| This paper reviews the early controversy on the relationship between Marxism and materialism, and asserts that Marxism is a kind of materialism according to Marx’s own expression. Meanwhile, this paper pays attention to the ambiguity of the term "materialism" itself. In the first chapter, textual criticism is used to analyze the prevailing interpretation of so-called "Engels’ definition of materialism" and Engels,original opinion. Morever, this chapter interpretes the concept of "Verbaltnis" and this will also play a role in the demonstration in the following text.With a philogical study of the first article of Theses on Feuerbach, this paper demonstrates that in Marx’s theses the words "object"(Gegenstand), "reality"(Wirklichkeit) and "sensibilia"(Sinnlichkeit) have nearly the same meaning as matter,the keywords of materialism. These words work as all-inclusive categories and express the unity of the world. And later on Marx developed his theory and recovered the formerly known term "matter".Chapter 3 points out the three meanings of the term "matter" and on the basis of them three different "materialisms" are established. This chapter traces Marx’s early expression, in which there were two concepts of matter and two kind of materialisms. The two paths finally intersected in Die Deutsche Ideologie, and they constructed the materialist theory of history.The fourth chapter talks about Marx’s new theory after the transition. This paper comes to the conclusion that there is a new type of materialism with another definition of "material" factors, which is a metaphor for economy. This materialism refers to a particular stage of human society, that is, the bourgeois society. And the large-scale industry works as the determinant basis of modem society. The theory of material totality therefore constitutes a necessary condition but relegates to the background. Marxist communism has the theory about the inevitability of human liberation, which relys on an economic determinism to some extent. |
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