Dariusz Aleksandrowicz Aleksandrowicz - Europa-Universität ...

The Socialist City and its Transformation
I. Ideological foundations of a socialist city
Unlike the development of new cities in Western industrial countries, the rise of socialist
cities cannot be explained in terms of economic objectives and economic
growth in the usual meaning of the word. The very rationality of the communist system
was not an “economic” one but rested upon subordinating the latter to objectives
which derived their justification from communist ideology. Achieving these ideology-defined
tasks was due much more to political decision and political activity than
to the organic development of the society and its infrastructure. The intention consisted
rather in creating some new reality which would contradict the “spontaneous”
(i. e. mainly economically determined) dynamics of the social organism. 1 Although
the communist vocabulary contained words like “economic” or “economy”, what
they referred to was, however, a politically manipulated system of production and
distribution. 2 In the proper sense “economy” means the type of rules which govern
production and distribution of goods. In Communism, on the contrary, the notion attributed
to the specific content of what is being done (i. e., creating material goods),
whereas the rules appropriate to it relied on political decision and ideological legitimization.
Conceiving the city as the major scene where the communist utopia was to be realized
in people’s every-day life, the Soviet-type Communists were in line with the
mainstream of the tradition of utopianism. It was represented, for instance, by the
“New Jerusalem” in the Apocalypse of John or by Campanella’s “The City of the
Sun.” In accordance with this tradition they regarded the city as the expected surrounding
where the new world resulting from a radical change would find its ex
pression. 3 The ideology of the Soviet-type Communists differed here from their
1 For the opposition of “spontaneous” and “constructed” order cf. Hayek (1978: ch. 6). With
respect to the problems of a “socialist city” – cf. Szczepañski (1990; 1993a: 63p.). Contrasting
“spontaneous” social order with the communist attempt to “construct” a society according to a
general plan laid down by the superior political authority, we must, however, avoid possible misinterpretations.
The communist idea of planning (or: planned economy) as a principle of social
organization is not to be confused with planning (especially: urban planning) as a method of rationally
managing and mutually adjusting particular aspects of a social organism. Since “planning”
in the first meaning can be opposed to “spontaneity”, as Hayek understands the term, the
proper opposite to “planning” in the other sense would be “anarchy”. For a related distinction
between “utopian planning” and “social technology of particular problems” cf. Popper (1945: ch.
9).
2 The idea of opposing “production” and “economy” in order to finally release production of material
goods from restrictions imposed upon them by economic rules traces back beyond Marx’
“Critique of Political Economy” to the writings of Saint-Simon. For more cf. Aleksandrowicz
(1993: ch. XI) and Polanyi (1960).
3 “From the architectural utopias of Alberti and Leonardo in the Renaissance, to Le Corbusier’s
design for the ‘city of tomorrow,’ architects and urban planners have sought to realize the good