On Marx’s Idea Of Justice And Its Modern Meaning

The radical content of this treatise is around the relationship betweenMarx and justice, revealing that: Marx’s idea of justice is an organic anddeveloping process, and actually instead of conventional idea of justice, thehistorical materialism illustrates society progressing, so the conventional ideaof justice is completed deconstructed.This treatise begins with two arguments between Wood and Husami:which idea of justice is Marx based on, whether or not Marx critiques thecapitalism as unjustice. Through the arguments it reveals: Wood realized theidea of justice is meaningful only if it’s based on determined social relationsof production in determined historical period, he wrongly restricted justice tothe meaning of distributive justice, ignored the development of the idea ofjustice in Marx’s idea; Husami had noticed this point, but he only discussedthe problem of justice in capitalism from Marx’s moral motivation, also can’tescape one-sidedness. The arguments between Wood and Husami reveal the plurality and complexity of Marx’s idea of justice, and this is related to thewestern idea of justice as its background and criticized object.In western thought, justice is generally divided into ethical-justice andlegal-justice: ethical-justice is based on the internal good or virtue,legal-justice is based on validity of external regulations. Relying on thisdivide, the argument on the idea of justice in western thought can be carriedon in these three sections: inner idea of justice delegated by Socrates,utilitarian idea of justice delegated by Hume, liberty and equity idea ofjustice delegated by Hobbes and Rousseau. On behalf of ethical-justice,Socrates defines the idea of justice with inner logos or reason. Belonging toregulations, Hume defines the idea of justice as a forcible enforcement underthe determined conditions in order to maintain society processing. Hobbesand Rousseau’s justice also belongs to the justice as regulations, theyconcentrate on human nature, so the idea of liberty and equality could bededuced from the original nature, then the concepts of contract and nationcould be constructed. Because of Marx’s idea of justice having this richbackground, corresponding to the justice of virtue and regulations, we woulddivide Marx’s idea of justice into ethical-justice and legal-justice in theargument.The third section of this treatise clarifies the journey of justice in Marx’sthought. This journey could be divided into three periods: from Doktorarbeitto Rheinische Zeitung, Marx recognizes justice as virtue based on reason orhuman’s consciousness itself, but in social practice, authority or governingclass dominates right and nation instead of justice, as a result thecontradiction between theory and reality prompts Marx to begin therethinking on realistic right and nation; from Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Rights to Economic&Philosophical Manuscripts of1844, the legal-justicebased on nature is restored to based on citizen right in civil society, then isrestored to the foundation of human’s alienation and private property, finallythe foundation of legal-justice is restored to alienated labor, as a result theinner absurdity of legal-justice is revealed; from Theses on Feuerbach and theGerman Ideology to On Capitalism, historical materialism is adopted, and theconventional mode that society progressing explained by the idea of justice iscompletely criticized and reconstructed. Marx indicates: firstly, societyprogressing is based on not justice but society production; secondly, justice isdetermined by fixed history and generated from society production; thirdly,the content, mode and essence of justice are determined by societyproduction. Altogether, society material production is not determined by theidea of justice, the idea of justice is determined by society materialproduction in contrastly.The fourth part of this treatise is about the Rawls’ reply to Marx’s ideaof justice, which having two sections: the evaluation and reply to Marx’scritique of egoism, the reply and disprove to Marx’s idea of private property.Rawls has realized the danger and threatens of modern capitalist societybrought by egoism and private property which revealed by Marx, he relies onthe construction of social institutions, but the genuine foundation of society isnot the Rawls’ regulations of justice, but the society production that makingRawls’ regulations of justice possible. So Rawls’ reply failed.The last section of this treatise is about the instructions for constructingChinese society justice by Marx’s idea of justice. This part is based onMarx’s critique and reconstruction on legal-justice, referring to the specialconditions in Chinese socialistic market economy, concluding that the only way to getting rid of the danger which brought by legal-justice when weusing it, is the construction of socialistic justice. The idea of liberty andequality in civil society is also needed to achieve this construction, in practice,the cultivation of citizens’ idea of right in society is radical for thisconstruction.