Marx’s theory of the relationship between civil society and state is a crucial part of Marxism and an indispensable link in the formation of historical materialism theory.The "civil society" in this study refers to the commodity economy society or the bourgeois society in the context of Marx,which has different specific meanings in different ideological periods.And "state" refers to the modern sense of the political state,or bourgeoisie state.The theory focuses on the relationship between the two rather than internal problems in their respective fields.This study attempts to start from Marxist philosophy,political economy and political science and other disciplines,under the guidance of historical materialism,to clarify the connotation,development history and contemporary value of Marx’s theory of civil society and state relations.The main line of this study starts from Hegel’s civil society theory.Hegel believes that civil society is a unique product and symbol of modern society,but its development will lead to non-ethical problems such as the polarization of the rich and the poor and social tearing.Therefore,he proposes that civil society should be controlled and guided by the state.On this basis,Marx believed that under the capitalist relations of production,the modern state is unable to solve the problem of civil society,and put forward the proposition that civil society determines the state,and further analyzed the internal structure and development trend of capitalist society.Early Marx,as a member of the Young Hegelians,was an admirer of Hegel’s rational view of the state.From August 1842 to March 1843,when Marx was working in Rheinische Zeitung,the real material interests prompted him to question Hegel’s rationalist view of the state.In the confusion,Marx began to reflect on Hegel’s theory.In two essays,On the Jewish Question and Introduction to Hegel’s Critique of His Philosophy of Law,Marx describes the relationship between civil society and the state with the modern political state in reality as the background,pointing out that Hegel did not give a realistic solution to the problem of the separation of civil society and the state,but hid in the concept to find the answer.In The Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,Marx further criticizes the defects of Hegel’s theory of the relationship between civil society and the state from the micro level,and points out that the modern state is unable to solve the non-ethical problems of civil society,which also means the formation of Marx’s theory of the relationship between civil society and the state.From 1844 to 1848,that is,from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of1844 to the Communist Manifesto,Marx’s understanding of civil society entered a new stage.Marx re-criticized civil society in three aspects.First of all,in 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscript of 1844,with the help of the concept of labor alienation,the power structure relationship in civil society was analyzed.Secondly,in the German Ideology in 1845,Marx and Engels further discussed the relationship between civil society and the state through the analysis of private ownership.Finally,the Communist Manifesto of 1848 analyzed the non-ethical nature of civil society from the perspective of class rule.After dissecting the relationship between the bourgeois society and the state in the Communist Manifesto,Marx made specific criticism to the bourgeois state and the bourgeois society respectively,which is also a sign of the maturity and science of Marx’s theory of the relationship between civil society and the state.From the time when Marx lived to today,capitalist society has undergone tremendous changes,from free capitalism to monopoly capitalism,and then to neoliberalism;Socialism has also developed from fantasy to science,from theory to practice,and the practice of socialism has undergone changes in form and system.In the historical development process of capitalism and socialism crisscrossing and ups and downs,the relationship between society and the state also changes and develops.Since the founding of New China,the relationship between society and state has undergone the development and change from integration to separation and interaction.From Marx’s theoretical perspective of the relationship between civil society and state,we can find its theoretical and practical value for Chinese modernization,especially for the strategy of common prosperity and effectively promote the construction of the relationship between market and government in the socialist market economy. |