A Philosophical Study Of Marx's Critical Social Theory

Social criticism is indispensable to the development of any society.Although social critique cannot provide us with a ready-made solution for social improvement,the absence of social critique will lead to insufficient understanding of the problem,and will also cause us to fail to properly deal with various contradictions.In front of the problem of social reality of free capitalism,Marx never played word games in the field of speculation,nor did he simply stack up the theories of his predecessors.Instead,he used materialist historical views and materialist dialectics as weapons against social reality,and criticized the process reveals the objective laws and future trends of social development.In contemporary times,capitalist society still contains many contradictions that cannot be overcome by itself,and global social crises frequently occur.China is facing not only common problems,but also the contradictions and problems of economic and social development.Marx’s social critical theory provides us with a scientific perspective and a way to grasp the nature of the problem.Research on Marx’s social critical theory has important theoretical and practical significance.The first chapter expounds the current situation of Marx’s capitalist society and Marx’s previous and contemporary social critical thoughts,and reveals the historical background and theoretical origin of Marx’s social critical theory.In Europe of the 19 th century,the production methods of the machine industry gradually became popular,the bourgeoisie won in the struggle against feudal aristocracy and established a political order,and the liberal ideological atmosphere permeated the entire ideological circle.However,with the change of the socialist economic and political order of capitalism,the problems of workers becoming vassals of machines and being exploited by capitalists,the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie,and the bourgeois hypocritical ethics became apparent.German classical philosophers think about social reality issues speculatively.Utopian socialists attack the entire realistic basis of a capitalist society,and put forward plans to transform society and ideas for a future communist society.And young Hegelians of the same age as Marx Under the slogan of critique,they focus on critique of social issues in the political and religious fields.Although their positions and methods have limitations,these critical spirits,critical perspectives and methods have inspired Marx.On this basis,Marx began to construct a scientific theory of social criticism.The second chapter summarizes the formation and development of Marx’s social critical theory.Marx initially used the philosophy of self-consciousness as the bascis for thinking about practical problems.When exploring the issue of freedom in political life,Marx encountered the difficult problem of contradiction between objective spiritual rationality and material interests,thus opening up criticism in the field of social politics.Due to the standpoint of Hegel’s rational state,Marx appealed the solution of social problems to social morality and national reason.With the deepening of the understanding of civil society,Marx discovered the secret that material interests determine socio-political relations,and raised the criticism of political states to the height of achieving human liberation.With the stance from revolutionary democracy to communism,Marx criticized the capitalist private society as a whole around the issue of social alienation,pointing out that the existence of private property leads to all issues of social alienation,and the way to realize the real possession of one’s own essence is communism.The practice-based new materialism and the establishment of historical materialism enabled Marx to overcome the speculative nature of the previous stage of social critical theory.He abandoned Hegel ’s position of a rational state,and establish a critical position on realistic material interests.Marx’s theory transcended that of the young Hegelian theory that examining the social reality from social copies,and established a critical method of understanding social issues from the original society.Marx’s theory transcended Feuerbach’s humanistic worldview that establishing realistic people with its realistic material production activities as the starting point.Finally,Marx established a critical position of historical materialism based on realistic material practice.The third chapter expounds Marx’s critique of capitalist social structure from the aspects of production methods and social relations on the basis of the scientific worldview,and reveals the various antagonistic contradictions of capitalist society under the domination of the law of surplus value.The capitalist mode of production determines the entire face of society.Marx firstly analyzed the cell of the capitalist economy of commodities,and found out the secret of surplus value on the basis of the law of value,and pointed out the contradiction between labor and capital in commodity production and the possession of a single capitalist.The contradiction between the means of production and the socialization of production,the contradiction between machines and workers caused by the use of machines and science and technology,and the contradiction between capitalist and non-capitalist modes of production.Through a systematic analysis,Marx revealed the laws of the contradictory movement of capitalist production relations and productivity,and demonstrated the inevitability of the demise of the capitalist economic system.Marx also discovered the problems of political struggle and ecological crisis from the materialized social relations,human-to-human relations,and human-nature relations,and criticized the antagonism of the capitalist social structure.While criticizing the unreasonable phenomenon of capitalist production methods,Marx affirmed its positive role in meeting people’s material and spiritual needs,promoting social progress,improving the quality of laborers,and accelerating the civilization process in backward areas.These reflect the scientific nature of the theory of Marx’s social criticism.The fourth chapter analyzes the transcendence of this theory to other social critical theories and the scientific nature of the theory from the aspects of the theoretical basis,critical methods,theoretical characteristics,and critical purposes of Marx’s social criticism.Marx and Engels’ scientific analysis of the capitalist social structure and guidance to the revolutionary practice of the proletariat were realized under the guidance of historical materialism.Historical materialism not only establishes the object of critique,that is,the production relations of the real capitalist society,but also points out the general laws and evaluation standards of future social development.Marx used materialist dialectics as a weapon of criticism,insisting on the path from abstract to specific criticism,and realized the transformation from theoretical criticism to revolutionary practice criticism.Compared with other critical theories that take capitalist society as the object of criticism,Marx’s social critique aims to explore the mystery of human history and answer the prospects of future social development and the way of human liberation.On the whole,this theory is a holistic,scientific,and thorough critical theory.The fifth chapter analyzes the theoretical value and practical significance of Marx’s social critical theory.Criticism is not blind denial,but shows the true appearance of things in the analysis of squares.Marx’s theory of social criticism is constructed by Marx in the process of comprehensively examining the development of a capitalist society.As a scientific tool for understanding society,it is not only an ideological weapon for criticizing the old and irrational society,but also a way to imagine and construct a new society.A theoretical guide.In the global global era,Marx’s socially critical positions,viewpoints,and methods help us to examine global issues,accurately grasp the new features of contemporary world development,and deepen our understanding of the trends of contemporary capitalist development.It helps us to clearly understand the status quo of capitalist society and properly handle the relationship between socialism and capitalism.It helps us to resolve contradictions and problems in China’s current economic and social development,and to promote social progress and human development.