Xing Guangcheng: The historical logic and cognitive path of Marxism on the transformation of history into world history: from the perspective of the certainty of human history
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Marx and Engels put forward the thesis of "the transformation of history into world history", and examined the entry of human history into a period of "world history" with the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, capitalism and communism, and pointed out the inevitability of mankind moving towards communism. It can be seen from the basic expositions of Marx and Engels that their concept of "human history" is the integration of "history" and "world history", and the "transformation of history into world history" shows the development trend of human history. Taking the thesis of classic writers on "human history" as the starting point, it is of great academic significance and theoretical value to focus on human history. One of the most striking features of human history is its certainty. In the face of great changes unseen in a century, and in the face of mankind being at a new crossroads, researchers of Chinese world history need to use historical materialism to analyze and answer the urgent questions facing mankind. 1. The Ideological Concept of Human History, "The Certainty of Human History" and Its Main CharacteristicsEngels once said that he did not want to doubt or despise "the revelation of history" at all, "history is our everything", and "attaches more importance to history" than other schools. Marx said: "People have history because they have to produce their own lives, and they have to do it in a certain way: this is conditioned by their physical organization, and so is their consciousness." Marx and Engels generally used the concept of "human history" when expounding history and its related problems, as in The German Ideology. (1) The ideological connotation of human history is first, about "man" in human history. First, "human existence". "The first premise of all human history is undoubtedly the existence of living individuals. Therefore, the first fact that needs to be confirmed is the physical organization of these individuals and the resulting relationship of individuals to other natures. Second, "human activity." "Any historical record should start from these natural foundations and their changes in the course of history as a result of human activity." Human activities include the relationship between humans and nature. An important sign that distinguishes man from animals is that he begins to produce his own means of subsistence, and at the same time indirectly produces his own material means of subsistence. According to the classic writers: the impetus of history and of religion, philosophy and any other theory is revolution, not criticism. …… Each stage of history encounters a certain material result, a certain sum of productive forces, the historically formed relationship between man and nature and between individuals, and encounters a large number of productive forces, funds and circumstances that have been passed on from one generation to the next, although on the one hand these productive forces, funds and circumstances are changed by the new generation, on the other hand, they also predetermine the living conditions of the new generation itself, so that it has a certain development and a special character. Thus, this view shows that man creates the environment, and in the same way, the environment creates man. Third, "the individual in reality". Social structures and states always arise from the course of life of certain individuals. The individual referred to here is the "individual in reality", the person who is realistic, engaged in activities, and engaged in material production. The starting point of Marxism is the person who is engaged in practical activities, not the "abstract person". Fourth, the "emancipation" of man. True liberation can only be achieved in the real world and by using realistic means; When people are not able to fully guarantee their food, drink, shelter and clothing in terms of quality and quantity, they will not be able to be emancipated at all. "Liberation" is a kind of historical activity, not an ideological activity, and "liberation" is brought about by historical relations and by the conditions of industry, commerce, agriculture, and exchanges. Second, people can make history and must be able to live. This is the first premise of all human existence, that is, the first premise of all history. In order to live, people first need to eat, drink, shelter, cloth, and everything else. Thus the first historical activity is the satisfaction of production, the means of satisfying these needs, that is, the production of material life itself. This is the historical activity that people have to engage in every hour of their daily life in order to maintain their lives from thousands of years ago to the present day, and it is the basic condition of all history. A certain mode of production or a certain stage of industry is always linked to a certain common way of life or a certain stage of society, and this common mode of activity is itself a "productive force". Since the sum total of the productive forces attained by man determines the state of society, it is always necessary to study and discuss the "history of mankind" in connection with the history of industry and exchange. There has been a physical connection between people since the beginning, and it has a long history. Marx and Engels discussed the contradictory movement between the productive forces and the forms of communication, and emphasized the decisive role of material production in the historical development of mankind. They also expounded on the form of interaction in which the productive forces restrict, and that "all historical conflicts are rooted in the contradiction between the productive forces and the forms of communication," and that this contradiction "inevitably erupts into revolution every time." Third, starting from the viewpoint that social existence determines social consciousness, Marxism emphasizes that the premise of the scientific view of history lies in the study of the activities of real people and their material living conditions. Their view of history consists in focusing on the material production of immediate life to examine the actual production process, emphasizing that the basis of the whole history is the form of interaction that is connected with this mode of production, and on this basis elucidating the various theoretical products and forms of consciousness such as religion, philosophy, morality, etc., and the process of their production. "This view of history is different from the idealistic view of history in that it does not look for a certain category in each era, but always stands on the basis of real history, and does not explain practice from the point of view of concepts, but from the point of view of material practice to explain various forms of ideas." Fourth, Engels put forward the task of natural science and historical research, that is, the natural world and human history are in motion, changing, generating and disappearing, which requires that it is not enough to grasp the general nature of the general picture of phenomena, but to understand the details that make up the general picture. "In order to understand these details, we have to extract them from their natural or historical connections and study them separately in terms of their characteristics, their particular causes and effects, and so on." This shows that historical research should not only pay attention to the overall picture, overall process and overall structure of historical evolution, but also pay attention to historical details under the macro framework, which are often "holographic" and carry some special and unique historical information. Therefore, it is necessary to unify the grasp of the "general picture" of human history with the focus on the "details" of human history. We often criticize the "fragmentation" of human history research, and from the perspective of the totality and integrity of history, the "fragmentation" of human history research will fall into an epistemological misunderstanding, that is, we can see the forest for the trees. However, it should be pointed out that when studying human history, we must pay attention to the various "fragments" of history, because, just as the fragments can still reflect the "holographic" mirror image after the mirror is broken, the fragments of history hide the information of history, and our task is not to ignore these fragments of history, but to relate these fragments of history to the "general picture" of history as much as possible, and systematize the fragments of history. (2) The certainty of human history: the concept and its characteristics: all the past of mankind is the whole history of mankind. Everything that happened during the period from the birth of mankind to the time of yesterday belongs to the category of human history. One of the most striking features of human history in the three-dimensional world is its certainty. This manifests itself in the fact that human history presents everything that has been done, that has happened, that cannot be changed, that has been "hardened". Therefore, human history is the sum total of human past activities, including the past of all human beings, which is the original state of human history. The deterministic character of human history determines that human history is knowable and knowable. However, the deterministic characteristics of human history determine that it cannot be presented in the way of self-presentation, and human history needs to be reconstructed and reproduced through the research and combing of later generations, so the study of human history is the basic way of human history reproduction. The basic criterion for the study of human history is to conform to the reality of human history and the "past reality" of human history, and it is impossible for historians to make choices about human history, let alone "arbitrary choices." In this sense, there is no choice in human history, or in other words, the person who created history has already chosen, and future generations cannot "choose" it, revise and change it. The certainty of human history determines that it no longer exists, and there are many possibilities to choose from, which can only be a confirmed historical existence and the realization of historical practice. To be precise, there were three types of situations in the "reality" of human society at that time: one was "no choice", there was only one choice, and the human society at that time realized this "choice", which was confirmed by history; The other type is faced with "choice", and there may be many "choices", but the human society at that time did not make a "choice", and history still reflects that there is no trace of "choice", and history is "blank"; The third category is faced with multiple possibilities, but excludes several others, makes the only choice and realizes this "choice", which history presents as it has been realized. This is what we usually mean when we say that every stage of human society has made a "historic choice". In this sense, there are no "ifs" or "ifs" in human history. It is true that there are many "regrets" in human history, but there is no room for remedy, and it is impossible to pull out the various "regrets" of human history from the old paper pile of history through "assumptions" and "ifs". Future generations can only accept this historical certainty and the objective facts of history. This is the "cruelty" of history. The people often say that to accept the verdict of history is to accept this "cruelty" of history. Human history does not accept "repentance" of history, and there is no such artifact as "time treasure box" in human history. Historical facts are at the heart of the study of human history. The certainty of human history provides researchers of human history with a research scale and norms. The certainty of human history determines its own objective existence, and it maintains its own certainty and objective existence regardless of whether people study it or not, understand it or not. Human history is in the mode of "text reading", not "revision", which removes the functions of "rewriting" and "revising" once and for all. The certainty of human history requires that historical researchers must also be objective and truthful. It is precisely because of such a characteristic of human history that it is determined that the past of human beings can be "retrospective" and "reproduced", but cannot be "edited" and "added or subtracted". However, human understanding and research of our own history not only objectively reflect the certainty of human history, but also have huge limitations, uncertainties, deviations and even distortions. Therefore, it is not an easy task for human beings to understand and study their own history. The certainty of human history requires that the historical research of historical researchers conform to the certainty of human history. The certainty of historical research must be matched by the certainty of human history itself. The certainty of human history is its inherent historical objectivity in a philosophical sense, and its inherent reality from a historical perspective. This determines that world historians must pursue "faith in history" and pursue the degree of truth of history in historical research, which is an important academic criterion for judging a world historian and historical school. But that's exactly where the problem arises. Human history has the characteristics of being unselectable, but it is impossible for world historians to write history in its original place and at one time, so they can only select, summarize and make trade-offs among the vast number of historical materials, and then make corresponding historical evaluations. However, it is impossible for world historians to choose, summarize, and choose historical materials without being governed by their historical outlook. Therefore, how to deal with the relationship between the certainty of human history and the selectivity in the research process of historians has become a fundamental issue in the study of world history. "Time difference" plagues the study of human history. In addition to contemporary history, human history is studied and sorted out by later generations, and they are not the "contemporaries" and "parties" who created these histories, but they are the descendants of history, and they are the readers, researchers, and examiners of history. This shows that there is a "place gap" between human history researchers and human history. The study of human history should have two basic dimensions, one is the historical dimension and the other is the realistic dimension, that is, to understand reality with a scientific view of history: all historical views up to now have either completely ignored this realistic basis of history, or regarded it as only an incidental factor that has no connection with the historical process. History, therefore, is always written according to some measure outside of it; Real life production is seen as something ahistorical, and historical things are seen as something detached from everyday life, something outside the world and above the world. In this way, man's relationship to the natural world is excluded from history, thus creating an opposition between nature and history. Human beings are constantly progressing, the history of mankind is constantly extending, and the understanding of future generations of human history by their predecessors is also deepening. Human history is certain, but there are considerable uncertainties and biases in the study of human history. Human history is, in a broader sense, world history. An important mission of world history research is to explain and restore the past truth and "original state" of human history, reveal the basic historical laws of human development and evolution, and provide reference for the current and future development and progress of mankind. In this way, what we usually call "world history" is the world history that world history experts "crawl and comb" according to their own historical outlook and values. Marxism holds that all previous history is the history of class struggle, the product of the relations of production and exchange, and the product of the economic relations of its own time, thus expelling idealism from its last refuge, that is, the view of history. Historical materialism emphasizes that human existence determines human consciousness. Researchers of Chinese world history need to use historical materialism to analyze and answer the pressing questions facing mankind. 2. The spatio-temporal structure of human history and its distorted human history has a temperature, and the relationship between human history, reality and the future can be compared to yesterday, today and tomorrow. History is the reality of the past, reality becomes history, and the future is the reality of the coming world. There is a qualitative difference between history and reality and the future, but they are all in the continuous dimension of time, and it is precisely reality that links history and the future. In other words, the creation of history is not completed at the level of history, but is cast at the level of reality, history is the solidification of reality, and reality is the reserve material of history. In this sense, it is not so much about changing history as it is about changing it in reality, so that history has taken on what reality expects. Therefore, reality determines the height of human history, and the "reality" of each period has been reflected and accumulated in history, and the superposition of layers of "reality" is the accumulation of cultural layers of human history, recording the scale of human civilization and progress. Therefore, if human beings want to shape history, they must not work on history itself, which is no longer immutable, but must work on the reality that is being practiced and the preparation for the future that will be practiced, so as to obtain the historical existence that mankind expects. History is the result of a series of past realities, not the beginning and process of a series of realities. It is necessary to discover the certainty of world history from the reality of the world today, and to perceive the historical inevitability and trend hidden in the reality of the world from the process of world history. Human history is related to the reality and future of mankind and has inseparable characteristics, and looking at the future of mankind from the depth of human history is an important manifestation of human wisdom. From the perspective of the process of human history, human history is superimposed and accumulative, and the activities of the later generation are carried out on the basis of the previous generation, and each generation is constrained by the established historical conditions at that time. The present looks at the past, and the future looks at the present. The classic writer pointed out: "History is nothing more than the successive succession of generations." Each generation makes use of materials, funds, and productivity left over from previous generations; For this reason, each generation continues to engage in inherited activities in a completely changed environment, and on the other hand, it changes the old environment through completely changed activities. "The research method of history is diametrically opposed to the research method of futurology, which is full of assumptions, and the addition of different variables will lead to different trends in future evolution. This is required by the nature of futurology itself. The study of human history can only explain and reveal the law of evolution of human history by abiding by the law of human historical certainty. In the course of human history, time and space are unified. Engels criticized Hegel for not admitting that there is a temporal development in nature, not recognizing the "sequence" in the concept of time, but only rejecting the "juxtaposition" of the concept of time: in Hegel's view, nature is only the "externalization" of ideas, it cannot develop in time, it can only expand its diversity in space, therefore, it shows all the stages of development it contains at the same time and side by side, and is destined to repeat forever the same process. Hegel's fallacy lies in the fact that he thinks that development takes place within space but outside time, and that time is the basic condition of all development. Therefore, the limitation of Engels' critique of mechanical materialism lies in the fact that the world cannot be understood as a process, and time and space are not unified. When Engels criticized Dühring's copying of Hegel's logic, he sarcastically said that Dühring did not copy the intrinsic connections in Hegel's logic, and as a result, "everything became a contentless fantasy about space and time, immutability and change." "Because the basic forms of all existence are space and time, the existence outside of time is as absurd as the existence outside of space." Engels quite correctly expounded the relationship between time and space. Engels also said that infinity is a contradiction, and it is full of contradictions. It is already a contradiction that infinity is purely made up of finiteness, but this is the case. The finitude of the material world causes no fewer contradictions than its infinity, and as we have seen, any attempt to eliminate these contradictions gives rise to new and worse contradictions. Precisely because infinity is a contradiction, it is an infinite, endlessly unfolding process in time and space. If the contradiction is eliminated, then infinity ends. Human history has a complete structure of time and space. From the perspective of time, human history has gone through the most primitive historical state, the period of ignorance and the period of barbarism, and then mankind entered the period of civilization. World historians are generally accustomed to refer to the period before the period of civilization as prehistoric. China is an ancient country, and from the perspective of time, China has a million years of human history, 10,000 years of cultural history, and 5,000 years of civilization history. Because China is the only civilization in the world that has not been interrupted and continues continuously, it has almost become a measure and yardstick of human history. Before the four major civilizations, humanity was still in the age of barbarism. It can be seen that human beings have not entered the era of civilization for a long time, in contrast, human beings have been in the prehistoric period and in a pre-civilization state for more time. If we divide the period of human civilization into the period of modernization, it can be divided into the period of pre-modern civilization and the period of modern civilization. The point in time of this division should be the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern history of the world. From a spatial point of view, the birth of human history is not evenly distributed, the four main human civilizations are all in the pan-Eurasian plate, and the Egyptian civilization, the civilization of the two river basins, the Indian civilization and the Chinese civilization are all distributed in the space south of the pan-Eurasian continent. The space in which human beings live is scattered, but there have been regional exchanges, especially the Eurasian and African continents have formed a relatively close network of connections, and the land Silk Road and the maritime Silk Road have linked the Eurasian and African continents together. It was only in modern times that the rise of Western European countries dragged mankind into the whole world through colonization, and the world became globalized, and Engels emphasized the process of transformation from history to world history in this sense. However, since modern times, the right to interpret, discourse, and determine the study of world history has all been in the hands of the Western knowledge system, and the most prominent feature is "Western-centrism". This is in fact a historical narrative constructed by the West on the basis of the political, economic, and military superiority it has accumulated in recent times. "Western-centrism" goes against the spatio-temporal structure of human history. From the perspective of time, the mainstream European historiography system deliberately "collided" with the ancient Egyptian civilization and the civilization of the two river basins, and incorporated it into the ancient source of the great Western civilization, and the ancient Greek and Roman civilization belonged to the secondary civilization, which was naturally influenced by the ancient Egyptian civilization, the civilization of the two river basins and even the Indian civilization. What is even more obvious is that "Western-centrism" directly "welds" Western civilization to the pedestal of ancient Greco-Roman "classical civilization", and regards ancient Greco-Roman "classical civilization" as an important part of Western civilization. From a historical point of view, it was precisely the Germanic and other "barbarian peoples" who destroyed the Roman Empire and destroyed Roman culture. Western European civilization was formed in the Middle Ages and began to emerge in the 5th century AD, and are two different civilizations from the ancient Greco-Roman "classical civilization". It is not in line with historical facts that the Western system has "elongated" history and forcibly "welded" and "grafted" its civilization on top of the "classical civilization" of ancient Greece and Rome. After the destruction of the Roman Empire by Germanic and other peoples, Europe fell into a period of silence and darkness for a long time, and Europe spent more than 1,000 years in chaos, becoming a poor and backward place in the world's civilized regions at that time, which was greatly inferior to the neighboring Byzantine Empire, which was the "Middle Ages" period in Western Europe. In fact, it was only in the 15th century that the Western countries became nation-states in a very late period, and it was only in the 15th century that European nation-states gradually formed. In The Collapse of Feudalism and the Emergence of the Nation-State, Engels discussed in detail the formation and characteristics of the European nation-state. Even Huntington admits that historically, Western Europe has lagged behind many other civilizations in terms of civilization, more than civilizations such as China, Islam, and Byzantium. But Western civilization rose to prominence, and for the next 250 years, the entire Western Hemisphere and some important parts of Asia were placed under European domination and control. European colonies controlled 35% of the earth's surface land in South and North America, 67% in 1878 and 84% in 1914. After the rise of Western Europe, with the help of the capitalist mode of production, the West has written world history into a world history with the West as the axis, constructed a world historical discourse system characterized by "Western-centrism", and promoted it all over the world. "Western-centrism" has spatially squeezed out other countries and nations in the world from "world history," and "Western-centrism" has squeezed out the space of world history with its huge historical "volume." It can be seen from this that "Western-centrism" has achieved the absolute dominance of Western countries and Western civilization in the world by "elongating" Western history and squeezing out the historical "space", and has shaped the spatio-temporal structure of world history, which is a conscious distortion and systematic artificial construction of the spatio-temporal structure of human history. In the Western system, a world history is the history of the West, at most it is the history of the West+, the history of the West is the red flower, and the history of the non-Western countries is the green leaf. What's more, some Western historians portray world history as a Western history that is a flower that does not even want "green leaves". The "Western-centrism" is prominently manifested in the fact that Western history is the main line of world history, pasting the history of the whole world and human history into the picture of Western history, replacing world cognition with Western cognition, replacing the world system with Western system, and replacing world experience with Western experience, instilling a strong flavor of the theory of the superiority of Western civilization throughout the text. The emergence of "Western-centrism" is directly related to the strong rise of the West. Western-centrism and the superiority of Western civilization directly shaped the historical discourse power for Western colonization. According to the Western system, Western countries are the historical direction of mankind. Because of this, the West has the ability and the right to conquer other countries, other peoples, and other civilizations. Therefore, "Western-centrism" takes the West as the core to write world history, which serves the Western capitalist system. There is a huge contradiction and distortion between the certainty of human history and the construction of the knowledge system of world history. In modern times, the history of colonialism pursued by the West for hundreds of years is a history of great historical trauma for the colonized countries, a history of blood and fire condensing into profound disasters, and a history of hatred by the people of the colonized countries, but in the West's interpretation of world history, it is known as a glorious history, a history of bringing light and civilization to the colonized countries and peoples, and a history of "propelling" mankind to "advance and progress". It can be seen that there is a huge distortion between the truth of world history and the study of world history in the West, mainly because the discourse power of history is in the hands of the Western system. However, "Western-centrism" runs counter to the original state of human history and world historical development, does not conform to the historical law of human development, and greatly distorts the basic truth of world history. Therefore, in the future development of mankind, it is necessary to break away from the "Western-centrism" and restore the original state of human historical development. The idea of "Western-centrism" is also reflected in the depreciation and neglect of China's position and role in World War II. During World War II, China fought against the Japanese fascists almost single-handedly, paid an extremely heavy price, dragged down the ferocious Japanese fascists, and contributed great strength to the final victory of the World Anti-Fascist War, but the mainstream schools of Western historiography ignored these historical facts and deliberately downplayed China's historical contribution and role in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. Up to now, Japan has not carried out due reflection on the "historical issue" and still has a militaristic ideological foundation. From the development structure of human history, it can be seen that Western civilization belongs to secondary civilization, which is a continuous civilization generated under the multiple influences of multiple primary civilizations and secondary civilizations in human history. It has not been more than 2,000 years since the Germanic people destroyed the Roman Empire, and it has been in an immature period for a long time, when Western civilization burst out of creativity and the real rise of Western European powers in the modern era, that is, in the last 250 years. However, as soon as Western civilization and the Western European powers rose and became strong, they expanded to most of the world by force, occupying most of the world's space, and the British Empire became an empire on which the sun never sets. The Chinese civilization has a glorious history of 5,000 years without interruption, with outstanding continuity, innovation, unity, inclusiveness and peace, and the 5,000-year history of Chinese civilization has not carried out conquest and expansion like Western civilization, which is the most important embodiment of the peaceful nature of Chinese civilization, and is also determined by the inherent civilization prescriptiveness of Chinese civilization itself. However, after 1840, China, the Chinese nation, and Chinese civilization were invaded by Western powers, resulting in humiliation of the country, suffering of the people, and dust of civilization, and the Chinese nation suffered unprecedented calamities. From the perspective of human history, China and Chinese civilization have been among the world's advanced countries for a long period of 5,000 years before modern times since they entered the era of civilization, but they were passively beaten and impoverished and backward for more than 100 years after 1840. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, China embarked on a historical journey of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The history of China and the history of Chinese civilization should have a true display on the spatio-temporal coordinates of human history. During the Han Dynasty, China's counterpart to Western Europe was the Roman Empire, known in Chinese history books as the "Great Qin", when the Germanic people were still living in the dense forests of the northern Roman Empire as "barbarians". No matter how "Western-centrism" constructs world history, the status and role of Chinese history and the history of Chinese civilization in human history cannot be lost and faded because of it, which is determined by the certainty of human history, and the certainty of human history will also truly record the deep traces of "Western-centrism" in constructing untrue history. 3. Barbarism in the Progress of Human Civilization The history of mankind is long and complex. Human progress is often achieved in a way that does not match its progress, or in other words, human progress is often achieved in a barbaric way, and human civilization is accompanied by barbaric elements, and barbaric elements can still be seen shaking in human civilization today. It should be said that the era of human civilization was opened by the "barbarians" in the late barbaric era, and it was the "barbarians" who pushed mankind into the threshold of civilization, and the barbarians who brought mankind into civilization were the first civilized people in the era of human civilization. (1) The entry of mankind into the age of civilization is achieved through "the most despicable impulses and lusts" and "at the expense of all other endowments of men", and "vulgar greed" and "wealth" are important stimuli that propel mankind into the age of civilization. Marx and Engels pointed out that the era of civilization accomplished with this basic system what the ancient clan society could not do at all. But it accomplishes these things by arousing the most despicable impulses and passions of men, and by exacerbating them at the expense of all other human endowments. Vulgar greed is the soul that has propelled the age of civilization from the first days of its existence to the present day; Wealth, wealth, and thirdly wealth – not the wealth of society, but the wealth of this insignificant individual — is the only and decisive purpose of the age of civilization. If in the bosom of the age of civilization, science has developed day by day, and periods of high prosperity of the arts have appeared again and again, it is only because all the achievements of the accumulation of wealth in modern times would not have been possible without this. For Hegel, evil is the manifestation of the dynamic force of historical development. There is a double meaning here, on the one hand, that every new progress must take the form of a desecration of something sacred, of a rebellion against an old, decaying order which is worshipped by custom; On the other hand, since the emergence of class antagonisms, it is the evil passions of man – greed and power – that have become the levers of historical development, and in this regard, the history of feudalism and the bourgeoisie, for example, is a unique and continuous proof. The result of the actual process of development (interject here) is the inevitable victory of the capitalist over the landowners, that is to say, the victory of developed private property over the underdeveloped and incomplete private property, as in general the victory of action over immobility, the victory of overt and conscious meanness over covert and unconscious meanness, the desire for money must prevail over the desire for pleasure, the straightforward, sophisticated, tireless, shrewd and shrewd enlightened egoism must triumph over the narrow-minded, the serious, The lazy, slack, fantasical superstitious egoism of money inevitably triumphs over other forms of private property. It can be seen from the expositions of Marx and Engels that there are many factors that promote the progress of mankind, but it is not excluded that some factors that we are accustomed to calling "negative" such as "despicable greed" also play an important role, but the key to evaluating the progress of human civilization is to look at the results and pay attention to the actual results of human civilization. In fact, Marxism also analyzes the trend of human development and the development of human civilization from the perspective of the internal law of human historical development: "According to our point of view, all historical conflicts are rooted in the contradiction between the productive forces and the forms of communication. "Man is equal in the state of nature and savagery; People are not equal in the state of civilization. According to Rousseau, all the progress of human beings beyond the primitive state is ostensibly towards the perfection of the individual, but in fact towards the decline of mankind. Metalworking and agriculture are two skills whose invention caused this great revolution, turning primeval forests into arable land, but also poverty and slavery due to the advent of property. The things that civilize and bring down humanity are gold and silver in the eyes of poets, iron and grain in the eyes of philosophers. Engels commented on this that for every step forward in civilization, inequality also takes a step forward. All the institutions that society has built for itself with civilization have been transformed into the opposite of its original purpose. (2) The greatest barbaric factor and barbaric phenomenon in the progress of human history and human civilization is conquest and war. The subjugation of others and the imposition of war on others have become a regular phenomenon in the course of human history. Turning the page of European history and examining the history of Western civilization, conquests and wars have continued to occur, which has become a normal phenomenon in European history and Western civilization. The spirit of "martial arts" in Western civilization is very obvious, and solving problems with fists is the norm in Europe. The ancient Egyptian civilization, the civilization of the two river basins and the ancient Indian civilization disappeared one after another, and there were comprehensive internal and external factors, but the external factors could not be ignored. Subsequently, the prosperity of the Persian Empire and its expansion and conquest in the Eurasian zone "sorted out" and "integrated" the vast areas from the southern and eastern Mediterranean regions to Central Asia in the form of war, forming the first Eurasian Empire, and then Alexander's Empire appeared, and after the destruction of the Persian Empire, it further expanded its territory, almost covering three of the four original civilizations of ancient Eurasia. As for the subsequent ancient Greek civilization, wars continued, conquests spread, and wars between various city-states were normalized, the most typical being the war between ancient Athens and Sparta. The Roman Empire pushed conquest, expansion, and warfare to new heights, and the glory of the Roman Empire was closely linked to conquest and war. But the glorious Roman Empire in human history was destroyed by the "barbarians". "Barbarians" such as the Germans and the Franks continued to fight each other in Western Europe after the destruction of the once-formidable Roman Empire. There is no doubt that Western civilization borrowed the essence of ancient human civilization, including Chinese civilization, but embraced the habits of "conquest" and "war" in ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. In the process of the formation of European nation-states, during the European Renaissance and Industrial Revolution, the Western powers, which were the first to enter capitalism, began to engage in global conquests, wars, the restoration of slavery in the process of global colonization, and the global slave trade. The capitalist mode of production, which is much more advanced than the feudal mode of production, is still mixed with elements of barbarism, and attaches the barbaric mode to the advanced capitalist mode of production. "When we turn our gaze from the homeland of bourgeois civilization to the colonies, the extreme hypocrisy of bourgeois civilization and its barbaric nature are laid bare before us, and it pretends to be decent in its homeland, while in the colonies it does not hide it at all." In his discussion of the clash of civilizations, Huntington regarded Western civilization as a strong civilization and a superior civilization. In his view, Western civilization is the measure of human civilization "by which to judge whether non-European societies are sufficiently 'civilized' to be accepted as members of the international system dominated by Europeans". He openly declared: "The most striking and important interaction between civilizations is the triumph, annihilation, or subjugation of those from one civilization." Because in his view, Western civilization has effectively put this idea into practice throughout history: in the process of European expansion, the Andean and Mesoamerican civilizations were effectively wiped out, the Indian and Islamic civilizations were conquered along with African civilizations, and China was infiltrated and subordinated to Western influence. Only three civilizations, Russia, Japan, and Ethiopia, ruled by highly centralized imperial authority, have been able to withstand the onslaught of the West and maintain a meaningful independent existence. The 400-year-old relationship between civilizations is made up of the subordination of other societies to Western civilization. Huntington makes no secret of the violent nature of Western civilization: "The immediate root of Western expansion is technology: the invention of seafaring tools to reach distant peoples, the development of military capabilities to conquer these peoples." …… The West wins the world not through the superiority of its ideas, values, or religion (to which few people in other civilizations have converted), but through its use of superiority in organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; Non-Westerners have never forgotten. The preponderance of "organized violence" is probably the most accurate conclusion that characterizes Western civilization. Thus, Western civilization has many characteristics, but the use of violence as the ultimate tool to conquer others is the most notable one. In this regard, modern China has endured an extremely painful experience. In order to reverse the trade deficit with China, Britain sent opium to China, knowing that opium was a drug but "exclusively" supplied to China as a commodity. Because opium was not sold in colonial India, it was not sold in the United Kingdom, and opium was specially formulated to suit the tastes of Chinese smokers. However, the Chinese government's ban on smoking in order to safeguard the interests of the Chinese state and people has led to aggression. Isn't this barbarism? This is not barbarism in general, but extreme barbarism! This is not barbarism in general, but open barbarism practiced in the bright light of Western civilization! The British government was also worried that the British people would know about their extremely barbaric practices, so they blocked the information in Britain and covered up the truth, "We do not hear the illegal opium trade filling the British treasury every year by destroying human lives and corrupting morals." China has suffered great humiliation and endured great disasters. Marley Martin, an Englishman at the time, wrote: "Isn't it true that the 'slave trade' was more benevolent than the 'opium trade'." We did not destroy the flesh of Africans, because our immediate interests demanded that their lives be preserved; We have not corrupted their character, corrupted their minds, or destroyed their souls. But the opium dealers, after corrupting, corrupting, and destroying the spiritual existence of the unfortunate sinners, killed their bodies; Every moment a new victim was sacrificed before the never-ending Moloch, and British and Chinese suicides competed to offer sacrifices to the altar of the Moloch. This analysis hits the nail on the head. Marx said: "This trade is unique in the history of mankind, both in terms of the tragic conflicts which may be said to form its axis, and in terms of its effect on all relations between East and West." Therefore, Marx believed that China's war against British aggression was a war to "defend the society and homeland" and a people's war to safeguard the survival of the Chinese nation. The means adopted by a rebellious nation in the people's war should not be measured according to the generally accepted rules of regular warfare or any other abstract criterion, but should be measured by the degree of civilization that the rebellious nation has just attained. Marxism holds that "there is no great historical catastrophe that is not compensated by historical progress." After arduous struggle, the Chinese people finally embarked on the road of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation under the leadership of the Communist Party of China. Thus, the global expansion of Western civilization was accompanied by a barbaric approach: "With the advent of slavery, which was most fully developed in the age of civilization, there was the first great division of society into the exploiting and exploited classes. This division continued throughout the civilizational period. Slavery was the first form of exploitation inherent in the world of ancient Greece and Rome; This was followed by serfdom in the Middle Ages and wage labor in modern times. These are the three major forms of servitude peculiar to the three major periods of the Age of Civilization; Overt and, more recently, covert slavery has always accompanied the age of civilization. "From the perspective of the general trend of human history and the historical trajectory of Western civilization, the world needs to reflect on Western civilization. The triggers of the two world wars took place in Europe, and in Western civilization gave birth to the evil ideas, institutions and warmongers of world fascism. Germany was once a backward country in Europe, but it embarked on the road of fascism under the framework of Western civilization, and Japan learned from the West in an all-round way through the "Meiji Restoration", changed course, abandoned Chinese civilization and copied Western civilization, but in the end it went mad and embarked on the road of militarism, which brought disaster to the people of Asia and, of course, to the whole world, including the United States. All this shows that Western civilization needs to be reconsidered, especially in the genetic aspects of Western civilization, which needs to be comprehensively and deeply examined. Now, humanity is once again standing at a crossroads in history. Both the West and Russia, led by the United States, have frequently demonstrated nuclear deterrence, especially after the emergence of the Ukraine crisis, Russia and the United States have repeatedly engaged in nuclear threats against each other. This poses a huge nuclear risk not only to Europe but also to the world. Who can guarantee that the possession of a nuclear weapon will not be able to use strategic nuclear weapons after the use of tactical nuclear weapons? Is there still a winner in the face of nuclear war? For the first time in human history, mankind possessed the ultimate weapon of self-destruction, and the nuclear arms control treaty system reached between Russia and the United States after the Cold War has disappeared. And because the human mind and reason have not yet fully matured to the point of being highly civilized apart from "despicable greed", it is impossible to curb the dangerous idea of using nuclear weapons with the utmost rationality. If mankind does not get rid of the "despicable greed" and the barbaric idea of conquest, all mankind will face the catastrophe of annihilation, and human civilization will face the danger of systematic destruction. In the history of mankind, there has been a phenomenon in Europe where one nation was conquered and exterminated by another. But a war between the two nuclear powers, now and in the future, would be enough to destroy all nations and destroy the planet. The fuses of various types that led to the occurrence of world wars remain. We need to "blow the whistle" from the perspective of the destruction of civilization, and this is the extremely important mission of researchers of world history. Human civilization/world civilization cannot resolve their differences by conquest and conflict, and all civilizations in the world are equal, and there is no superiority or inferiority. Civilizations need mutual learning and integration, peaceful dialogue and the abandonment of prejudices. Comrade Mao Zedong said: "Over the past several hundred years, as a result of their protracted aggression, Western countries have developed a mentality toward Asia and Africa and have despised backward countries. They say we're people of color. This is distinguished by skin color, as in the case of non-ferrous metals. Our 'non-ferrous metals' will swell. Of course, we will not invade others, but 'non-ferrous metals' are more valuable, because non-ferrous metals include gold, silver, copper, tin, etc. Comrade Mao Zedong also said: "We all belong to the colored race. People of color are looked down upon, and the biggest 'disadvantage' is that they are colored. Some people prefer non-ferrous metals to people of color. As far as I can see, colored people are quite like non-ferrous metals, which are precious metals, and colored people are at least as valuable as white people. People of color are just as human beings as white people, and they are all in the first category, not the second category. The second category is animals, not people. All people in the world, regardless of their skin color, are equal. IV. Contingency and Inevitability in the Evolution of Human History and Other Factors Marx and Engels attached importance to the science of history: "We know only one and only science, that is, the science of history. History can be examined in two ways, and it can be divided into natural history and human history. But the two aspects are closely linked; As long as human beings exist, natural history and human history have conditioned each other. Natural history, the so-called natural sciences, we will not talk about it here; What we need to study is human history, because almost the entire ideology either distorts human history or ignores human history altogether. Ideology itself is nothing but one aspect of human history. Engels said: "Human society, like the natural world, has its own history of development and its own science. The problem, therefore, is to reconcile the science of society, the sum of the so-called historical and philosophical sciences, with the basis of materialism, and to transform it on this basis. "The height of human history refers to the height of progress in human history. The study of human history should be problem-oriented, which is the most basic method of studying history. The certainty of human history shows that human history can be known and read, can be commented on, can be deeply thought about and directly and profoundly learned, and the reference function of human history is extremely powerful, which is also an important motivation for human self-evolution and progress. Later generations investigate history by taking historical documents, historical relics and underground excavations as the basic way to investigate the relevant materials that carry historical information. Human history has a complex character, with all the complexity and concealment of the process of past reality, and naturally includes the conspiracy and deception of past reality, and the internal motives and internal laws of human history are hidden in it, which is the most important historical logic that future generations must discover through research. (1) On the question of conquest and subjugation in human historyThere is a phenomenon in human history that culturally backward nations often conquer culturally advanced nations. The conquest of the Roman Empire by Germanic peoples is a striking example. Engels pointed out that all the vital and life-giving things that the Germans injected into the Roman world were the things of the barbaric era. Indeed, only barbarians can make a world struggling with a dying civilization young. And the advanced stage of the barbaric age, which the Germans had reached before the great migration of peoples and had worked hard to open up, was the most suitable for this process. The Roman Empire, which had created a high degree of civilization, was conquered by the Germans, who were at the advanced stage of the barbarian era. "Every conquest carried out by the more barbarian peoples, it goes without saying, hinders the development of the economy and destroys a great deal of the productive forces. But in the long conquests, the saver conquerors, in the vast majority of cases, had to adapt to the relatively high 'economic conditions' they faced as a result of the conquest, and they were assimilated by the conquerors, and in most cases even had to adopt the language of the conquered. "After the backward Germanic people conquered and flattened the Roman Empire, they were naturally influenced by Roman civilization. The Germanic conquest of the Roman Empire caused the "jealousy" of Russian historians. Klyuchevsky once said: "[The Eastern Slavs] are in a completely different geographical and international environment from their Arian kinship, the Germanic tribes that opened up a new history in Western Europe. There, the wandering Germanic peoples settled in ruins, and the habits and ideas they developed in the forests were directly influenced by a powerful culture, between the Romans they conquered or the Romanized outsiders of this decaying empire, for whom they became vivid transmitters and interpreters of this culture. The Eastern Slavs, on the other hand, were in the middle of an endless plain, the rivers of which prevented them from living closely together, the forests and lakes of the plains made it difficult for them to settle in new places, among their neighbors who were of different origins and less developed, who not only had no virtues worth learning from, but who often fought against them, who were in a deserted and unexplored territory whose past had not left them any equipment and cultural heritage, Not even a single ruin remained, only countless desolate graves, scattered across the Russian land, with steppes and forests everywhere. These primitive living conditions of the Rosslavs determined that their development was relatively slow and their social structure was relatively simple, and at the same time determined the great uniqueness of this development and this social structure. To give another example, the whole history of India is a history of being conquered again and again. The Arabs, Turks, Tatars, and Mughals invaded India successively, but all of them were Indianized because they were all "savage conquerors" and were not as civilized as India and were assimilated by Indian civilization. Thus, in the history of mankind, there have often been culturally backward peoples who conquered culturally advanced peoples, and then these backward peoples were assimilated. The British conquest of India was an exception: the Britons were the first conquerors to be more civilized than India and therefore not affected by Indian civilization. They destroyed the civilization of India by destroying the local communes, destroying the local industries, razing everything great and noble in the local society. The history of their rule in India is hard to say anything other than destruction. India's repeated conquests, both by low-civilization and by high-civilization peoples, provide a typical example of human history. What does this show about the relevance of Indian civilization to repeated conquests? (ii) On the question of human rights and equality in the history of mankind According to Marxist theory, the Germanic rampant in Western Europe gradually established an unprecedentedly complex social and political hierarchy, eliminated all notions of equality over the centuries, and for the first time created a solid cultural zone in Western and Central Europe, which involved it in the movement of history, and here "for the first time established a system of mutually influencing and guarding against each other, mainly nation-states." This has prepared a basis on which it will be possible to speak of human equality and human rights only on this basis". This shows that the issue of equality and human rights is conditional, first, the formation of a solid cultural region; The second is the establishment of the nation-state system. Since people no longer live in a world empire like the Roman Empire, but in a system of independent states that interact with each other on an equal footing and are at about the same stage of bourgeois development, it is natural that this demand acquires a universal character beyond the boundaries of individual states, and liberty and equality are naturally proclaimed human rights. The peculiar bourgeois nature of this human right is typified by the U.S. Constitution, which was the first to recognize human rights while affirming the slavery of people of color that existed in the United States: class privileges were not protected by law, and racial privileges were sacred. In addition to the above two factors, there must be a subject that proposes equality and human rights. Within the feudal Middle Ages was born the bourgeoisie, destined to be the representative of the modern demand for equality. In late medieval Europe, where economic relations demanded freedom and equal rights, the feudal political system confronted it with guild restraints and privileges at every step. In this way, the economic progress of society requires the liberation of feudal shackles and the establishment of equality of rights through the elimination of inequality. But from the time of the medieval hierarchy to the modern class, the bourgeoisie was inevitably accompanied by its shadow, the proletariat, and the bourgeoisie's demand for equality was accompanied by the proletariat's demand for equality. According to the Marxist point of view, the concept of equality, whether in the form of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, is itself a product of history, and the formation of this concept requires certain historical conditions, which in turn presuppose a long period of past history. Therefore, such a concept of equality says that it can do anything, but it cannot be said that it is an eternal truth. Marxism and Dühring had a heated debate on the question of equality. Dühring once said that it is a fundamental principle of all national law that the people should have a king to protect their freedom, not to destroy it. Engels retorted that these kings must become the oppressors of the people, so that the inequality at the peak is once again transformed into its opposite, the cause of equality: everyone is equal before the tyrant, that is, everyone is equal to zero. Dühring also has the idea that here is the culmination of an inequality, the end of a closed circle, which meets the starting point from which we depart: here all individuals are equal, precisely because they are nothing, and the subjects have no other law than the will of the sovereign. A tyrant is a monarch only when he has violence, and now violence overthrows him again, and everything goes according to its own normal natural course. Engels criticized that inequality is transformed again into equality, but not into the old spontaneous equality of primitive man without language, but into the equality of a higher social contract. The oppressor is oppressed, this is the negation of negation. (3) On the question of the contingency and inevitability of history, Engels gave a definition of history: "Regardless of the outcome of history, people always create their history by each person pursuing his own consciously intended ends, and the combined force of these many desires to move in different directions and their various effects on the external world is history." "The certainty of human history predestined the existence of human history, which involves the question of the contingency and inevitability of human history. To be clear, in the process of "formation" of history, human society encounters many accidents in the practice of history, and many major events in human history are manifested in ways that seem to be accidental. Engels said: "In nature, it is precisely those laws of dialectical motion that have historically governed events that seem to be fortuitous events, that also come into play in innumerable intricate changes; These laws are also permeated throughout the history of the human mind, and they are gradually being realized by those who think. However, when the facts caused by these "accidents" become the state of history that has been practiced and completed, the facts caused by "accidents" become the existence of history, and the characteristics of "accidents" in the process of historical "formation" are lost. The more obvious and abrupt these "accidents" of human history are, the greater the stimulation they will bring to future generations, and the more they will be unconvinced by the historical existence caused by "accidents", and the more unconsciously they will put forward some "assumptions" in order to eliminate "accidentality" from the established historical existence, inject "inevitability" and "rationality" into history, and "rewrite" history, so as to make historical existence more "pleasing to the eye", more "reasonable", and more "inevitable". But all this is in vain, history cannot be changed, and naturally it cannot be "beautified" or "scandalized". In the academic history of human history research, history is cut - beautified or scandalized - in the end, it is washed away by the inherent "cleaning agent" of history, and the true face of history is still there. According to Marxism, "people make their own history, but they do not create it as they please, not under conditions of their own choosing, but under conditions that they encounter directly, that they have established, that they have inherited from the past." In expounding this viewpoint, Engels emphasized two important aspects: First, people create their own history, but in the established environment that restricts them, it is created on the basis of existing real relations, in which economic relations are of decisive significance, which "constitutes a red line that runs through and is the only one that contributes to understanding". Marxism holds that "the course of history is governed by the general laws of the interior", and on the surface it seems that chance governs cooperation, but the conflict of numerous individual wishes and individual actions creates in the field of history a situation that is exactly similar to the dominant situation in unconscious nature, where the purpose of action is expected but the result of action is not expected, so that historical events seem to be in general governed by chance as well. But it is ostensibly where chance comes into play, and this contingency is always governed by hidden laws within, and the problem is only to discover them. The second is that "people make their own history, but until now they have not made their own history according to a common will, according to a common plan, or even within a given society with clear boundaries." Their intentions are intertwined, and for this reason it is the necessity that complements and manifests itself by chance that reigns in all such societies. The inevitability of forging one's own path here through all sorts of contingencies is, in the final analysis, still an economic necessity." Marx and Engels revealed the general laws of the historical development of mankind, demonstrated the historical inevitability of communism replacing capitalism, and put forward the historical task of the proletariat. "For the practical materialist," they point out, "the whole problem is to revolutionize the existing world, to actually oppose and change what exists. "Communism is empirically possible only if the simultaneous actions of the dominant peoples "all at once" presuppose the general development of the productive forces and the intercourse of the world connected with it. V. The Historical Trend of Human Development and Its Historical Logic (1) The Significance of the Transformation of History into World HistoryMarx and Engels put forward the thesis of "the transformation of history into world history" when expounding human history. For example, with the development of the productive forces, people's existence is a world-historical existence, not a regional existence, a regional individual is replaced by a world-historical experience-universal individual, and people's labor and employment conditions are premised on the existence of a "world market", and so on. All of this indicates that human history has entered a period of close interconnectedness around the world. This period is the period of capitalism. They also examine the entry of human history into a period of "world history" in relation to the proletariat and communism: the proletariat can exist only in the sense of world history, just as communism – its cause – is possible only as a "world historical" existence. And the world-historical existence of each individual is the existence of each individual who is directly related to the history of the world. They stressed that the creation of a new society in the future "is premised on the tremendous growth and high development of the productive forces," and that communism will eliminate the restrictions caused by the old division of labor, remove the fixation of social activities, and enable each individual's talents to develop freely and comprehensively, form their own joint forces, and enable a single person to get rid of all kinds of national, geographical, occupational, and identity restrictions, and truly liberate himself in the process of "completely transforming history into world history." This shows that the development of human history to the period of world history has provided a worldwide material, spatial and historical basis for the emergence and development of the proletariat. The existence of each person is transformed into the existence of individual people who are directly connected to the history of the world. The transformation of history into world history is a completely material process. Marx and Engels said in "The German Ideology" that the more the sphere of activity of the various mutual influences expands in this process of development, and the more completely the primitive closed state of the nations is eliminated by the increasingly perfect mode of production, intercourse, and the division of labor between different nationalities naturally formed by intercourse, the more history becomes world history. …… The transformation of history into world history is not some purely abstract action of "self-consciousness", of the spirit of the world, or of some metaphysical specter, but of an entirely material, empirically demonstrable action that can be attested to by every individual who lives a real life and needs to eat, drink, and clothe. …… The degree of emancipation of each individual is commensurate with the degree to which history has been completely transformed into world history. Marx said: "The history of the world does not always exist in the past; History as the history of the world is the result. "How to understand the complete transformation of history into world history"? From the perspective of the theoretical system of Marxism, classic writers divide human history into two stages and periods: "history" and "world history". "History" obviously refers to the history of peoples, nations, and regions; "World history" refers to the history of the world, the history of the world, the history of "world-historical events". In the author's view, the concept of "human history" used by classic writers is basically the same as the concept of "world history" that is now commonly used on the mainland, and the concept of "world history" used by classic writers is similar to the concept of "global history" that is popular now, which coincides with the period of modern world history and modern history research. Because the concept of "world history" of Marx and Engels refers to the history of the capitalist period and beyond, that is, it includes the socialist movement in the capitalist period and the communist period. This shows in reverse that there was no "world history" before the capitalist period. Therefore, the author believes that the "history" and "world history" of Marx and Engels are the history of mankind when combined. (2) Looking at the historical trend of human historical development from the Marxist theory of negation of negationMarxism argues from the depths of history the historical evolution process of the negation of civilization, and all civilized nations start from the public ownership of land, and all civilized nations enter history together with the clan communes that practice public ownership of land or with its very obvious remnants. But in the course of agricultural development, in the course of agricultural development, however, all nations that have gone through a certain primitive stage have become the shackles of production, and thus it has been abolished and denied, and transformed into private ownership. However, at the higher stage of agricultural development brought about by the private ownership of land itself, private ownership has in turn become a shackle to production, and therefore there will inevitably be a demand for the same negation of private ownership and its re-transformation into public ownership, but this is not to re-establish the original public ownership, but to establish a much more advanced and developed form of common ownership, which will free production from the shackles and make the full use of modern chemical discoveries and mechanical inventions in production. The Marxist theory of negation of negation reveals the certainty of human history, especially the principle of negation of the negation of the capitalist mode of production manifested by the capitalist mode of production in the period of bourgeois history when Marxist human history has developed to the stage of "world history", that is, the certainty of human history that the capitalist system is advanced relative to the feudal system and the capitalist system is bound to perish relative to the communist system. Marx and Engels clearly pointed out that "the bourgeoisie has played a very revolutionary role in history. The bourgeoisie has destroyed all feudal, patriarchal and idyllic relations where it has gained domination. …… It replaces exploitation concealed by religious and political fantasies with open, shameless, direct, blatant exploitation". The bourgeois epoch differs from all previous epochs in the constant transformation of production, and all social conditions are constantly in turmoil, in perpetual instability and change: the bourgeoisie, thanks to the rapid improvement of all the means of production, and because of the extreme convenience of transportation, has drawn all nations, even the most barbarous, into civilization. The low price of its commodities is the heavy artillery it uses to destroy all the Great Wall and conquer the most tenacious xenophobia of the barbarians. It compels all nations, if they do not wish to perish, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; It forces them to impose on themselves the so-called civilization, that is, to become bourgeoisie. In a word, it creates a world for itself in its own image. …… It subordinates the uncivilized and semi-civilized nations to the civilized nations, the peasant nations to the bourgeois nations, and the East to the West. …… The bourgeoisie has created more productive forces in less than a hundred years of its class rule than all previous generations. Marxism believes that capitalism was formed in feudal society, but the feudal social system could no longer accommodate the productive forces of capitalism, so it was destroyed by capitalism. However, capitalism from the day it was created with serious drawbacks, periodic economic crises, manifested as a social plague of overproduction, in which society suddenly found itself in a state of temporary barbarism. This shows that the productive forces possessed by society can no longer promote the development of bourgeois civilization and bourgeois ownership relations. The relations of the bourgeoisie are too narrow to accommodate the wealth it has created. The weapon used by the bourgeoisie to overthrow feudalism is now aimed at the bourgeoisie itself. The bourgeoisie has not only forged the weapon of its own death, but has also produced the people who will wield it—the proletarians. This is the case in human history, the capitalist system negates the feudal system and forms historical progress, but the bourgeoisie also creates its own antagonist and gravedigger - the proletariat. The mission of the proletariat is the historical negation of the bourgeoisie. From the point of view of the certainty of the development of human history in Marxism, capitalism has fulfilled the task of destroying the feudal system relatively well, has the progressive nature of history, and has pushed human history to the stage of world history, but capitalism cannot solve the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, and capitalism has laid the material foundation for socialism that has replaced itself: the bourgeois historical period has the mission of creating a material foundation for the new world: on the one hand, it is necessary to create universal exchanges based on the interdependence of all mankind, and the means of doing so; On the other hand, it is necessary to develop the productive forces of man and turn material production into a scientific domination of the forces of nature. Bourgeois industry and commerce are creating these material conditions for the new world, just as geological changes have created the earth's surface. Only when the great social revolution dominates the fruits of the bourgeois epoch, dominates the world market and the modern productive forces, and subordinates all this to the common supervision of the most advanced nations, will the progress of mankind cease to be like the terrible pagan gods, where the sweet syrup can only be drunk by making cups of the heads of the slain. Socialism cannot emerge from within the feudal system like capitalism, and socialism must realize its historical mission with the help of the "world history" trend initiated by capitalism. The socialist system is a historical negation of the capitalist system. Therefore, when we talk about the capitalist system and the socialist system, we cannot regard the two as a juxtaposed relationship, but a relationship that replaces the one that is replaced, negated and negated, and the communist society is a higher social form that surpasses the capitalist society. But human history has twists and turns. Socialism did not begin at the developed end of Britain, France, and Germany as conceived by Marxism, but from the poor and backward Russia. Lenin developed Marxism, revealed the law of imbalance in the political and economic development of imperialism, and foresaw that socialism would be able to make a breakthrough in the weakest link in the imperialist world chain. Russia is in this position. Lenin promoted the socialist revolution in Russia under the guidance of the idea of "world revolution". According to Lenin's vision, the victory of the Russian Revolution would lead to the explosion of the European Revolution, and the outbreak of the Anglo-French-German socialist revolution would greatly help the Russian Revolution, and Russia would change from the vanguard of the revolution to a follower. But the European revolution did not succeed as Lenin had envisioned, and Russia was faced with the task of building socialism on its own. As a result, one of the most important theoretical and practical questions in the history of mankind has arisen: Can poor and backward countries build socialism? In the light of the profound changes in the international situation, Lenin changed the idea of "world revolution" and put forward an important theoretical thesis that Russia could build socialism. Lenin's idea was that under the Soviet power, Russia would be able to change its poverty and backwardness, develop its productive forces, achieve higher labor productivity than capitalism, and be able to build the highly developed material and social conditions necessary for socialism, change the wartime communist policy into a new economic policy, introduce a grain tax, consolidate the workers' and peasants' alliances that had already cracked, and carry out economic and trade cooperation with the capitalist countries. History has proved that Lenin's theory and practice were very successful and of great world significance and of great practical significance to the international communist movement. The major theoretical and practical problem lies in the fact that socialism, as the initial stage of communism, should surpass capitalism in the level of development of the productive forces, but because socialism has won victories and carried out socialist construction in economically underdeveloped countries, there has been a realistic "difference" in the degree of economic development of socialist countries that is not as good as that of developed countries. For the socialist countries, the whole key question is how to achieve rapid development of the productive forces under the leadership of the proletarian party and achieve higher labor productivity than capitalism. There are two very important paths here, one is to use the cultural heritage of capitalism. Lenin said: We cannot build socialism without the heritage of capitalist culture. There is nothing else to build communism except what capitalism has bequeathed to us. …… If you could not use the materials left to us by the bourgeois world to build the edifice, you would not have been able to build it at all, and you would not be communists, but empty talkers. To carry out socialist construction, it is necessary to make full use of science, technology and everything that capitalist Russia has left us. Lenin put forward a famous "formula": "Be happy to absorb the good things of foreign countries: Soviet power + Prussian railway order + American technology and trust organization + American national education and so on and so forth." This is the basic principle of Lenin's NEP. In 1985, Deng Xiaoping said: "The Soviet Union has been working on socialism for many years, but it has not fully figured it out. Maybe Lenin had a better idea and made a new economic policy, but then the Soviet model became ossified. This shows that Deng Xiaoping has a very positive position on Lenin's New Economic Policy thinking. Second, it is necessary to integrate the basic principles of Marxism with national characteristics. Lenin placed great emphasis on the question of building socialism with Russian characteristics. Mao Zedong said: "The experience of the Soviet Union can only be to choose those who are good and follow it, and those who are not good to follow it." Two ways to compare everything must be proposed, and this is the dialectic. "The revolutionary spirit should be unified with the practical spirit, and the revolutionary fervor of Russia should be unified with the actual spirit of the United States." At present, General Secretary Xi Jinping has put forward the theory of "two combinations", which is a theoretical innovation in the theory and practice of socialism in the new historical stage. (3) The Historical Path of World History ResearchWe should study human history, especially the laws of development of world history, under the guidance of Marxist historical materialism, and enhance our ability to use Marxist historical materialism to distinguish right from wrong. To give an example, the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the most important historical events of the 20th century and fell under the category of certainty in human history. How do you view such a historical event that has had a great impact on human society and the contemporary world? What were the reasons for the collapse of the USSR? After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the mainstream of Russian thought and historiography did not answer this question with wisdom. There is an opinion in the Russian philosophical and social science circles that it was Gorbachev who brought down the Soviet Union, and that Gorbachev was a great traitor who betrayed the Soviet Union. The views of Russian scholars based on such non-serious research have actually been recognized by some people in mainland academic circles. This shows that the academic circles of world history on the mainland need to seriously reflect on their own level of Marxist theory. As a matter of fact, such a seemingly correct viewpoint is in fact very wrong, and Engels has long been liquidated. In his study of the reasons for the inevitable outbreak and inevitable defeat of the German Revolution, he made it clear that these causes should not be found in the accidental motives, strengths, shortcomings, mistakes or defects of some leaders, but in the general social conditions and living conditions of every country that had experienced upheaval. The sudden outbreak of movement in February and March 1848 was not the result of individual activity, but a spontaneous and irrepressible expression of national demands and needs, which were clearly felt by the various classes in every country, though in different degrees. This is already a well-established fact. And whenever asked about the reasons for the success of the counter-revolution, a ready-made answer is heard everywhere: because this gentleman or that citizen "betrayed" the people. This answer may be correct or wrong in the context of the situation, but in any case, it does not say anything. It is not even possible to explain how the "people" could have allowed others to betray themselves. Moreover, if the whole capital of a political party is to know that so-and-so citizens are unreliable, then its future is too sad. It is understandable that the Russian academic circles should look for who had "betrayed" the Soviet Union, because Russia no longer regards Marxism as its guiding ideology, but the world history circles on the mainland should not arbitrarily accept the viewpoint that has been openly liquidated by the classic writers, but should seriously read the works of the classic writers, or at least the main works of the classic writers. According to the Marxist materialist view of history, the causes of the drastic changes and disintegration of the Soviet Union should be found in the "general social conditions and living conditions" of the Soviet Union, and that "not so much the motives of individual figures, even the most outstanding ones, are the motives that make the broad masses, the whole nation, and, in the midst of each nation, the whole class act; And it is not a fleeting burst and a fleeting fire, but a long-lasting action that causes major historical changes". Exploring the dynamics of the masses and the minds of the leaders "is the only way that can lead us to explore the laws that have governed the history of the whole of history and of individual periods and individual nations".
[Xing Guangcheng: Member of the Chang'an Street Reading Club, Member of the Faculty of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences]
Note: Authorized to publish, this article has been selected and included in the "Chang'an Street Reading Club" theoretical learning platform (People's Daily, People's Political Consultative Conference Daily, Beijing Daily, Chongqing Daily, Xinhuanet, CCTV, National Party Media Information Public Platform, Vision, Beijing Time, Surging Government Affairs, Phoenix News Client "Chang'an Street Reading Club" column synchronization), reprinting must be uniformly marked "Chang'an Street Reading Club" theoretical learning platform source and author.
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