Hajime KAWAKAMI's Socialist Ideology

From the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, with the establishment and development of capitalism ,the socialist ideas were quite active in Japan. Among the various socialist schools of thought, Marx's scientific socialism were gradually introduced by Japanese through the scholars'in-depth research to Das Kapital. Among these scholars, as an economist, Hajime Kawakami occupies an important position in the history of thought in Japan for the study and dissemination of Marxism. He had experienced a long and tortuous history of ideas to pursue the Marxism. Mutations in modern Japanese society makes a change of Hajime Kawakami from the "moral theory" to the "theory of Revolution" ultimately. From the view of the revolutionary Marxist, the humanitarian ethics is weak in a certain sense, and hypocritical. However, his life has always retained a humanitarian tendencies.From the understanding of socialism by Hajime Kawakami, human's inner spiritual world always causes his attention. To some extent, this has affected Hajime Kawakami to understand the historical materialism. Even he fully accepted Marx's materialist view of history finally, but also for the human moral considerations. For this reason, one hand comes from the impact of Chinese classical thought by Confucianism; the other hand stems from the religious belief in the moral requirements of altruism. These had been reflected most obvious in Kawakami's economic study, which is just the process of his study from Adam Smith to Marx.This paper will be written on Hajime Kawakami's research in historical materialism and political economy, describing his understanding of scientific socialism. Then, it will disscuss his ideal of scientific socialism from the ethics of Confucianism and religion. As human society is evolving, is it enough to reconstruct the society only on the aspects of economy? How important are the existence of human morality and ethics in the community? At different times, morality and revolution have different focus, however, ultimately, both of them are developed from the concern for human self-development. Collectively, this paper wants to ponder over the balance between moral and social development through understanding the socialist ideology of Hajime Kawakami's.