Study On Marx’s Thought Of Leisure And Its Contemporary Value

As an important domain of human survival and development, the leisure is the natural life state of the individuals. Marx foresaw the importance of the leisure in the development of the human civilization, carried out prospective research, and put forward some groundbreaking thought. During the process of “criticizing the old world” and “discovering the new world”, he adopted metaphor for the leisure problems. His leisure thought has profound theoretical connotation and realistic value.Based on the analysis from the integral perspective, this paper keeps a foothold in Marx’s classics, sorts out the generation process of Marx’s leisure thought from the theoretical system, deeply interprets its connotation, reviews its value, and inspects the leisure problems in the current Chinese society from the reality layer according to the reality of the contemporary era, analyzes different causes for the problems, seeks for the solutions, and strives for putting forward practical and convincing countermeasures.This paper is divided into three parts: introduction, main body and conclusions.The introduction mainly introduces the research background and significance of Marx’s leisure thought, current status of the related domestic and foreign research,and deficiencies. It regards Marx’s world outlook and methodology as the basic thought of the argument, comprehensively utilizes the document analysis method,unification of the history and logic, and other methods to carry out systematic research on Marx’s leisure thought and its contemporary value, and focuses on the integration of the theory and practice.The main body is divided into six chapters. The first chapter is mainly to carry out academic analysis on the leisure concept and its correlation. Under the premise of tracing the meaning of the leisure, this paper starts from the historical and realistic perspective, draws the leisure wisdom from the mankind idea history, absorbs the casual modern connotation, and analyzes the concepts related to the leisure, which lays basic theoretical foundation for interpreting the leisure connotation in the Marx’s classic works in the following part. Firstly, trace the western and domestic connotation f the leisure from the historical perspective, and try to comprehensivelyunderstand the leisure through the comparison on the domestic and western leisure.Secondly, analyze the modern connotation of the leisure from the reality perspective.Besides, the social change and era development, leisure connotation and denotation will be enriched and developed. In modern times, it mainly defines the leisure from the time, activity, existence ways and psychology. Thirdly, interpret the similar meaning of the leisure: rest, relaxation, recreation, and game. It is the premise of clarifying the leisure concept in the paper. Fourthly, investigate the leisure from the different periods of the social history.The second chapter is mainly to sort the logic and context of Marx’s leisure thought. This chapter is established in Marx’s classics. It systematically sorts out the theoretical premise, development phase and reality affiliation of Marx’s leisure thought. Firstly, Marx’s leisure thought derives from the casual life and relaxation right problems of the working class in the capitalist society. On the basis of referring to the leisure envisage of the utopian socialist, he undertook the responsibility of the proletariat liberation and the leisure problems involved in the mission. Secondly,starting from the main line of Marx’s theory from “criticizing the old world” to“discovering new world”, the development progress of Marx’s leisure though can be divided into the early phase with Paris Manuscripts to later mature phase with Economics Manuscripts from 1857 to 1858 and Capital as the center. Thirdly, Marx carried out reality quantitative research on the social distribution status of the time from social attribute of the time and truth significance of the leisure, and discovered the trend of the future new world.The third chapter interprets the connotation of Marx’s leisure thought. under the premise of reading the Marx and Engels’ original works, this chapter explores the leisure thought connotation of Marx’s classics, and grasps Marx’s leisure attitude and proposal through the detailed interpretation on the free time, labor, consumption,human’s free and all-around development, etc. Firstly, the free time thought is the direct statement of Marx’s leisure thought. From the theoretical elaboration, analysis and criticism from the alienated labor of Economics Philosophy Manuscript in 1844 to the hired labor of Capital, Marx revealed and looked forward to the important status and role of the free time in the development of the human society from thetheoretical aspects, and narrates the free time theory. Secondly, Marx highlighted the importance of the labor in the criticizing the capitalism alienated labor and hired labor.The capitalists’ exploitation on the workers’ labor is actually the exploitation on the workers’ leisure. In Marx’s labor concept, the profound leisure view is taken as a metaphor. Thirdly, the leisure consumption is a metaphor part of Marx’s leisure thought. The leisure actually exists in Marx’s consumption thought. He not only mentioned the leisure problems in the discussion about the consumption problems, but also clearly pointed out the proposition of the leisure consumption. Fourthly, the free and all-around development of the human is the value principle and target of Marxist theory, the essence feature of the new society “communist” in Marx’s grand ideal, and the ultimate theory dependence of Marx’s leisure thought.The fourth chapter is mainly to narrate the value of Marx’s leisure thought. From the current history, re-read Marx and Engels’ original works, interpret Marx’s leisure thought, and explore the historical value, contemporary theoretical value and reality value from Marx’s leisure discussion and proposition. Firstly, Marx manifested his leisure thought and historical value of the proposition in the leisure rights about the laborers advocacy of the elegant leisure activities and expectation of the future social leisure, etc. Secondly, the theoretical value of Marx’s leisure thought can be expounded from its expansion and deepening of the leisure theory, inheriting and supplementing of Marx’s theory, and the theoretical research significance of Marx’s leisure thought. Thirdly, Marx’s leisure thought returns to the social reality and faces the changeable leisure life. It makes the systematic and scientific theoretical achievements return to the real society, and guide the leisure practice problems of the human. Besides, it can explore the practical value on the politics, economy, culture,society and ecology.The fifth chapter mainly investigates the realistic status under Marx’s leisure thought. On the basis of analyzing the difference between Marx’s leisure presetting of the future society and the current leisure status of Chinese realistic society, this chapter reviews the leisure problems in the current society and analyzes the causes.Firstly, according to Marx’s historical logic, the future ideal society he imagined and looked forward to has the integration of labor and leisure, and free andall-around development. It is an ideal society with the leisure as the main characteristics. However, under the globalization background and China during the transition, the leisure presents active development trend and positive development trend at the same time. Secondly, in the modern Chinese society, the rapid development of the economy, gradual establishment and improvement of the market economic order, transition and recombination of the social ideology, constant blending of the western living mode, and impact on people’s traditional cultural perspective and value not only have profound influence in people’s production modes, but also deeply change the lifestyles. Keeping foothold in the connotation interpretation and logic of Marx’s thought, and reflecting the leisure problems of the contemporary China society are mainly reflected on the leisure nihility, working, consumerization and vulgarization. Thirdly, the emerging of the leisure problems is restricted by the subject factors, and affected by the social conditions, such as economy, politics,culture and other external factors. Starting from the perspective of Marxist methodology, the emerging of our domestic social leisure problems includes internal cause and external cause.The sixth chapter mainly explores the realistic routine of solving the leisure problems. The subject of the leisure is human. Meanwhile, the leisure activity is carried out in a certain social environment. It is affected by the social conditions, such as economy, politics, culture and other objective factors. To solve the leisure problems in the modern society, it is feasible to combine the internal and external factors to search for the solutions under the guidance of Marx’s leisure thought.Firstly, Marx’s free time, labor, consumption, human development, and other theories contain rich leisure thought, which provides scientific thought analysis and theoretical guidance for solving the leisure problems and get rid of the leisure dilemma. Secondly,in face of the leisure problems in the society, seek for ways of surpassing the leisure dilemma. Start from the leisure education of the subjects, increase the leisure knowledge of the subject, cultivate the leisure ability of the subject, and cultivate the leisure value. Thirdly, to solve the leisure problems in the contemporary Chinese society, it is necessary to develop the leisure industry, build various leisure industry patterns and actively advocate the ecological leisure on the basis of improving theproductivity. Fourthly, to solve the leisure problems, apart from the objective condition of the social production, it is particularly necessary to require the functional government departments to give full play to its role, strengthen the public recreation facility construction, enlarge the guarantee strength of the leisure system, and provide equal leisure resource to the special groups. Fifthly, the leisure has cultural value.Therefore, to explore the traditional leisure culture resource, strengthen the supervision and guidance on the leisure culture, and create harmonious leisure culture atmosphere, and enhance the culture connotation of the leisure, are the practical ways for solving the leisure problems.Based on the above discussion and analysis, the conclusion points out the ultimate concern and the spirit for pursuing the noumenon value advocated in Marx’s leisure thought. It reflects the introspection and meditation of the senior ideologists on the great problems, such as scientific rationality, life value, etc. In essence, the research on Marx’s leisure thought is a thought for human prospect, and also is re-thinking on the cultural spirit of the modern people and value system. On the other hand, it is necessary to realize that, there are many leisure problems emerging in our current social development. The leisure gets into trouble. To achieve the solutions, we should not accomplish it in an action; instead, we should change such dilemma, and make great effort to solve the problems.