Probing Into Marx’s Leisure Thoughts

Leisure,a constant topic.At present,the research on Marx’s leisure thoughts is not only a narration of further deepening for the integrated research of Marxism,but also can play a normative and guiding role in the leisure study.At the same time,it can be used as a theoretical weapon to solve the problem of unbalanced and inadequate in leisure development,and many other practical significances.Domestic and international academics have made a lot of achievements in the research of Marx’s leisure thoughts,but they still leave many key issues to solve.For example,the class characteristic of leisure rights,the labor force of workers,the two different ways of producing surplus value,the issue of leisure consumption,and the revolutionary characteristic of Marx’s leisure thoughts,etc.In Marx’s leisure thoughts,there are three core concepts of leisure,personal abilities,and free time.Among them,leisure refers to people who can freely control their own ability to work and develop their consumption ability,thus it is a status that people can possess their own comprehensive development of individual abilities.Therefore,in reality,leisure always has the historical limitation and class characteristic.Marx’s leisure thoughts have an experience to generate and develop.It was created at a background of European society in the 19 th century when capitalism entered the era of machine industry,to criticize and inherit the philosophy of thinkers including such as the joy and happiness,the good and pleasure,enjoyment,leisure,etc.,especially for the labor view contained as the theoretical origin.From the perspective of its development,in its infancy,Marx,through philosophical discussions and proceeding from the specific right of religious worship rights,revealed the connotation and nature of leisure rights;starting from specific economic facts,he proposed to eliminate alienation of labor deprived workers’ leisure.At the stage of its formation,due to the discovery of historical materialism,Marx thoroughly criticized historical idealism and metaphysics on the leisure issue,clarified the methodology of historical materialism for studying leisure issues,claiming the class struggle in reality and social revolution,to realize the equal rights of leisure.In its sublimation stage,Marx systematically studied "seven kinds of time" and incorporated leisure into the field of labor value theory and surplus value theory.He also pointed the different allocation form of the basic living materials and leisure materials exists in the first and advanced stages of communist society.Eliminating private ownership and realizing communism,which is the thought clue that lead through the development of Marx’s leisure thoughts.To study the basic content of Marx’s leisure thoughts,we must firstly complete the transformation of research clues from "labor time" to "labor ability",and "labor ability" is a more essential clue.First of all,the realistic foundation of leisure lies in the return of the controlling power of labor ability.Under the condition of capitalism,the selling of the labor ability to control labor power has resulted in the opposition of labor and free time.At the same time,only in the production process,the confrontation between labor and free time is inevitable.Under this condition,labor has changed from a means of creating and realizing free time to a means of eliminating workers’ free time,which is the antagonism between labor and free time.Therefore,to achieve the return of the controlling power of labor capacity,on the one hand,class struggle must be carried out through the proletariat;on the other hand,individual productivity and social productivity must be continuously developed.Secondly,the necessary condition for leisure lies in the comprehensive development of spending power and personal abilities.In the special process of capitalist production,the constrained development of spending power and personal abilities led to the opposition between leisure and free activities.The "leisure" of workers does not have the meaning of free activities.The development of this bondage is rooted in the absolute subordination of labor to capital that accompanies the production of relative surplus value.At the same time,it also causes the workers’ bad entertainment and the passiveness of the workers’ choices.Therefore,the comprehensive development of the workers’ spending power and personal abilities should be based on the free choice of lofty leisure and entertainment.Finally,leisure takes the free and comprehensive development of each person and the unity of the subject and process of labor and leisure as the ideal status.The relationship between labor and leisure includes two layers of the historical process of negation of negation.The first layer occurs within the class society,the other run through the entire history of society.In short,one of the most prominent characteristics of Marx’s leisure thoughts is the sublating characteristic.The realistic enlightenment of Marx’s leisure thoughts embodies its epochal and class characteristic.In theory,it not only provides theoretical guidance for China’s leisure research at the present stage,but also presents the objective laws of leisure development in reality.In practice,this law shows the legitimacy of safeguarding the people’s leisure rights,the importance of advocating and nurturing rational leisure consumption culture and values,and the necessity of using the shared development philosophy to develop the leisure enterprise.