A Study Of Marx 's Social Construction Thought

Marx’s social construction theory penetrates many detailedelaborations of social historical issues and it constitutes an importantpart of Marxist theory, which has specific connotation and discoursefeatures.Marx lived in not only an era of prosperous modernity created bycapitalism, but also an era of ills caused by capitalism, and thisconstitutes historical context of appearance of Marx’s socialconstruction theory. Marx not only finds the positive role of capitalism,such as promoting the development of productive forces, advancingpersonal subjectivity, and richening social relationship, but also findsthe negative role of capitalism, such as blindness of social development,anti-ecology, and inhumanity. Thus, the arguments of bourgeois scholarson social construction theory constitute a crucial discourse resourceslearned by Marx, and become the objects surpassed by Marx. For example,Marx criticized the “human nature” concept implied by social contractdoctrine in17to18century for avoiding the generalization tendency ofbourgeois’ values and interests, and clarifying the theory distinguishof social construction theory; Marx criticized the “civil society theory”of Hegel, and paid more attention to the realizability and materialityof civil society, and found a new method to grasp the social structureof modern capitalism; Marx criticized Utopian socialists’“asceticism”,“equalitarianism”, and “utopian tendency”, and absorbed the essenceof their theory.As a result, a new “social construction theory” was created by Marx,and it has a rich and systematic content. Firstly,“social organism”constitutes a revolutionary perspective of the theory. Marx was stronglyagainst “mechanical view” and “metaphysics” which holds that thesociety can be separated into isolated entities, and claimed that society was a complicated system containing many elements, levels and areas.Accordingly,“social construction” is also a huge project involving manyareas such as economy, politic, thought, law and daily life etc. Thus,Marx’s social construction thought contains four general principles,namely wholeness, specific structures, different levels, and openness.Secondly,“historical materialist” constitutes the theoreticalperspective of Marx’s social construction theory, and contains thelogical framework of the theory. Ⅰ: The progress of productive force isthe core of the theory. The progress of productive force is the externalappearance achieved by human themselves, and is the fundamental mechanismof social evolution, and is the basic premise of human liberation. Thus,productive force has surpassed the “pure economic field”, and has a closerelation with the ultimate goal of social construction. Ⅱ: Harmonybetween human and nature is the basic premise of Marx’s socialconstruction thought. Marx criticized the capitalist views on therelation between human and nature, which regards the nature as the basisand premise when we deal with the issues such as relation between human,productive methods, and social systems. Ⅲ: Building harmonious socialrelation is the main content of Marx social construction thought. Marxcriticized the irrational association relation in human history, andregarded the complete reform of social relationships as one of the aimsof social revolution and social construction, and put forward to builda new form of social life distinguishing traditional civil society.Thirdly,“human liberation constitutes the ultimate goal of Marx’ssocial construction thought. Marx held that although the capitalistsocial construction had cleared the way for human liberation to someextent, it also created an alienation life state of proletariat; only whenthe social construction is led by the proletariat, can the human achievethe real liberation. The course processing from capitalism society to socialist society is one achieving the dual liberation of human andsociety, and the general principles of social constructions constitutesthe detailed methods for achieving the Commonwealth of free people.All in all, starting from the individual caring, Marx criticized theirrational phenomenon in the capitalist social construction, andelaborated the directive principles of social construction in future inorder to achieve scientific, humanistic, and revolutionary unity in theperspective of development law human history. Research on Marx’s socialconstruction thought can help people to master the Marxism theory systemprecisely and completely. In addition, the theory can also provide ageneral idea for socialist construction because of its highly scientific,foreseeable and superior features. According to the different historicaltasks, Chinese communists apply Marx’s social construction thought toactual circumstance of our country and formed a new “social constructionthought with Chinese characteristics”. At present, in a new period ofsocialist reform and construction, many contradictions becomeincreasing prominent, and the cost of development grows up greatly. ThusMarx’s social construction thought is still important for us to solvethe big problems in social construction practice. Based on the theory,we should pay more attention to establishment of harmonious humanrelationship in social construction practice, focusing on theconstruction of ecological civilization to achieve the reconciliation ofhuman and nature, and focusing on individual development etc, and theachievement of all the tasks depend on the unceasing deepening socialistreform.