Study On Karl Marx’s Civil Society Theory

Civil society, as a conception crucial to the formation of Marx’ theory system, is aimportant component of the system. Based on the critical inheritance of G. W. F Hegel’s civilsociety theory, Marx asserted the civil society to be a social organization directly derivedfrom productions and transactions. This assertion profoundly revealed the nature of civilsociety, and integrally grasped all material transactions processing in market economy. Marxrealized that the concept of civil society was connotated by notions of both capitalism andeconomic base, which buried the cornerstone for the formation of his historical materialism,or even his entire theory system.The contexts in which Marx’s civil society theory arose included historical, theoreticaland practical ones. The historical context was the evolution in contents of civil society theoryfrom its first proposition in11thcentury to Marx’s days in Mid19thcentury. Hegel’s civilsociety theory and L. A. Feuerbach’s humanistic thoughts, which significantly influencedMarx’s civil society theory, functioned as the theoretical context. The practical context refersto Marx’s suspicion towards Hegel’s theory aroused by the oppression Prussian governmentimposed on its people.The generation of Marx’s civil society theory was a eventual process between hiscomposition of Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and The German Ideology. Throughphilosophical, political and economical investigations, Marx reached three conclusions:1.The civil sosiety shapes the political state;2. Proletarian was historically reponsible forunderstaking human liberation;3.The civil society is the summation of material transactions.The evolving course of Marx’s civil society theory mainly lay in the transformation fromphilosophy of right to economics in which Marx expounded the theory, the formation ofhistorical materialism, and the proposition of new understanding to the theory by westernMarxists such as A. Gramsci and J. Habermas, etc. The result of Marx’s research on civilsociety theory could be stated both on a narrow sense, where his historical materialism wsaregarded, and a broad sense, where the entire Marxist theory system was referred to. And the civil society theory Marx held, was featured by historicity, analyticity, synthecity andlogicality.