The Interpretation And Reconstruction Of Western Marxism On Historical Materialism

The historical materialism and surplus value theory founded by Marx changed socialism from a fantasy into a science,which is Copernican revolution in the field of social sciences.As an important integral part of Marxist philosophy,historical materialism aims at finding the general laws in the social development of human beings.Historical materialism believes that it is not the heros who create history,but the people who create history,that is,they are the historical creators.The historical development follows its own rules,the social existence determines social consciousness,productivity and production relations,and economic foundation determines superstructure.interaction,In the mean time,the productive relations must adapt to production,and superstructure to its economic foundation.Mutual constraints dominate the entire social development process.Productivity is the most active and revolutionary factor that propel the social progress.Productivity is the final decisive factor of historical development.Science and technology are productivity.Historical materialism is an ideological weapon for Marxist political parties to analyze national conditions,understand and transform the society in the process of revolution,construction and reform.However,how to scientifically and integrally understand Marx’s historical materialism has always been a problem in the history of Marxism in the history of international communist movement.The "orthodox Marxist" theorists in the Second International understood and publicized the historical materialism and scientific socialism created by Marx as the economic determinism of economics,and passively waited for the historical law to spontaneously bring about the inevitable victory of the proletariat revolution.As a result,it was deficient in arousing the self-consciousness of proletariats and revolutionary class consciousness,and it also inefficient in mobilizing and organizing the proletarian proletariat force.As a result,favorable revolutionary situation created by the First World War failed to transform into the victory of the proletariat revolution.Why the revolutionary class as a typical European capitalist country does not rise to take part in revolution has become a logical starting point where we need to reflect on and think about the practical subjects and theories of historical materialism.For this purpose,Western Marxism,which first emerged as the leftist trend of the communist movement,started from the logical starting point of such practical subjects and theories,and returned to the original Marx to reconsider and discover Marx’s original theory,especially to reunderstand and rebuild Marxist historical materialism.Western Marxist scholars and the relevant schools of thoughts,from different perspectives or under a certain topic,have analyzed some basic theoretical issues in the theory of historical materialism,and reestablished their own historical materialism.However,Western Marxism mainly focuses on the issue of how to look at the basic and decisive role of the economic foundation,the issue of the historical development law and the inevitability of historical development trends and the dynamic relationship of class consciousness,the issue of economic foundation and superstructure and society,the issue of how to understand science and technology as productivity,the issue of productive relations in various social relationships(especially the relationships between communication and production relations),the issue of how to evaluate the impact of natural ecological environment on the relationship between man and nature and the impact of the nature of production methods and production relations on the relationship between man and nature? Western Marxism’s interpretation and reconstruction of historical materialism is mainly based on these issues.It has made great efforts to explore the basic theoretical issues of these historical materialism,and has achieved certain theoretical results and has also put forward issues worthy of serious consideration.However,there are also some misunderstandings and misreadings of Marx’s historical materialism so that their reconstructed historical materialism has deviated from the original scientific Marx’s historical materialism.First,in terms of how to understand the decisive role of the economic base.Lukács,Korsch and others criticized the historical materialism of economic determinist dogmatism,and attributed the failure of the Western European proletarian revolution directly to the economic determinism of the Second International,arguing that the theory ignored the will in the revolutionary process and underestimated the factors of the dynamic revolutionary role of class consciousness.The main reason why capitalism has not collapsed in the riots in many countries in Western Europe is that the working class consciousness has not yet awakened.In order to save the Marxist theory from bankrupcy,Lukács,Korsch and others demanded the establishment of a revolutionary theory of class consciousness,so as to resuscitate Marx’s dialectics and the theory of socialist revolution,by laying emphasis on the principle that Marx’s philosophy is the practical philosophy of revolution.In this way,it started a new trend in the study of Marxist historical materialism by Western Marxism.Secondly,with regard to the issue of the relationship between the economic base and the superstructure,the socio-economic structure and the form of social consciousness,Althusser et al.gave a new explanation.He regards the economic base and the superstructure,and the social economic structure and the social consciousness form,as a multi-dimensional coexistence and parallel relationship,which forms a complex unity according to a certain structure,and in which various factors interacts and influences each other and jointly promotes social history together without the such a relationship of one being the base and the determiner of the rest factors.Thus,he developed a pluralism that took the place of the monism which believed in the material production as a dominant factor to determine the progress of social history.In addition,Althusser put forward the "national ideology machine" theory,with the purpose of replenishing Marx’s historical materialism.Althusser felt that Marx and even Lenin’s works "lacked" the theory of the state,especially the theory of the relationship between trade unions and the state,and also lacked the theories on state ideology.However,he did not break free from the logic of Western Marxism,because when he correctly emphasized certain characteristics of Marxism,he embarked on the other extreme,that is,humanism,and attempted to surpass Marx in a certain sense.Thirdly,in terms of how to understand the basic dynamics of historical development,there different views in Western Marxism although they all recognize the decisive role of the development of productive forces for historical development,what are the decisive factors or main motives for determining and promoting the development of productive forces.Sartre refuted the judgement of Marx that the basic driving force of historical development is the contradictory movement about productivity and production relations.He believes that the contradiction between lack and demand is the fundamental driving force of historical development,regardless of the significance of the adjustment of production relations and the revolutionary transformation of production relations.The analytic Marxism with William Shaw as a representative.He understood Marx’s productivity being the ultimate decisive factor in the development of social history,as scientific technological determinism.He uses the method of analytic philosophy to analyze the conceptual connotation of productivity and productiive relations,and the dialectical relationship between productivity and production relations in a more detailed and thorough way.To analyze Marx’s assersion of "the first position of productivity",and proceed from this assertion to systematically analyze and expound his technical determinism.He believes that the concept of productivity and production relations is a decisive basic one for Marx historical materialism.He interprets Marx’s productivity determinism as technical determinism.This kind of separation from the production relationship to talk about productivity is a one-sided theoretical point of view.Fourthly,in terms of how to think about the impact of natural ecological environment on the relationship between man and nature,and the relationship between people in production and the relationship between man and nature,ecological Marxism with Ben Agger and O’Connor,the representative theorists as the representatives reconstructed Marx’s historical materialism based on of the proceeded from the ecological "determinism".If we say,Marxism declares the inevitable demise of capitalism from the perspective of economics,ecological Marxism has sounded the "death knell" of the inevitable demise of capitalism from the perspective of ecology.They believe that capitalism is not only economically unsustainable,but also ecologically unsustainable.Ecological Marxism’s ecological critique of capitalism enriches Marxist social critical theory and deeply explores the ecological implication in Marx’s materialist philosophy.It has deepened people’s understanding and reflection on the ecological nature of contemporary capitalism,and made people more clearly see that the capitalist system is the real source of the ecological environment crisis.Fifth,with regard to how to view the status of production relations in various social relations,especially the relationship between communication and production relations,Habermas made a unique research.He explained the theory of communicative action with the status of communication in the productiive relationship,and realized the reconstruction of historical materialism with the theory of communicative action.Habermas concentrated on the criticism of historical materialism’s social labor,production methods,productivity and production relations,and economic foundations and superstructures.As for the basis of social issues,he believes that "communication behavior" is the basis of all periods of human society,and "social labor" only plays a fundamental part in specific social and historical periods.About the issue of social development dynamic system,Habermas holds that the "learning mechanism" is the driving force of social development which denies Marx’s view that the basic contradictory movement of society is the driving force for the development of social history.In the division of social forms,Habermas proposes to adopt the "organizational principle" to replace the production relationship and divide the society into " Four social forms in the Neolithic period,the early high cultural period,the highly developed cultural period,and the modern social period.Therefore,he has replaced Marx’s theory of social forms with his four social forms theory.Habermas highlights the study of communicative behavior and has achieved original results and broadened the research vision of historical theory.However,the historical materialism he reconstructed almost neglectes the basic theory of Marx’s historical materialism.In short,Western Marxism’s efforts to explore the basic theoretical issues of these historical materialism have begun to interpret a certain theoretical problem in the theory of historical materialism from different angles and different aspects.Certain theoretical results have raised issues that deserve serious consideration.However,there are also misunderstandings and misreadings of Marx’s historical materialism.Actually,there still exist quite a few biases.The historical materialism reconstructed by Western Marxism is not Marx’s original historical materialism.The historical materialism that it reconstructed has deviated from the historical materialism of Marx’s original science.How to scientifically and completely understand Marx’s historical materialism is still a subject that needs Marxist theoretical workers to continue to study and explore.Marx’s historical materialism profoundly reveals the general law of the development of human society.It has been proved by history and practice to be a scientific theory.It still has a strong vitality in the present era and remains a powerful ideological principle to guide the progress of communists.