Research On The Thought Of Marx's Critique Of Reification

The economy,politics and culture of European capitalism took on a new look in the nineteenth century.However,the bright appearance whitewashed the severe social contradictions.Under the logic of capital multiplication,in addition to the material feast brought about by the increase of productivity,there is also increasing exploitation and constraints of the free individuality made by uniform division of labor and the exchange system.The reification thought of Marx precisely analyses the existing situation.He regarded man's ideal survival schema as the ultimate orientation.He criticized the capitalist mode of production and relations between people represented by relations of objects through detailed economic analysis.Marx's study of the relationship between human and things inherited the ideological elements of German classical philosophy.On this basis,he constructed the existence of man and things and their relationship in a practical way,emphasizing the interaction between them under specific historical conditions.The emphasis on the liberation and all-round and free development of human beings has been throughout Marx's critique of reification.Human beings have always been the concern of Marx's theory.Therefore,in the stage of dependence on things,although we have more abundant material conditions,the enslavement of human beings is an unavoidable fact.Marx absorbed the results of previous economic analysis,and carried out the reification thought with the criticism of capitalist mode of production as the background,and took practice as the way to realize the ideal value of man and society,which made the value concern become an internal perspective coexisting with rational analysis.Marx's critique of reification includes concepts such as objectification,externalization,alienation,verdinglichung,versachlichung and fetishism.The relations and changes among these concepts are showing the development of Marx's critique of reification.In the second part,the article focuses on these concepts in order to have a better understanding of the development logic of critical reification thought.At the same time,it also intends to show that we can not ignore the integrity of the theory and garble it from the connotation of the concepts.With the construction of historical materialism,Marx's critique of reification also presents a mature process.The early criticism of reification conceptually focused on the use of "alienation" and "extermalization",which led to the identification of materialized facts and the criticism of value level.In the turn to economic research,the early theoretical research was deepened through the analysis of the alienation of relations between individuals.It is also the foreshadowing of the study of reification.However,since the criticism of reification has not yet been established on the basis of in-depth economic analysis,the liberation of slavery and bondage,and the setting of ideal state of human beings have obvious traces of humanistic logic.It is impossible to find an effective way to eliminate its negative effects.Accompanied by the construction of historical materialism,Marx inspected the mode of production,communication and social relations from the realistic production activities of human beings,which provided the most theoretical and logical basis for the construction of the concepts of "verdinglichung" and "versachlichung".Conceptual use of "alienation"in the period of "Paris Manuscripts" was significantly reduced at this stage.Marx no longer directly related it to labor analysis,using it as a "temporary" concept.After the construction of this stage,Marx got rid of the analysis method of humanistic logic and made a scientific and historical investigation of materialized facts.In Capital and its related economic manuscripts,on the basis of criticizing classical political economics,he established his own labor theory of value.Through the analysis of commodities,money and capital,he revealed the reification phenomenon and capitalists' exploitation of workers under the capitalist production relations.This paper probes into how people and things are reversed under the criterion of exchange value in wage labor,that is,people become mechanical beings,and things acquire the social attributes of individuals.The relationship between man and man is manifested in the relationship between things,which is deeply enslaved by itself.Within the class scope,capitalists establish a wealth kingdom by the surplus value created by the laborers,and realize the enslavement of the laborers.Marx's reification thought in his mature period still retains the previous themes such as alienation,the relationship between man,nature and society.However,compared with the previous discussion,he made a scientific and historical investigation of it through analysis from abstract to concrete.With the changes of the times,later scholars have expanded Marx's critique of reification,penetrated it into all aspects of life,and combined the new accumulation mode of capitalism,the mode of spatial production and the modern development of science and technology to explore the materialized patterns under the new conditions.Individuals are instrumentalized,symbolized,and spatialized.In addition to the direct presentation of commodities,money and capital,man's attributes are being engulfed by things in many systems of life.Relations between individuals are manifested in more diversified physical ways and they change with the way things are constructed.In other words,as the way of construction changes,relations between individuals are also subject to varying degrees of distortion and variation.Driven by the logic of capital,on the one hand,individuals become mechanical existence in the system,and on the other hand,he has to face the irreversible and rapidly changing environment.The dull and one-sided physical existence collides with the pluralistic and fragmentary value,bringing a sense of emptiness without support and hope,which become a new topic that we have to face.Western scholars can not fundamentally change the status of being enslaved by the expansion of reification.Marx's criticism of reification can not instantly provide good ways to solve these problems.These intertwined historical products will eventually be traced back to the stream of historical development.And in the future,we will find the key to it.Marx's critique of reification warns us not to fall into its cunning in the insurmountable dependence on things.By sorting out the relevant literature,the study of this theory is either based on the early theory of alienation,or based on the concept-based analysis of the mature period.However,the reification thought of Marx is a constantly mature process of construction.It begins with the identification of reification phenomenon and is completed in the analysis of political economy through the logical framework of historical materialism.Therefore,the article attempts to explore the following aspects.Firstly,compared with the perspective understanding the reification thought through early alienation,the article attempts to materialize the mature period as the basis.point,reflecting the formation and development of the whole reification thought.Secondly,on the basis of the discussion of reification at the economic level,this paper advances it to the political and ideological levels and examines the living conditions of the reification of the whole human being under capitalist production.Thirdly,on the one hand,reification is specific content of criticism,on the other hand,it is a method of phenomenal analysis,combined with the new perspective of later scholars,to analyse existing problems in communication between human and things.It can better understand the thought of Marx's critique of reification and provide benefits for the current survival situation.