Approach to Marx in Spirit

Zhang Yibing      Meng Mugui

A Brief Introduction of the Authors

  Zhang Yibin, whose pen name is Zhang Yibing£¬male, born in 1956 in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, graduated from Department of Philosophy of Nanjing University in August 1981and gained master’s degree of philosophy. He is now vice-president of Nanjing University, senior and prestigious professor and doctorate tutor oriented in Marxism. His academic specialty lies in western Marxist philosophy study and textual investigation and he takes a strong interest in the field of humanities. His articles began to be published in 1982 and from then on they come out ceaselessly. The main works of his include: The Subjective Dimension of Marxian Historical Dialectics (Nanjing University Press, 2002)£¬ Atonal Dialectical Imagination: The Textual Reading of Adorno’s Negative Dialectics£¨Sanlian Bookstore Press£¬2001£©£¬ Return to Marx: The Philosophical Discourse in the Context of Economics£¨Jiangsu People’s Press, 1999£©£¬ Self-selected Works by Zhang Yibing£¨Guangxi Normal University Press£¬1999£©.
Meng Mugui, female, born in 1977 in Hengxian County, Guangxi Province, is now a graduate in Department of Philosophy of Nanjing University.

Abstract:
This book is the distillate one of Return to Marx, which, based on the latest texts of MEGA2 and the important headstreams of classical economy and Hegelian philosophy, returns the readers with an authentic and vivid Marx with the phenomenological spirit of “ Turn to the thing itself” and through the peeling and obstinate philosophical endeavor of Marxian life-long philosophical investigation and evolution. This book makes a change of the academic face of obscurity and inaccessibility if not expert and it leads the readers to enter the excellent Marxian spiritual world step by step, explaining the profound things in a simple way with fluent and splendid style. Such is the title of Approach to Marx in Spirit.

Preface……………………………………………………………………
Introduction: The Access to Marx………………………………………
1.A Life Quest: Marxian Life Road…………………………………………
2.Rosebush without Flower: The Orthodox History of Marxism ……………………
3£® Picking up Morning Flowers in the Evening: Problem and Method………………………
Chapter I Cumbrance of Humanism…………………………………………
Section 1  Decline and Rise of God: The Civilization Song of Enlightenment Age……
1£®Overdue Enlightenment: Religious Alienation and the Human “Genus Essence”………
  2£®Classical Economy: Liberalistic Cradle…………………………………………
Section 2 Who Dominates the Mainstream: Humanist Dirge against Modernity…………
  1£®Abstract Deceit: There Exists a Thing without the Emergence of a Man……………
  2£®Economic Alienation: Stele of  Fetishism……………………………………………
  3£®Labor Alienation: Metaphysical Mimosa………………………………………
  4£®Step into the New Era: Subversion of “Genus Essence” and the End of Humanism……
Chapter II Scenery in Front of the Door………………………………………
Section 1 Philosophy is a Kind of Thinking………………………………………………
  1£®Just Making Feuerbach Become Practical Is Not Enough……………………………
  2£®The Solution to Kant’s Problem and Philistinism of the Concept Practice………
  3£®Historicity and Temporality …………………………………………………
Section 2  History Is in a Genesis…………………………………………………
  1£®What is History?……………………………………………………………
  2£®Who is Man?…………………………………………………………………
  3£®Work Division and World History……………………………………………
Section 3 Natural History Process and Social History Determinism …………………
  1£®Historical Review of History View……………………………………………
  2£®Quasi-naturalness: Deepening of Historical Determinism……………………………
  3£®Object-enslavement Phenomena …………………………………………………
4£®On Historical Materialism Again…………………………………………………
Chapter 3 Sound of Shatter……………………………………………
Section 1 Shadow of Dialectics………………………………………………………
  1£®Theoretical Reversion: Combat Your Shield with Your Own Spear……………………
  2£®Logical Transcendence: Truth Is Concrete………………………………………
Section 2 History Ties a Knot……………………………………………………
  1£®Theoretical Introduction: A Certain Historical Provisional History Background
  2£®Dispute between Hat and Man: Against Proudhon………………………………………
  3£®Historicity: Dagger Thrusting at Bourgeois Ideology………………………………
Section3 Renewed Investigation of Epistemology……………………………………
  1£®Objectivity of Phony Phenomena……………………………………………………
  2£®Epistemic Alienation…………………………………………………………
Chapter 4 Ray of Historical Phenomenology ……………………………………
Section 1  Exceed the Barrier of Classical Economics………………………………
  1£®Capital: Starting- and End- Point of Theory……………………………
  2£®The Truth of History……………………………………………………
Section 2 Fetishist Representation…………………………………………
  1£®Table and Commodity Deity in Headstand Dance……………………………………
  2£®General Social Wealth and the Holiness of Currency…………………………
  3£®Money That Produces Money and Capital God……………………………………
Section 3 Reproductive Metaphysics…………………………………………………
  1£®Abstraction Becomes Master…………………………………………………
  2£®Ultimate Revolution…………………………………………………………
  3£®Psuedo-thingness and Market Idol……………………………………………
Chapter V All Wall is Door…………………………………………
Section 1 Watcher in Cornfield…………………………………………………
  1£®The Concept Historical Totality as Critical Sword……………………………………
  2£®The Alienation Sin of Contemporary Society………………………………………
Section 2 Priest of Science…………………………………………………………
  1£®Problems and  Symptomatic Reading…………………………………………………
  2£®Problem of Subject………………………………………………………
Section 3 Bosom Friend of Dialectics……………………………………………
  1£®Critical Eyes……………………………………………………………
  2£®Memorization for Oblivion …………………………………………………
Bibliography…………………………………………………………
Postscript

Introduction: The Access to Marx

In 1883, on the day of March 14, Karl Marx died in London, and Engels gave that famous speech on the outstanding achievements of Karl Marx in his life, which are two great ideas, one is the theory of surplus value, and the other is historical materialism. Exactly, Engels was so correct that he in fact offered two mentions to understand what Marx had done and had fulfilled in his theoretical study, i.e., the dual angles of economics and philosophy. And we hold that these two horizons were the logical nature of Das Kapital, in this glorious work, Marx showed his great achievements thoroughly. Let us give more information in detail.
As we know, there are two basic particles in Marxian historical dialectics. One is the objective dimension, namely, focusing on the social existence and its laws which are based on the development of specific material productive forces. And the other is the subjective dimension, namely, focusing on the man’s social practice which is based on the transitory and historical productive relations. As Marx emphasized in his famous letter to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov on December 28, 1846, whether productive forces or social relations, i.e., whether objective or subjective dimension, they were specific, transitory and historical. An important argument of this book, Approach to Karl Marx in Spirit, is that this dual dimension of economics and philosophy was generated by Marx in Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, developed in The German Ideology, and was completed in Economic Manuscripts of 1857-1858 and Das Kapital. And what’s more, it is this dual angle that the methodological starting point of the two important texts of Economic Manuscripts of 1857-1858 and Das Kapital. In our opinions, the critical theoretical resources for Marxian economics are the Ricardian Socialists and Hegelian philosophy.
Therefore, there are three steps to trace Marxian theoretical investigation as follows: Firstly, the logical fallacy of pure objective dimension and pure subjective dimension. In this section, classical political economy, including humanist economics, e.g., Simonde de Sismondi, and humanism in Germany, e.g., Moses Hess and Max Stirner, and Feuerbach, are the main study for Marx in the first two chapters of this book. The former, we think that they offered the objective angle of capitalistic society positively, and the latter, they offered the critical angle ethically, however, both of them failed because of their own logical fallacy, as a result, from Max Weber, positivism became ideology under the name of scientific methodology, and the humanism, after Nietzsche, especially Frankfurt School, turned over itself. As to Karl Marx, this fallacy also made him begin to study economics.
Secondly, the two important attempts to dialectical unity of these two dimensions. In this section, Ricardian Socialists and Hegelian philosophy are the main study for Marx in the third chapter of this book. As to Marx, Ricardian Socialists offered the economical attempt to understand and inform capitalism, while Hegel offered the philosophical attempt. The most important achievement of these two resources, in Marx’s viewpoint, is that they did not only have a single framework, but the dual eyes, i.e., Ricardian Socialists were economists, but they did not abandon philosophic concern which is the ultimate end of humanism, whereas Hegel as a philosopher, he was just the bosom friend of classical economists, in his abstruse philosophy there is the abstract of the achievements of classical economics, especially David Ricardo. In fact, Hegel, Ricardo, and Marx in Das Kapital are the same line in different faces. We think that the inspiration of Marx in Das Kapital is from his investigation of these two theoretical resources again and again, especially when he stayed in London from 1850s to 1860s.
Thirdly, the most important achievement of Marx: historical phenomenology. In this section, through reading the book of Marx, Das Kapital, we draw a conclusion: Marx did not keep his eyes on the whole historical patterns any more, such as primitive society, slave society, feudal society, capitalistic society and socialist society, just like when he became beginner of economics in 1845, but focused on capitalistic society only, that means, with the dual critical angle, Marx opened the door of understanding the nature and construction of capitalism. And what’s more, by the three fetishisms, i.e., the fetishisms of commodity, money and capital, a key to understand modernity and post-modernity was made by Karl Marx. So, as his the highest fulfillment, we think that historical phenomenology means that, whether phenomena or noumena under the condition of capitalistic society, actually is the best way to reflect human himself, in other words, Kant’s problem was answered here by Marx: Man and Thing, Subjectivity and Objectivity, are not single framework any more, they were expressed themselves with each other, and in the huge capitalistic market, there is intermediary anywhere, in this intermediary, man and thing were reversed, i.e., object became subject, man was enslaved by thing, that is so-called reification or alienation by philosophers. But for Marx, that is not enough. Although this reification or alienation, in Marx’s words, fetishisms or reified social relations under the name of natural requirement or scientific essence (e.g., classical economics), is exactly objective, even scientific, but above all, it is historical, transitory and specific. As a result, the nature of bourgeois ideology is that it mistakes historicalness as eternalness, mistakes historical character of thing as its natural character, mistakes historical relations as natural requirements, and mistakes phenomena of capitalism as its noumena, thus is the bourgeois ideology and so-called natural laws of economics, politics and sociology.
Consequently, after Karl Marx, his dual dimension of historical dialectics was torn into a single framework by both of philosophers and economists unfortunately. A good example is Western Marxism (e.g., Lukács). In the last chapter of this book, we rethink the dialectics with three typical notions, i.e., Lukács, Sartre and Adorno, so that readers can see what is the bridge between Karl Marx and modern society, even global capitalism. In a word, the purpose of this book is leading the readers into the spiritual world of Marx, seeing that what he had done and how to get it, what connections between Ricardian Socialists and Marx, between classical economics and bourgeois ideology, and what differences between historical phenomenology and bourgeois ideology, between self-reflection of bourgeois ideology and Marx’s critique of capitalism,

The Logical Fallacy of Pure Objective Dimension and Pure Subjective Dimension
Marx spent most of his inks to criticizing bourgeois ideology, so, what is bourgeois ideology? Precisely, it means that directly taking it as innate nature correctly, no any logical criticism of capitalism, which is traced back to the Enlightenment, and its typical expression is classical political economy.
As we know, the theory of labor value is the foundation of classical political economy. And the key of the theory of labor value is that the value is created by labor, i.e., the existence of mankind himself now is confirmable without God, which is production of the Industrial Revolution, after then the relationship between man and nature is changed thoroughly, consequently the change of human relationships. We think that it is just the so-called capitalistic productive method that changed these relations. And among these changes the most important meaningful facet is that human beings did conquer nature and be master of the earth. As a result, in philosophy it is humanism that becomes the main tide since the Renaissance. Humanism, the expression of freedom, democracy, equality and fraternity, of course, is based on the respect of man, not God, and it is the strong weapon to liberate man from the fetter in the Middle Ages. So, here are two important connections: one is between classical economics and bourgeois ideology, and the other is between economics and philosophy. However, here is also a dual dilemma: As to classical political economy, it brings out Man, but finally constructs a scientific system of Thing, i.e., the science of commodity, money and capital, those what leads to the study of production, about how to make productive force strong scientifically in capitalistic society, with methodology of abstract and positivism, which declares neutrality of value judgment, but in fact, it is just a value judgment of bourgeois ideology and capitalism, and above all, it is classical political economy from Adam Smith to David Ricardo that established the power of Thing under the name of science. As to humanism, it establishes the power of Man, against the domination of Thing, endeavoring for reconstruction the harmonious relationship between man and nature in the earth, reconstruction the harmonious human relationships between social classes in modern society, but in fact it is invalid for a scientific theoretical system, that means, a philosophical and ethical criticism is actually invalid when it faces economical scientific laws, consequently it does not bridge between man and thing, value and fact, on the contrary, it makes them hostile to each other strongly, which is confirmed by modern western philosophy in the twentieth century.
In a sense, we see that natural laws of economics on the one hand exactly are the abstract of capitalism and bourgeois ideology, and the other hand establish the authority of science and scientific methodology. So, returning this book, when Marx in 1844 intended to criticize capitalistic society with Hegelian philosophical concept of self-consciousness and German humanist concept of species-nature, and drew his conclusion, alienation of labor, he did stand by the side of humanist philosophy, not the side of economics, in this moment, we even can say that he was a layman of economics, as a result, he certainly did not touched the core of classical political economy, and in 1845, when he was a primer of economics, he did make a error, that is, he fell into the trap of economics, and he did not understand why and how classical political economy from Adam Smith to David Ricardo was such a science, in this moment, what his weapon of criticizing capitalistic society was just Smith’s concept of division of labor. In our opinions, Marx must face this predicament, and he must solve the dual dilemma between philosophy and economics what we mentioned above. But unfortunately, before 1847 when he wrote the book, The Poverty of Philosophy, to refute Proudhon, he did not have any effective solution. And before he began to study the economics of Recardian Socialists and reinvestigate Hegelian philosophy after 1849 in London, he did not become Karl Marx who is so far famous economist and philosopher. Marx was tormented by the dilemma.
In a word, we think that the pure objective dimension, the single framework of economics, make itself fall into the capitalistic and bourgeois ideology, which is not what Marx wanted to get, whereas the pure subjective dimension, the single framework of philosophy, make itself fall into the invalid ethical soliloquizing, which did not discuss with economic sciences in the same theoretical platform, their discussion and criticism was far away from the theory of labor value. As Marx said in the last sentence of On the Theses of Feuerbach, philosophers just explain the world in many ways, but the key part is changing the world. So, how Marx got his theoretical peak, is the core of this book. And before talking about Karl Marx, we focus on the two important attempts intending to give a way out of this dilemma. Before Marx, that is Hegel and Ricardian Socialists.

Two Important Attempts to Dialectical Unity between Subjective and Objective Dimensions
In common sense, Hegel is a pure abstruse philosopher, not an economist. However, in his Manuscripts in Jena, many details show that he spent much time in studying classical political economy. In our opinions, Hegel had got his fruitful research in economics, though most of them were expressed by his philosophic discourses. A good example is his famous concept of absolute spirit. As we know, when Hegel said absolute spirit, he meant that two important notions: In methodology, he questioned a critical method of scientific investigation, i.e., having an insight into the essence with reflecting and seeing through the phenomenon, such as economic laws by investigating market phenomena, Hegel questioned that such a scientific method actually did have a theoretical presupposition which is the dichotomy between essence and phenomenon, and above all, this scientific method actually is a static way so that there is a logical conclusion that is history did not have been changed in any way. Hegel argued that these scientific investigation would be scientific, just because they are rational knowledge in history dynamically, not because the mechanical unity between the essence and the phenomenon, whether the essence and the phenomenon, they have been changed and developed in any time, anywhere. So, absolute spirit is different from those ontological concepts before Hegel, and it is not a transcendental ontological concept, not an innate concept, but an abstract of philosophy of history, a historical concept. As a result, Hegel here offered a historical way to investigating history itself.
Thus came into the second notion, that is, in the connection between absolute spirit and classical political economy, when he said absolute sprit what Hegelian really meant is that the negation of negation. In detail, there are three stages in the development of absolute spirit: One is the positive stage, during this stage there is the second nature which is different from the original nature, this second nature is created by human beings, so that here is an famous conclusion, that is, labor of man is the objectified labor which means man is liberated from the fetter of nature and is confirmed himself by this labor, and meanwhile it is also the alienation of labor which means man came into a new fetter, the production of his labor, which is the negative stage, the second stage of the development of absolute spirit. In our viewpoints, here is the key of the connection between absolute spirit and classical political economy. Civil society actually is the direct expression of the cunning of reason, i.e., each individual does fulfill the universality unconsciously with his individual will, in Smith’s words, each man did just show and get his selfishness, but in fact bring out social universal benefit. So, this negative stage in fact offered two metaphors, one is that Hegel did stand by the side of classical economy with the acknowledgment of the alienation of absolute spirit, and the other is that Hegel did try to find a way out of the alienation of absolute spirit, for he actually thought that civil society is not the end of history. The end of history is a visible hand, the country and right, as a solution of Adam Smith’s famous invisible hand.  Consequently, there is the last stage, the negation of negation, the fulfillment of absolute spirit thoroughly, the returning of itself. In this sense, Hegel is the bosom friend of classical political economy, and finally found his way out of the trap of classical political economy, of bourgeois ideology. In a word, Hegel here offered his solution to the dialectical unity of the economics and philosophy, the objective and subjective dimensions, on the one hand, alienation is the logical and necessary way to the ultimate fulfillment of absolute spirit, that means, the capitalistic society is the positive development of history, and on the other hand, in historical eyes this capitalistic society is a new fetter of man, this stage of history must be exceeded by the conquering of alienation, the returning of man and reason, the fulfillment of absolute spirit ultimately. Obviously, when Marx reinvestigated Hegelian philosophy again and again in 1850s, especially in his many manuscripts in London, at first he did not understand Hegel wholly, and at last he did so, it is in the Economic Manuscripts of 1857-1858, a draft of his Das Kapital in 1867. Before we give more information in Marx, let us pay attention to another important attempt, Ricardian socialist economists.
Ricardian socialist economists were different from Hegel. They did not take the logical exceeding of the negation of negation, but take the logical reversing of the theory of labor value. As economists, they insisted on the fundamental role of the theory of labor value, that means, they took the theory of labor value as their starting point, just like what their ancestors did, such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo and so on, not like those humanist philosopher, such as Max Stirner, who never thought of economics in their investigation. The theory of labor value, as we mentioned above, means that labor of human beings create our existing world, the material force is the presupposition of our existence, in a word, labor creates value. No labor, no value. Thus these Ricardian Socialists stick to the consistency of the theory of labor value, that is, because labor creates value, the value should belong to the laborer, however, in capitalistic society, there is an informal phenomenon: laborers have nothing at all, and they even can not survive. The fortune came into the bag of capitalists, not that of laborers. In Marx’s words later, poverty is produced when fortune was made. Fortune is more, poverty more. Why? These Ricardian Socialists thought that the problem is the social system of capitalism. The theory of labor value is not wrong. The wrong is social system. As Proudhon said in his famous work, What Is Property, property is stealing. In capitalistic society, a universal benefit is pseudo-universality because of its concealing of the difference between bourgeoisie and proletarian. Consequently, the property of capitalists is from the stealing toward the laborers through the social system. So, these socialist economists drew an ethical conclusion from the economic investigation, i.e., the capitalistic system must be changed and superseded by socialist system. Here we can see that their endeavor is so glorious that when Marx encountered their works in the library in London, how strong his feeling is! Thompson, Gray, Bray and so on, they all came into the bottom of Marx’s heart. Marx, this brave and lasting soldier, was charmed deeply by their great works.
As a final word, we see that Hegel and Ricardian Socialists made these two important attempts to unify the subjective and objective dimensions. They stood on the fundamental stone of economics and got their philosophical conclusion. In this sense, they are the real and direct ancestors of Karl Marx.

The Generation of Marxian Historical Phenomenology (Das Kapital)
After 1849, Marx had been exiled in London. In this moment, he and Engles had published many books, such as The Holy Family, The German Ideology, The Poverty of Philosophy, and The Communist Manifesto. And he had many notebooks, especially when he lived in London, most of them did not publish in his lifetime. So, when we say the generation of Marxian historical phenomenology, we take these published and unpublished texts as our data, especially MEGA-2.
In our opinions, the generation of Marxian historical phenomenology, of course, is from the dual subjective and objective dimensions. Unfortunately, Marx did not successfully find a way out of the dilemma what we mentioned above before his Economic Manuscripts of 1857-1858. When he reinvestigated Hegelian philosophy and classical political economy after in 1850s, he found that he would not have any ideas of capitalistic society if he did not understand wholly Hegel or Ricardo. The productive method of capitalism thoroughly changed the relations between man and nature, between man and man, and the logical development of capitalism itself stood on the peak of human history. Capitalistic society is a new pattern of history, a new way to existence of human beings, a new relationship between man and the world. Thus came into a new reflection of history, a new expression of sciences. As for Marx, how to understand this new pattern of history and its construction, its secret of social system, is his first theoretical endeavor. In our viewpoints, Hegel gave him a weapon of historical phenomenological method, and Ricardian Socialists gave him a weapon of scientific fundamental logic, which made his unique historical phenomenology powerful and strong to battle with bourgeois ideology, and above all, to give a theory weapon to workers and proletariat in order to change the world, change the relationships of human beings, in a world, change this capitalistic society for fulfillment of happiness and freedom and equality of the whole human beings, especially for the class of weak, of proletarian, not just for those blocs of ruler, of ownership.
Now, there is the question: what is Marxian historical phenomenology? Before answering this question, we have three questions to answer: First, what is difference of the method of economic investigation between Marx and classical political economy, and Marx how to exceed his theoretical opponent, David Ricardo? Second, what different answers of historical phenomenological method between Marx and Hegel? Third, what Marx learned from Ricardian Socialists to unify the objective and subjective dimensions, in other words, what is Marx’s solution?
As to the first question, we think that the key of difference is abstract. As for classical economics, its important way to investigation is social materialism, which is the abstraction of those unseen behaviors and facts in marketing exchange, and it is different from the natural materialism of Feuerbach which is emotional and intuitive and mirror-like. In our opinions, it is social materialism, not natural materialism, to be the starting point of Marx’s theory. However, the difference of abstract between Marx and classical political economics is what materialism means. As for Marx, materialism means social relationship, in capitalistic society, this social relationship is constructed by the present productive action, consequently it appears as reified relations, and unfortunately, these reified relations are taken as the presupposition of classical economic theory, but for Marx, these reified relations are the origin of reification and fetishism, as a result, in Marx’s opinion, classical economics mistook the reified social relations as the real essence, in fact, they are just the appearances. Consequently, the important conclusion of metaphor in classical political economy is that capitalistic society is the end of human beings, and classical political economy is the cradle of bourgeois ideology. A good explanation is the labor in capitalism. Each kind of labor is reified in capitalism, and it has noting to do with its master, it has nothing to do with laborer’s personality, will and everything. The ruler of this labor is reified market and its exchange, not the laborer himself. So, for Marx, labor creates value, but labor itself is not value, and laborers becomes commodity in market with selling his quality of labor, not with selling his quantity of labor, in a word, what laborers sell is the power of labor, the control power of labor. That is the key of capitalistic society. That is the origin of surplus value.
In our opinions, classical political economy, from Smith to Ricardo, especially Ricardo, everything is for the end of production, that is, everything is reified, whether man or natural materials, they are value in capitalistic society because they are able to be reified and exchanged. In a sense, the method of capitalistic production can be dilated in any time, anywhere. Today there is global capitalism. That is the logical development of capitalism itself. In theory, everything, everywhere, every country, every nationality, ultimately they all have been reified and come into the system of capitalism. That is the result of Ricardian theory, but not that of Marxian economics. In our viewpoints, Marx is always a thorough humanist, thus he certainly would not stop in the theory of labor value. So there is the theory of surplus value.
As to the second question, the answer is that Hegel is the one who successfully generalized the achievements of philosophy since ancient Greek time, while Marx overturned this philosophical tradition. The end of historical dialectics is not explanation of the world, but changing this world, thus his critical concepts, such as social relations, practice and so on, did not be included by the genealogy of philosophy. In Marx’s words of The Poverty of Philosophy, every concept of philosophy in fact is historical, and the emancipation of human beings is not the action of concepts, not the action of terms, but the action of reality, the action of history. So, Marxian historical dialectics is not the construction of philosophy, and above all, not the construction of ontological philosophy. That is the key of difference between Marx and Hegel. Marx had not a logical systematic philosophy, while this is the character of Hegelian philosophy. Consequently, for Marx, the historical phenomenological method is the weapon of exceeding the methodology of classical economics, and it smashed the eternalness of capitalism in classical economics. And for Hegel, the historical phenomenological method is the key of understanding philosophy of history. In the understanding of the new pattern of human history, understanding of capitalism, Marx, Hegel and Ricardo stood the same starting line, although they finally had different conclusions and gave different answers. Ricardo took the productive force as powerful change, and Hegel took the visible rationality, country and right, as his hope, while Marx took the proletariat as the power of conquering reification and returning the real equal and harmonious human relationships.
As to the last question, we firstly differentiate two important terms, one is broad connotation of historical materialism, and the other is narrow connotation of that. The key is the concept of history. Broad connotation, means that the whole history of human beings, and narrow connotation, means that the present history of capitalistic society. And materialism, for Marx, is a material force of human existence, and it is a fundamental stone of history. In our opinions, when Marx paid attention to capitalistic history, he found that this capitalistic society was more complicated than what he thought at first. In his words, the anatomy of man is the key of the anatomy of monkey, and that means, only understanding the higher stage of history can people understand thoroughly the lower stage of history. So, capitalistic society, as the higher stage of human history in Marx’s time, became the object of theoretical investigation of Karl Marx, not the whole patterns and stages of human history any longer. How this society operate and what is its construction, and above all, why fortune and poverty produce at the same time and why so huge fortune which capitalism created does not bring out the happiness and equality of the whole classes, why proletariat as laborers who created so huge fortune had nothing at all? Marx was perplexed by these questions badly. As a result, he had two critical concepts: productive force and social relations.
In our opinions, productive force in a sense is a synonym of the objective dimension, and social relations, in a sense, is a synonym of the subjective dimension. Before Marx was a connoisseur of economics, he firstly fell into the logical trap of humanist philosophy to criticize capitalism with terms and concepts, such as alienation and species-nature, but he failed, then he asked for help of Smith’s concept of division of labor, but also failed. Until he understood wholly Ricardo and Hegel, understood wholly what happened and how operated in capitalistic society, he had renewed and refreshed his starting fundamental stone of his economic theory, a concept of Ricardo, the Capital. Capital, in Marx’s opinion, is the highest achievement of abstract of classical political economy, and it is the essence of the system of capitalism. In his words, capital is a universal light to shine every place in capitalistic society. The subjective angle, man, and the objective angle, thing, can not differentiate it, because it has an appearance of thing, but it actually is reified social relations, in another word, it has dual identity itself, it is thing, but not the one of natural materials, and it is value of human labor, but not the one of the real social relation, it is reified in the process of labor. Thus there is the dual angle of Karl Marx in his book, Das Kapital. That is not the result of philosophy, not the result of economics, but the result of the historical reality of capitalistic society, the result of the action of human history. So, on the one hand, Marx of course took capitalism as a progress in human history, because it liberated man from the fetter of nature, from the social relations of feudal society or other society whose foundation was natural connection, such as family, consanguinity and so on. In capitalistic society, it did not differentiate people with these natural factors, and set up a common sense of equality, democracy and freedom, which took reified value of commodity, money and capital, especially capital as its fundamental stone. Everyone is equal before these reified values, and everyone is offered an equal chance to change his social position and social class. That is the real progress of history. That is what Marx learned from Hegel. But on the other hand, for Marx, after all it is a reified reality, and it reversed the value of man into the value of thing, and it took the latter, not the former, as its foundation. In a sense, capitalistic society stood by the side of those classes of property, not those of poverty, because the latter has nothing to do with the power of those reified value. What they got is just their salary, and their surplus value is taken by capitalists through the social system of capitalism. So, Marx had to smash the illusion of bourgeois ideology, because for those proletarian, freedom and democracy and equality whose foundation is property are nonsense and meaninglessness. That is what Marx learned from Ricardian Socialists. That is why Marx had his economics, why he must uncover the secret of fortune in capitalism. Das Kapital, we can say this book is crystallization of thinking for Marx in his long lifetime. Thus is the solution of Marx: historical phenomenology.
Historical phenomenology, an outstanding achievement of Marx’s Das Kapital, is a fruitful anatomy of capitalistic society. It is a production of Marxian economics whose origin is classical political economy, and its fundamental concept is social relation which is objective, reified, and above all, historical, transitory and specific. Just because it is objective and reified, it makes capitalism powerful, productive and bourgeois, so, for classical political economy, both of their scientific character and fatal fallacy are from this objective and reified social relations. Objective, so, scientific, and reified, so, fatal, because their social materialism can help them find economic laws, but can not help them take reified social relations as reified appearances, on the contrary, take them as the essence of social relations in capitalistic society, however, for Marx, social materialism was certainly not enough. He wanted to uncover this fallacy, although this fallacy is scientific, he must set up a new science to exceed the science of classical political economy. Thus is Das Kapital.
And just because the social relation is historical and transitory and specific, it makes capitalistic society not eternal, but changeable, consequently human beings, especially proletariat could be hopeful for revolution and subjectivity and conquering the reification of civil society. In this sense, it is an integrated unity of dual angle, the subjective and objective dimensions. In Lenin’s words, dialectics, logic and epistemology are the same thing in different terms, that means, whether historical materialism or historical dialectics, they are thorough revolutionary with historical phenomenology. In our opinions, no the revolutionary connotation, there is no real Marxism. So, when modern Marxist study focuses on cultural philosophy, not economics, it is gradually far away from Marx. A good example is Western Marxism which finally fell into the morass of explanation of the world, and forgot their ancestor, Karl Marx’s motto: Philosophers just explain the world in many ways, but the key part is changing the world.

Looking back on the history of Marxism and historical practice of socialism, especially the October Revolution in Russia and the Communist Revolution in China, we see that the subjective dimension is very clear, while the objective dimension seems to be vague. Productive social relations had been changed in these socialist countries, but the productive forces developed slowly, even in the reality of socialist system, free exchange of commodity, money and capital was banned by the government. These governments seemed to fall into the fallacy of the pure subjective dimension, and forgot the objective dimension, the productive forces and the method of production in capitalistic society are actually progress and fundamental stone of the existence of human beings. As a result, these socialist countries faced its difficulty of development more or less. For China, in 1980s the government began to regulate economic policy and tried to unify the dual dimension under the framework of given social system in 1990s. Today Marxism is still the guiding ideology of the government in China.
As a final word, the access to Marx is that endeavoring for equality and happiness of human beings under the condition of the foundation of fortune and productive forces. That is the legacy of Karl Marx, and we try our best to show it in this book.