Kong Weiyu: Toward an Epistemology of Historical Materialism: Young Marx’s Dual Perspective on "Things"
Adhering to the Marxist worldview and methodology is key to advancing the development of philosophical theory. Its primary objective is to uphold, apply, and develop a scientific epistemology on the philosophical basis of a profound grasp of "thinghood" (物) in historical materialism, thereby grasping the living soul of Marx’s way of understanding and changing the world. The "thing" in historical materialism is "existence," and "the existence of men is their actual life-process" (Marx & Engels Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 29). How, then, are we to scientifically understand people’s actual life-process? In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels both acknowledged the affirmative nature of "things" and elucidated their negative nature. The affirmative nature lies in their recognition of the priority of natural existence, their proposition that material life constitutes the primary quality of human historical activity, and their clarification of the foundation of historical materialism—that "life determines consciousness"—which fundamentally sublated Hegelian idealism. The negative nature lies in the fact that Marx and Engels were not satisfied with remaining at the level of an intuitive materialist understanding of physical properties. While they affirmed real existing things, they discovered that a thing is more than itself; behind the thing lies a complex construction of activities and relations between humanity and nature, and between person and person. By using a scientific epistemology to penetrate the actual life-process of humanity, Marx and Engels formed the essential method of historical materialism.
I. The Dual Perspective on "Things" in Humanist Discourse
The scientific understanding of "things" in historical materialism did not emerge overnight; rather, it underwent a long process of theoretical exploration. Prior to writing the Theses on Feuerbach (hereafter Theses) and The German Ideology (hereafter Ideology), Marx studied and excerpted important theories from German classical philosophy and British classical economics. He absorbed different understandings of "things" (the object in Hegel’s eyes, sensuous intuition in Feuerbach’s eyes, and the product of labor in Smith’s eyes) from figures such as Hegel, Feuerbach, and Smith, forming the humanist epistemology found in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (hereafter 1844 Manuscripts). Although incomplete, this initial attempt constituted an important link in Marx’s progression toward a historical materialist epistemology.
Beginning during his doctoral studies, Marx gradually read and studied Hegelian philosophy under the influence of Eduard Gans, Bruno Bauer, and the Young Hegelians. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, in particular, provided Marx with significant theoretical inspiration. Consequently, Marx’s doctoral dissertation was an epistemological sublation carried out between determining the subjectivity (Epicurus) and objectivity (Democritus) of the sensuous world. Let us first briefly outline Hegel’s understanding of "things." Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit describes the complex journey through which the self realizes itself as absolute knowledge in the process of dealing with the subject and object; this is also a theory that ontologizes the entire human cognitive process. For Hegel, "the object is an immediate existence, that is, a thing in a general sense" (Hegel, p. 490). At the opening of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel denies the understanding that treats the "thing" directly as an object. He argues that the result of a direct understanding of the "thing" is sensuous certainty. Sensuous certainty causes the "thing" to present the richest and yet the poorest understanding to people: the richness lies in the infinite extension of its connotation, while the poverty lies in the fact that it merely tells people: "this thing exists (es ist)" (Hegel, p. 61; Hegel, S. 82). This sentence can also be translated as "it is."
Hegel inherited the premise of the history of Western philosophical thought concerning "existence/being" (Sein) dating back to Parmenides and Plato, acknowledging the truth and priority of existence itself: "The object exists (ist), it is the truth and the essence. The object exists (ist), whether it is known or not" (Hegel, p. 62; Hegel, S. 84). However, this pure existence is irrelevant to the subject; only when the subject comes to know and grasp the object can the object become an object for the subject. Therefore, Hegel seeks to shift the grasp of existence, or the "thing," into the subject’s activity of knowing—that is, the process by which the subject (consciousness) achieves self-cognition: from sensuous certainty ("the power of truth depends on me" [Hegel, p. 64]), to the perception of negativity and difference, to the understanding’s grasp of the object’s "form (eidos)" (grasping the essence of the thing at the phenomenal level), and finally, the grasp of the thing's essence must turn toward the self-consciousness of subjectivity. In other words, knowing the object is knowing the self, thereby transcending Kant's "thing-in-itself."
Although this cognitive process is essentially idealistic, this phenomenological epistemology deeply influenced Marx’s thinking. Whether in the discovery of the subjective essence of private property in the 1844 Manuscripts, or in the rediscovery of the creative process of the objectification of subjective labor from the objective process of material production in the Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858, one can see that Marx was consciously sublating this Hegelian method of cognition. Furthermore, Hegel's phenomenological epistemology is reflected in a viewpoint in the Phenomenology of Spirit that comes full circle: Hegel says in the first chapter, "at the same time as it exists, it no longer exists" (ibid., p. 66), and in the final chapter, "the object has already appeared as something fleeting to the autonomous subject" (ibid., p. 489). What, then, are the "no longer existing" and "fleeting" things of which Hegel speaks? In the discourse of historical materialism, the fleeting things are the material production and labor activities through which the world surrounding humanity is formed, as well as the deeper structural relations between humanity and nature, and person and person, behind them. These have vanished within the "things" of the already-formed surrounding world; they are things that once existed but exist no longer. This likely constituted the premise for Marx’s penetration of the "thing."
During his research into classical economics in the Paris Notes, the young Marx left his first summary of the content of the Phenomenology of Spirit, namely the "Abstract of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit" (hereafter Abstract). This represents not only the young Marx’s inheritance of Hegelian epistemology through the logic of alienated labor but also an active transformation of Hegelian idealist philosophy using Feuerbach’s materialist thought. The main content of the Abstract consists of a word-for-word transcription of the first half of the "Absolute Knowledge" chapter—the final chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit. This chapter is also Hegel’s review of the logical method of the entire Phenomenology, recounting the journey of how consciousness grasps the object step by step and achieves self-realization; that is, "how the strangeness of the object is overcome to reach its own truth—reaching the knowledge of the object as the self" (Zhang Shiying, p. 182). This helped the young Marx for the first time to see through the "thing" in the context of classical economics. If one studies the Abstract in conjunction with the section on alienated labor in the 1844 Manuscripts, it is clear that Marx established a penetration of the economic object from both the objective and subjective sides.
From the objective side, Marx sought to discover the subject within the "thing." Similar to Hegel’s logic, Marx also begins from what appears to be an "indifferent existence" (MEGA, Band 2, S. 494) to explain the first level of alienated labor: he first transforms the "object" into the "product of labor" and "self-consciousness" into "man (the worker)." The product of labor, as a completed result, not only appears unrelated to the worker themselves but also stands opposed to the worker as an independent existence. Marx, of course, was not satisfied with this explanation that remained at the level of appearance; secondarily, he sought to find the invisible subject behind the product of labor. In his view, the product of labor is actually the objectification and realization of the worker; the two construct an objectified subject-object relationship through labor activity. However, this labor activity is not only "fleeting" at the moment it occurs, but the construction of the relationship between the product and the worker has also "ceased to exist." Therefore, the objective "thing" (product) in the economic context exists only in its activity and relationship with the subject (worker); a natural object that has not been transformed through labor activity cannot become a product.
From the subjective side, Marx sought to establish the subject within the activity of creating "things." Marx not only believed that the product of labor is created through labor activity but also transformed the process of externalization in Hegelian discourse into the process by which man establishes his species-essence. Marx stated in the 1844 Manuscripts: "It is just in his work upon the objective world, therefore, that man first really proves himself to be a species-being" (Marx, p. 53). The first half of this sentence seems to approach the seeds of a new worldview, but its internal logic is the result of transforming Hegelian philosophy with Feuerbachian humanist materialism. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, self-consciousness creates the object through externalization and establishes itself in the object through externalization. Although Marx at this time directly transformed externalization into "practice," his understanding of this concept tended more toward Feuerbach’s so-called "supreme practical principle" (Feuerbach, p. 350)—the love between people—rather than the "practice" of historical materialism based on historical industrial material production. Therefore, he inevitably ended up, like Feuerbach, moving toward the establishment of a species-essence based on value-postulation. Although Marx had not yet escaped the shackles of humanism, he had achieved a major breakthrough in epistemology: the creativity of labor activity was Marx's point of entry for understanding the "thing" at this time, through which he saw that behind the world of objects lies subjective practical activity. More importantly, Marx also distinguished that "animals produce only themselves, while man reproduces the whole of nature" (Marx, p. 53). This already invisibly characterized the existence of the surrounding world as the result of human practical transformation in bourgeois society; it was from here that he most likely transitioned toward the creation of a historical materialist epistemology.
Under the deep influence of Hegel’s phenomenological epistemology, Marx inevitably felt a strong resonance with Smith among the classical economists. Smith’s labor theory of value also pushed Marx to further discover, in philosophical terms, the subjective labor relations behind private property. Let us return to the historical context: in the era when Marx lived, Europe was a world surrounded by private property—ranging from large items like houses and machinery to small items like hammers and nails, and even the plants growing on private land all possessed the character of private property. It can be said that private property constituted the existence of the world around Marx, which is why he was already reflecting on the essence of private property while writing the Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood. When Marx encountered Smith in the Paris Notes, he excerpted: "In that original state of things, which precedes both the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock, the whole produce of labour belongs to the labourer. He has neither landlord nor master to share with him" (MEGA, Band 2, S. 344). From the perspective of historical development, prior to bourgeois and feudal society, the objects created by people’s labor activity belonged to the laborers, and this "belonging" did not have the character of private property; the "thing" was used and shared. This was the "authentic state" Marx envisioned at the time. However, "things" in feudal society were stamped with the attribute of royal ownership—that is, "Under the whole heaven, every spot is the sovereign's ground" [1]—and "things" in bourgeois society were stamped with the attribute of capital ownership, thus becoming the private property that so incensed Marx.
Marx clears away the fog of private property surrounding "things" and sharply points out that "the subjective essence of private property—private property as activity existing for itself, as subject, as person—is labor" (Marx, p. 70). Although at this time Marx has not yet seen how the relations of production [2] of private property are historically formed, he has already followed Smith’s labor theory of value to realize that the essence of private property is the subjective activity of man; it is being-for-itself, that is, completed labor, while the labor activity itself is "transitory" in the time and space where it occurs. Furthermore, Marx offers a deeper insight: only labor in the industrial age is capable of creating the surrounding world. These "things," as private property, in turn complete their domination over the laboring subject—the alienation of man from his own relations. In contrast, people in the pre-industrial era were not yet capable of "legislating for nature"; thus, agricultural products were primarily gifts of nature and could only be "recognized in a specific, naturally determined form of existence" (Marx, p. 73). This method of understanding the existence of one’s surroundings in different eras—namely, searching for subjective labor activity and essential forms of existence within "things"—has already far surpassed Feuerbachian intuition. However, because Marx’s thinking at this point is still dominated by humanism, he is not yet able to scientifically grasp the economic connotations and defects of the labor theory of value.
Viewed as a whole, the young Marx, under the influence of Hegel, Feuerbach, Smith, and others, had preliminarily formed a double perspective on "things." The first perspective on "things" in the 1844 Manuscripts is the perspective of activity—specifically, subjective labor activity. Discovering vanished labor activity within the transformed external world was the result of Marx combining three elements: Hegel’s discovery of the externalization of self-consciousness in the object, Smith’s discovery of labor in the constitution of private property, and Feuerbach’s discovery of man in the objectification of God. This not only profoundly revealed the existential foundation of man’s relationship to nature but also served as an important basis for potentially moving toward the practical viewpoint of historical materialism. However, due to a lack of investigation into modern material production, this "activity" itself remained in the idealized state of pre-capitalist society described by Smith. After determining that invisible subjective activity lies behind the "thing," Marx formed a relational critical epistemology through the theory of alienation. That is, the second perspective on "things" in the 1844 Manuscripts is the understanding of the alienated relationship between subject and object in bourgeois society, specifically divided into three relations: (1) behind the product of labor is the alienated relationship between man and the sensuous external world; (2) behind the labor activity is the alienated relationship between the laborer and himself; (3) behind man’s species-essence [3] is the alienated relationship between man and man. These three relational perspectives represent the young Marx’s use of phenomenology to recognize the construction of relations between man and nature, and man and man, which are obscured by the thing-ness of private property during the process of subjective externalization. Methodologically, however, it still possesses a strong humanist tendency. Compared to the epistemology of historical materialism, the "relations" here possess neither realistic, concrete historicity nor sociality within the discourse of production.
II. Surpassing the Old "Thing": The "New World" in the Budding of the New Worldview
Through the excerpts and research in the Brussels Notes A (see Kong Weiyu, pp. 16–21), the critique of List’s The National System of Political Economy, and the re-study and summation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Marx gradually dissolved the discourse of alienated labor, which lacked historicity and sociality, and replaced it with the new world created by material production in bourgeois society. In the Theses [4], Marx realized that to thoroughly surpass the Feuerbachian intuitive-materialist epistemology, one must establish a new worldview based on actual material productive practice. What this new worldview faces is precisely the new world constructed by material production. In other words, the practical activities of the industrial age created the existence surrounding human life; for people to know the world is to know their own practical activities.
Before specifically researching the theoretical creation of the budding of Marx’s new worldview, we first need to consider a question: If we use the basic principles of Marxism to analyze the origin of the budding of Marx’s new worldview, the generation of this "consciousness" must be determined by a certain social existence—that is, the new world (surrounding existence) determined the budding of the new worldview. So, what was "new" about the things Marx encountered at that time? I believe the "newness" of the new world can be viewed from two aspects. On the one hand, the objective world is a brand-new mode of existence. What Marx encountered was a world based on industrial production, constantly transformed by human practice. Unlike feudal society, in bourgeois society, humans not only face a new existence, but the mode of existence between man and things has also undergone a qualitative change. In feudal society, the relationship between man and nature was one of human submission; man not only had to pray to "Heaven" for favorable weather but also had to harvest grain from the "Earth." The historical activities of eating, drinking, housing, and clothing were entirely dependent on nature. It was on the basis of this dependency between man and nature that the dependency between man and man in feudal society arose—namely, the sovereign relations of feudal kingship and the construction of religious belief. Starting from the budding and birth of bourgeois society, with the rapid development of science, technology, and productive forces, the relationship between man and nature began to change. Although people remained to some extent subject to weather and land, they no longer succumbed to the limits placed on human life by nature; people began to use machines to conquer and transform nature. While Marx admitted the natural existence of "newly created coral islands in the Pacific" (Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 3, p. 50), the primary object of his research was not this nature that has nothing to do with man, but the "whole existing sensuous world" based on "this continuous sensuous labor and creation, this production" (ibid.). Thus, when Marx visited the large-scale industrial machine production of Manchester with Engels for the first time in 1845, he was profoundly shocked. It was in such a new world that a new worldview characterized by cooperative activity and industrial practice found the realistic soil in which to bud.
On the other hand, the subjective world is the capacity to know and transform the surrounding world. We cannot help but wonder: when Marx was still at university studying Hegelian idealism, was the world around him not also such a "new world"? When the German idealist theorists of that time faced the "new world," why did they not create a new worldview? I believe a sentence Marx wrote and then deleted in The German Ideology explains this phenomenon well: "My relation to (zu) my environment (Umgebung) is my consciousness" (Hiromatsu Wataru ed., p. 28). This sentence has two theoretical activation points. First, in the German context, "environment" (Umgebung) includes both the surrounding material world and the surrounding people and things, so this word can also be understood as the "surrounding world." In the Manchester Notes, Marx excerpted Robert Owen: "The influence of the external environment is regulated in a unique way through each individual's unique structure, and thus each person's unique character is formed, continued, and preserved in life" (MEGA, Band 5, p. 175). In the Theses, Marx critiqued this view: "circumstances are changed by men" (Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 3, p. 4). "Environment" is not a pure object unrelated to man, but a world that already contains human productive activity; this is precisely Marx's conscious identification of the surrounding world constituted by material productive practice. Second, Marx uses the directional preposition "to" (zu) here. That is to say, consciousness is not a blind interaction "between" man and environment, but rather man actively coming to know the world transformed by humanity equipped with an already formed system of knowledge. People with different knowledge structures will necessarily have heterogeneous understandings of the same thing. This important judgment is both Marx's critical transcendence of Kant's synthetic a priori judgments and an important foundation for understanding Marxist epistemology. On this point, Kosík is very astute: "Materialist epistemology, as a spiritual reproduction of society... is both a 'reflection' and a 'projection.' It records, and at the same time constructs and projects" (Kosík, p. 15). Fundamentally speaking, the Marx in the discourse of alienated labor and the Marx in the discourse of scientific production see the world and existence differently. At this time, through his second systematic study of economics and his research into technology (Technologie), Marx gradually formed a scientific discourse of production, which served as his new prism for understanding the world. It is in this sense that Wataru Hiromatsu says: "The materialist conception of history is not a 'conception of history' in the narrow sense, nor is it merely 'simultaneously a conception of society.' In a certain sense, it can be said to be the Marxist worldview itself" (Hiromatsu, p. 43).
Having clarified the realistic basis for the budding of Marx's new worldview, let us examine Marx's critique of the Feuerbachian materialist method of cognition. Looking at the developmental process of the history of Marx's thought, his interpretation of theory is often accompanied by a critique of contemporary theorists; or rather, Marx completes the construction of his own theory precisely by sublated and transcending the important theories of his time. This is where the criticality and contemporaneity of Marx's thought lies. In the Theses, Marx criticized the defects of the old Feuerbachian materialist epistemology from three aspects:
First, the "thing" in Feuerbach's eyes lacks subjectivity (agency). Marx says in the Theses: Feuerbach understands "things, reality, sensuousness, only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively" (Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 3, p. 3). In Marx's discourse, starting from the one-dimensionality of the "object" (Objekt) is insufficient. This represents the subject-object relationship in Feuerbach's intuitive imagination. Although a pure object independent of the subject is a pre-condition for human existence, pure objects have almost ceased to exist in contemporary society. Through generations of practical transformation, subjectivity has been historically embedded within the modern surrounding world. In Marx's words, the "nature that preceded human history" (ibid., p. 50) no longer exists. However, "object" (Gegenstand) is entirely different from the concept of "object" (Objekt), because the word Gegenstand represents the subject's practical transformation of the external world. Although this practical activity occurs in a certain context and is transitory, the objectified relationship it creates is present in an invisible way. Therefore, the object itself is the result of human practical activity, and the understanding of the object must proceed from the agency of practice.
Second, the "thing" in Feuerbach's eyes lacks historicity. Marx says: Feuerbach, "separating [the religious sentiment] from the historical process... presupposes an abstract—isolated—human individual" (Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 3, p. 5). Feuerbach attempts to use a materialist viewpoint to explain that the origin of religion is the objectification of man's essence, but if one views man's essence apart from historicity, one falls back into the trap of idealism. Thus, although both Marx and Feuerbach view "things" from the starting point of "man," the fundamental difference is that for Feuerbach, the starting point is man as abstract and non-historical, whereas for Marx, the starting point is man in real life—individuals engaged in material productive practice. Real life and practical activities are necessarily carried out on the basis of past historical development and under certain historical conditions. Consequently, historicity is the necessary characteristic of Marx's understanding of "things" from the viewpoint of practice.
Third, the "thing" in Feuerbach’s eyes lacks sociality. To be sure, there is a concept of society within Feuerbach’s theory, but the society he perceives "is 'civil' (bürgerliche) society," whereas Marx’s standpoint is "human society, or social (gesellschaftliche) humanity" (Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 3, pp. 5–6; MEGA, Band 3, S. 21). What is the distinction between the two? Put simply, the term bürgerliche used here can also be translated as "bourgeois," while gesellschaftliche can be rendered as "sociality." In Marx’s view, Feuerbach’s abstract and isolated understanding of the human being possesses bourgeois characteristics; this is both a manifestation of the bourgeois Enlightenment spirit’s elimination of myth and assertion of subjectivity, and a dialectic of the Enlightenment creating yet another eternal new myth, wherein "all basic concepts become purely formal shells" (Horkheimer, S. 30). Such theoretical origins led Feuerbach to an understanding of "things" as rigid and eternal, which happens to coincide with the view of bourgeois economics that seeks to eternalize itself. In contrast, the sociality of Marx’s new world-view is a "definite social form" (Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 3, p. 5) built upon the foundation of historical social practice; it opposes all attempts to eternalize or ontologize itself. On this theoretical basis, when Marx states that the human being is, in its reality, "the ensemble of all social relations" (ibid.), he recognizes not only the physically present individual but also an invisible, ever-shifting existence of multiple relations.
Consequently, Marx’s understanding of "things" in the Theses likewise presents a double perspective: people's social practical activities construct the surrounding world—to understand "things," one must proceed from an understanding of one's own practical activities—and each individual likewise constructs their own social relations through past and present practical activities. In this sense, to know the human self is to discover the ensemble of social relations behind it. Clearly, the double perspective here is also completed through the concepts of "activity" and "relation," yet there is a qualitative difference from the same concepts found in the 1844 Manuscripts. At this point, Marx no longer remains stranded in ahistorical, non-social relations; moreover, he transcends the idealized objectifying activities of the pre-capitalist period, constructing the theoretical prototype for understanding the new world. However, because the Theses is itself merely a prototype of Marx’s attempt to construct a new world-view and is quite brief—and since at this time Marx may not yet have begun his excerpted studies in the Brussels Notes B and the Manchester Notes, nor had he reached Manchester to witness the production processes of large-scale machine industry firsthand—the discourse on practice in the Theses does not highlight material productive activity and the relational construction behind it. The formal debut of the new world-view still required a return to economic research.
III. The Construction of a Scientific Epistemology through the Double Perspective on "Things"
In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels jointly founded historical materialism and, for the first time, achieved a scientific understanding of the existence of the surrounding world, forming the epistemology of historical materialism. Within this epistemology, the double perspective of "activity" and "relation" serves as the mediation through which Marx and Engels understand the "thing" of historical materialism; the two are both distinct and interrelated. If we take visible physical objects as the first level of understanding existence (intuitive cognition), then "activity" constitutes the second level (the first perspective). While an activity is occurring, the activity itself is visible, but it dissolves as soon as it happens. For example, in the process of manually producing a screw, the worker's action of striking the screw with a hammer is visible at that moment, as are the activities of numerous workers completing their respective divisions of labor on an assembly line. However, once the screw is finished or moves to the next process, these activities become what Hegel termed "evanescent." Similarly, when purchasing goods in a shop, the consumer's act of buying and the shopkeeper's act of selling are visible at the time, but once the purchase is complete, the activities of buying and selling disappear. Building on this, "relation" constitutes the third level of understanding existence (the second perspective). While the activity occurs, relations between human and nature and between human and human are constructed simultaneously. Relations themselves are invisible; when the activity disappears, the relation is transformed into an invisible "mode" imprinted upon the human being, even though this relation often presents itself in an inverted form. Let us return to the two previous examples: while the worker is striking the screw with a hammer, they construct a "ready-to-hand" relationship with the hammer, a labor-shaping relationship with the screw (and the iron as its underlying natural attribute), and a relationship of cooperation and division of labor with other workers on the assembly line. When the production process ends, the relations between the worker and the thing, and between the worker and other workers, are preserved in the "mode" of this activity, forming the functional level of production for this factory and imprinting the attributes of "producer" and "product" upon the worker and the screw. Likewise, after the activities of buying and selling in the shop end, the social relational attributes of "consumption" and "vending" are congealed within the person and the thing. Only thus can the human being become "the ensemble of social relations." Therefore, activity creates the thing and conversely constructs the relation, while a definite activity begins upon a definite relation. This double-perspective epistemology is also the key to the dialectical relationship between productive forces and forms of intercourse in The German Ideology. Below, let us analyze the specific explanations of these two perspectives provided by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology.
The first perspective: discovering the activity behind the thing. How does a "thing" become a "thing"? In the view of Marx and Engels, behind the existence of the visible surrounding world lie invisible material productive activities; it is the product of industry and social conditions, a product of history, and the result of the activities of successive generations (see Hiromatsu Wataru ed., p. 16). Judging from their expressions, "activity" possesses two layers of meaning: First, historicity. The surrounding world is not a purely natural thing that has existed since the beginning of time, nor is it an eternal and unchanging object. Rather, in the development of human history, it is the product of generation after generation transforming external objects of nature—it is "second nature." Furthermore, the objects and levels of human transformation are developed upon the foundation of the previous generation's human practice; thus, the "things" people face in each era change along with changes in the relations of social production and exchange. As Marx summarized from Henri Storch’s Cours d'économie politique in the Brussels Notes: "Without the linen previously produced, we should never be able to produce the sailcloth" (MEGA, Band 3, S. 238). Here, the thing acquires subjectivity, and subjectivity carries out new practice based on the results of past subject-object practice, thereby forming the historical temporality of the subject-object relationship. Second, sociality. The human world is not the result of individual labor but is the crystallization of objective social practice built upon material production. This is because "practice" in historical materialism is by no means a simple subject-object relationship, but a social existence established upon a certain level of productive functionality. To an extent, the field theory proposed by Bourdieu at the mental level is perhaps a continued expression of these complex real-world relations. Marx and Engels were focused at this time on the general development of social history; only when each social individual plays a different role in the social division of labor and engages in their respective practical activities—thereby constituting production—will the social whole form an objective collective. This is an objective result of social practice that does not change according to individual will. At the same time, the surrounding sensuous existence is a product constructed within a certain time and space; definite practical activities are constrained by specific spatial and temporal conditions. Therefore, "activity" is the product of the combined action of historicity and sociality.
We must point out that Marx and Engels’ analysis of "activity" was built upon the foundation of studies in classical economics and technology [5]. Activity is not only industrial and commercial activity in bourgeois society, but also the new world-view established upon large-scale industrial machine production. In agricultural and tribal societies, the cyclical characteristics of surrounding sensuous existence lead to its temporality being relatively stagnant. As Marx and Engels pointed out in the "Barna Manuscript" [6] of The German Ideology, countries like Germany have "only a very wretched historical development" (Hiromatsu Wataru ed., p. 161). The "wretchedness" here lies in the fact that Germany "had no steam engines or spinning jennies" (ibid., p. 160). The "history" mentioned here is not history in natural time, but a "history based on industrial practice" in which humans occupy the dominant position and continuously create new social relations (Zhang Yibing, 2020, p. 480). Therefore, the homogeneity of the mode of production in agricultural and tribal societies leads to the stagnation of the development of productive forces; such an ahistorical surrounding world was not the focus of Marx and Engels at this time. However, since entering the industrial age, machine production has greatly increased human productive forces; the revolution in productive forces brought by machines is new every day. People have changed from being subservient to nature in the agricultural age to actively transforming and enslaving nature, and the surrounding world has become a product of industry. Thus, Marx once excerpted Senior in the Brussels Notes: "Every great mechanical invention is followed by a greater division of labor, and every increase in the division of labor in turn brings new mechanical inventions" (MEGA, Band 3, S. 171). It is precisely on the foundation of large-scale industrial machine production that "activity" in the new world-view of historical materialism can make its entrance and become the realistic support for the historicity and sociality behind the "thing." Therefore, "one must always study and treat the 'history of humanity' in connection with the history of industry and exchange" (Hiromatsu Wataru ed., p. 26). In the industrial society faced by historical materialism, should such activity cease for even a single year, the surrounding world—including human beings themselves—would cease to exist.
The second perspective: discovering the relations behind activity. Marx and Engels completed the first perspective on "things" within the horizon of objective economic activity, powerfully critiquing the epistemology of the old Feuerbachian materialism and forming a brand-new foundation for materialist epistemology. However, we may also consider that many classical economists, technologists, and statisticians to some extent also recognized the real activities behind "things"; they simply used them unconsciously as a theoretical starting point—for instance, the labor theory of value proceeds from the activity of labor. Clearly, Marx and Engels would not stop there. Based on the economic and philosophical research conducted in Brussels and Manchester, Marx and Engels completed the second perspective on "things" within objective economic activity—that is, the unfolding of a philosophical epistemology within an economic context. Marx and Engels wrote in The German Ideology: "At each stage of history there is found a certain material result, a certain sum of productive forces," to which Marx added a supplement in the manuscript: "a historically created relation (Verhältnis) of individuals to nature and to one another" (ibid., p. 50). From this, it is evident that historical materialism’s fundamental perspective on the surrounding material world does not remain at the level of objective economic activity, but rather analyzes the historical construction of relations behind it. Historical materialism’s view of the relationship between humans and the world is not a simple determinism of the external environment but emphasizes the creation of a new order of "things" through the agency of the subject. The relational construction in the eyes of historical materialism is neither a simple subject-object binary nor a structure of relational ontology; rather, it consists of the moving social relations of modernity behind social practical activities—it is the fundamental methodology for understanding the world.
First, why did Marx and Engels regard the practical activities behind real life as "relations"? Why did they use the discourse of production to support this relational construction? In fact, "relations" are the invisible mediations of how practical activities manifest as things. "Activity" is immediately present, and "things" are continuously present, while "relations" are invisible entities created by the presently present activities of practice and intercourse [7]. Yet, they connect these two forms of presence, constituting the core of the mode by which a "thing" becomes a "thing" and the mode by which "activity" carries out "production." In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels point out: "This mode of production (Diese Weise der Produktion) must not be considered simply as being the reproduction of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity (eine bestimmte Art der Tätigkeit dieser Individuen) of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life (bestimmte Lebensweise) on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are... [Their nature] coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce." (Ibid., p. 25) In the original manuscript, Marx and Engels underlined "mode of production," "what," and "how" in this passage, which characterizes why the new world-outlook of Marx and Engels took root in "relations." Specifically, Marx and Engels once again opposed an epistemology that examines "things" solely from the reproduction of visible existence, because "mode" (or "the how") is invisible. The specific quality of each person's activity determines the quality manifested in their life, and likewise constitutes a definite mode of life. The essence of this most primordial activity is productive activity—that is, what is produced and how it is produced. As the foundation of people's mode of life, productive activity finds its primary theoretical support in the studies of classical political economy and technology [8] conducted by Marx and Engels in Brussels and Manchester. Looking at the content of classical political economy, Say, Storch, Rossi, and McCulloch all began with material production; material goods are the prerequisite for humans to carry out productive activities. Thus, Marx and Engels also stated: "What [individuals] are, therefore, coincides with their production... [which] depends on the material conditions of their production." (Ibid.) That is, activity is supported by material conditions. Furthermore, in the Brussels Notes, Marx once commented on the Italian economist Pellegrino Rossi: "In the phenomenon of production there are three elements: 1) force, 2) the mode of application (eine Weise der Applikation), and 3) the result. Or, 1) cause; 3) result; and 2) the transition from cause to result, through the action that the cause must exert to produce the effect. There are direct means of production and indirect means of production, i.e., mediation." (MEGA, Band 3, S. 366) Starting from the Brussels Notes, Marx paid particular attention to this "mediation," namely the question of "how" production occurs in the transition from cause to result, thereby leading them to reflect on what transforms "activity" into a "thing." From the perspective of technology, the studies of Ure and Babbage addressed the micro-level problems of how to produce in the industrial age, specifically how machinery constitutes the characteristics and skills of modern workers' production and the division of labor. This early exploration of "ready-to-hand relations" [9] (in Heidegger's terms) likely influenced Marx’s new way of viewing human existence.
Second, Marx and Engels’ concrete interpretation of "relations" is divided into two aspects. On the one hand, regarding the relation between humanity and nature, the relational construction is a brand-new order created by humans "toward" (zu) nature in modern society. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels mentioned "comprehending things (Dinge) as they really are and how they happened to come to be" (Wataru Hiromatsu edition, p. 18; translation modified). So, what is the true face of things? They believed that the answer to the question of the "relation of humanity toward (zur) nature" (Ibid.) serves as an example of uncovering the true face of things. I have noted that Marx and Engels did not use the relation "and" (und/zwischen/mit) nature, but rather the relation "toward" (zur) nature. This "zur" implies "to/toward," carrying a certain sense of directionality. Marx and Engels’ use of this term here is based on the shift in the relation between humanity and nature from passive to active since the dawn of modernity; it is a continuation of the Kantian discourse of "man legislating for nature" and an inevitable consciousness determined by the social life in which they lived. At the same time, in the manuscript, Marx supplemented the explanation of the relation between humanity and nature as the "'relation' between nature and history" (Ibid., p. 18). In his view, the relation of humanity toward nature is the relation of history toward nature; history is the product created by human practical activity, while nature serves as the externalized manifestation of historical human activity—the two are inseparable. It is worth mentioning that in the manuscript, Marx added in the margin next to this passage: "The 'struggle' between man and nature promotes its productive forces" (Ibid.). He viewed the relation between humanity and nature as a struggle. However, in pre-industrial society, humans were fundamentally unable to struggle against nature, just as commoners had to prostate themselves before the Son of Heaven, and agrarian peasants had to prostrate themselves before the nature of heaven and earth. Only in modern times, through industry and machinery, when people were able to gradually transform and conquer nature, did humanity become qualified to struggle with nature. Thus, Marx and Engels’ revelation of the true face of "things" is precisely a re-examination of the relation between humanity and nature in industrial society, and this is the result of historical materialism’s "observation of men from the surrounding conditions of life that have made them what they are" (Ibid., p. 20).
On the other hand, regarding the relation between humans, Marx and Engels believed that "the meaning of social relations here refers to the joint activity (Zusammenwirken) of many individuals" (Ibid., p. 26). The "activity" here is not the activity used in the first dimension of perspective (representing subjectivity as Tätigkeit or the overall movement of development as Aktion), but Zusammenwirken. In German, this word possesses the meaning of collaboration or cooperation, its root being "together (zusammen) + working (wirken)." If translated as "cooperation," one can clearly see that what is being discussed here is the mode of collaboration between people in the mechanized large-scale production of industrial society. Thus, Marx added in the margin of the manuscript: "This mode of joint activity is itself a 'productive force'" (Ibid.). Using a relational epistemology, Marx here sublated [10] the explanations of productive forces found in classical political economy: Smith believed productive forces originated from the division of labor; Senior viewed them as a kind of vitality; Rossi identified them as the power of land, labor, and capital. On this basis, Marx moved from the division of labor toward the specific productive forces in mechanized large-scale production, which is a creative fusion and sublation of classical political economy and technology. In the Brussels Notes, Marx excerpted Ure: "In technology, the term factory system in English refers to the cooperation (coopération) of various workers, namely adult and minor workers" (MEGA, Band 3, S. 348). Marx excerpted the French coopération here; he was discussing a brand-new relation between people precisely on the foundation of large-scale industrial factory production, and the level of this human collaboration is defined as a productive force. Consequently, the mode and level of human collaboration (productive forces) determine the social relations between people within activity (relations of production). Under certain spatial and temporal conditions, these construct the relation of humanity's transformation of nature. These dual relations produce the existence of the surrounding world through human activity, thereby forming a preliminary understanding of the dialectical movement between productive forces and relations of production in the sphere of production. In this sense, humanity in its reality is the ensemble of social relations.
Finally, Marx and Engels also gained a preliminary understanding of the inverted relations in bourgeois society—namely, that "personal powers (relations [Verhältnisse]) are transformed into objective (sachliche) powers by the division of labor" (Hiromatsu edition, p. 120; translation modified). In their view, the various relations between humanity and nature, and between humans, are expressed in an inverted manner in bourgeois society as objective relations [11]. Powers that originally belonged to humans were transformed under the conditions of the division of labor into dominant powers alien to humans. The division of labor caused productive activities, which were originally visible, to be concealed beneath machine production; it caused the originally direct relation of transforming nature and the collaborative relation between people to be obscured within relations of enslavement, allowing false objective powers and false ideological powers to rule over individuals, forming the rule of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat. More importantly, under the universal principles of bourgeois society, "the individual is imagined to be freer than before" (Ibid., p. 124). Everyone seemingly is free; every individual's labor in the factory and exchange in the market seems voluntary, yet this superficial voluntariness is the greatest lack of freedom! The bourgeoisie does not rule with chains but utilizes visible existence (money) to carry out invisible enslavement (the capital relation behind money). Everyone (including the bourgeoisie) kneels before objective relations, subjected to the invisible rule of objective relations.
At this time, Marx and Engels had already keenly discovered the rule of "things" over humans resulting from the inversion of relations. However, it was not until Marx’s mid-to-late economic studies that he further realized this inversion was actually more complex and hidden, with the capital relation having transformed into a "general light" [12]. With the continuous deepening of historical materialism, Marx and Engels’ understanding of "things" would further transform into a critical discourse.
(About the Author: Kong Weiyu is a doctoral student at the Center for Research on Marxist Social Theory and the Department of Philosophy, Nanjing University.)