A Revolution In The Technical Terms Of Das Kapital

"A revolution in the technical terms" is contained in Das Kapital; this was firstpointed out by Engels in the preface of the1st English-edition Das Kapital. Meanwhile,Engels emphasized that a revolution in the technical terms was a theoretical difficultythat readers themselves should get rid of. This implies that to truly comprehend DasKapital, readers must get the revolutionary connotations of terms. However, for years,seldom researches in academia study Das Kapital from the perspective terminologicalrevolution specifically, and Engels’s proposal about Das Kapital terms hasn’t arousedmuch attention yet.Whereas this background, this paper selects a revolution in the technical terms asthe core theme, aiming to reveal the philosophical implication of the economiccategories in Das Kapital, and reproduce the real relationship between Das Kapital andMarxism philosophy. The prerequisite for Das Kapital is nothing but the significantphilosophical revolution of Marxism, and this is why the economic categories of DasKapital as a critique of political economy, are fundamentally different from terms ofgeneral political economics in the aspect of "deep structure".Marx of his youth had been deeply aware that the philosophical basis of Hegel,who was the climax representative of German Classical Philosophy, was still stuck inthe convention of idealism. Hegel was limited in the vision of criticizing abstract ration,claiming that "the general development of human spirit" swallowed the lively "humanworld". Marx thought this led to an "upside down of world consciousness". For the"material benefit" issue in front of modern people, Hegel’s philosophy held limitedcriticism, showing just a rational "explanation" of modern society; thereafter, Marxstood opposite the speculative philosophy. He demanded, in terms of contemporarytasks, philosophy must explode the conventional theory that truth was on the other side;it should "retreat" to "world", and seek for the practical existence of human. Marx proposed to reconstruct a new philosophy to "criticize all that exist", so that human canobtain freedom and liberation in the current world.To reach to that goal, Marx began to consciously abandon the starting points ofthe western traditional philosophy. He faced "real individuals", stepped into the newphilosophical vision of concerning "material production of direct life" and "humanrelations in society", and therefore, truly transferred the historical development basis to"civil society". Simultaneously, Marx gradually got rid of speculative philosophicalterms, starting to criticize the real world with this new context. By convert the "overalltheoretical issue" of traditional philosophy and its speculative expression to "realhistory", Marx impacted the future of philosophy definitively. All above provide asignificant thinking opportunity for reviewing the "philosophical implication "ofeconomic categories in Das Kapital throughout the revolutionary process of Marxismphilosophy.Engels pointed out that throughout Marx’s life, there were two greatest theoreticaldiscoveries. One was to "change the whole worldview", and the other was to "figureout completely the relationship between capital and labor". People who neglect theinternal consistency between these two would arbitrarily think that the latter is just themechanical use of the former to the political economic area, and thus, view Marxismphilosophical revolution and Das Kapital in isolation. Nevertheless, Marxism subvertsthe domination of speculative philosophy to real subject, and reveals the manipulationof "capital logic" to human. These two are not irrelevant, instead, they come from thesame theoretical purpose which is to, by resorting to the real motor process of capitalistsociety, liberate the whole human race to seek for the "realistic way" based on this kindof comprehension, the issue consciousness and basic contents of the economiccategories in Das Kapital are "nominally" inherited from terms of political economy.From the perspective of word "surface layer", the context indeed has been definedas the core of economics and attached with detail introduction. In the age of AdamSmith, modern society was called " commercial community", and the concept of"value" was proposed for the first time to represent the "two different meanings":use-value and value. However, the labor theory of value proposed by Smith wasequivocal in that he didn’t carry out the concept that labor was the general entity of economic exchange activities to the end. David Ricardo, eventually defined the uniquecriteria of measuring commodity value to the labor time the commodity consumed.Despite that Ricardo developed classic economics, he eliminated the innatesocial-historical characteristics of economics; he simply abstracted economics as thequantity relation of between objects. He, in fact, took the standpoint of bourgeoisie,and claimed the capitalist production relation non-historical and eternal. By contrast,on the basis of "the twofold character" in the economic categories, Marx traced back tothe source of the contemporary capitalist economic relation which was the unity ofopposites exist between "useful labor" and "abstract labor", and therefore, here-analyzed economic concepts in social life, and restored the "relationship betweenindividuals" hid behind the object relations. Marx filled the gaps of old economicalterms, and rebuilt the concepts of labor and surplus value. In essence, Marx recoveredthe historical concepts of social relationships implied in the economic categories, andgiven the philosophical implication of the economic categories.The economic categories of Das Kapital not only represents the modernity of thecapitalism, but also predicts the future trends of human history. A critique of politicaleconomy provides complete scientific reasoning for the "value proposition" that Marxrooted in philosophical criticism.The economic categories, already discussed by Marx, are the unique elevator for"knowing the world" and the "real weapon" for "changing the world"; they can beidentified as the new philosophical category that enriches the new worldview ofMarxism. It is in the Das Kapital that lurks the real Marxist philosophy.