Marx’s Critique Of "Abstract"

Abstractness is the basic feature of modernity.In the modern capitalist world,there is a general situation of "individuals being subject to abstraction." As a real ruling power,abstraction has caused the relations of human beings alienated into the relations of things.This theoretical issue has long been an important research object in the academic circles at home and abroad.If we want to clarify this issue clearly,we must return to the criticism of"abstract" by the classic Marxist writers.It can not only help us to deeply understand the profound connotation of Marxist historical materialism,but also offer some scientific methodological inspirations to comprehensively interpret the criticism of contemporary western leftists.This essay respectively deals with the development of young Marx’s critical thinking about"abstract",the historical materialism behind Marx’s criticism of"abstract",the criticism of "abstract" from the perspective of critique of bourgeois political economy and in addition,the differences of Marx’s criticism of abstract in different periods.Specifically,first of all,in Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,the young Marx criticized the abstractness of Hegel’s rational state based on the general materialism.In Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,Marx criticized the abstractness of bourgeois political economy and then expounded his view of abstraction from the perspective of humanistic materialism.In The Holy Family,Marx revealed the abstract secret of Hegel’s speculative structure and criticized the abstractness of the bourgeois view of interests,which forms the period of theoretic transition from humanistic materialism to historical materialism.Secondly,in Theses on Feuerbach,Marx criticized the abstractness of Feuerbach’s humanistic materialism.In The German Ideology,Marx put forward his theory of historical materialism and criticized the abstractness of "german ideology" and "true socialism";and in Poverty of Philosophy,Marx criticized the abstractness of Proudhon’s petty bourgeois political economy.Finally,in Capital and its manuscripts,Marx reached a scientific conception of abstraction and then systematically criticized the abstract bourgeois political economy.