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Marx and Engels's ideas of the "Pacific Era" are concentrated in several of their commentaries on current affairs for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. After putting forward the relevant ideas, they mentioned them many times and constantly confirmed their judgments, but they did not attract enough attention from later generations. The idea of the "Pacific Era" is the result of the mature period of Marx and Engels's thought, which implements the basic principles of historical materialism and has shown great scientific value and strategic significance so far. At a time when the world is facing major changes unprecedented in a century, in-depth discussion of their ideas about the "Pacific Era" can bring many useful enlightenments to the current situation and future development.
Since the concept of the "Pacific Era" was officially introduced at the end of the 19th century, there has been a gradual increase in discussion. In the past half century, related topics have also attracted widespread attention from the academic community many times. Its main meaning is that as the center of gravity of the world economy shifts from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the history of the world will also change from the Atlantic era to the Pacific era. If most of the discussions of the past were at best one of many predictions of the future, today it is a reality we are experiencing. As it has been tested in practice, this concept has further demonstrated great scientific value and strategic significance. Therefore, there is a need for a broader and in-depth discussion of the formation and development process of the Pacific era.
Academic research on the concept of the "Pacific Era" has been very rich, and a few examples are given to peek at the whole leopard. Professor Pekka Korhonen's essay "The Pacific Era in World History" sorts out the academic history of this concept more clearly. He noted that the Japanese political economist Manjiro Inagaki first explicitly used the concept of the "Pacific Era" in 1892. However, he does not give a firm source for the original source of the discussion, only mentioning that U.S. Senator William Seward wrote the prophecy during the California Gold Rush in the 1850s. In addition, he recounts several discussions of the "Pacific Era" in world history. In 1994, Wang Yizhou carefully examined the discussion on the "Pacific Era" in the article "On the "Pacific Era", and examined the historical facts of "the westward shift of the center of gravity of civilization". On this basis, he analyzes the reasons and significance of the topic, and discusses several ideas about the "Pacific Era" and its implicit differences in historical and political and cultural contexts. He Fangchuan's 1995 article "Pacific Times and China" discussed the inappropriateness of the term "Pacific Era" and stressed that it cannot be judged only from the perspective of economic development. He Fangchuan traces the original origins of this concept back to The Westward's remarks in 1852 and president Roosevelt in the early 20th century.
However, the above-mentioned research results do not mention the discussion of this topic by Marx and Engels as early as the late 1840s and early 1850s, which cannot but be said to be a deficiency. With the deepening of research, the relevant expositions of Marx and Engels have attracted the attention of more and more scholars. The existing research in China summarizes the main contents of marx and Engels's "Pacific era" thought, and preliminarily explores the internal logic and application value of this thought. It is worth further exploring whether marx and Engels's "Pacific era" ideas are the logical result of their historical theories, or whether this idea can be regarded as an organic part of Marx's historical theory. Its significance lies in the fact that if we can deeply analyze its scientific nature, that is, know why it is so, we can better guide and grasp the current historical process. In particular, at a time when the current world development is facing major changes unprecedented in a century, tracing and thinking about the deep logic of Marx and Engels's original insight will inevitably bring certain enlightenment to the exploration of the future path.
I. Marx and Engels several levels of "Pacific Age" thought
Marx and Engels did not explicitly use the term "Pacific Era" in their works, but their expositions were highly consistent with the connotation of the concept of "Pacific Era" used by later generations. The two classic writers' discussions of the "Pacific Era" are concentrated in several of their commentaries on current affairs for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. The earliest of these was Engels's essay "The Pan-Slavism of Democracy" written by Engels in February 1849, published in Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Nos. 222 and 223. Although his exposition is extremely brief, it can already see the general outline of the "Pacific Era" thinking. The remaining commentaries, co-written by Marx and Engels, were published in neuer Rheinische Zeitung. Political Economic Review, February 2, 1850, April 4, 1850, and May-October 1850, Fifth and Sixth Issues. These three commentaries are extremely rich in content and contain theoretical logic and background information for the "Pacific Era" ideas. Since these articles are quite extensive, the following will be analyzed and summarized from several levels.
First, with the continuous expansion of the world economic system, the center of the world economy has been moving continuously. In 1848, gold was discovered in California, and thousands of people began flocking there. In the face of the sudden appearance of the gold rush, Engels observed for several months and then pointed out keenly: "If the energetic Yankees quickly developed the gold deposits there, increased the means of circulation, concentrated the dense population in the most suitable places on the Pacific coast in a short period of time, carried out extensive trade, established many large cities, opened up steamship traffic, laid the railway from New York to San Francisco, for the first time brought the Pacific into real contact with modern civilization, and for the third time in history opened up a new direction for world trade, what is so bad?" The so-called "third" is not elaborated here. About a year later, Marx and Engels further elaborated: "The gold of California flows throughout the Americas, throughout the Pacific coast of Asia, and drags even the most stubborn barbarians into world trade and into civilization." For the second time, world trade has gained a new direction of development. The world trade centers were Tyre, Carthage and Alexandria in ancient times, Genoa and Venice in the Middle Ages, London and Liverpool in the present, and Now New York and San Francisco, San Juan de Nicaragua and León, Chagres and Panama. The world's transportation hub was Italy in the Middle Ages, England in modern times, and currently the southern half of the North American peninsula. In the above discussion, they summarize the historical facts in a highly macroscopic way, but mainly based on the analysis and exposition of the historical process in the West. The Mediterranean coast was where capitalism sprouted, and the earliest centers of the world economy migrated mainly around this region. With the advent of the Age of Discovery and the Great Discovery of Geography, the center of the world economy underwent its first major shift, that is, its shift to the Atlantic coast. Then, as the California gold rush developed, a second major shift in the center of the world economy was about to take place, that is, to the Pacific coast. In their view, the discovery of gold, the "greatest event in the United States," would be of "much greater significance than the discovery of the American continent."
Second, the Pacific will rise, while the Atlantic will inevitably decline. Europe has had to take a detour through the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn for centuries to trade with the Pacific, and there has been a lot of resistance to shortcuts to Panama. However, after the discovery of the gold mine, the great creativity of the Americans seemed to be magical, and in a very short period of time, they concentrated in one direction and opened up the transportation route to the Pacific Ocean. With shortcuts, who would have bypassed the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn" The gold of California and the constant efforts of the United States will soon make the two shores of the Pacific as densely populated, so easily traded, and so industrially developed as the coastal regions from Boston to New Orleans are now. In this case, the frenzied speculation of capital arose, and trade in the Pacific was bound to flourish. The foreseeable corollary, then, is: "The Pacific Ocean will, like the Atlantic Ocean in modern times, the Mediterranean Sea in ancient times and the Middle Ages, play the role of a great line of communication by waterways in the world, while the atlantic ocean will have a lower status, and like the Mediterranean Sea now, it will play the role of only an inland sea."
Thirdly, the immediate impetus for this shift comes from the development of international shipping and its consequences, namely the increasing integration of the Pacific region. At that time, the westward expansion movement of the United States had lasted for more than half a century, which greatly promoted the development of capitalist industrialization. The discovery of the California gold mine is a major event of world historical significance, which not only greatly accelerated the process of exploration in the west, but also had an unprecedented impact on world trade. Marx and Engels pointed out: "Its significance lies in the fact that California's rich mineral deposits have played a role in promoting capital in the world market, making the entire west coast of the United States and the east coast of Asia active, and forming a new sales market for California and all the countries affected by California." At this point, it was impossible for them to know that Gold would also be discovered in Australia in early 1851, pushing the Gold Rush to new heights. In the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy of 1859, Marx added the factor of the discovery of gold in Australia and asserted that capitalist society had entered a new stage of development. In their view, the ensuing construction of transportation networks will make the Pacific Ocean the most important ocean. "As a result of the development of California, entirely new world lines of transportation must be established, and in the future these lines of transportation will soon surpass all other transportation lines." The main trade route to the Pacific Ocean (which is actually only now opened and will become the most important ocean in the world) will henceforth pass through the Isthmus of Panama. "Not only that, but the Pacific will become increasingly connected." Redoubling the development of transportation in the Atlantic, opening up transportation in the Pacific, linking Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, China and the United States, and shortening the travel time around the world to four months. "In short, the pacific has shrunk in time and space, and regional trade will become more frequent than in the past."
Fourth, after understanding the trend of changes in world history, people can dynamically accelerate or delay the development of the historical process. Marx and Engels reminded Europeans not to be taken away from their dominant position by the New World. "If the industry and trade of old Europe are not willing to decay as those of Italy since the 16th century, if England and France are not willing to become the Venice, Genoa and the Netherlands of today, great efforts must be made." It can be seen that although the development trend of world history is clear, it is not impossible to change at all. In this process, people's subjective initiative has sufficient room to play. The purpose of their argument, of course, was to promote a social revolution in Europe. "The only possibility for the civilized nations of Europe to avoid falling into the present industrial and commercial and political dependency, such as Italy, Spain and Portugal, is to carry out a social revolution, which is not too late, and which can change the mode of production and the mode of exchange in accordance with the needs of production itself which the modern productive forces have contributed to, so that new productive forces can be created, and the superiority of European industry can be guaranteed, thus compensating for geographical disadvantages." For people today, the crux of this discussion is that geographical factors are not decisive forces driving the transformation of world history, but that the development of new productive forces is fundamental.
Second, the relationship between the "Pacific Era" ideology and Marx's theory of history
Before Marx and Engels, there was already a concept of attaching importance to the role of water as a medium of communication and linking it to the changes in the center of history and the process of civilization. In 1820, Carl Ritter, one of the founders of modern geography and a professor of history, proposed a theory of the "three stages of civilization." He believes that the first stage of human civilization is the stage of The Great River Civilization, the second stage is the stage of inland sea civilization (such as the Mediterranean region), and the third stage is the stage of marine civilization. In his view, it was the age of great navigation led by Europeans that pushed human society to the highest stage. In a series of speeches in the 1820s, Hegel also emphasized the great role of geography, especially water, in history. He believed that the center of history would inevitably shift from east to west. Both scholars were professors at the University of Berlin at the time and both had a wide range of influences among students. It is not necessary for us to attribute the originality of ideas such as the "shift in the center of history" and the "Mediterranean-Atlantic era" to Marx and Engels. However, the significance of the coming "Pacific Era" is likely to be the insight of Marx and Engels. The most obvious evidence is that they specifically highlighted only one thing in their article that they first brought up, namely, the far-reaching implications of the discovery of gold in California. They wrote that "the discovery of gold in California brought America's prosperity to its zenith." We have already pointed out in the second issue of this journal (before all European journals) the special significance of this discovery and the inevitable consequences it brings to world trade. Logically, the advent of the "Pacific Age" was one of the inevitable consequences of the discovery of gold for world trade.
Moreover, it is not surprising that German academics are concerned with the geopolitics of the distant Pacific. We know that the European scramble for the Pacific Began as early as the 16th century. The scramble was initially between Spain and Portugal, and later joined by Britain and France. By 1812, the British and American navies had engaged several times in the Pacific. Around 1816, Russia also coveted the Pacific Ocean. Thereafter, until 1845, the U.S. Navy made a total of 25 voyages in the Pacific. In 1840, Britain provoked the First Opium War on the west coast of the Pacific. In this context, it is not difficult to understand that friedrich Ratzel, the founder of geopolitics and a German human geographer, mentions in the preface to Political Geography that his teacher Little has paid sufficient attention to the "political aspect" of geography. Therefore, some of the ideas discussed by Marx and Engels in several commentaries should have had a precursor in European academia, especially in Germany, which is why they only attributed the significance and impact of the discovery of gold in California to themselves. So, is their idea of the "Pacific Age" the logical consequence of Marx's theory of history?
In the mid-to-late 1840s, Marx and Engels established the materialist view of history. In the second half of 1849, the flames of revolution on the European continent were dimming. Marx and Engels went to London to organize a new magazine, The Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Political-Economic Review" to sum up the experience of the revolution. After various tribulations, the magazine was finally published in Hamburg on March 6, 1850. However, on November 29, 1849, the magazine published its fifth and sixth issues, and it could not continue.
During this period, Marx and Engels wrote a large number of political articles, and the ideas about the "Pacific Era" were also included in these articles. One of the commentaries on the French Revolution was published by Engels in 1895 under the title "Class Struggle in France from 1848 to 1850". Engels wrote an introduction specifically for this purpose, and Engels pointed out at the beginning of the introduction: "The current reprint of this work is Marx's first attempt to explain a period of modern history from a certain economic situation from his materialist point of view. In the Communist Manifesto, this theory has been applied in general to all of recent history; in the articles published by Marx and me in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, it has been often used to explain the political events that took place at that time. It can be seen from this that the idea of the "Pacific Era" is the result of the mature period of Marx and Engels's thought, and it fully implements the basic principles of historical materialism.
After putting forward the idea of the "Pacific Era", Marx and Engels repeatedly reviewed and adhered to their judgments. In 1851, Engels wrote in a letter to Marx: "Shipping around the world will develop extensively in half a year, and our prediction that the Pacific Ocean will leap to the top of world shipping will be fulfilled sooner than we expected." In 1857, Marx wrote in a letter to Engels: "The Crisis in the United States is wonderful (we have predicted in our November 1850 review that it will break out in New York). In 1860, in order to clarify his distortion, Marx again emphasized in his essay "Monsieur Vogt": "This prediction I made to the United States in 1850 has been fully confirmed by the great commercial crisis of 1857." ”
In 1895, Engels, who was about to come to the end of his life, still did not forget to mention the reviews he wrote when he was young in his last article. He recalls again an error in the article about the coming of a new revolution. Although they have already abandoned this view in the last review, according to the latest economic material. "The greatness of Marx and Engels is not that they did not make mistakes, but that they were always able to correct their mistakes in time from practical analysis." In this way, if there is anything wrong with the discussion of the "Pacific Age", then Engels will admit it frankly after 45 years. Yet he continued in an unmistakable tone: "Yet this is the only major change we must make. The explanations given to the events in previous articles, the causal relationships identified there, have absolutely nothing to change. Apparently, Engels was completely positive about the "Pacific Age" in the commentary until his later years.
Today, 170 years after the publication of the commentary, people no longer use the future tense and use it to describe the "Pacific Era". In addition to marveling at the foresight of the great men, we also want to know the logic behind their ideas. Although the idea of the "Pacific Era" did not originate from Marx and Engels, and the inspiration of Hegel and other predecessors cannot be excluded, the path of Marx and Engels to relevant understanding is completely different. From a methodological point of view, this idea is the inevitable result of the logic of historical materialism.
Iii. The Logic of Historical Materialism in the "Pacific Era" Thought
According to the different development directions of human society in time and space, historical materialism can be decomposed into two dimensions, one is the diachronic or vertical dimension, mainly referring to Marx's theory of social and economic forms; the other is the synchronic or horizontal dimension, which mainly refers to Marx's "world history" theory. The idea of the "Pacific Era" discussed in this article is the intersection and unification of these two dimensions. Why is the "Pacific Era" bound to come? How will it develop? Marx and Engels did not make a systematic exposition of this from a theoretical point of view.
Historical materialism believes that in the early stage of human society, various ethnic groups and regions were in a state of natural isolation due to the blockage of mountains and rivers and inconvenient transportation, so the history of mankind was only the history of nations and regions. But as productivity increases and means of transport are upgraded, the original isolation from each other is gradually broken, and the primitive, closed and scattered regional history is increasingly transformed into a modern, open and holistic world history. This process can be summed up in one sentence – "World history does not always exist in the past; history as world history is the result".
Today, it seems that the "Mediterranean era" represents the first stage of the development of human civilization, which seems a bit generalized. He Fangchuan once pointed out that this statement "completely ignores the ancient Oriental civilizations that are as brilliant as the Greek and Roman civilizations, and ignores the historical reality of the pluralism of ancient human civilizations." Strictly speaking, it would be more fair to think of the Mediterranean As the regional center of the Hellenistic and Roman circles of civilization. Similarly, the East Asian civilization circle and the Indian Ocean civilization circle also have their own regional centers. However, according to the above perspective of "the transformation of history into world history", it is not useless to regard the "Mediterranean era" as a popular term for the decentralized development stage of human history.
In the same way, although the "Atlantic era" argument does not exempt it from the suspicion of "Eurocentrism", it also correctly conveys the meaning of "the transformation of history into world history" to a further deepening degree. The "Atlantic Era" became a reality not because of the great geographical discoveries, but because of the promotion of modern large-scale industry. Leaving aside the latest archaeological discoveries and DNA evidence, the Americas have been "discovered" many times before Columbus. If it were not for the promotion of modern large-scale industry, Columbus's "discovery" would have become a passive water, and the Americas would only fall silent again. That is to say, the deep reason driving the transition from the "Mediterranean era" to the "Atlantic era" was the development of productive forces.
It was the birth of modern large-scale industry that provided a direct impetus for the formation of "world history". Large-scale industry, Marx pointed out, "for the first time in the history of the world, because it depends on the whole world for the satisfaction of the needs of every civilized nation and of every individual in these countries, because it abolishes the previous naturally formed state of isolation of the nations." The "Atlantic era" refers precisely to the transition of nation-states from a phase of decentralized development to a phase of universally interconnected, interdependent development. Although the degree of connection and dependence of nation-states at this stage was far less extensive and deep than it is today, there are qualitative differences compared to the "Mediterranean era".
With the continuous development of large-scale industry, the degree of ties and dependence among the peoples of the world has continued to expand and deepen. Large-scale industry fully embodies the revolutionary power of the productive forces, and "modern large-scale industry breaks down the barriers of nations everywhere with this concentrated force, and gradually eliminates the local characteristics of production, social relations, and the national character of each nation." One of the results of this process is the formation of a global world market and world system. From then on, every nation became a unit of this system, and it was impossible to exist outside the system, or rather, to exist outside the system.
In Marx and Engels, they often used concepts such as "exchange" and "world exchange" to describe the globalization situation that is commonly seen today. "Frequent engagement between Asia, Australia and the United States calls for the opening of a huge new route from Panama and San Francisco to the Sandwich Islands, the most important anchorages in Guangzhou, Singapore, Sydney, New Zealand and the Pacific. Australia and New Zealand, in particular, have grown faster than all other parts of the Pacific due to rapid colonization and California influence. "This increasingly frequent exchange will inevitably bring the world's largest and final sea into the world economic system." It can be said that the earth has only begun to become round since the time when it is necessary to sail the world's oceans. "After the vast Pacific region joins the world market, the center of gravity of the world system will naturally move to the Pacific region, and the world trade center and transportation center will shift accordingly, but this process will not be completed overnight, and it will inevitably undergo a long and tortuous evolutionary process."
Today, we have witnessed the fact that the three major economies of the United States, China and Japan are on both sides of the Pacific, the BRICS countries that attract global attention are basically around the Pacific periphery, and the proportion of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in the world economy is also rising. Broadly speaking, the Pacific region has become the center of gravity of the global economy. As early as 1995, trans-Pacific trade surpassed transatlantic trade, and today the former is about twice as much as the latter. Thus, we can confirm that the "Pacific Era" in world history has finally arrived.
There is also an important content of historical materialism, that is, the imbalance in the development of the world economy. Since the depth and breadth of the interconnections between the nation-states are not consistent, interaction with each other has had a different degree and scope of influence on their respective social lives. "These effects may be to speed up their development, to change their direction, or to slow them down, to push them backwards, or even to interrupt the development of entire peoples, or even to lead to their complete extinction." This imbalance manifests itself in the sudden decline of powerful countries and the rapid rise of relatively backward countries. The British Empire is a good example, and it is hard to imagine that it will soon fall apart in the early 20th century. Therefore, the center of the world economy is not fixed, it will certainly continue to migrate with the development of world history. One of the most decisive forces is the development of the productive forces.
Western scholars have noticed that the current "Pacific Era" shows a clear trend - "people pay more attention to the cooperation of Asian countries". In 2000, Johan Galtung, the "father of peace studies," analyzed that the U.S. Empire would collapse in 2025. By 2009, he had shortened the time of the collapse by another five years, 2020, depending on the evolution of the situation. Garton's writings are equal to those of the world, and their prophecies cannot be taken lightly. Regardless of what the future holds, the above view may mean that the center of the world economy will shift from the east coast of the Pacific to the west coast of the Pacific.
Fourth, the practical significance of the "Pacific Era" ideology
Marx and Engels warned the old Europe, stressing the need to create new productive forces in order to avoid losing their dominant position. However, the historical fact is that the United States began to rise rapidly from the end of the 19th century, ran wild in terms of productivity innovation, gradually surpassed Europe in economic, military, and social and cultural aspects, and finally ascended to the position of global hegemony after World War II. There is no doubt that this was a major turning point in the history of the world. Today's world is once again standing at the door of great changes, and many enlightenments can be obtained by combining the ideas of the "Pacific Era" with the aforementioned historical facts.
First, in order to accelerate the shift to the center of the world economy, efforts must be made to innovate productivity. It is not yet possible to assume that the arrival of the "Pacific Era" will necessarily mean that the center of the world economy will automatically shift to China. People probably won't forget that in the 1980s, Japan once discussed topics such as the "Pacific Era", "Asia-Pacific Era", and "Western Pacific Era", as well as the expressions "Asian Era" and "Asian Century" in the book "Asia Can Say No". However, history did not go in the direction that the Japanese hoped. As has been explained above, the transfer of the world economic center depends on certain conditions. This condition is that Marx and Engels have stated that it is necessary to "change the mode of production and the mode of exchange in accordance with the needs of production itself which is promoted by the modern productive forces, so that new productive forces can be created." Only by making down-to-earth efforts in this direction and creating more superior conditions for the development of the productive forces can China not repeat the mistakes of the Japanese.
Second, the shift to the center of the world economy is not an easy one, and it is full of twists and turns, even crises. The reasons for the rise and fall of great powers are widely debated, mainly because there are too many variables involved. Moreover, politicians and scholars will choose very different ways of describing the same historical events and come to completely different conclusions. In any case, wise countries will choose to constantly strengthen their own strength in order to cope with the changes. Needless to say, the mainland is currently in a stage of development in which social contradictions are frequent, and certain social fields still need to be perfected and enhanced. Therefore, while believing in the laws of history, we must also actively make up for the shortcomings of science and technology, vigorously solve the problems of people's livelihood, and be prepared to deal with various emergencies.
Third, the degree of globalization in today's world has greatly exceeded the era of Marx and Engels, and the shift in the center of the world economy is bound to show new characteristics that are different from the past. Large-scale war conflicts are likely to be ruled out because of the existence of nuclear deterrence. Non-military means such as trade wars to obstruct the historical process will become the main means for countries with dominant positions, and economic competition may become the main means of shifting the center of the world economy. Competition to create new productive forces is a fair and peaceful way, and the most desirable way. The mainland has consistently pursued an independent foreign policy of peace, pursued the principle of mutually beneficial exchanges in the economic field, and actively safeguarded the well-being of the people of all countries in the world. This image of a responsible major country and the new concept of a "community of common destiny" reflect the new characteristics that the "Pacific era" may have.
Fourthly, attempts to prevent the shift of the centre of the world economy through non-peaceful means are bound to fail. Viewing the world as a whole has become an integral part of modern thought. Marx once clearly pointed out: "The more the scope of activity of the various mutual influences expands in this process of development, the more the primitive closed state of the nations is eliminated by the increasingly perfect mode of production, the intercourse and the division of labor between the different nations naturally formed by the interaction, the more history becomes the history of the world." In such a highly integrated "Pacific era," a pattern of interests between major powers has been formed in which you have me and I have you, and there is a high degree of complementarity and deep integration, and advocating the "decoupling theory" and other acts of reversing history will only be ruthlessly crushed by history.
Based on the above discussion, and then looking at the various international events in recent years, we will have a deeper understanding and a clearer understanding. The Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) initiative proposed by the mainland are aimed at increasing productivity throughout Asia and around the world. This self-confident attitude of fair competition fully demonstrates the mainland's willingness to promote a positive and harmonious game between major powers, and this attitude is undoubtedly a positive factor in the recovery of the world economy today. The latest measures to vigorously develop the Hainan Free Trade Zone have further strengthened the positive image of conforming to the trend of history. On the contrary, the actions of certain countries that go against the tide of history will only seriously damage the image and strength of the country. The mainland should face this situation more calmly and rationally, profoundly understand marx and Engels's "Pacific era" thinking, constantly draw powerful wisdom and strength from it, and act in accordance with the laws of historical development.