Reflection And Criticism On The "Wood Proposition

Since the 1970 s,"wood proposition" has caused continuous debate in the academic circles of Marxist theory at home and abroad.This proposition advocates that Marx does not think capitalism is unjust,and that Marx criticizes capitalism based on immoral good,rather than moral good,such as justice.This proposition is directly opposite to the well-known impression of Marx and his theory for more than100 years,which disturbs the most core content of Marxist Theory-materialist dialectics,historical materialism and surplus value theory.This core content immediately becomes active and opposes the original opposition,so as to re-establish itself and return to itself in this opposition.Wood firmly believes that Marx has no clear theory of justice.But in fact,Marx just did not have the clear theory of justice understood by British and American analysts such as wood.Wood’s passion for clarity largely rests on a rule or definition.For example,wood believes that Marx and Engels’ concepts of power and justice are the highest rational standard to judge law,social system and human behavior from the perspective of legal power.He believes that this clearly stipulates the concept of justice.But neither Marx nor Engels can understand things in this metaphysical way of thinking.Moreover,this "highest rational standard" is Proudon’s view criticized by Marx.In other words,at the level of basic world outlook,wood was very different from Marx and Engels from the beginning.In the "wood proposition",wood’s most commonly used provision-as long as it is consistent with the mode of production,it is just.According to wood’s understanding,it is a rule and a formula.Wood tends to apply this formula everywhere.However,Marx understood it from the perspective of dialectics and historical materialism,and there is no fixed formula in Marx.This is the second key difference between Marx and wood: the difference of methodology.The reason why wood can comprehensively and systematically misread Marx’s criticism of capitalism is not a coincidence,but based on his profound inconsistency with Marx in methodology.Marx’s method is dialectics,but wood doesn’t seem to be interested in dialectics.Although wood can accurately describe Marx’s views,he can’t use these views to analyze Marx’s text or the real world.The fundamental problem of "wood proposition" is that wood’s attitude towards Marx’s dialectics is exclusive,and his understanding of historical materialism deviates fundamentally from Marx.Wood seems to hold a negative attitude towards all speculative theories,such as dialectics and metaphysical methods.He often thinks that they belong to the illusion and hypothesis of ideology.He rejected Hegel’s speculative philosophy,thought that Hegel’s speculative philosophy was outdated,and thought that Hegel’s philosophical basis was his ethical thought rather than his logic.He studies Hegel’s ethical thought,but often finds himself in failure in understanding Hegel.He also deliberately ignored Marx’s dialectics.As we all know,"Das Kapital" is a work in which Marx made full use of dialectics,especially the part about commodity value."Law of value" can be said to be an important basis for Marx’s criticism of political economy.However,wood belittled it as a "simple economic model".Among them,the exchange value was interpreted by him as a kind of ability of goods rather than the social relationship between people.When understanding historical materialism,he tends to a teleological interpretation,understanding historical materialism as an empirical model based on Marx’s three assumptions and two beliefs about human society.He equates the scientificity of historical materialism with the scientificity of positivism,and his attitude towards historical materialism is a Hume skeptical attitude.His understanding of productivity and production relations often falls into idealism.He often understands production activities from the perspective that production relations should adapt to existing productivity,rather than from the change of existing productivity.This led to his failure to deeply explore the reform of the mode of production,to explain the dialectical reversal of the mode of production,and to understand why the capitalist system must perish.In short,these fundamental inconsistencies with Marx make the "wood proposition" look like a pseudo proposition.This is not to deny its discussion value.It is called false proposition because it does not enter the ideological content of Marx,but discusses the problem of Marx’s justice.Through the reflection and criticism of "wood proposition",Marx’s view of justice has been able to take on a basic look.It is not a separate theory or viewpoint,but has its own theoretical basis.This foundation is Marx’s materialist dialectics and historical materialism.Without this theoretical basis,talking about Marx’s concept of justice is like talking about a castle in the air.Marx’s view of justice displayed by "wood proposition" is just like this castle in the air.It is almost shaky in front of Marx’s method.This paper does not attempt to fully explore Marx’s theory of justice.This paper just wants to firmly grasp and focus on these two theoretical bases to discuss Marx’s view of justice and respond to the query and misunderstanding of Marx’s view of justice by "wood proposition".Different from wood’s understanding,Marx’s view of justice has a distinct proletarian position.At the same time,it is also the unity of norms and facts,inevitability and necessity,and the unity of relative justice and absolute justice.These relations are not separate theories or viewpoints,but based on Marx’s dialectical way and historical materialism.In this way,the proposition of "wood proposition" is likely to become irrelevant in Marx.For example,whether Marx criticizes capitalism based on "justice" becomes irrelevant,so wood’s distinction between moral good and immoral good becomes irrelevant here.When we rely on dialectics and historical materialism to understand the concept of "justice",the concept itself is critical,and it is criticism itself.Therefore,we can say that Marx criticizes capitalism based on "justice".Compared with wood’s view,this understanding is also closer to the ordinary people’s view of capitalism."Wood proposition" has been discussed for a long time in academic circles,which is enough to prove its important value.However,the importance of "wood proposition" in China’s academic circles does not lie in the value represented by its content,but in its great value as a touchstone of Marxist theory.For China,the current reflection and criticism of "wood proposition" has important theoretical and practical significance.In theory,the debate caused by "wood proposition" is mainly at the theoretical level,which reflects the different degrees of understanding of Marx’s Theory(mainly focusing on dialectics),and helps to make the truth clearer and clearer.In practice,"wood proposition" has a continuous heat,which shows that the real world needs it.It helps us to guide practice with a clearer and more accurate Marxist view of justice.