Interpret, Defend And Disseminate:Mehring’s Contributions To The Marxism

Mehring is a famous activist in the international labor movement, a left-wing theorist of Germany Social Democratic Party in the period of the Second International, and the earliest Marxist historian. As the constructor of the second generation of Marxism, Mehring has played a huge role on defend, interpretation and dissemination of Marxism.This article is divided into five parts. The first part expounds the reason and significance why I chose Mehring as the object of my study, moreover, it summarizes and evaluates internal and overseas research actuality of the subject, and this part also introduces the research ideas, research methods, innovations and flaws of this paper, too. The second part to the fourth part outline from three aspects to study Mehring’s contributions to Marxism, including his defend of historical materialism, criticism of the Second International revisionism and carding the history of the formation of Marx and Engels. And the fourth part is the comprehensive, objective evaluation of Mehring’s contributions and deficiency.The second part mainly discusses about Mehring’s defend and apply of historical materialism. The contribution of Mehring for historical materialism mainly lies in his right protection and apply of historical materialism. He treat the discovery of historical materialism with the historical materialism viewpoint, and applied the viewpoints of historical materialism to interpret the content of historical materialism, refuted those genres who attacked historical materialism. Mehring also applied the viewpoints of historical materialism to study the phenomenon of literature and art, and developed Marx and Engels’s literary theory on the basis of historical materialism, at the same time, he applied the viewpoints of historical materialism to his historical writing, truly applied historical materialism into his actual writing. The third part mainly discusses about Mehring’s criticism of the revisionism. Mehring is a left-wing theorist that strong criticized revisionism in the period of the Second International. In the revisionist flood period, he always stood in the position of Marxism, fought with the opportunist and revisionists who attempted to tamper with the Marxism. To reveal the essence of revisionism, maintain the orthodox Marxism, he criticized the view of revisionism from the aspects of philosophy, political economics and the theory of class struggle.The fourth part mainly discusses about Mehring’s research of the formation of Marxism. Mehring is the first historian who studied the formation of Marxism. Studying the Marx and Engels’ different activities and works in different periods, he expounded the producing and forming process of Marxism step by step. In this paper, I try to analyze Mehring’s carding of the formation process of Marxism by studying his three major works.The fifth part mainly discusses about the overall evaluation of Mehring on the basis of the former three parts. I Applaud Mehring’s defend, interpretation and dissemination of Marxism positively, also point out the shortcomings of Mehring critically. And combined with his books, I analyze the cause of these weaknesses, and strive to treat Mehring’s main contributions to the Marxism objectively, comprehensively.