Research On Western Left-wing Labor Theory From The Perspective Of Historical Materialism

Focusing on the production factors such as the globalization of capital,international division of labor and digital information technology,western leftwing scholars intend to construct a new labor theory to study the power of capital and the life state of laborers.However,these scholars put aside the perspective of historical materialism and the research methods of Marx’s political economy,and only based on the empirical analysis of neoliberalism,they believe that Marx’s research paradigm on capitalism and the cognition of the working class have been unable to solve many problems of current capitalism.Based on this,this paper attempts to explore the research methods and ideological connotation of the left wing labor theory from the perspective of historical materialism,and points out its defects in the study of capitalism.In the perspective of historical materialism,the study of western left-wing labor theory should first go deep into the historical development of capitalism to find out the background of the formation of the theory.The non-material labor form,which is valued by western left-wing scholars,is just the concrete manifestation of wage labor in the current capitalist society.This dual division of physical and intellectual labor is not the result of the spontaneous formation of the so-called immaterial labor subject.Driven by technology and productivity,the transformation from the manual labor of early collaborative production to the intellectual labor of today’s Internet production is due to the demand for labor capacity of capital at different stages of development.Secondly,the study of left-wing labor theory should be based on the discussion of productive forces and relations of production.From the perspective of productivity,employed workers in different industries and with different labor abilities are associated with different labor materials,rich labor objects and independent labor choices,so that employed labor presents hierarchical class structure,diversified labor forms and flexible labor time characteristics.From the perspective of production relations,the employment relationship premised on the private ownership of the means of production shows a new pattern in the employment mode,that is,it breaks away from the restrictions of time and space and produces distinctions and focuses among different industrial sectors.In addition,on the issue of class struggle,capitalists control and assimilate workers in political,economic and ideological aspects,which not only reduces workers’ resistance,but also deepens the exploitation of surplus value production in the extension of time and space dimension.In order to face the crisis of modernity and get rid of the shackles of economic studies,western left-wing scholars urgently want to construct the theoretical turn of alternative modernity through new research methods and theoretical objects,so they have to put aside Marx’s research perspective on historical materialism and the cognition of the working class.In view of the western left-wing scholars’ questions and challenges to Marx,this paper gives a critical response through three questions.First of all,Hardt,Negri and other left-wing scholars believe that the current value production and exploitation need to revise Marx’s labor theory of value.However,they misunderstand the abstract form of value generation in Marx’s method of political economy,and have a fuzzy understanding of value exploitation issues such as communality and common property.Secondly,left-wing scholars overemphasize the common revolutionary power of non-material labor groups and the liberating political subject relationship,but ignore the substantive competition between wage labor and capital.Finally,their political orientation of life and political production of living labor is utopian,ignoring the labor situation of wage laborers still being exploited and oppressed under the premise of private ownership.