The Capital And The Modern Society

Based on Marx’s Economic Manuscript of1857-1858, this thesis attempts to analyze the inner relation between capital and modern society. It shows that a series of problems about the formation and development of modern society are closely related to capital movement from the perspective of relation between capital and labor relations. Although modern society is embodied in abundance and governance of commodity, and social development is represented as appearance of commodity fetishism, what lies behind the appearance is the role played by capital. Pursuing surplus value is the interior momentum of capital movement, which promotes the formation and development of modern society. In order to realize the multiplication of it, capital is depending on the development of productivity on the one hand, and vigorously advances the development of productivity on the other hand. In the process of pursuing surplus value, capital is automatically playing a role of promoting social progress. Modern society is established and developed with the movement of capital itself. At the same time, many problems caused by modern society come out in the development of capital.Many problems produced in the development of modern society are due to intrinsic limits of capital. These limits of capital are a kind of representational form of capital, and they also constitute the internal contradiction of capital. The erupting of economic crisis is an explosive manifestation of the limits. Economic crisis will not make Capitalist society collapse immediately, but the limits of capital will eventually lead to sublation of capital. Thus, it is of great important significance for us to understand modernity and the relation of social economic development to the development of human beings in contemporary China if we understand capital correctly.As a whole, this dissertation is divided into five chapters. The first chapter starts with the perspective of turning of Marx’s political economic critiques, and indicates that although commodity possesses a dominant place in modern society, and even a trend of "everything commercialized" is emerging, the leading part behind this trend is play by capital, in fact. Capital is a key of understanding modern society which is a society developed on the basis of market economy. There is no modern society without market economy. While capital is the foundation and core of market economy, and the main body of market competition and production, we cannot understand market economy and modern society without capital.The second chapter begins with the theory of historic materialism, and mainly refutes capital perpatualism. It shows that capital is a process of historic development, and capital, exchange and money compose three premises of market economy, in which capital is primary. Capital is a kind of social relation grounded on employed labor with respect to its essence.The third chapter starts with the perspective of capital pursuing self-multiplication, and shows that the formation and development of modern society is grounded on capital movement. The source and main drive of modern social economic development is that capital is pursuing surplus value. However, the realization of surplus value of capital must rely on currency and market. Therefore, capital is necessarily looking for market, and world market is an importance trend of self-development of capital. As for the notion of capital,"world market" is embedded in it.The fourth chapter analyzes the intrinsic limits of capital, and shows that the intrinsic limits result in such a lot of serious problems in modern society. Capital movement promotes economic development, but it cannot resolve the problems of all-around development of human beings and social harmony and can’t conquer economic crisis and financial crisis as well. According to Marx, capital should be sublated. The intrinsic limits of capital are inherent in it, and capital should be sublated in virtue of violence. Marx conceived of two ways of sublating capital:"positive sublation" which is establishing factories, and "negative sublation" which is establishing stock company.The fifth chapter points out that Marx’s analysis of capital still has great life force in contemporary China. With constructing socialist market economy nowadays, how to understand and deal with capital become the problems we should resolve above all. Since the reform and opening for more than thirty years, the development of China benefits from adhering to market economy, which is as the result of committing to capital and developing capital essentially. At the same time, many worse problems such as polarizing and ecological deterioration challenge us. Hence, our socialist market economy construction ought to treat the relation to capital correctly and make government play a right role. Given the relation between capital and modern world, we should structure a new system for international political and economic, and resist the abusing of capital principle among nations.