<3) Jack Lang was the Socialist Minister of Culture and Claude Quin is a Communist.
(4
> The Forum is a huge underground commercial development on the site of the old Halles.
with Henri Lefebvre 31

but they weren't able to stop their growth. At the core of Marxist thinking, there
seems to be an idea that society should reorganise around small units of production
of about 15 000 inhabitants—a workers' city. Urban problems are certainly new to
Marxism, although they had emerged before the present day, especially in the
problem of the market and the realisation of surplus value, as in the work of Rosa
Luxemburg. She asked the question of how surplus value produced in firms comes
to be realised, and where. And that leads on to a Marxist scheme, such as the
slightly simplistic one propounded by Castells: on the one hand, there is the firm
and production, on the other, the town and consumption. But Castells does not
understand space. He sets aside space. His is still a simplistic Marxist schema, as
is Preteceille's. They are very reductionist because all they see is land speculation,
the price of land. They aren't wrong—what they say isn't absolutely false—but is
only one part of a new and immense reality, that one more or less examines ... .
As for me, I have suggested the concept of capitalist production which has managed
to produce space without space, in the same way that the mode of production
produced its space in the Middle Ages or the mode of production in Antiquity
created its own space: the city-state, Athens, Rome. There is not, however, a
strict correspondence between modes of production and the spaces they constitute.
The medieval town was not the direct product of feudalism; on the contrary, it
was the product of the contradiction within feudalism from which the town emerged
victorious. Yet, I do believe that each epoch produces its own space. There was a
space produced from the 1960s on; it was at a world scale, based on aeroplanes,
motorways, suburbs, peripheries, the disintegration of historic centres and con-
urbations. Geographers have tended to approach these forms in a descriptive way.
Space seemed, until recently, to be a given, something natural, even in human
geography.

Interviewer How do you explain the continuation of the dichotomy between space
and society?
Lefebvre I would blame, first, a certain conception of historical materialism which
has focused its research on history, especially in economic history, and a somewhat
elementary notion of the relationship between the superstructure and the base.
There have been interminable discussions about economic conditions ... it's as if
you said "Goethe had to eat every day in order to write Faust". Really, where does
that get you? The conditions are of incredible complexity and subtlety, the more
so as you try to grasp them more closely. The conditions which lead to the
production of a poem, a sonata, are extremely difficult to grasp, so that to reduce
them to economic circumstances is terribly gross. And then there is an obsession
with established scientific method, epistemology, and historical materialism, around
which research and knowledge are centred. There is also an underlying economism
which I have been fighting for some time. There is possibly something else as
well; that is that to study space it is necessary to study the mode of production in
its own right, and not to start off with a political premise, for example, that the
capitalist mode of production is in its death throes. The coming of the political
revolution has been an ever-present illusion.
Interviewer Albert Thomas stated in 1907-09 that Marx said that the workers
made their own gravediggers. He added: "I clearly see the gravediggers but the
corpse is recalcitrant!" It seems to me that, after all you have said about DATAR,
your reflections have been directly engendered by the mode of production of
space, taking Mourenx(5) as your example.
Mourenx is a new town in southwestern France.
32 An interview

Lefebvre It is a bit subjective. I worked for ten years at the CNRS [Centre
Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique] on rural issues and agrarian reforms. At
the end of ten years I realised that it was to no purpose whatsoever. After Fidel
Castro came to power, the Cubans invited me to teach philosophy, whereas I knew
about agrarian questions. They said to me; that is not your business, it is ours. I
didn't go. The same thing occurred with the Algerians. Then there was the
transformation of the southwest of France, closely following the introduction of
hybrid corn. It was on corn that Lysenkoism came unstuck: the Americans
succeeded in breeding high-yielding varieties of corn, and it was in the midst of
exciting discussions in the southwest that the hybrids were introduced. Suddenly I
saw a town being built with amazing rapidity, the decision for it being taken at a
high level, the bulldozers arrived, leaving the peasants traumatised. It was a period
of high drama in the Mourenx area. It was then that I began to study the urban
phenomenon. I grasped there and then the problems associated with the production
of a town and its infrastructure. This experience was subsequently very useful. At
the same time, the opposite situation was occurring. I was in Caracas in Venezuela
when someone suggested I visit a new town on the edge of the Orinoco. They
knew that to settle people without services would be disastrous, so they began by
putting in the services. However, by a Spanish law, if a house with its roof is
completed in a night, you cannot expropriate it. Hence, twenty to thirty thousand
Indians settled in the midst of luxury services destined for management and
professionals. As a result of this, they reconstructed the town further out.
Interviewer Based on the example of DATAR and Mourenx, do you think the
state in our country can produce a space?
Lefebvre It holds considerable powers and investment possibilities nationally, but I
have the impression that the thinking about the future was never pushed far enough
to really examine what needed to be done. DATAR has never conceived of France
as a whole. Can one think of it in a forward-looking and operational way; that is
the problem.
Interviewer We have thought about it futilely and negatively with an unacceptable
scenario?
Lefebvre Yes, that has certainly been the case. I gave a seminar at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology on urban questions and discussed these questions with
students. They said to me; do you want to see a project for a town? They took
me to an enormous model and said: General Motors provides you with a 'key in
your hand' in a town of 100000 inhabitants. Then I looked at the model; it was
built in an outrageously functionalist style, quite extreme, and everything was
planned in advance. The different functions were juxtaposed and dispersed; it was
quite astonishing. Then I said to them: are you sure you're not going to be bored
stiff? Boredom is the great fear in America. Anything goes in the fight against
boredom.
Interviewer There is a contradiction in the DATAR type of scheme: you envisage
a future plan of space which can't be foreseen because it is part of the production
of the society; it is necessary to be able to envisage the society which will be
produced. Isn't there a flaw in any policy of spatial planning which begins from a
spatial 'diagnosis' and assumes a spatial 'medication'?
Lefebvre I think that's correct, but sometimes there are attempts and breakthroughs
which more or less succeed and from which one can draw conclusions. Whatever
we think about towns today is the result, after all, of an experience that goes back
with Henri Lefebvre 33

thousands of years—to Athens or even the Sumerian cities, but it also stems from
contemporary experience. For example, installing people in towns without services
is an experience that those who have lived through it are not likely to forget. So,
can one have a view of the future or a projection of the present? I think there can
be breakthroughs which give rise to new experiences. The idea of the ideal city—
in which I don't believe—has never been pushed to its conclusion. I was asked to
stay in Yugoslavia and construct a socialist city. I like Yugoslavia very much, but
the socialism is not absolutely convincing and, apart from that, the plan was
abandoned because of a lack of resources. They wanted to build a socialist city
that was different to those in other socialist countries. They wanted something
thought up, Utopian, ideal. A similar Rockefeller project was undertaken in New
York State. I was invited seven or eight years ago to advise on it, but the project
was dropped. You can't represent what a socialist city would be like, except
possibly in the field of architecture where certain attempts have been made. For
example, one of the first projects was Ricardo Bofill's, which was the city in space
with an extremely complex architecture. They started to construct it in Madrid
during the Franco regime, but it was stopped because it provoked apprehension.
There have been attempts; one gets to know that isolation, closure, and partitions
are mistakes; it is easier to see what not to do than what should be done. But I
don't think one can predict, at least at present, what should be a space. You can't
go from the universal to a specific spatial project. I don't see that we have the
means. In any case, we have never been given the means to go further because,
once the project is conceived, it is abandoned.
However, I should like to say a few words from a philosophical perspective, for
philosophy has always been linked to the city and it is thought that belongs to the
city. After all, the city is the grand design of civilisation and architecture which
remains to us in history. Whether it concerns the medieval or the ancient city, it is
the model of civilisation to which we refer more or less consciously; so, although
industry has shattered this model, it is always present. Returning to the philosophical
aspect, I should like to discuss the problem of the fundamental relationship
between time and space. Philosophy, and also science until recently, operated in a
context of total separation between space and time. Time was Bergsonian, psychic
time, duration and quality; space was quantity and measurement; it was science
opposed to philosophy. There was complete separation, yet it worried us. For
example, with my surrealist friends, I walked around Paris for whole nights—
Aragon derived his Paysan de Paris from it(6)—and we said, time and space are so
separate in cities. The decisive element for me was a paper given by Einstein at
the Societe Franchise de Philosophic, where he confronted Bergson, and where, in
my opinion, he crushed him. In simple terms, time and space are intimately related,
you can't just throw all sins onto space; for Bergson, spatialisation is the very
movement of matter against me spirit. Einstein, on the other hand, introduced the
close relationship between space and time. I have returned to that meeting between
Einstein and Bergson because it was important as a beginning. From that moment,
my attention, as a Marxist, was drawn towards these phenomena and to the idea
that there was a gap to be filled within Marxist thought. That was accomplished
by my adherence to Marxism without abandoning, as such, the positive aspects of
my previous thinking. That in itself posed a problem afterwards because the
official position was that Marxist thinking was absolutely and radically new.

<6> Aragon (1897-1980) was a poet, novelist, and journalist who joined the French Communist
Party in 1930 after a visit to the Soviet Union. In Paysan de Paris (1926), an early novel, he
suggested throueh daring fantasv the evervdav marvels of the citv.
34 An interview

And then I read Hegel, and there is much in Hegel. Hegel said that the city is
the supreme work of mankind. That's a very beautiful way of expressing it. It
contains the arts, architecture, painting—all have a place in the city; it is one of
the aesthetic theses of Hegel. You read Hegel and that reopens the questions.
You realise that he is neglected by Marxists and you want to take up the problem
once more. The link between time and space remains a fundamental problem,
both theoretically and practically. It consists of the use of time in relation to space,
the division of space in relation to time, and the measurement of time and space,
which are relative in relation to one another. I think that the idea of relativity in
space and time penetrates all thinking, including geography and sociology, but only
very slowly.
Interviewer In geography we are lagging behind, for we have not yet had our
Einsteinian revolution, because, if space is relative, then there are several spaces,
and not a single given space.
Lefebvre You formulate the problematic admirably, and besides there are also
several times.
Interviewer In geography, we are still at the stage of Euclidean geometry: it is distance
which counts. All the theories of centrality are based on relationships of distance.
However, let us return to Lysenkoism. How do you explain that all those
theories, and I am thinking in particular of the Marxist-inspired sociologists, have
had two, possibly linked, orientations. One of these is fairly reductionist in its
theoretical analysis (Castells) and, in relation to the city, extremely dangerous.
There are those who are in it, and those who are not, and those who are not are
the bad ones. Is there not a danger that in introducing Marxism into geography,
we shall all become Lysenkoists?
Lefebvre If you are alluding to the relationship between sociology and Marxism,
this is still a sensitive and delicate point. First, there has been a reaction against
sociology on the part of Marxism. There is even the position that sees sociology
as the 'bourgeois science'. Second, when there is an interrelationship, it often
consists of a vulgar sociologism, that is the study of economic conditions, taken up
in more or less sociological and historical terms, or a sort of bastardisation of
historical materialism, like that of Marx, or the principal Marxists, would have
wanted to establish. Vulgar sociologism has been extremely reductionist. I believe
there have been few Marxist sociologists because of a sort of opposition or
obstructionism, or refusal to accept Marxism, and, when it has been introduced,
this has not always produced interesting results. Furthermore, in certain countries,
as in the Hungarian school of sociology, nothing much has been said. I have said
to some people that they could prove to their hearts content that the number of
people who leave a metro station is the same as those who enter, with the
exception of an unforeseen incident (death), and even that .... It was extremely
naughty of me and I quarrelled with them.
However, I have not sufficiently stressed the dialectal thinking about space in the
development of Marx's work. I think that one of the current contradictions, which
didn't exist in Marx's time, but which has emerged recently, is the ability to handle
vast spaces, for example, that of DATAR, or of a country, or even larger—the
Chinese are dealing with a gigantic space—and, on the other hand, to sell space in
small quantities in miniscule plots. There is thus this contradiction which is a
spatial contradiction, and that is quite new. But it is necessary to demonstrate the
contradiction and, of course, we have to do it first.
with Henri Lefebvre 35

Interviewer Do you think that sociologists can legitimately give advice? Is it right
for a Marxist to put forward a different type of planning?
Lefebvre I think one can prudently say certain things, but I can assure you that it
has no effect whatsoever. I followed what was taking place at Creteil(7) because the
urban planners said they had been inspired by what I had written [Le Droit a la
Ville (1968), La Production de VEspace (1974)]. Yet, the initial proposal had
nothing in common with the completed one. At a certain moment, the banks and
shopkeepers decided to call upon an American architect/urban planner. For him,
the city centre is the commercial centre to which agora is in opposition. But agora
is an anachronism, and we must pay much attention to this type of thing. The
upshot is that there is no one in the agora and, it is true, many people in the
commercial centre. The prefecture is separated from the town by a gulf, but the
administration wants an even larger one because they want the prefect's office to
be fully lit. They didn't want it to be reached by a machine gun on the other
side! Thus you see the problems that planners face; they draw up a plan with a
prefecture and suddenly the minister says: no, it isn't that. What torments and
sufferings are the lot of the poor chaps who have tried to do something in the new
towns! They have been the martyrs. They have been made to dismantle what they
did bit by little bit ... .
Interviewer You are a philosopher, but if you were a king, would you be able to
carry out your ideas? If you analyse the city as a sociologist, you would be led to
be contradictory, because the city itself is, and thus you yourself express these
nuances. Don't you think that action means a reduced choice? Are there not two
logics, that of citizen Lefebvre and that of philosopher Lefebvre?
Lefebvre It is a question to which there is no answer because I haven't had this
experience. I have never had direct influence, I've had indirect influence, but only
as a by-product. I admit that if I was given the responsibility—and I would think
about it a long time before accepting it—I would see the basic elements of the
problem, the means, and the space. Perhaps after a long and considered examination,
I would accept, but that is not certain, since it is an enormous responsibility.
Interviewer The time taken in examining the facts would mean the facts are
already out of date; in other words, the times of the planner and the theoretician
are not the same.
Lefebvre You have put your finger on a sensitive and painful point because ... I
haven't the experience which I would like to have. I haven't in principle refused it,
I would have liked to have had it. I met Christopher Alexander(8) at the Museum
of Modern Art in New York and we spoke at length of this potential city, of this
future city; he was of the same opinion on rejecting this problem. He had just
had the biggest problems: he gave up the combinatory mode—under the influence
of Levi-Strauss—upon the introduction of computers. As for me, I have fought this
style. It's true that all languages are combinations of phonemes. There are 85
phonemes and thousands of millions of thousands of millions of combinations.
This explains all languages and none. I have always struggled against the cybernetic
combination. But Christopher Alexander went along with it completely. You
remember the list of urban variables. One said that there were so many parameters,

(7)
Creteil is a new town in the Paris region.
<8> Alexander (1936- ) has been influential in trying to give architecture a sound theoretical
basis. Since 1967 he has been Director of the Centre for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, CA.
36 An interview

even after reducing them to key parameters, that one had to give up using this
method. Christopher Alexander had found numerous architectural parameters; he
thought he could combine them, but he had so many that finally the selection was
empirical, practical, and experimental. Then he agreed to reject the question of the
perfect and ideal city. He left to build Zen communities, thinking that he would
be dealing with concrete and specific issues and with a few specific persons. With
architecture for monasteries and small communities, one could perhaps achieve
something, but on the urban scale, he thought there was nothing to be done.
Interviewer It was very Marxist then: small unit of production, small scale of life.
Lefebvre Yes, if you wish, but it wasn't a modern problem. Anyhow, we won't
have that experience in the immediate future, for it would be expensive. The city
must be a place of waste, for one wastes space and time; everything mustn't be
foreseen and functional, for spending is a feast. You can't reduce this concept,
either the festival disappears and becomes a simple commercial market, or it is
something which goes beyond it. I don't want to say that we have to unleash
violence, but there has to be a certain transgression in the festival, spaces of
freedom and perhaps adventure, but that is certainly not enough. I don't know
how one can modernise the concept of the festival, because the city has been a
place for festivals; the most beautiful cities were those where festivals were not
planned in advance, but there was a space where they could unfold, for example,
Florence, Venice, ... .
There is also the political aspect. Two years ago a competition was held for the
centre of Paris. I supported a project, 'Robespierre's Tomb', because it was Italian
architects who designed it. There is still today not a square, a monument, a small
street, or lane, named for Robespierre or Saint Just. There is only an underground
station in Montreuil, a communist municipality, and that's all. My Italian friends came
up with a magnificent project, but Monsieur Chirac(9), refused to see me, although he
had some very very big architects. It was very funny, the reshaping of the centre
of Paris. But for a festival, you need a rich and free society. There are the
fellows who take part in a festival in the Forum at the moment, but that's a little
special; it drifts. I don't know if it is completely lost or if we have to return to
something freer and more plentiful. As for the spaces for festivals, I would be
very annoyed if we had to conceive and site them, because of the formulas of
Portic and Agora, that nothing works well ... . Underground space is an idea, but I
can just see the expressions on the faces of the mayors!
Our era has found a space for festivals and pleasure—that's the beach. There is
an intense struggle over time and space, for example, to keep the beach open, so
that it does not become private property. It is an intense struggle, and not only in
France. Water remains a space of freedom, and the beach is a space of pleasure,
par excellence.
To end, I should like to come back to Marx. In Marx's work there are two
words which have made a great deal of impact on me. They are in a youthful
work, the "1844 manuscript" [1978]: second nature remains a very fluid concept
which he never specified. That means that there is something contrasted to an
initial and specific first nature. I have tried to develop this concept, which is
implicit in Marx, to clarify and express it. The city is second nature; it is a work,
a product, which is superimposed on the first nature and which uses the same
elements, such as water. Water as urban material borrowed from first nature, and
becoming known and opening out through second nature. This is an idea to think

<9) Mayor of Paris and since March 1986 Prime Minister of France.
 with Henri Lefebvre 37

about, even though it is not functional, indeed precisely because it is not. Stone
and tree are materials of first nature which become an element of second nature.
The concept of the urban came to me in Bologna in the centre of the city, where
there is not a single tree, but it is entirely mineral, entirely stone and water, not a
single tree. That is second nature totally outside of first nature, where first nature
penetrates the second and blooms; it is very beautiful. There isn't yet a city where
the elements, notably mineral and vegetable, are arranged like a work of art. Or, if
that is done, it is spontaneous, but it is not yet arranged.
References
Aragon L, 1926 Paysan de Paris reprinted 1978 (Gallimard, Paris)
Castells M, 1977 The Urban Question (Edward Arnold, London)
Harvey D, 1973 Social Justice and the City (Edward Arnold, London)
Hirsch A, 1981, The French New Left (South End Press, Boston, MA)
Huet A, Sauvage A, 1983, "La sociologie urbaine en peine ou en panne?" Espace et Societes
42 9 1 - 1 0 4
Kelly M, 1982, Modern French Marxism (Basil Blackwell, Oxford)
Martins M, 1982, "The theory of social space in the work of Henri Lefebvre" in Urban
Political Theory: Critical Essays in Urban Studies Eds R Forrest, J Henderson, P Williams
(Gower, Aldershot, Hants) pp 160-185
Marx K, 1978, "1844 manuscript" in Marx-Engels Reader Ed. R Tucker (W W Norton, New
York) pp 6 6 - 1 2 4
Poster M, 1975, Existential Marxism (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ)
Remy J, Voye L, 1981 Ville: Ordres et Violence—Formes Spatiales et Transactions Sociale (PUF,
Paris)
Remy J, Voye L, Servais E, 1978 Produire ou Reproduire (Editions Vie Ouvriere, Brussels)
Saunders P, 1981 Social Theory and the Urban Question (Hutchinson, London)
Soja E, 1980, "The socio-spatial dialectic" Annals of the Association of American Geographers
70 207-225
Soja E, 1985, "The spatiality of social life: towards a transformative retheorisation" in Social
Relations and Spatial Structures Eds D Gregory, J Urry (Macmillan, London) pp 90-127
Soubise L, 1967 Le Marxisme apres Marx (Editions Montaigne, Paris)

Bibliography
This is not a comprehensive bibliography of Lefebvre's vast output in philosophy, politics,
rural and urban sociology, and literature. It does not include pamphlets and the various
journals with which he was associated from his early surrealist days in the 1920s to the
present. Many of his earlier works are still available. These are indicated with a dot.

1938 Nietzsche (Editions Sociales Internationales, Paris)

• 1939 Le Materialisme Dialectique (Alcan, Paris) 7th edition 1975; translated by J Sturrock as
Dialectical Materialism (Jonathan Cape, London)
1946 Critique de la Vie Quotidienne: Introduction (L'Arche, Paris)
1946 L'Existentialisme (Le Sagittaire, Paris)
• 1947 A la Lumiere du Materialisme Dialectique: Logique Formelle. Logique Dialectique
(Editions Sociales, Paris) 3rd edition 1982 (Anthropos, Paris)
1947 Pour Connaitre la Pensee de Karl Marx (Bordas, Paris)
• 1948 Le Marxisme (PUF, Paris) 20th edition 1983
• 1957 Pour Connaitre la Pensee de Lenine (Bordas, Paris)
• 1958 Problemes Actuels du Marxisme (PUF, Paris) 4th edition 1970
1959 La Somme et le Reste 2 volumes (NEF de Paris, Paris)
• 1961 Critique de la Vie Quotidienne: Fondaments d 'une Sociologie de la Quotidiennete volume 2
(L'Arche, Paris) 3rd edition 1980
1962 Introduction a la Modernite (Minuit, Paris) new edition 1977
1963 La Ville de Campan: Etude de Sociologie Rurale (PUF, Paris)
1964 Marx, sa Vie, son Oeuvre, avec un Expose de sa Philosophic (PUF, Paris)
1965 La Proclamation de la Commune 26 Mars 1871 (Gallimard, Paris)
1965 Metaphilosophie (Minuit, Paris)
1966 Le Langage et la Societe (Gallimard, Paris)
 38 An interview

1966 Sociologie de Marx (PUF, Paris); translated by N Guterman as Sociology of Marx 1968
(Allen Lane, London)
1967 Position Contre les Technocrates (Gonthier, Paris)
• 1968 Critique de la Vie Quotidienne: De la Modernite au Modernisme volume 3 (L'Arche, Paris)
3rd edition 1981
• 1968 La Vie Quotidienne dans le Monde Moderne (Gallimard, Paris); translated by S Rabinovitch
as Everyday Life in the Modern World 1971 (Allen Lane, London)
1968 Le Droit a la Ville (Anthropos, Paris)
1968 L'Irruption de Nanterre au Sommet (Anthropos, Paris); translated by A Ehrenfield as The
Explosion: Marxism and the French Revolution 1969 (Monthly Review Press, New York)
1970 Du Rural a VUrbain (Anthropos, Paris) 1976 edition (a collection of articles, conference
papers, and interviews with an introduction by Lefebvre)
1970 La Fin de I'Histoire (Minuit, Paris)
• 1970 La Revolution Urbaine (Gallimard, Paris)
• 1970 Le Manifeste Differentialiste (Gallimard, Paris)
1970 "Reflexions sur la politique de 1'espace" Espaces et Societes 1 3 - 1 2 ; translated by
M Enders as "Reflections on the politics of space" 1976 Antipode 8 3 0 - 3 7
1971 Au Deld du Structuralisme (Anthropos, Paris)
• 1971 Vers le Cybernanthrope (Gonthier, Paris)
• 1972 La Pensee Marxiste et la Ville (Casterman, Tournai) 3rd edition 1978
1973 Survie du Capitalisme (Anthropos, Paris); translated by F Bryant as The Survival of
Capitalism 1976 (Allison and Busby, London)
• 1974 La Production de VEspace (Anthropos, Paris)
1975 Hegel - Marx - Nietzsche (Casterman, Tournai)
• 1975 Le Temps des Meprises (Stock, Paris)
• 1975 L'Ideologie Structuraliste (Seuil, Paris)
1975-1978 De I'Etat 4 volumes (Union Generate d'Editions, Paris)
1980 Une Pensee Devenue Monde: Faut-il Abandonner Marx? (Fayard, Paris)
• 1980 Presence et I Absence: Contribution a la Theorie des Representations (Casterman, Tournai)
• 1983 Diderot ou les Affirmations Fondamentales du Materialisme (L'Arche, Paris)
• 1985 Q'est-ce que Penser? (Publisud, Paris)
• 1986 Le Retour de la Dialectique: 12 Mots Cles pour le Monde Moderne (Messidor/Editions
Sociales, Paris) (thoughts on 12 issues such as the state, philosophy, daily life, socialism,
the urban)
• 1936 with N Guterman La Conscience Mystifiee (Gallimard, Paris) 2nd edition 1979
(Sycomore, Paris)
• 1978 with C Regulier La Revolution n'est plus ce qu'elle Etait (Editions Libres-Hallier, Paris)

p © 1987 a Pion publication printed in Great Britain