Comparative Research Of Marx And Rousseau’s View On Equality

Equality refers to a reciprocal relationship between people and people and it is also a principle and value orientation to build an ideal society. Marx and Rousseau, as two great thinkers in the history of human thought, express their indignation of inequality of the world, consciously pay attention to and research the equality, and they take the shoulder of realizing the equality of human beings. Rousseau revealed the irrationality of the feudal system and the historical inevitability of destruction on the basis of imagining human freedom and equality and he put forward equality idea, which shocked thinkers and feudal ruling authorities at the time. Marx proposed proletariat equality by affirmation and criticize of bourgeois equality view, which opened a new chapter in the struggle of the proletariat revolution.After studying related the work and citing relevant achievements of scholars at home and abroad, the author summarizes the similarities and differences about Marx and Rousseau’ view on equality as follows: 1)both Marx and Rousseau believe that the inequality of human society originated from private ownership; 2)equal historical evolution process is dialectical; 3) the way to realize equality is to build a community;4) inequality is “ inevitable”. Although Marx and Rousseau’s equality thought have great similarities and contacts, we can not equivalent them because Marx’s equality view is far beyond Rousseau. In the first place, Rousseau takes the human who is not a real person in the world as starting point of equality view, while Marx takes the world as starting point of equality view. Secondly, Rousseau believes it is self-improvement ability that makes natural equality develop to society inequality, while Marx believes that the force of original equality to class inequality is the basic contradiction of human society. In addition, Rousseau disagrees to completely abolish private ownership, while Marx advocated completely abolish private ownership. Last but not the least, equal right is the essence of Rousseau’s equality view, while Marx regards the society equality as the essence of equality view. Therefore, we can get conclusion that Marx’s equality view is scientific, reasonable and practical and his opinion is different from Rousseau’s equality view.In addition, based on comparative research of Marx and Rousseau’ view on equality, the author also expounds reality enlightenment of Marx’s equality view.