Awareness of real problems in the study of Marxist texts

In the strict sense, the study of Marxist texts is not a documentary study with the content of restoring the creative situation, the status of the literature and the main details, but should be the unity of version examination, text interpretation and ideological interpretation. Among them, ideological interpretation, as the ultimate purpose of Marxist text research, mainly includes the following four levels of content: one is the internal logic presented based on version examination and text interpretation; the second is the evolution process of textual thought, that is, the criticism, inheritance and development of thought; the third is the reinterpretation of basic principles and important propositions, that is, the "vivid" exposition of principles or propositions extracted from the combing of ideological history; fourth, the solution of practical problems or the disclosure of practical significance. Because thought is the result of the activity of thinking reflected in man's consciousness as an objective reality, itself belongs to the scope of objective reality, that is, reality. It can be seen from this that the awareness of practical problems is the proper meaning of the topic of Marxist text research. Taking the Marxist classic work "Capital" as the starting point, we can make a certain reasonable interpretation of the above views.

1

A new definition of the philosophical connotations and textual nature of real problems

"Reality" in the philosophical sense is, in layman's terms, "facts" plus "essences." In other words, like the front and back of a coin, "thought" and "reality" themselves exist as two interdependent aspects of the same thing. Correspondingly, the philosophical connotation of "real problems" should include the following aspects: First, the existing ones are not all realistic, but the social phenomena or events that characterize the characteristics of the times and their development trends can be described as "real problems"; second, the problems of the present era are "real problems", and each era has its own "real problems"; third, as an abstract expression of the development trends and major problems of its own era, some important ideological trends and theoretical trends also belong to the scope of "real problems".

Redefining Capital according to the above understanding is by no means just an abstract theoretical expression or a summary of Marx's empirical facts about his own life experience, but his refinement, analysis, and answer to the practical problems of his time, and even more an in-depth exploration of the basic practical problems that run through almost all of human beings— the law of social and historical development. In view of this, the researchers of Capital should first review its creative process, clarify the social reality and its development situation at that time to clarify the main practical problems; then compare the relevant expositions in Capital with it, examine whether they are closely related to the pulse of the development of the times, whether they can comprehensively and objectively present the real problems, whether they are not clearly aware of the crux of the real problems, and then form unique and profound solution ideas; and finally extract the ideological views contained in them that can rise to the methodological level.

In addition, Capital, as a theoretical expression of the current of Marxist thought, should be examined in the ideological picture of its time and various intricate theoretical events. Only in the comparison of different interpretations of the same practical problems in the currents of thought that have been directly or indirectly related to Marx, such as German classical philosophy, British classical political economy, French socialist doctrine, etc., and even extending comparative research to the evolution of intellectual history and the development of social practice after Marx, can Capital show the transcendence and profundity of thought. The great changes in space and time make it impossible to find ready-made answers to the current practical problems from Capital. However, the present era is still not out of the process of "the transformation of history into world history" revealed by Marx, which in turn determines that Capital can provide an important method reference for interpreting and grasping the practical problems of the present era.

2

The transformation of real problems is decisive for the change of text structure

The existing literature shows that the chapter arrangement of Capital is an open structure that Marx constantly adjusts according to the changes in practical problems. This can be seen in the division of chapters in the different editions of volume I—the six-chapter structure of the first German edition, the seven-chapter twenty-five-chapter structure of the second german edition, the seven-chapter and thirty-three-chapter structure of the first French edition and the first English edition. As for the reason why Marx did not complete the finalization of the second and third volumes of Capital, in addition to health, it is not that his thinking ability in his later years has declined, and he has seriously underestimated his procrastination, but that the profound changes in practical problems have greatly exceeded Marx's original concept. That is to say, although the process of historical development and social change typical of Britain is bound to affect Western European society and even the entire capitalist world, the laws of modern social development revealed by this cannot be fully applied to other countries.

In fact, the world economic crisis of 1873, which lasted several years, did not reach its peak and was continuously alleviated with various adjustments in monetary policy, and was never able to develop to the point of "detonating" the proletarian revolution. The failure of the Paris Commune showed that the international form of organization had become the shackles of the workers' movement, and that the "confusion" of various erroneous currents of thought had plunged the worldwide proletarian revolution into a trough. In view of this, Marx expanded his research horizon to the "prehistoric history" of capitalism, and through the analysis of the major historical events of Western European society and the development process of different nation-states, revealed the shaping role of economic, political, religious factors, etc. in capitalist civilization, and realized to a certain extent the theoretical framework of the materialist view of history, that is, the reflection and reconstruction of the philosophical basis of the criticism of political economy represented by Capital.

Not only that, Marx also focused on the development path of Eastern society, especially the Russian rural communes, and analyzed and pointed out the necessary conditions for backward Russia to cross the capitalist "Kafdin Gorge", such as actively absorbing the advanced achievements of capitalism, excluding the adverse effects of capitalist relations of production, the promotion of internal self-revolution and the support of the european revolution as a whole, and emphasizing the explanatory limits of Capital. In Marx's view, the complete disregard for the socio-historical environment in which different nation-states find themselves, and the "historical overview of the origin of capitalism in Western Europe, thoroughly transformed into a philosophical theory of history on the general path of development" in Capital, far from contributing to the interpretation of historical phenomena, cannot achieve the purpose of becoming a philosophy of history because of its super-historicity.

3

The methodology behind textual interpretation around real-world problems

Without linking with practical problems, and only starting from a single discipline division and its methods, to measure the social and historical picture depicted by Marx in Capital, it is bound to fall into the misunderstanding of understanding. On the surface, money is a symbol of social wealth and a common economic phenomenon. It can in fact be transformed under the capitalist mode of production into capital with powerful creative forces, and become a thing that reflects the living conditions and historical destiny of all strata of society. In other words, the external form transformation and internal relationship evolution of money exist as a real problem in itself. Similarly, commodities, forms of value, wage labour, capital in general, capital particularity, ownership, primitive accumulation of capital, etc., are not simply economic categories, but expressions of social relations of production. In the analysis of these practical problems, Marx's profound thinking is condensed, especially the viewpoint that can rise to the level of methodology.

Based on this, we can see the following situations: the actual individual and his material production in certain social relations are the starting point of the critique of political economy; the relationship between economic categories and concrete reality, including the dialectical relationship between simple categories and specific categories, the applicability of economic categories to certain social forms, the differences between the same economic categories in different social forms, etc.; the method of observing and grasping the logic and history of complex social systems, and the dialectic of production as a whole To reveal the laws of economic movement in modern society from the dimension of the social organism in order to shorten or alleviate the "pain" brought about by social change; the necessity and possibility of communism lies in the free and all-round development of man.

To extract the methodology from the analysis of the practical problems of Capital, we can also appeal to the comparative research of Marx's contemporaries. In fact, how to view the relationship between philosophy and political economy, and then achieve their internal integration, is a common practical problem faced by Marx, Hegel, Smith, Ricardo and so on. As Engels said: "Here another question, which has nothing to do with political economy itself, must be solved. What should be done about science? Among them, Hegel did not use moral philosophy to dominate political economy, as Smith did, but instead took freedom as the main line of the inner stipulation of the ethical spirit, unifying the family, civil society, and the political state, thus having a strong historical foundation. This grand view of history, which processes economic materials from a certain connection with history, provides a starting point for the logical method, although it "turns the real relationship between the evolution of ideas and historical development upside down.". Marx stripped the above-mentioned "rational kernel" from its idealistic "shell", established dialectics in its correct form of simple form, and applied it to the critique of political economy, resulting in a result that was no less than the materialist worldview. This achievement is by no means a support for the method of unifying logic and history, but also contains the deep significance of how history leads reality, such as how history shows its original appearance under the decision of objectivity and regularity, how history can be narrated in order to better achieve effective contact with the present era, and how the theory derived from practice can make expressions different from history and thus show the true meaning, etc. These contents need to be further excavated.

4

The contemporary value of the text and the cracking of the real problems of the modern era

As early as the initial widespread influence of Capital, Marx was aware of the consequences of reducing it to a general philosophical theory of history, and accordingly emphasized the importance of the specific analysis of different socio-historical conditions in the borrowing of The Das Kapital methods. In the same way, it can be seen that the systematic investigation of the very different and complex social environment is the premise for solving today's practical problems in combination with Capital. From the perspective of the historical development of human society and the evolution of the form of civilization, Capital strives to solve the practical problem: when capitalist society appears in the form of human civilization, why does capital gain independence and not the realization of free individuality by real people? How to change the modern society dominated by the logic of capital and realize the free and all-round development of human beings? Time has advanced to today's 21st century, in the face of the reality that the logic of capital still dominates human life, we can further ask why the nature of capital is, whether capital is needed, how to control the logic of capital, the geometry of the relationship between artificial intelligence and capital logic, how the development of ecological civilization can get rid of the domination of capital, and where people's free personality will go.

Capital pushes the real problem of capital criticism to the pinnacle of Marx's time. The profound changes in the capitalist world since then have made people never stop analyzing and criticizing capital. While inheriting the "sharp edge" of capital criticism in Capital, later generations have profoundly realized the various adjustments, transformations and even variations of capital. It can be seen from this that Capital must be placed in the sequence of ideological development of capital criticism in order to fully demonstrate the contemporary value of the ideological changes achieved by Marx.

Moreover, the rapid development of globalization since the 1980s is directly related to the reappraisal of the theoretical status of Capital. The practical problems of wage labor, money fetishism, capital fetishism, and the deep-rooted nature of the sacred formula of the "Trinity" involved in Capital still emerge in the process of capital globalization. Compared with Marx's time, the practical consequences, economic roots and social nature of the above problems have not formed a substantial difference. With strong economic strength and monopoly on advanced technology, capitalist multinational corporations and state capital have created an increasingly extensive international division of labor and international competition. From this point of view, the analysis of the real problems of Capital has a broad space of theoretical value. Not only that, the gradual emergence of the world historical significance of China's road urgently requires us to base ourselves on China's national conditions and development path, reveal new characteristics, new roles, and new trends, and sublimate practical experience into ideological achievements. This undoubtedly provides a historical opportunity to re-examine the contemporary significance of Capital.

(This article is a phased result of the National Social Science Foundation Youth Project "Research on the Philosophical Thought of Capital Oriented to Practical Problems" (19CZX003))

(Author Affilications:Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

Editor: Huang Zhen