Questions And Interpretation

Letter to Zasulich is regarded as a very important text of Marx’s theoretical change in his late years and his eastern social theory. And it has been the hot topic because of the "Leaping over Furcae Caudine" in this text and its discussion and controversy.The research on Letter to Zasulich present from Question Phase to Text Phase in logical and in time. In Question Phase, some questions related to this text especially "Leaping over Furcae Caudine "is discussed. These research mostly did in the context of two main questions:Marx’s theoretical change in his late years and his eastern social theory. The discussion gradually separates itself from the original text and focuses on some general and realistic questions. Therefore, this text is considered as one example illustration or one step of a certain idea or theory. In Text Phase, the discussion focuses on text, such as the feature and change of the expression in this text. And the work in this dissertation may be regarded as a kind of continuation of this research change.It’s obvious that why Marx wrote five versions is the key question. Marx wrote four drafts and one formal response. All researchers who had read all five texts must be definitely affected by the significant contrasts between the four drafts and the formal letter and raise many questions. Why the four drafts and formal response are so different not only in the length but also in the contents? How can we interpret this change? Why Marx give a very brief answer in his formal letter and choose to depart from almost all contents and ideas mentioned in his drafts? why Marx didn’t give a definite and affirmative answer to the key questions that are Zasulich is eager to know? Why Marx express regret over this in his formal response?These questions above are the ones my dissertation will be discussed and resolved. Context(Chapter One), Question(Chapter Two), Solution(Chapter Three), Discussion and Conclusion(Chapter Four and Chapter Five), and Assessment and Response (Chapter Six and Chapter Seven) are the main chapters of this dissertation.Analytics instead of logical and historical method which is adopted widely in academia is the main method. Analytics is used in the analysis of texts, analysis of reasons given before and the choice of different solutions. The conclusion is get in the end that the underlying reason why Marx gave brief answer and expressed regret in the formal letter is the limitation of historical prediction in the specific historical situation. At the same time, the interpretation framework of Historical Materialism and the limitation of prediction in the specific historical situation are offered and analysed.The researchers gave many reasons to the questions before. The analysis given before are reasonable and understandable. The external reasons (ie. consideration of the revolutionary situation and avoiding misunderstanding) revealed that these real factors could influence Marx’s writing at that time. However, these explanations are not sufficient to answer some further questions. And the internal reasons(ie. academic rigor and influence of author’s inclination) tend to the formal answers and not to the underlying reasons.Fundamentally, it is how to answer the key questions in the letter that lead to the expression of regret in the last formal response. We need to track what confused Marx and why these confusions happened. As result, we will find the way to explore the underlying reason in this dissertation. Therefore, we could not consider this text as one example illustration or one step of a certain idea or theory, it’s necessary to go back to the real histiorical suitation at that time and regard this text as entirety.Once we do it according to the principle above, we will find that Marx at that time is in the, position that he is asked to answer Zasulich’s questions. So Letter to Zasulich is a kind of historical interpretation case or historical prediction that answer the specific question——the future of the Russian commune. Letter to Zasulich presents how Marx thought and analysed this question and how he answered this question. Not only the change from speculative philosophy of history to analytical philosophy of history but also the Covering Law in historical interpretation all indicate that the historical interpretation is made in a certain interpretation framework or structure and not just given in one case context. So the specific interepretation is definitely presents the features of its own framework. In this sense, if we want to get the answer to these questions in Letter to Zasulich, we have to reflect the interpretation framework of Historical Materialism, that is the new and unique perspective and solution in this dissertation. So we temporarily stray from the text of Letter to Zasulich and turn our attention to the analysis of the interpretation framework of Historical Materialism.Base on study in this dissertation, some following points of view are given. Firstly, the interpretation of Historical Materialism is not in the same level, that is, there are different levels in this the interpretation framework or structure. Kant proposed the piont of view that reason has three levels:perceptual process, intellectual process and reason. And the perceptual and intellectual process have their own apriori forms. The interpretation framework of Historical Materialism also has different levels, interpretation mode or principle and limitation of application. There are different explanatory power and we should put different questions in different levels.Secondly, the interpretation mode or principle in the abstract level are the "guiding thread" in The Preface to The Critique of Political Economy in1859and the successive social fromation; and the interpretation mode or principle in the specific level is historical situation. The guiding thread in1859Preface is presents a causality and a form of determinism, which has the highest level of abstraction and explanatory power. It provides us with a reasonable method or principle interpreting history in the abstract level and help us make sense of the world. The successive social formation is a kind of abstract and generalization on the change and development of human history as a whole. The three social formation is taken by this dissertation as the interpretation mode or principle in the abstract level because that this principle contains two features. Marx uses capitalism society as typical and the method of retrospective thinking in his historical theory.The interpretation mode or principle of Historical Materialism in the specific level is the historical situation. Although it is not mentioned explicitly just as the guiding thread in1859Preface, Marx presented this principle in many statements. It means that the historical interpretation in the specific level is the analysis and assessment base on the various factors in the real historical situation, not the deduction of some basic principles or the interpretation mode in the abstract level. That is, it all depends on the historical situation at that time. The interpretation mode or principle in the specific level has these features. First, the interpretation is mutual determined and combination causal explanation with motivation explanation. Also the interpretation is more based on the empirical research and on the knowledge and methods of other disciplines.Thirdly, general history theory all indicate that we can only know the possible trend and result in general, but it’s not possible for us to forecast all details in the future. So this dissertation provide us with the exactly same conclusion that is the prediction in Historical Materialism has limitation. The limitation in the specific level does not means that this theory can’t make predictions in any case. It means that the predictions have many limitation not only in the contents but also in the forms because of the influence by many factors. The prediction is a kind of jugement of probability or a list of some possiblities. And it’s not a exactly affirmative and definite conclusion in the logical inevitability. The prediction can provide general rather than sufficient information about the details, that is, we can’t give "the list of seasoning for the future dining hall". The factors affected the limitation are analysed in details in this chapter. These factors are the openness of history, the differences historical prediction with interpretation, the influence of the author’s inclination, the application of knowledge and method in other disciplines and theory’s dependency on practice.After the analysis of feature of the interpretation framework of Historical Materialism, we return to the text and get the following conclusion. It is the limitation of the prediction in the specific level that is the underlying reason why Marx didn’t give an affirmative and definite answer to the key questions and expressed regret over this in the formal letter. These questions are resolved in this chapter. And this statement is supported by the text. In this chapter, we return the text and explore Marx’s analysis on these four drafts and reveal the two crucial questions he encountered in his analysis. Although Marx hold an inclination-driven opinion on the future development of the Russian commune, he can’t give the affirmative and definite conclusion just through the theoretical research because of the limitation of historical prediction. And we give the analysis of these factors which result in this limitation in this case. The questions raised in Chapter Two is hereto get answered. But we need to give some response to the hot topic "Leaping over Furcae Caudine". That is, although Marx didn’t give the exactly definite prediction when he wrote letter to Zasulich and departed from the point of view "Leaping over Furcae Caudine", it doesn’t mean that there is no answer to this question. The real practice gave answers to this question. That is, Russian and Chinese revolution and construction in history gave us the answer to this question which also revealed the dialectics in this question.And this is the real and practical answer to this question.Further, the analysis above indicate that the limitation of the prediction in the specific level doesn’t deny the function of interpretation of Historical Materialism. Historical Materialism is the revolutionary theory in historical interpretation, and it helps us make sense of history. Also the limitation indicates that the prediction in the specific level is not deduced from some principles directly, and it is conceived by the analysis on the real factors and consideration of some limitations. Also it remains that we should avoid the bland optimism in the historical prediction, just as Marx’s attitude in the Letter to Zasulich. Just as Kant reveal the limitation of theory and leave room for practice, the limitation of the prediction also leave room for practice. Although the theoretical prediction doesn’t tell us all things, we can get the answer just from our own practice. The truth of history is given by the real practice fundamentally.