Influence Of Ure’s Philosophy Of Manufacturers On The Development Of Marx’s Philosophy

In Marx’s theory, German Classic Philosopher Hegel、Feuerbach, and British politic economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo are those who usually catch the public attention. In domestic academic circle, however, a person has long been neglected. He is Andrew Ure, a British factory philosophy and chemist. His masterpiece Philosophy of manufactures started the study of the capitalism machine industry. He built a brand-new world view from a ontology perspective, which laid the solid foundation for manufacture and the study of objective rule of the whole world.It is an important changing point. Based on what the author previously found, the change of Marxism from its early focus on human to the later focus on the internal conflict of capitalist manufacture is greatly influenced by Ure. Ure’s theory played a significant role in Marx’s works in his late years. Marx took note of Ure’s works in his Briisseler Hefte and since then, Ure’s theory can always been sensed in Marx’s works. Marx quoted in large parts of Ure’s Philosophy of manufactures in his The economic manuscripts of 1861-1863 and Das Kapital and thus this book is said to hugely influence Marx’s philosophy. However, it took Marx quite a long time from the understanding of this book to the acceptance and transcendence of it. He could not see the depth of this philosophy when his own theory was not as developed. With the deepening of Marx’s study of economics, he started to grasp the hidden meaning. It was when he started his works of Das Kapital that he truly understood and surpassed Ure.The first chapter addresses several representative ideas of the characteristics of capital ism from the western academia at that time. This chapter is to explore the influence of political economists Smith and Ricardo before Ure, and of his contemporaries Babba ge and Schultz on Marx. By analyzing the original background, this chapter will give a precise view of Ure’s theoretical orientation based on the intellectual history.In the chapter 2, the author analyzes Marx’s interpretation in 1844-1847 about Ure. In this chapter, at first the author analyzes Engels’s opinion of criticism to Ure’s bourgeois position in his writings British working class status;then the author introduces explicitly the extract content about Ure’s Philosophy of manufactures in Marx’s writings Brusseler Hefte according to the original text of MEGA2,we could find Marx’s thoughts from the extract content in this period; and then the author analyzes Marx’s against the theory of Friedrich List based on the theory of Ure in his writings Draft of an Article on Friedrich List’s Book; and then discusses the reason about Ure’s deficiency in his writings German Ideology; at last, the author analyzes Marx’s theory of Proudhon based on the theory of Ure in his writings Poverty of Philosophy.In the Chapter 3,this thesis explores Marx’s continuation and development of the thinking of Ure from 1848 to 1858. Marx’s thinking was changed by the Revolutions of 1848. Such changing was expressed in a lot of works of Marx such as The Communist Manifesto, The French class struggle between 1848 and 1850 and the 18th of the Foggy Month in Lewis Bonaba. And then Marx turned to some research about Economics and wrote a lot of notes named Londoner Hefte. In this period, Marx repeatedly concerned over Ure and extracted some relevant content from Ure’s A Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures and Mines. This research promoted the development of Marx’s philosophical thinking, which came through his writing in the Economics Manuscript in 1857-1858. Although Marx only made some reference to Ure once, Marx had understood and even transcended Ure about this time.Chapt 4 shows further study in Marx’s for Ure’s theory transcendence in the economic manuscripts of 1861-1863 and Das capital.In particular,Marx surpassed Ure’s theory in four aspects.First,Marx surpassed Ure’s theory in the understanding of the machine industry.Marx distinguished the differences between the handicraft manufacture.Second,Marx surpassed Ure’s theory in the analysis of the machine industry.Marx distinguished the differences between the handicraft manufacture and the machine industry as well as labor division.Third,Marx criticized Ure’s capitalist system.From the perspective of capitalist objective internal contradictions to completed the analysis of the capitalism internal mechanism.Fourth,Marx criticized Ure’s bourgeois ideology theory.In the understanding and transcending of Ure’s theory, Marx finally finished the accurate analysis of the capitalism machine industry and discovered the internal conflict of capitalist society.