On The Rationality And Limitation Of “New Dialectics” In The Interpretation Of “Das Kapital”

Christopher J.Arthur,the representative of the“New Dialectics”school,advocated elucidating Marxism’s theory of form of value with systematic dialectics excavated from Hegel’s philosophy,thus carries on the reconstruction to the“Das Kapital”dialectics.Arthur’s System Dialectics has attracted wide attention of scholars both at home and abroad,because of its uniqueness and creativity in linking Hegel’s logic with the form of value.By contrasting logic with Das Kapital,Arthur provided a new philosophical path for the study of the dialectics and Marxist political economy of Das Kapital,it provides us with Hegel thinking direction to understand the logic of capital and the development of value form.On the whole,Arthur used the form of value to illustrate the dialectics of Das Kapital,which provided a new theoretical train of thought for advancing the study of Marxian economics.In Arthur’s view,Marxism’s theory is consistent with Hegel’s,and the dialectics that runs through it is systematic rather than historical,but this key point is not explained in detail in Marxist works or later Marxist studies.In order to remedy this defect,Arthur’s System Dialectics advocates a mode of dialectical development and constructs the inner logic of capitalism by expounding the dialectical development of value form.It can be said that the research paradigm of system dialectics laid the philosophical foundation of dialectics for Marxism’s theory of value form in terms of ontology and epistemology,it also provides a new philosophical way of thinking for the Marxian economics.It should be noted that there is a fundamental difference between the dialectical movement of capitalist production and the logical development of concepts.The dialectics of “Das Kapital”is the unity of history and logic,the totality of capitalism must be viewed from the historical dimension of Marxism’s dialectics,which is both revolutionary and critical.When he confined himself to the form of value and ignored the historicity of economic categories,he severed the logical and historical dimension of Marxism’s dialectics,the System Dialectics got into the morass of“non-historicism”of the value form dialectics,thus lost in the capital logic of identity and could not find the realistic way to break through the identity power.Based on the reality of the material mode of production and taking the historical materialism as the fundamental position,In his understanding of the dialectical development of capitalism,Marx found the communist way to break through the logic of capital and realize the liberation of mankind.Therefore,it is necessary to make a critical study of Arthur’s System Dialectics in order to understand the rationality and limitation of System Dialectics in interpreting Das Kapital,and then clear the real profound meaning of dialectics in Das Kapital.