"From The Abstracting Up To The Concreting":A Study On The Logic Of The Formation Of Marx’s Concept Of Civil Society

"From the abstract up to the concrete" is not only the process of forming a general understanding of items,but also the process of reappearing the generation of concepts in thinking.From this perspective,the formation of Marx’s concept of civil society is showed as the unification of "two processes".On the one hand,Marx grasped the general understanding of the civil society,One the other hand,Marx transcended the ideology of concept of civil society.For Marx,the word "up" means that the process by which he grasped the essence of capitalist society.In this process,Marx got rid of the bondage of the abstractness of economic category.At the same time,Marx analyzed the historical background of the formation of civil society and dissected the fundamental contradictions among it.Obviously,the concept of civil society is the key point that Marx criticized capitalist society.The term "civil society" is historic,it is the product of the contemporary world merely.Some views traced the concept of civil society back to the "national community" in ancient Greece.In fact,this view is a kind of enlightenment expression,they tried to perpetuate the concept of civil society which represents the political and economic demands of the bourgeoisie.In the 17 th and 18 th centuries,the enlightenment ideal rose to fell.Correspondingly,the concept of civil society has undergone a transition from construction to criticism,and formed two theoretical traditions.First,it is the constructive tradition,which constructed the ideal society from a political or economic perspective.Second,it is the critical tradition,which turned from romanticism to dialectical understanding.These are the historical context in which Marx grasped the concept of civil society.Driven by the "trouble of civil society",the progress of Marx’s concept of civil society was showed "integrity".This is not only the process that Marx revealed the illusion of civil society ideology,but also the process that Marx deepened his understanding of capitalist society.Why does the civil society based on the principle of equal exchanging breeds social differentiation inevitably? This is the so-called "problem of civil society".This problem is the theoretical crux of classical school of economic.From the perspective of political philosophy,the stage is perceptual criticism.In this stage,Marx regarded civil society as a group of citizens without economic relations,which inherited Hegel’s concept of civil society formally.From the perspective of communicative relationship,it is the abstraction stage."true focus and theatre of all history" was just particular words of Marx in a particular historical context.The critical logic of capitalism was the leading logic that Marx analysed civil society.At this time,Marx had distinguished between civil society as an analytical tool and "the true civil society".The solution of "civil society problem" is inseparable from the analysis of capitalist mode of production.Through the analysis of production relations,Marx had already regarded civil society as a derivative notion of capitalist society.Slavery labor and surplus value occupation in manufacture field were covered by equivalent exchange.The implication of civil society in Marx is not the economic base,but a process of transforming the fantastic meaning of civil society into a realistic criticism based on capitalist society.The key point about the formation of Marx’s concept of civil society is that deconstructing the abstractness of civil society,The general concept of labor became the cornerstone for classical economics to construct the ideal form of civil society.Smith took the quantity of labor purchased in the field of exchange as the dominant logic,which made his labor theory of value,promoting subjectivity,become a supplement to the concept of commodity fetishism.On the aspect of methodology,making a distinction between substance modality and historic modality of conceptual category was the fundamental difference between classical economics and Marx.Through the socio-historical criticism of the economic category,Marx not only deconstructed the true meaning of "abstract rule" in civil society,but also answered why "abstract rule" is bound to obtain the dominant position.Marx’s criticism of civil society is still effective in responding to trend of the utopian civil society in contemporary.The methodology of "from the abstract up to the concrete" is not only the process that Marx surpassed his own abstract understanding,but also showed that Marx challenged and deconstructed the symptoms of the age that "abstraction becomes rule".In this process,on the one hand,Marx transcended Hegel’s criticism of "abstract rationality" and made philosophical thinking face reality.On the other hand,Marx surpassed the worship of "abstract existence" in classical economics and grasped the nature of production relations of capital.The old philosophy are both intuitive or defensive towards civil society.Different with them,by revealing the true nature of the civil society,Marx achieved the fundamental transformation of his foothold.