Bio: (1900-1991) French philosopher and sociologist. Henri Lefebvre studied at the University of Paris and taught at the Universities of Strasbourg and Nanterre. His intellectual work is connected with his participation in the Communist Party of France, from which he was expelled in the late 1950s because of his heretical views. After that, he worked closely with the founders of the Socialist International and representatives of student protests. Three main themes run through his theoretical work: the development of Marxist philosophy and practice (dialectical Marxism), the study of everyday life, and the problems of urban space.

With the publication of the book Dialectical Materialism (1940), Lefebvre became one of the most influential representatives of this direction of Marxism. His heterodox dialectical materialism carries the influences of Marx, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Lefebvre's dialectical materialism emphasizes the problems that arise in the cultural and existential dimensions of the capitalist mode of production. Alienation is the most important consequence of modern capitalism, which makes it impossible to achieve human authentic self-realization. The dialectical perspective emphasizes the constant presence of contradictions in society, but also the possibility of overcoming them through practices aimed at combating the system, and creative and concrete ideas that change collective practice. The goal of philosophy, sociology, and economics should be to find a solution through which the "return of man to himself" would be achieved and thus overcome the problem of alienation. The ultimate goal is the realization of a "total man" who exists in a society in which inequalities and alienations have been eradicated.

His interest in dialectics and alienation was also expressed in the book Critique of Everyday Life (2014, in French 1947, 1961, 1968, 1981), which had four volumes that were published over three decades. In these books, Lefebvre studies everyday life, which is not banal but represents a direct product of a society governed by consumerism and the bureaucratization of life. Everyday life is the best indicator of how the capitalist mode of production has shaped modern society. Bureaucratization and consumerism have impoverished and taken away authenticity from everyday life. Capitalism, marketing, and the liberal-democratic state have created a "bureaucratic society of organized consumption". On the other hand, everyday life contains the seeds of resistance to such a system, because it preserves the collective memory of alternative practices and supports the development of strategies and movements that challenge the existing social order.

Lefebvre made a huge contribution to the development of rural sociology, and later in his career, he made an even greater contribution to urban sociology. His books The Right to the City (in French 1968), From the Rural to the Urban (in French 1970a), The Urban Revolution (2003, in French 1970b), The Right to the City II - Space and Politics (1972b) and The Production of Space (1974) are the most important books with urban sociology as a topic. He believes that the city is the best place to study capitalism, due to the degradation capitalism brought to the city. Capitalism, through speculation with land and real estate, extends commodification to living space. In addition, the capitalist organization of urban space creates segregation of social groups, and this has the most negative impact on the working class.

The city should be studied on three levels of analysis: global (as a space shaped by the capitalist mode of production), mixed (as a mediator between the state and everyday life of people), and private level (the everyday life of people in private space). In the historical dimension, the city has gone through three phases: a political city, a commercial city, and an industrial city. With the arrival of socialism, we would enter the fourth and final phase of the development of the city, and through the "urban revolution" a humane urban society would be created. Lefebvre sees urban space as a place where the state and capitalists want to commercialize space (in which technocrats dealing with architecture, urbanism, and planning play a significant role), but also as a place where opponents of this situation want to create alternative spaces - "Heterotopias" - for self-realization through art, communes and similar forms. The urban revolution is the culmination of this defense of the "right to the city".

In On the Other Side of Structuralism (1971), Lefebvre seeks to construct what he called "structural  historicism." He resolutely rejects Althusser's division of Marx's thought into young and old Marx. Lefebvre also believes that the introduction of the boundaries between history and sociology is wrong, which is also visible in Marx's approach in which dialectical existence is connected to a formal structure. Marx believed that dialectical contradiction is deeper than structural contradictions. Lefebvre advocates the introduction of a regressive-progressive method, which connects the micro-social level of everyday life with the macro-social level.

Main works

Morceaux choisis de Karl Marx (1934);

La Conscience mystifiée (1936);

Le Matérialisme dialectique (1940); 

L'Existentialisme (1946);

Critique de la vie quotidienne, 4 vol. (1947, 1961, 1968, 1981);

Le Marxisme (1948);

Knowledge and Social Criticism, Philosophic Thought in France and the USA (1950);

Contribution a l'esthetique (1953);

Problèmes actuels du marxisme (1958); 

La vallée de Campan: Étude de sociologie rurale (1963);

Pyrénées (1966a);

Sociologie de Marx (1966b);

Vers le cybernanthrope, contre les technocrates (1967);

Le Droit à la ville, I (1968a);

La vie quotidienne dans le monde modern (1968b); 

Du rural à l'urbain (1970a);

La Révolution urbaine (1970b); 

Architecture et sciences sociales (1970c);

Au-delà du structuralisme (1971);

La pensée marxiste et la ville (1972a);

Le Droit à la ville, II - Espace et politique (1972b);

La survie du capitalisme: la re-production des rapports de production (1973);

La Production de l'espace (1974);

Une pensée devenue monde (1980);

De la modernité au modernisme: pour une métaphilosophie du quotidien (1981);

Éléments de rythmanalyse: Introduction à la connaissance des rythmes (1992).

Works translated into English:

Critique of Everyday Life: The Three-Volume Text (2014, in French 1947, 1961, 1968, 1981);

Dialectical Materialism (1968, in French 1940);

Sociology of Marx (1968, in French 1966b); 

Everyday Life in the Modern World (1971, in French 1968b);

The Explosion: From Nanterre to the Summit (1969);

The Urban Revolution (2003, in French 1970b);

Marxist Thought and the City (Posthumanities) (2016, in French 1972a);

The Survival of Capitalism (1976, in French 1973);

The Production of Space (1991, in French 1974);

Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche: Or the Realm of Shadows (2020, in French 1975);

Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life (2004, in French 1992);

Introduction to Modernity: Twelve Preludes September 1959-May 1961 (1995);

The Missing Pieces (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents) (2014).