A Study Of The Category Of Karl Marx’s Capitalists

Capitalists have had an important impact on human social life since they stepped on the stage of social history.In the process of criticizing capitalist society,Karl Marx paid in-depth attention to and studied the capitalist phenomenon,and constructed a unique category of capitalists in theory.Marx’s construction of the category of capitalists not only reproduces the connection and operation mode of capitalists’ economic activities such as production,exchange,distribution and consumption through logic,like the traditional economists,but also consciously reflects and investigates the essential attributes,generation conditions,social functions and historical outcomes of capitalists,which has typical philosophical characteristics.Marx’s capitalist category should be interpreted from the perspective of economic philosophy.The capitalist category constructed by Marx has profound social and ideological history background.From the perspective of social history,the scientific and technological progress and industrial revolution in Europe in the 19 th century promoted the rapid development of social productive forces,and the capitalist-dominated wage-labor relations of production not only prevailed in Europe,but also gradually expanded to other parts of the world.The contradiction between the socialization of production and the private ownership of production means became more acute.The proletariat,as the opposite of the capitalist class,started a conscious struggle against the capitalist class.This required a unified critique of philosophy and political economy on capitalist phenomenon in theory.From the perspective of the development of ideological history,the achievements of German classical philosophy,British classical political economy,utopian socialism,modern humanistic literature and other fields provided rich ideological resources for Marx to construct the category of capitalists as theoretical elements in practical construction.The process of Marx’s construction of the capitalist category can be divided into three historical periods: the formation period in the1840 s,the maturity period in the 1850 s and 1860 s,and the new development period of the category after the 1870 s.Marx re-examined the essence of capital and human from the perspective of social relations and drew the conclusion that capital is not material in nature but rather a kind of social relationship in a special historical stage.Human essence is the sum of all kinds of social relations in reality.Capitalists are essentially those who regard capital relations as the person of all social relations,which is the unity of capital personification and human capitalization.As the personification of capital,capitalists produce,realize and possess surplus value through wage labor.As human capitalization,the pursuit of surplus value has become the only purpose and content of capitalist activities,resulting in alienated labor,commodity fetishism,currency fetishism and capital fetishism.Marx believed that capitalists are not natural products,but the products of certain historical periods and conditions.Through the philosophical analysis framework of the dialectical relationship between subject,object and the two,the mystery of the formation of capitalists was uncovered.Through primitive accumulation,capitalists create two historical conditions for primitive generation,that is,free workers who lose means of production and can freely sell labor,and money holders who own means of production in the form of money and control laborers in the form of wage labor.Through the gradual development of hierarchical capital and commercial capital to industrial capital,capitalists transformed to modern capitalists who exclusively rely on hired labor to occupy surplus value,that is,to complete the generation in reality.Capitalists continue to maintain and create new conditions for capital transformation,and ensure the production and realization of surplus value,and realize the continuous generation of capital as capitalists through the endogenous mechanism of socialized generation and the external mechanism such as national legal power and ideology.Marx applied dialectical materialism and historical materialism to objectively evaluate the historical function of capitalists from three dimensions.From the dimension of productivity,the capitalists’ pursuit of surplus value leads to the continuous expansion of commodity generation and the continuous shrinking purchasing power of workers,resulting in periodic economic crisis and the damage of social productivity.At the same time,capitalists prospered commodity economy,promoted technological innovation and continuously expanded production,which created material premises for the future society.From the dimension of human development,capitalist activities cause human alienation,while these provide individuals with the possibility of development in personal freedom,production freedom,consumption freedom,time freedom,ideological freedom and so on.From the dimension of world history,capitalists have destroyed the modes of production,living conditions and original cultures of countries and nations with pre-capitalist forms of production.Meanwhile,it has objectively promoted the improvement of world productivity,enriched the content of human exchanges,strengthened the consciousness of human destiny community,and served an unconscious tool of world history.Marx further investigated the interpersonal imbalance and the incongruity between man and nature caused by capitalists.Based on the basic principles of humanized dialectics of nature and historical materialism,he pointed out that the social and historical destination of capitalists is to realize the “two reconciliations” between man and nature and between man and man,that is,to enter communism.Capitalists cannot achieve reconciliation by sublating themselves.Marx also proposed that the inevitable way to sublate capitalists from three aspects: developing productive forces,rebuilding individual ownership and taking realistic actions by the proletariat.The capitalist category constructed by Marx still has important enlightenment significance to the contemporary world.Firstly,we should strengthen the discipline integration of Marxist political economy and Marxist philosophy,jointly restore and carry forward the tradition of Marxist economic philosophy,and constantly explore a new realm of Marxist political economy in contemporary China.Secondly,while controlling capital’s disorderly expansion,we should adopt flexible strategies to give full play to the constructive role of capitalists and capital,and further develop social productive forces.Thirdly,we should promote all mankind to jointly face the problem of modernity brought about by capitalist activities,carry forward contemporary Marxism,unite consensus of all mankind,and make unremitting efforts to build a real community with a shared future for mankind.