Marx's biographical image construction and paradigm shift

Generally speaking, Marx's biography has undergone a development process from "fragmentary biographical articles" to "systematic Marx biographical writings", from "the authoritative construction paradigm of classical writers" to "the diversified construction pattern of scholars in various countries", from "Marx who sanctified/demonized the poles" to "Marx who was academically/objectively restored". These three veins are not strictly arranged in chronological order of writing Marx's biography, but are intertwined and overlapping with each other. In this complex process of intertwining and overlapping construction, Marx's biography can be divided into the authoritative paradigm of Marxist classic writers, the sacralization/doctrination paradigm of Soviet and Eastern scholars, the neutralization/objectification paradigm of Western scholars, and the professional/academic paradigm of contemporary Chinese scholars. These four paradigms do not refer exclusively to all biographies of Marx written by Soviets, Westerners, or Chinese in the national sense, but to different images of Marx's thought formed by special, specialized ways of studying and interpreting them.

　　Authoritative paradigm. For thinkers, the groups of texts such as works, manuscripts, notes, letters, etc. left by Marx himself are the autobiographical documents of his life. Engels, a close comrade-in-arms of Marx and co-founder of Marxism, in his later years, always wanted to write a detailed biography of Marx, but unfortunately only left three overviews, as well as speeches and some articles and prefaces to commemorate Marx's death. Although it is not a complete and systematic exposition of Marx's life and thought, it lays a solid foundation for the interpretation of Marx's life and thought. Compared with Marx and Engels, Lenin's profession and identity as a classic writer have changed. As the main leader and supreme leader of the Party, Lenin first began to lead the whole Party and the whole country to collect, sort out and publish the works of Marx and Engels on a large scale and systematically, laying a solid documentary foundation for Marx's biography. The "Karl Marx" entry he wrote for the 28th volume of the Granat Encyclopedic Dictionary not only determined the basic stages of Marx's life and activities, but also comprehensively expounded the theoretical content of Marx's doctrine and constructed the authoritative paradigm of Marx's biography of life and thought.

　　The sanctification/doctrinalization paradigm. Initiated by Lenin and further developed by Ryazanov, Kornu's highly elaborate biography of Marx pays attention to highlighting Marx's side as a great proletarian revolutionary and leader in terms of his life deeds, paying little or no attention to Marx's side as an ordinary person; in terms of textual thought, taking the "two transformations" as the clue to run through the ideological development process of young Marx, expounding Marx's writings and ideas based on the three major theoretical systems of dialectical materialism, historical materialism and scientific socialism. Specifically, there are two points: First, Marx was a perfect and always correct hero and great man; second, Marx's ideological doctrine is mainly dialectical materialism, and historical materialism is the popularization and application of dialectical materialism in the field of social history, which is absolutely correct and unquestionable. This constructive paradigm has been influencing Soviet and Eastern scholars in the second half of the 20th century, and Marx's image has become more and more sacred and doctrinal. The biography of Marx published by the East German scholar Heinrich Gamkov in 1968, the Soviet scholar Peter Fedoseev in 1973, and the biography of Marx published by Stepanova in 1978 mostly belong to this paradigm. Since Chinese Marxists are first familiar with and accept Marxism of the Soviet paradigm, most of the biographies of Marx that we have created for a long time have been influenced by this paradigm in terms of life research and text interpretation.

　　Neutralization/objectification paradigm. In the first half of the 20th century, based on the needs of the actual revolutionary struggle and different from the "sacralization/doctrination" paradigm of Soviet and Eastern scholars, most Western scholars devoted themselves to reducing Marx to "man" and advocated an objective academic attitude to study Marx. Based on the so-called "neutral", "objective", "ideological reduction", "psychoanalytic method" and other research positions and interpretation paradigms, they have constructed different images of Marx, many of which are anti-Marxists who stigmatize and demonize Marx, constituting a pattern of multiple coexistence of Marx's biographical image. Western scholars generally believe that the British liberal scholar Isaiah Berlin made Marx research begin to be respected, and his student David McClellan made Marx research popular in the West. Berlin's Karl Marx: Life and Circumstances has not only been published in five consecutive editions in the English-speaking world (1939, 1948, 1963, 1978, and 2013), but has also been translated into French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and many languages. In 1975, McClellan published the first edition of Marx's biography and the fourth edition in 2006, which is not only one of the most authoritative research documents on Marx's life and thought in the English-speaking world, but also the most widely influential biography of Marx.

　　This paradigm generally examines Marx's thought from a European perspective, pulls Marx back to its historical background and ideological context, and gives Marx a sense of reality, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. That is, to fully incorporate Marx's philosophy into the category of Western philosophy, to understand the theoretical content and spiritual essence of Marx's philosophy according to the theoretical framework and spiritual essence of Western philosophy, to deny the scientific nature of Marx's philosophical thought and the great philosophical revolution he led, and to ignore the profound impact on the pattern of world history and the future direction. In addition, although Japanese scholars attach importance to interpreting Marx's concepts and theories from the original works and texts, and shape the image of Marx's thought with Japanese cultural characteristics, most of them have not broken through the fundamental influence of Western scholars' research paradigms, such as "The Thought of Young Marx" (1968) by Noboru Shirozuka and "On Young Marx" (1971) by Hiromatsu Shigeru.

　　Specialization/Academic Paradigm. Since marx's name was introduced to China, various versions of Marx's biography have spread in China, both translated by foreign scholars and independently created by Chinese scholars. From sporadic introduction to systematic translation to the construction of Chinese scholars, from direct introduction to breaking the Soviet paradigm to forming a Chinese style, it reflects the development process of Marxism in China. Since the second half of the 20th century, the latest achievements in MEGA2's philology have submerged in the pile of old papers, both in the service of ideological and political purposes and the biographies that wantonly distort and denigrate Marx based on prejudice. A number of biographical paradigms of Marx's thought with Chinese characteristics that integrate professionalism, scholarship and ideology have emerged in China.

　　First, take Marx's philosophical revolution as the central topic to examine the biographical paradigm of Marx's ideological development. For example, "Toward the Depths of History", "Into Marx", "Obscured Marx", "Approaching Marx: The Ideological Trajectory of the Four Major Thinkers in the West after the Drastic Changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe", etc., these works either directly revolve around Marx's philosophical revolution or present the topic in the process of expounding the creation and development of Marx's materialist view of history, which greatly broadens the new horizon of Marx's thought research and deepens the study of the essence of Marx's philosophical thought. Second, a biographical paradigm that interprets and explores Marx's text as an objective object. For example, "Cleaning up and Transcending: Rereading the Meaning, Basis and Methods of Marx's Texts" and "The New Foundation of Marxism- A Methodological Introduction to the New Interpretation of Marx's Philosophy" and so on. In the study of Marx's thought, text research and version examination provide the necessary theoretical premise for handling the relationship between "text research" and "reality research" of Marx's thought, and how to maintain a reasonable tension between history and reality, academic and ideological, objective and subject. Third, around Marx's revolutionary career, highlight Marx's revolutionary activities, and combine Marx's revolutionary activities with theoretical creation. For example, "Marx and Yanni", "Marx", "Marx Biography" (multiple versions), and "Marx Painting Biography" and so on. These academic/professional Marx biographical paradigms are not only the breaking of the Soviet paradigm by contemporary Chinese scholars, but also a powerful refutation of the fundamental flaws of Western scholars, reflecting the sinicization, modernization and popularization of Marxism.

　　Marx's biographical image construction and paradigm shift profoundly reflect the influence and great contribution of Marxism on human history and thought. In the process of integrating Marxism with China's reality, Marxism has guided the Chinese people to realize the goal of standing up and getting rich to becoming strong, which proves why Marxism works. Chinese scholars should give full play to their subjectivity and provide new standards for Marx's biographical construction in the 21st century. Proceeding from reality, we not only need to respect Marx's great ideals and noble character, but also objectively understand and understand Marx himself based on reality. At the same time, we should also stand at the height of human intellectual history and comprehensively grasp Marx's ideological theory from the overall level. Based on the global vision, we must accurately and correctly understand the profound impact of Marx's thought on the historical process of the human world, and combine the most cutting-edge issues in contemporary Marxist research to describe Marx in Chinese discourse, and then promote the development of Marxism in the 21st century.

　　(This paper is a phased result of the Ministry of Education's Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Fund project "Research on Marx's 'Anthropological Notes' and Its Contemporary Values" (19YJC710022))

　　(Author Affilications:School of Marxism, Fujian Normal University)

Source: China Social Science Network - China Social Science Daily Author: Jia Xiangyun