![]() ![]() When revolutions break out, they break out in cities. They are also centres of class struggle, where bosses and workers wage their “uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight”. On the other hand, they are the sites of capitalism’s most barbaric extremes-of state repression and surveillance, of homelessness and destitution, of air, land and water poisoned by pollution, of exploitation and alienation. They are, on the one hand, fulcrums of creativity and innovation, melting pots of different cultures and lifestyles, and cradles of new ideas and social practices. In them are contained all the intensities and deep contradictions of this chaotic, crisis-ridden system. Cities are where capitalism’s “uninterrupted disturbance” and “everlasting uncertainty and agitation” are concentrated. In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx highlighted that “constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones”. ![]() ![]() Around the world, it’s 56 percent, a figure the United Nations forecasts will increase to 68 percent by 2050. In Australia, 72 percent of people live in major cities. As capitalism emerged and grew, so too did cities-the great centres in which the productive life of human societies has become increasingly concentrated. ![]()
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