Marx’s Critical Theory Of Modernity And Its Contemporary Value

As regard to “modernity”, different scholars have different interpretations.Undoubtedly,“modernity” has had very important influence on social development,but caused lots of problems. While encountering serious crises in modern society,“modernity” has also led to the loss of values as well. Hence, criticism of modernityhas become a generally-concerned issue in contemporary academica Karl Marx wasa deserving pioneer of criticism of modernity. He showed his critical attitude onmodernity by means of criticizing the bourgeois ideology and the capitalist politicaleconomy. Marx confirmed the positive role of “modernity”, on the other hand, he hassensitively perceived the crisis and plight of “modernity” as well and analyzed themodernity theory from the perspective of historical materialism, aiming atreconstructing modernity and going beyond capitalist modernity.This article, based on domestic and foreign literature, has made an in-depththeoretical study of this issue. First, it has studied the origin and development of theterm “modernity”，and made an overview of the criticism of and reflections on theissue of “modernity”. Second, it has fully interpreted the contents and features ofMarx’s critical thoery of modernity, analyzed its specific critical paths, explored themethods of how to enrich them and formed more full contents of critical theory ofmodernity. At last, it has atempted to apply Marx’s critical theory of modernity to theactual situation of Chinese modernization and made a thorough analysis of the theory,especially its contemporary value, with the purpose of providing some inspirationsand references for the construction of modernity in contemporary China.