The Ethical Thoughts In Marx's Political Economy Writings

The exploration of Marx's ethical thought from the writings of political economy is an important object on the study of Marxist ethics.It is the theoretical source of the ethical thought of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era,and the ideological basis for the cultivation and development of the socialist core values and their system.Marx has not written a monograph devoted to ethical thoughts while living,but we could see many treatises on moral and ethical issues from his large number of political and economic writings,with systematic and rich ethical ideas and value appeals.Marx's ethical thought does not exist in the dominant discourse of political economics,but as a true recessive existence in the text of political economics,which embodies the value of Marx's economics and Marx's ethical concern for the real society.The study of the ethical thought in Marx's political economics works is not only an objective and systematic understanding and grasp of Marx's ethical thoughts,the theoretical needs of creating a socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics,but also a response to the challenge of the times to the theory of Marx's doctrine,and find a suitable road for the survival and development of the contemporary people.From the perspective of practice-based Personality Ethics,this paper focuses on the interpretation and study of Marx's ethical thoughts in the text of political economy and tries to elucidate his ethical thoughts.Marx's ethical thought is based on the reality of the individual,insisting on the unity of egoism and altruism,and taking the free and comprehensive development of human beings as the theory of the highest value.It can be summed up as a logical line,two groups of representative economic writings and three major ideological features,that is,to realize the free and comprehensive development of human beings as the main line,and take the "Paris manuscript"," Capital" and his manuscript as the main research objects,to reveal and expound Marx's ethical thought with the highest value of man's free and comprehensive development,to insist on the basic characteristics of unification of economics and ethics,the unity of fact and value,and the unification of egoism and altruism.As far as its source of thought is concerned,the ethical thought in Marx's political economy writings not only involves classical political economics,but also involves the German classical philosophy and the utopian socialism.The representative figure of the classical political economy,Smith,thinks that economics is a theory of economic ethics,characterized by free competition,which is based on the theory of "compassion and selfish heart".In the general sense,Ricardo puts forward the point of "laboring create value".The theory of value runs through the ethical thoughts of utilitarianism with "the greatest happiness of most people",economic freedom and distributive justice.Hegel,the German classical philosopher,establishes the labor ethics with "free will" as the core through the concept of "dissimilation".Feuerbach establishes materialist anthropology,reveals the essence of the alienation of religion,and takes people of perceptual intuition as the object of ethics.the utopian socialists,represented by Saint Simon,Fu Liye and Erwin,criticize the malpractice of the capitalist system and regard the free development of human beings as the ideal goal of the future society.The valuable contents of these predecessors' theoretical achievements constitute the main theoretical source of Marx's ethical thoughts.The free and comprehensive development of human beings is the main thread of Marx's ethical thoughts,which runs through political and economic writings and other writings in different periods.From "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844",Marx describs it as "the full and rich man of human nature",to "the personality in the exchange of relations" in the Muller summary,from proletarian poverty of "Employment and capital" to the "free personality" of "1857-1858 Economic Manuscript",and communism is defined as "a social form based on the comprehensive and free development of everyone" in Capital.In Anthropology Notes,it is described as "returning to the advanced form of communism".The “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844” and "Muller's summary" are the main parts of the Paris manuscript.The former takes "labor alienation" as the core and criticizes the actual state of the barbarous state of living and the moral decay of the workers' livestock under the conditions of capitalism and puts forward the value goal of realizing communism.The latter takes "communication alienation" as the core and clarifies that the essence of human beings lies in the real social relations of human beings,and the externalization of private property leads to the alienation of communication,the alienation of morality and the negation of the value of human life.It is advocated to restore the real social relations of people and to realize the ethical demands of the all-round development of human beings.In "Capital" and its manuscript,Marx establishes the scientific labor theory of value and the theory of surplus value,explained the law of the development and operation of the capitalist social economy,and reconsidered the way of existence and the subjective value of the subject.On the one hand,the theory of labor value affirms the decisive role of productive labor in the development of human history and promotes the dominant position of practical activities.The economic significance of labor gives the moral character of labor itself,and then affirms that the worker is the subject of value creation,and should be given the corresponding social status,and should be fully respected in personality to make it the true subject of moral and value judgment.On the other hand,the theory of surplus value extends the direction of humanism nature,reveals that the commercialization of the labor force,marks the immortalization of the wage earners,and uncovers the moral relationship of the people who are disguised by the fetishism;meanwhile,this doctrine also indicates that the capitalists have unpaid labor in possession of the workers and exposes the false justice of the capitalist system.The absolutism of capital proliferation is the root of extreme egotism.In the study of the law of the movement of commodity economy and the special law of the capitalist society,Marx seeks the highest value ideal of human being—— the free and comprehensive development of human beings and the liberation of human beings.It embodies the organic unity of economics and ethics,the principle of fact and the principle of value,the historical scale and the moral scale,and embodies the organic unity of the principle of egoism and the altruistic principle.This provides enlightenment for us to realize the value goal of socialism with Chinese characteristics and to clarify the new requirements and principles of socialist ethics with Chinese characteristics.