How to Construct Marxian Thoughts as a Political Philosophy?

Importance of contemporary political philosophy has increased in recent decades. Since the 1970s, studies of Marx’s theories have become an important part of the discussion within contemporary theories of justice. More extensive studies concerning Marxist political philosophy from multiple perspectives are becoming a focal point in other fields of academic research. “How to understand Marx’s political philosophy?” has been a classic question for over a hundred years. Not an academic philosopher himself, Marx seems not to have issued a complete or consistent political philosophy by today’s standards, so it is only natural that his views would be interpreted differently by different scholars. While it is justifiable for us to construct Marx’s political philosophy, we must do it through a comprehensive theoretical reflection, and our construction must take full account of the history of the interpretations of Marx’s political philosophy. This applies especially of his theory of justice—a history which has lasted for more than a century. It is even more important for us to reread the original texts, particularly Marx’s early philosophical writings, and take them as the textual foundation for Marx’s political philosophy.     

Philosophy by Other Means?

I attempt to show that Marx was driven by a systematic philosophical goal expressed already in his doctoral dissertation and present throughout his mature political economic theory as well as in his practical political writings. I reconstruct this systematic – and critical – philosophical adventure in order to suggest that it is as philosophy that Marx's work retains its political bite today . In the process, I propose a reinterpretation of Marx's political theory that, once again, is traced through the entirety of Marx's corpus. The young Marx criticized Hegel's separation of the political from society; he then attempted to reduce the political sphere to civil society; the theory of alienated labor was elaborated as a theory of political economy that replaced the political; but in the end, when all three volumes of Capital and the unpublished Grundrisse are considered systematically, Marx sees capitalism as threatened ultimately by its inability to reflect politically on its own presuppositions, and hence its limits.     

马克思政治经济学批判的话语萌发与思想发端——《关于林木盗窃法的辩论》的文本贡献

《关于林木盗窃法的辩论》的主导话语是哲学话语,在该文中,马克思也开始使用政治经济学话语,在以哲学批判为主导分析框架的前提下构建了政治经济学批判的辅助分析框架。马克思在坚持从哲学层面分析“物质利益难事”的同时,使用了“劳动”“价值”和“额外价值”这些政治经济学核心话语。这些话语蕴含着马克思思想中的无产阶级立场、客观价值论和资本批判的方法。当然,这时政治经济学批判思想还不成熟,立场、观点和方法都处于话语萌发和思想发端阶段。     

Lefort as a reader of Machiavelli and Marx

This essay begins with the contention that phenomenology has taken a “hermeneutic turn,” “the things themselves” are always already interpreted. Philosophers often elaborate their own positions through a “reading” of the works of other philosophers. This is the case for Claude Lefort. Through his interpretive reading of the works of Machiavelli one sees the origin of Lefort’s idea of the autonomy and the anonymity of the political and thus his notion of political modernity. In tracing the evolution of Lefort’s relationship to Marx, we witness the process by which he disengages himself from his early “enchantment” with the works of Marx and the idea of the proletariat as a class bearing universal interest. Ultimately he criticizes Marx for his attempt to derive the political from the dimension of the social. This issues in his theory of totalitarianism as the attempt of a regime to close in on itself, thus denying any gesture to the dimension of the other.     

论马克思市民社会理论的两种逻辑

<正>人们近年来围绕着马克思的市民社会理论进行了很多研究,不过,在笔者看来,这些研究尚未完全阐明这一理论的所有基本问题,因而对其作进一步研究的空间仍是敞开的。一个直接的问题是:人     

马克思何以在激进民主主义上逗留?——再现马克思《德法年鉴》时期的政治哲学思想

<正>青年马克思思想发展中有一个非常重要的时期即《德法年鉴》时期(1843年夏至1844年2月),这是一个马克思本人告别古典自由主义以及浪漫主义传统,转向激进民主主义思想,进而孕育共产主义思想的关键时期。这一时期马克思集中撰写了几部政治哲学著述,即《〈黑格尔法哲学批判〉导     

On the Philosophical Relevance of Marx＇s Views Today

This paper revisits some of Marx＇s central philosophical ideas with the attempt to understand the thinker＇s real place in the history of the Western philosophical tradition. It does not only show that the philosophical dimension is central to Marx＇s economic and political works, and therefore his contributions to philosophy merit special investigation, but it also argues that Marx is a descendant of classic German philosophy, and thus his views should be assessed in the context of the development of the philosophical ideas that emerged within that tradition.     

财产权批判的政治观念与历史方法

一、财产权问题的政治之维财富和财产权问题一直是西方学界的热点,近年来国内学界也开始予以关注。这是一个重要学术动向,因为现代社会是经济型社会,财富的生产及其占有既是这个社会的实体,也是它的首要目标。这决定了马克思历史唯物主义从经济角度对现代社会的批判性理解,需要在政治上落实于财产权问     

Marx and Paci on the Question of Appearances (Or,Reading <Emphasis Type="Italic">Capital</Emphasis> as a Phenomenology)

The following essay argues that Marx’s method of critique, conception of science, and mode of presentation in Capital are all phenomenological in the sense first articulated by Enzo Paci in The Function of the Sciences and the Meaning of Man. In Capital, Marx places the phenomenological problem of appearances at the centre of his criticism of political economy. His analysis begins with the way in which things typically present themselves in a capitalist society, but this is merely the starting point for a systematic critique which tries to reveal the innerconnections and exploitative social relations hidden beneath those estranged outward appearances. Marx presumed that this phenomenological approach was the most appropriate method for demystifying the ‘naturalized’ semblance of the capitalist economy. According to Paci’s reading of Capital, the task of Marxian critique is to show these superficial appearances for what they really are: i.e., reflections of the reified reality of modern life.     

Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt on the Jewish question: political theology as a critique

The article is dedicated to the politico-theological critique of Judaism from the position of Christianity. It shows the affinity of Marx’s early critique of liberal state and of Hannah Arendt’s criticism of formal legalistic thinking in the contemporary judicial treatment of Nazism (and of similar international political crimes). Marx’s critique of nation-state finds its unlikely continuation in Arendt’s critique of international law. The politico-theological argument is explicit in Marx and implicit in Arendt, but both develop the Hegelian criticism of liberal state which shows its reliance on the abstract law, on the one hand, and on the egotistic abstract individual, on the other. The theological undercurrent of the argument is both sign of its limitations, and of the subsisting relevance of the politico-theological framework, even in the similarly novel circumstances of the twentieth century. It is only within and through the theological critique and critique of theology that these issues would stand a chance of resolution.     

翻译的政治性——马克思文本研究中的一个议题

在马克思文本的翻译过程中,本土化的政治议题始终是马克思主义中国化的基本视域。从传入之初,马克思思想就作为一种陌生化的思维冲击着中国旧有的语言体系,与其他国外思潮共同构成了近代思想启蒙的基础。同时,翻译也是多种差异性共存的场域,其中既包括本土文化与陌生文化的相互冲撞,又包括多种话语方式的权力争夺。最后,面对马克思充满激情与卓越文采的原文,翻译不仅需要忠实原文的意图,更需要保持原文的风格,作为一种政治的修辞学,翻译其实是一种面对读者的再创作过程。     

No More Like Pallas Athena: Displacing Patrilineal Accounts of Modern Feminist Political Theory

The history of modern feminist political theories is often framed in terms of the already existing theories of a number of radical nineteenth‐century men philosophers such as James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Charles Fourier, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. My argument takes issue with this way of framing feminist political theory by demonstrating that it rests on a derivation that remains squarely within the logic of malestream political theory. Each of these philosophers made use of a particular discursive trope that linked the idea of women's emancipation with the idea of social progress. I argue that this trope reproduced the masculinist signification and symbolism inherent in their particular political philosophies. I argue for a more positive, less masculinist, account of the history of feminist political thought.     

A sorrowful farewell to a Utopia

Born 1931, professor of the history of philosophy at the University of ódz. Specialist in German philosophy, with numerous publications on Schelling, Hegel, and Marx and their influence on political and social theories.     

Political Theory and Political Practice

What is the role of political theory in the real world of politics? Opinions have varied about this, ranging from Plato’s arguments for philosopher-kings to Marx’s relegation of political philosophy to the realms of mere ideology. This paper contrasts the competing claims of intellectualism vs pragmatism in politics. It explores the ends/means relation as one account of how ideas and actions might be connected. This relation is found to be inadequate, and with it the more ambitious claims of intellectualism. But an argument is advanced for the qualification of pragmatism with a more modest account of the role of ideas in politics.     

Marxism and radical democracy 1

Whether or not Marxism leads straight to authoritarianism and the destruction of individual liberty is a question which has long exercised both theorists and politicians. This paper deals with a narrower, though related issue: Is Marxism actually reconcilable with radical democracy, the type of democracy advocated by those, including Marxists, who berate the iniquities and hypocrisy of parliamentary liberalism? The answer, according to my paper, is no. The Marxist tradition contains four characteristic features which tend to contradict the participatory procedures most Marxists profess to desire. These features are: (1) the view of Marxism as a science, yielding objective solutions to social and political dilemmas; (2) the messianic aspiration for a society of perfect unity; (3) the belief that human rights are not independent moral norms but so much bourgeois ’ideological nonsense’ (Marx), expressing the antagonistic relationships of the capitalist regime; and (4) hostility to the market mechanism, which results in a preference for a totally planned economy. Marxism, unless revised beyond recognition, would seem, paradoxically, to be more congruous with the élitist, constricted type of democracy we have in the West than with the more egalitarian mode of decision‐making defended in the writings of Marx himself.     

A European Initiative: Irigaray,Marx, and Citizenship

This article presents Irigaray as a philosopher committed to sociopolitical change by discussing her political thought and her engagement with the European Parliament. It traces her recent work with the ex‐Communist Party in Italy back to her early critique of Marx and her subsequent attraction to Hegel's civil definition of the person. The failure of her European Parliament initiative suggests that her thinking is in advance of its possible realization.     

实践智慧(phronesis)与"技艺"(techne)之喻——由亚里士多德引发的现代思考

亚里士多德虽然将目的在己还是在他作为区分实践智慧与技艺的重要标准,但是由于受“技艺”之喻此种潜在思想图式的影响,亚里士多德关于实践智慧与技艺的划界并非无懈可击,为后代思想家们的进一步思考留下伏笔。马克思提升生产劳动为目的价值,进而批判资本主义社会的“异化劳动”状态;海德格尔则对实践智慧与技艺的区分作了存在论的解读,以此对应人类自身本真-非本真的生存状态;阿伦特则更加注重和强调行动/实践智慧的政治涵义,以此对抗政治上的极权主义。     

How much of a loss is the loss of self? Understanding Vygotsky from a social therapeutic perspective and vice versa

Using the example of Fred Newman’s social therapy, a methodology that works with the human capability of growing as social units, the contemporary self is explored as an impediment to human development and learning. Following Karl Marx in political philosophy and Lev Vygotsky in child psychology, it is the group/the collective/the mass that engages in developmental activity. In losing the self, we gain the opportunity to create collectivity and in that process come to sense the social-relational-collective quality of creativity and development. By getting rid of the self, we are more able to see the group, which is—developmentally speaking—the important unit of study. In this article I share the role that Marx, Vygotsky and Ludwig Wittgenstein played in the creation of this understanding and critical practice.     

伍德对胡萨米:马克思和正义问题之争

伍德与胡萨米关于马克思是否批判资本主义为不正义之争是一场富有启发性的论争。本文从三个方面对这场论争做了简要的述评：(1)马克思批判资本主义社会是否基于某种正义观?(2)马克思是否认为资本主义剥削是不正义的?(3)在马克思的视野中,共产主义是否是一个正义社会?     

Philosophy and the analysis of language

Elster's understanding of Marx is reviewed in three areas: the theory of value, the theory of history, and dialectics. In each area Elster goes astray in quite superficial ways, not instructive ones. There is a simple underlying reason in almost every case, viz. that Elster fails to confront the distinction in the philosophy of science between the methods of atomism and essentialism. Since Marx was an essentialist, Elster's attempt to assimilate Marx to the atomist tradition has as much serious interest as attempts to show that Kant was a utilitarian, Hegel a classical empiricist, or whales fishes. The conclusions are that the book is an unsympathetic treatment of Marx, that it is lacking in scholarship and balance, and that the standard of argument is unusually poor.