On The Relation Between Humanism And Historical Materialism Of Marx

Marxism is the greatest thought in modern history of mankind. It is originated from strong critique of the capitalist society class oppression and the capital governance reality, and it points to realize the communist society without private property. What is its basic character? The orthodox Marxism originating from the former Soviet Union attributed it to the scientific system of revealing the laws of human society development, while the western Marxism beginning with Lukacs attributed it to the humanistic theory of pursuit of thoroughly improving mankind’s survival situation. These two theories in the history of international communist movement are in long-term mutual confrontation and criticize each other. Their argument shows that Marxist theory contains a scientific understanding level and an ethical appeal level, but the question is which level is more fundamental one. To be sure, from the content of Marxist theory, any moral values are decided by the reality of social economy, so its historical materialism should dominate its ethics. But we shouldn’t forget that the starting point of creating Marxist theory is the humanism appeal of indignation at the phenomenon of thing (capital) dominating man (living labor), the communist idea as result of this appeal was produced before Marx created historical materialism, so it mignt influence the value orientation of historical materialism. Therefore, we consider Marxist theory has two foundations that are the ethics of humanism and the science view of historical materialism, which they oppose each other and also complement each other, that is, the humanism appeal constitutes the motive and orientation factor of historical materialism creating, while historical materialism scientifically proves the implementation road of humanism ideal. Only using a complex view to examine the interaction of different thought level in Marxist theory, we can completely and perfectly master the connotation of Marxism. Thus we clearly see it is the unity of a justice theory and a scientific theory, and this is its great vitality.Virtually in the development process of Marx’s thought, its humanism factors and scientific factors were always coexisting and develop at the same time. At the stage of young Hegelians, on the one hand Marx was a radical democrat for popular sovereignty, on the other he also recognized that "in study of national life phenomenon" should not "ignore the relationship between various objective nature", and avoided "by the will of the parties to explain everything"; At the stage of humanism communist, on the one hand Marx had criticized the capitalist society alienation of man both in the political field(Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law) and in the economic field(Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts in1844), on the other he materialistically reversed Hegel’s theory of state determining civil society, and proposed the theory of civil society determining state; Finally at the stage of historical materialism communist, Marx put the target of the full-scale development of implementation person on the basis of historical materialism of productivity determining relations of production. And in Marx’s mature theory these two aspects were also influenced each other and permeated each other, such as in the study of the history progress of human society Marx used two standards of productivity development and human value realization, pointed out the implementation of two standards were inversely related to each other in the history progress of private ownership society, while the implementation of these two would be coordinated with each other only in the communist society. Moreover, in the early years Marx proposed the alienation concept from a humanistic perspective and later scientifically explained it again from a historical materialism perspective. The humanism alienation concept mainly showed his moral indignation at the capitalist system, while the historical materialism alienation concept ("Fetishism") was intended to illuminate the alienation phenomenon of its historical origin and its eliminated road; both of them supplemented and complemented each other. Finally, in Marx’s Capital, the highest scientific classic work, on the one hand Marx demonstrated the historical destiny of inevitable demise of the capitalist society according to the scientific laws of relations of production must conform to the level of productivity development, while on the other he proved the right of the proletariat and the justice of its appeal according to the unfair ethical principle of freely being occupied the fruit of labor produced by other’s sweat and toil.Marx’s humanism thought includes three levels that man is the purpose, man should have substantive equality and human beings should form socialized human beings of solidarity, at one end of it is full and free developed individuals, at the other end of it is happy combo of free man. To achieve this aim is Marxism’s gist. To master Marxism’s gist is beneficial for us to correctly understand historical materialism and advance Marxism keeping pace with the times. In the past left dogmatism emphasized that Marxism was the science, they one-sidedly chased the advancement of relations of production, made "the poor transition" disregard for the realistic level of productivity development and even pushed it by class struggle, which caused socialist country’s civil strife and poverty. But Deng Xiaoping representation of new generation leaders of CPC has taken the people-oriented policy emphasize on developing the productivity for improving people’s livelihood, practically make relations of production conform to the level of productivity development and implemented socialist market economy reform, which create Chinese economic miracle that attract worldwide attention. The Chinese characteristic socialism theory has sprung from and developed the basic tenets of Marxism, which combines the market economy and the social security system and establishes the socialism of combining efficiency and fairness in order to absolutely realize the welfare of people.