Historical Interpretation Of Marx 's Labor Thought

Exploring the meaning of life and human freedom, equality, liberation is the eternal pursuit of mankind. In ancient Greece, the sages hope to get the significance of life and build an ideal world through meditation. In the middle ages, people began to hope that the belief in God can save evil soul and gain eternal life. With the Martin Luther’s religious reform and the rise of capitalism germination, secular life gradually gets rid of the yoke of Christianity and unfolding in people’s vision. Enlightenment thinkers represented by Descartes quickly established the rational authority, high up the banner of freedom, equality and liberation. However, even after the baptism of the Enlightenment and the bourgeois revolution, human freedom, equality and liberation still seems to be a distant dream in modern capitalist society reality.What is the reason? Since the ancient times, the pursuit of the meaning of life and the liberation of the people seems to always hovering in spiritual activities, which include meditation, faith and reason. But the labor of material production, as an old and basic activity, has never been attracted people’s attention. People can’t imagine the meaning of life and the freedom and liberation of human being can found in the humble and hard productive labor. However, Marx discovered it. He pointed out that labor creates human beings and decides the nature of human beings and only through the labor human liberation and freedom is possible. But the true spirit of the thoughts has been eclipsed in modern interpretation for a long time. People often misunderstand that Marx is a mechanical determinism of history, claim that the historical materialism and the surplus value theory as the core of Marx theories have been out of date. The fundamental reason is that people don’t read the Marx’s labor thought as a whole and with a history way.When we view Marx’s thought of labor and grasp the true meaning and essential spirit of Marx’s labor thought in the overall perspective of human history, we will find that Marx’s labor thought is a product of the era. The rapid raise of the labor productivity brought by capitalist industrial revolution enable people to see the great creativity and power of human labor firstly, the continuous development of the labor movements make people begun to pay attention to the rights of the worker class and the increasingly sharp class contradictions, gradually found that the distortion of the civilsociety and political country split. Many thinkers have studied and explored these social phenomena. Through the research of the capitalist economic relationship, the classical national economists put forward a more perfect theory of labor value, for the capitalist social reality of the lack of enlightenment Hegel constructs the moral state which can achieve the unity of the individual and the class through the spirit active labor. Marx’s labor theory is based on the absorption of the essence of the predecessors, and it is also closely related to Marx’s own theoretical attainments, life circumstances and class position. Similarly, in order to clarify Marx’s labor thought, first of all, we must define the connotation and extension of concepts of labor in Marx’s text works. Only in modern times, the concept of labor has the general meaning of labor which abstracts from all kinds of concrete labors. Historically, the concepts of labor and production,practice and work are both different and related, with the historical changes of these concepts as the path to describe the basic features of the history of human labor. it is helpful for us to clarify the real means of labor category in different contexts in Marx’s text. On the basis of this, from the three perspectives of labor and human, labor and social, labor and history, the interpretation of the theoretical connotation of Marx’s labor theory is more comprehensive.From the perspective of Marx’s history of labor development, we can see that Marx’s labor theory originates from the contradiction between the social reality of backward Germany at that time and the freedom and equality which is called by the Enlightenment Rationality, its temporary lodging is to achieve freedom, equality and human liberation. The condemnation and revelation of labor alienation phenomenon and materialization reality of capitalist society is to called for the proletariat to overthrow the society which is full of exploitation and oppression. The analysis and exposition of duality of labor and surplus value theory is to prove the cruel exploitation of capital to labor of capitalist society and to find the reality path which can overthrow capitalist society and realize true human liberation.In general, Marx’s labor thought not only inherited and absorb the strong historical sense and dialectical outlook of Hegel’s philosophy thinking mode, but also absorb the traditional materialism which is face to the reality and empirical and experienced demonstration method of Economics in national political economics. Thus Marx established a dialectical and materialistic labor theory which is suitable for the truereality. And due to the collection of all western excellent spiritual and cultural resources and the representative of advanced proletarian interests, Marx’s labor theory has the incomparable theoretical characteristics. It is a whole theory. It has a strong sense of history and dialectical way of thinking. It is the unity of truth and value.