ABSTRACT

The ‘concrete abstract’ is a crucial concept within the work of Henri Lefebvre that has only been given the critical attention it merits, particularly through the writings of Lukasz Stanek. This chapter explores the tricky and often obfuscated concept of the ‘concrete abstract’. J. Stalin’s narrow Dialectical and Historical Materialism is the target of Lefebvre’s Dialectical Materialism, published in 1940. Lefebvre’s project itself is concrete abstraction, it resists total systematisation. The concrete abstract must then always be grounded in the particular, if the particular is an idea or a wall. Even if that particular is shaped in a malign way by an abstraction. The concrete abstract is part of Lefebvre’s project to at once defend Marxism and rescue it from those who seek to reduce it to a scheme, a party programme, and a dogmatism. It blows open the base and superstructure metaphor to extend Marxism out into culture and space.