Lan Jiang: Innovating Paradigms in the Study of Foreign Marxism
Since the 1980s, the field of foreign Marxist studies in our country has achieved extremely prolific research results. As socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered the New Era, contemporary Chinese research on foreign Marxism has entered a transitional period. It is necessary to shift from the simple translation, introduction, and analysis of the theories, ideas, and systems of foreign Marxist scholars toward a re-interpretation of foreign Marxism using a Chinese discourse system. This will allow for the consolidation of thought and a problem-oriented, systematic explanation of foreign Marxism. Ultimately, with a spirit of "incorporating a hundred rivers into the sea," we must present to the world research results on foreign Marxism based on the construction of a Chinese independent knowledge system.
A Special Historical Mission
In the process of Reform and Opening-up, when facing elements of Western capitalism, the translation and study of foreign Marxism possessed a specific historical value. For a long time, while partially inheriting the basic ideas of Marxism, foreign Marxism also strove to conduct a penetrating critique of post-World War II capitalism in both thought and practice. Whether it was Lukács's critique of reification, Gramsci's critique of cultural hegemony, or the Frankfurt School's critique of instrumental reason, these thinkers were actually targeting the inequality, alienation, injustice, and irrationality inherent within capitalism after it entered the stages of financial capitalism and state capitalism. They advocated for the construction of a more just and more humane social system within capitalist society. In this sense, the study of foreign Marxism possesses a certain historical rationality.
From this, it can be seen that for Chinese Marxist researchers at the beginning of Reform and Opening-up, the introduction and study of foreign Marxism possessed value and function in two aspects. On the one hand, theoretically, research on foreign Marxism supplemented a very important link in the development of Marxism—namely, the critique of capitalism from within the capitalist mode of production during that stage of its development. This was a perspective that socialist countries external to Western capitalism did not possess, and thus it could enrich and develop the scope and perspective of Chinese Marxist studies. On the other hand, practically, research on foreign Marxism helped Chinese people understand the basic contradictions of the capitalist mode of production and its many negative effects. This allowed people to face Western capitalist elements objectively, thereby maintaining a clear head on the questions of how to correctly understand and correctly develop socialism. We could absorb foreign capital and advanced production experience while remaining vigilant against negative effects during the process, thereby facing Western capitalism with an attitude of independence and autonomy and avoiding a slide toward "total Westernization." In this regard, scholars who first introduced foreign Marxism—such as Xu Chongwen, Yu Wujin, Du Zhangzhi, Chen Xueming, Li Qingyi, and Ou Litong—translated and introduced the first generation of foreign Marxist scholars and their works, represented by Lukács, Korsch, and Gramsci. They also gradually led us to recognize and understand the constellation of the Frankfurt School, represented by Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin, and Fromm, as well as French Marxist thinkers like Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lefebvre, and Althusser, and Analytical Marxist scholars such as Cohen, Roemer, and Elster. The introduction of these works greatly enriched Chinese scholars' understanding of Marxism and led us to refocus on some of Marx's important concepts and ideas.
In the ensuing thirty years, foreign Marxist studies achieved rapid development. Works by more schools and scholars were introduced, and more young scholars participated in the study of foreign Marxism. During this process, our country's research on foreign Marxism presented new characteristics.
First, research on foreign Marxism expanded from individual figures to the study of threads, countries, and schools. It can be said that research was no longer limited to introducing the core concepts, major works, and ideological systems of individuals, but rather examined the development of foreign Marxism from the perspective of different schools and nations. From the highly influential Frankfurt School to the Birmingham School of British Cultural Marxism, from French Marxism to Italian Marxism, and even Marxist studies in non-Western countries such as Eastern European Marxism and Japanese Marxism flourished during this period. Undoubtedly, these studies are of great value. The translation and interpretation of these foreign Marxisms allowed Chinese scholars to more comprehensively understand the developmental trajectory of Marxism on a global scale and provided a richer reference for Marxist research under socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Second, foreign Marxist research hsa increasingly focused on problems brought about by the development of Western capitalism, such as ecological issues, gender issues, colonial issues, and political issues. This gave rise to a series of new research fields in foreign Marxism, such as Eco-Marxism, Post-colonial Marxism, and Feminist Marxism. These new fields focus on practical problems generated during capitalist development and provided certain reflections for China to evade developmental risks during the Reform and Opening-up process.
Current Problems Faced
Of course, after more than thirty years of development, our country’s research on foreign Marxism has also exposed a series of problems. Today, as China builds a discourse system, a narrative system, and even constructs a Chinese independent knowledge system, we are required to rethink many ideas and systems of foreign Marxism based on China's specific realities. This will open up a new realm and a new situation for our foreign Marxist studies.
First, because early research on foreign Marxism was mostly based on introduction, it led to a phenomenon where texts and ideas were emphasized while the historical dimensions behind them were neglected. However, as Marx emphasized in The German Ideology, social existence determines social consciousness. Foreign Marxist thinkers were not religious prophets or theoretical geniuses; the works they wrote and the ideas they proposed were all answers provided for problems appearing at a certain historical stage of capitalist development.
For example, when Horkheimer and Adorno of the Frankfurt School critiqued capitalist instrumental reason, they were actually representing the tendency in 1950s and 1960s Western capitalism to instrumentalize the proletariat, thereby erasing the meaning of the worker's existence within the highly automated production system of Fordism. Similarly, in One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse examined the existential condition of humans under the technological governance of Western capitalism brought about by scientific and technological development. Because humans were integrated into a highly technocratic production system, ordinary people (whether factory floor workers or white-collar office workers) were unable to reflect upon or critique the capitalist industrial system. They moved toward a one-dimensional state, where human laborers could only obediently follow the capitalist mode of production in a one-dimensional manner.
In other words, almost no foreign Marxist thinker conceived the edifice of a future society through mere speculation or fantasy in a study; rather, they went deep into the internal workings of the actual capitalist mode of production to provide their own answers. It was precisely because Baudrillard saw the dominance and rule of capitalism over ordinary people and shifted from the sphere of production to the sphere of consumption that he wrote The Consumer Society. It was because Foster saw how capitalist production exploits nature and breaks the metabolic process of nature itself that he could write Marx’s Ecology. If we ignore specific historical backgrounds when introducing these foreign Marxisms and only perform literal analysis from text to text, it may be an act of "buying the casket and returning the pearls" [1].
Second, when reading foreign Marxist texts, we also need to see the limitations in their modes of discourse. Although most foreign Marxist scholars are very familiar with Marx’s works—especially the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, the Grundrisse, and Capital—most of them enter the material through a mode of Western ideological discourse. Consequently, they can only express a version of Marx that has been filtered through the discourse familiar to them.
For example, Erich Fromm was a psychoanalyst. To a certain extent, he was simultaneously influenced by psychoanalytic discourse and Western humanist ideology. After reading Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts, he wrote Marx’s Concept of Man. In this work, Fromm did indeed provide many insightful views. However, when he understands the concept of the human from a Western discourse—setting up the Marx of the 1844 Manuscripts as a "humanistic Marx of youth" in opposition to the "old" Marx centered on Capital—he brings this Western humanistic discourse into Marxism. This severs the internal connections within Marx’s thought and opposes the "two Marxs" against one another.
The reason such a misreading occurs is precisely because Fromm and other foreign Marxist scholars adopted a humanistic ideology that held a dominant position in Western society at the time. They painted Marx as a "humanistic" master, thereby distancing him from the Marx of historical materialism. If our country’s foreign Marxist research does not pay attention to this and ignores the influence of Western ideological discourse on foreign Marxist studies, it will be easy to accept these ideas as correct without discrimination, leading foreign Marxist studies astray.
Longitudinal Research and Horizontal Research
In practice, our country's research on foreign Marxism can be viewed as consisting of the vertical and horizontal axes of a Cartesian coordinate system. This constitutes the longitudinal research and horizontal research of our foreign Marxist studies.
First, regarding longitudinal research, for Chinese Marxist scholars, we need to understand that previous research more often considered the theories and ideas of foreign Marxism through a longitudinal study of periods and countries. We introduced certain thinkers and then placed them into different nations and schools, such as German Marxism, French Marxism, Italian Marxism, British Marxism, and American Marxism. The advantage of this research is that it facilitates a detailed analysis and differentiation of different types, nations, and countries of Marxism from a genealogical perspective. However, it easily severs the internal connections between different countries and regions and ignores the horizontal influence of some foreign Marxist thinkers.
Second, although our foreign Marxist studies have achieved very prolific results in longitudinal research, in past studies we neglected the existence of a horizontal research dimension. Therefore, today we must introduce a horizontal axis—that is, within the coordinate system of the Chinese discourse system, to construct Chinese-style questions and adopt a Chinese conceptual and discourse system to restructure the horizontal research of our foreign Marxist studies. In any case, our Marxist researchers stand upon the soil of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The perspective from which we consider foreign Marxist problems is a Chinese perspective; the discourse we speak is a Chinese discourse; and the concepts we use are Chinese concepts. Today, the theories and thoughts presented by foreign Marxism all need to be re-interpreted under the construction of a Chinese independent knowledge system. We need to understand and reflect upon the intellectual nourishment brought to us by foreign Marxism against the grand background of today’s "Questions of China, Questions of the World, Questions of the People, and Questions of the Times" [2]. We must transform their insights into the energy of Sinicized Marxism, thereby contributing to the construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the New Era.
Constructing a Chinese independent knowledge system requires going deep into our country's specific realities and the fine traditional Chinese culture. This requires Chinese Marxist scholars to discover problems within our specific realities, borrow resources from fine traditional Chinese culture, and use our own problem-consciousness and discourse modes to rethink the problems of foreign Marxism. For example, when we discuss the digital economy and digital empowerment, it is easy to connect these to some critical achievements of foreign Marxism, such as those of Marcuse, Stiegler, David Harvey, and others. But our research on them is not to blindly follow their tone and criticize digital technology and the digital economy without discrimination. Rather, based on a Chinese standpoint and discourse, we reflect on the giant transformations brought by the digital economy, avoiding new inequalities and injustices brought by capital monopoly, so that the digital economy brings more welfare to the economy, society, and all the people.
In this sense, from the height of constructing a Chinese independent knowledge system, we must re-understand and re-interpret foreign Marxism. On the one hand, this involves transforming the problems once used by foreign Marxism to critique capitalism into effective components for building a Chinese independent knowledge system, thereby providing richer intellectual materials for research in fields like philosophy, sociology, political science, and communication studies under that system. On the other hand, constructing a Chinese independent knowledge system represents the academic and ideological self-confidence of Chinese scholars. At the same time, it means that by absorbing a broad range of foreign Marxist thought and grounding ourselves in China's specific realities, we can achieve high-quality and high-level ideological transformation. This provides effective intellectual momentum for advancing the development of China’s digital and intelligent society, realizes a "dual circulation" between human thinking and social construction, and lays a creative foundation for the practice of building a community with a shared future for humanity.