Gu Qingqing: The Historical Shift of Marx's Morality: From Value Criticism to Practical Generation
In the 1970s, a debate themed "Marx and Justice" sparked a surge of research into Marxist ethics within Anglo-American academia, later expanding from the question of justice to a contest between Marxist "moralism" and "amoralism." Within this debate, "Analytical Marxist" scholars such as Allen W. Wood and Richard W. Miller argued that Marx's theory was, on the whole, a purely scientific theory concerning historical development and empirical facts, and was fundamentally value-free or "morally non-involved." One reason Wood, Miller, and others reached this conclusion was their failure to trace the historical development of Marx’s moral theory from the context of concrete social practice; instead, they relied on fragmented and one-sided abstractions of local concepts or isolated propositions. While Marx did not provide a normative ethical theory in the explicit sense, this does not mean his work lacks an ethical dimension. On the contrary, Marx maintained a specific stance toward ethics and morality; they possess a vast space for growth within his theory and follow an internal logic of self-generation. This generative logic differs from the academic trajectory of formalized Western ethics. Instead, it employs historical materialism as its core method and explanatory principle to critique the abstract, formalized research paradigms of traditional moralists. It is precisely through this process that Marx realized a historical shift in his own moral outlook.
The historical shift in Marx’s moral outlook unfolded gradually as he critiqued the abstract and formalized paradigms of traditional moralists. Broadly speaking, this shift underwent four stages: an ideal-type moral outlook, a radical liberal moral outlook, a revolutionary humanist moral outlook, and a practical moral outlook. Simultaneously, this process of historical shift reflects a bidirectional interaction with the methodological construction of historical materialism—that is, the sublimation of moral critique from a pure "abstract value judgment" into an "internal link of socio-historical practice." This achieved a paradigmatic revolution in Marx’s thought, moving from "explaining morality" and "constructing moral norms" to "transforming the conditions of moral generation." By tracing and grasping the trajectory of Marx’s moral shift and his methodological revolution, we find that Marx’s attitude toward ethics and morality is practical in sense. Emphasizing the practicality of ethics and the historicity and sociality inherent within that practicality constitutes an essential dimension of Marx’s moral outlook.
I. Youthful Period: An Ideal-Type Moral Outlook Based on the Convergence of Christian Ethics and Enlightenment Humanism
During his youth and high school years, Christian ethics and Enlightenment humanism formed the backdrop of Marx’s development and reflection. This dual influence was a process that unfolded under the triple influence of the historical era, family upbringing, and formal schooling. First, the dense religious atmosphere and devout religious life of Trier, Marx’s ancient hometown, laid the foundation for religious faith and ultimate concern in his early thought. Second, Marx's father was an enlightened Protestant who believed in religious liberalism and was deeply influenced by the spirit of Enlightenment liberalism. He advocated for the reconstruction of faith within a rational framework and opposed rigid religious forms and dogmatic constraints. Furthermore, Marx's father integrated French Enlightenment thought—including Voltaire and Rousseau—into his home education. This ensured that while Marx received an education in traditional Christian culture, he was also deeply immersed in Enlightenment humanist thought; the intersection of these two strands led Marx to develop a critical understanding of religion. Finally, his six years of study at the Trier Gymnasium [1] were not only a process of receiving systematic religious instruction but also a stage for engaging with the Enlightenment educational system and strengthening his intellectual formation. During this period, religious texts were central to the school curriculum, and Christian doctrines and admonitions were the primary content of lectures. Meanwhile, the school’s curriculum included works by representative figures of the Enlightenment as textbooks, and exam prompts often carried an Enlightenment orientation.
It can be said that religious liberalism and Enlightenment humanism exerted a dual influence on the young Marx’s intellectual formation. On the one hand, religious content and culture provided the raw materials for his early writing; religious sentiment and faith formed his early emotional backdrop and served as an indispensable dimension for exploring how Marx observed and grasped the world. On the other hand, Enlightenment rationalism profoundly influenced him. "The spirit embodied by the Enlightenment... had already been internalized as a character trait and temperament in Marx; after budding in the formative period of his thought, it gradually developed into a complete understanding, profound expression, and active behavior integrated into his theory and practice." This not only shaped his early humanist values but also served as a critical weapon and an intellectual stepping stone in the formation of his theory of historical materialism.
Specifically, the dual influence of Christian ethics and Enlightenment humanism on the young Marx is concentrated in two essays written for his school-leaving examinations: "The Union of the Faithful with Christ according to John 15:1-14, its Grounds and Stature, its Absolute Necessity and Effects," and "Reflections of a Young Man on the Choice of a Profession." These two essays represent a concentrated expression of the youthful Marx's moral sentiments regarding Christian love, while simultaneously reflecting the profound immersion of Enlightenment humanism in his early thought. Their fusion highlights the primary content and basic viewpoints of the ideal-type moral outlook held by Marx at the time.
In the first essay, Marx uses the metaphor of the believer's union with Christ to emphasize the establishment of an emotional relationship of love, achieving the closest and most vivid spiritual communion with Christ. Specifically, Marx discusses the methods by which the believer unites with Christ, including looking upon God with "eyes of love" and gratitude, as well as following His commands and making sacrifices. "In union with Christ, we first of all turn our eyes of love to God, feel a most fervent gratitude towards Him, and sink joyfully on our knees before Him." Additionally, we must become virtuous persons by sacrificing ourselves to fulfill the other; only the love for Christ from a virtuous person can be called the purest reverence and adoration. Simultaneously, Marx discusses the effects of this union, including the perfection of virtue and the nobility and joy of the soul. In Marx’s view, only virtue originating from divinity is truly sublime: "All virtue is born of love for Christ, of love for God; and because it springs from this pure source, it is freed from everything earthly and becomes truly divine." Naturally, only by being united with Christ does one pursue philanthropic, noble, and great divine things rather than worldly vanity and fame.
At the same time, however, Marx did not simply stop at a theological interpretation of Christian doctrine; his work contained an Enlightenment narrative of rational critique and humanism. When explaining the essence of the believer’s union with Christ, Marx emphasized using "love" as a bond to establish a secular human community. When explaining the effects of this union, he viewed it as a process of individual moral perfection, emphasizing that the believer must achieve spiritual elevation through the "awakening of self-consciousness" rather than through God's grace. It can be said that the aforementioned transformation of the Christian "commandment of love" into a social ethical principle, and the replacement of religious salvation with the rational ideal of "human perfection," actually aligned with the core tenets of Enlightenment humanism, signaling an ethical shift from God-centeredness to human-centeredness. Furthermore, in his argumentation, Marx replaced theological discourse with Enlightenment philosophical terms such as "necessity," "causality," and "teleology," reflecting his methodological tendency to use classical humanism to weaken religious mysticism.
In the essay "Reflections of a Young Man on the Choice of a Profession," Marx first clarifies that a young person chooses a profession to achieve the common goal assigned to humanity by God: "to ennoble mankind and himself." Given this goal, we must choose a profession under the calling, guidance, and inspiration of God, with our compass being "the welfare of mankind and our own perfection." "If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work." In this essay, Marx’s dual proposition regarding "human happiness" and "self-perfection" not only argues for the religious ideal of the "union between Christ and the believer"—reflecting his specific reflections on how to realize the identity of the believer and Christ and how to understand the relationship between man and God—but also calls for the secular pursuit of "working for humanity." In evaluating this essay, David McLellan pointed out that in theme and structure, Marx's article, like those of his classmates, was based on the ideal concepts of the German Enlightenment and the humanists of the classical period—the all-round development of the individual and the all-round development of an interdependent community of people. This highlights Marx’s humanist ideal of individual subjective awakening and social responsibility. This essay can be described as a secularized manifesto of Marx’s Enlightenment ideals. It contains both the rational core of "man as an end" and inherits the ethical paradigm of the Christian "love thy neighbor as thyself." It is both a concentrated expression of Marx’s religious ethical conviction regarding a mission for humanity and a preliminary attempt to transform the salvific narrative of religious ethics into the human liberation narrative of historical materialism.
In summary, the young Marx, on the one hand, treated the moral sentiment and ethical spirit of Christian love as a sublime truth, viewing it as a spiritual bond connecting man to God and man to man. On the other hand, he combined the Christian ethics of "love" with Enlightenment reason, emphasizing the perfection of individual morality through professional choice and the achievement of a dialectical unity between individual and social value. It is evident that in his understanding and concern for the world, the young Marx had already developed the early embryonic form of a philosophy centered on human liberation as the ultimate concern. This inherently contained an idealistic dimension that took the free species-essence [2] of man and human self-actualization as the highest value. This moral content, characterized by high transcendence and spiritual depth, constituted the primary substance of the young Marx’s ideal-type moral outlook. It can be said that the ideal-type moral outlook of this period not only satisfied his youthful pursuit and longing for love but also represented his preliminary reflections on how to achieve respect and care for the individual and how to increase human welfare. Generally speaking, however, this practice of explaining the source of human morality through the will of God and seeking moral perfection through Christ’s redemption actually provided a metaphysical foundation for universal moral principles through an abstract holy purpose ("human happiness"). In content, it remained limited by the abstract framework of idealism. Such a moral ideal, built upon an abstract human nature, lacked a concrete path of implementation and could only exist as a beautiful wish. Consequently, the analysis of moral issues in Marx’s ideal-type moral outlook at this stage remained largely within the "dialectical movement of concepts" and had not yet penetrated into the actual conditions of social reality for reflection and understanding.
II. The Rheinische Zeitung Period: A Radical Liberal Moral Outlook Based on Rational Universality
Upon entering university, nurtured by science and reason, Marx gradually realized the illusory nature of God and the contradiction between religion and the spirit of universal reason. "There should be no god placed alongside human self-consciousness." The romantic youthful imagination regarding Christian love gradually gave way to philosophical argumentation based on rational universality, emphasizing the need "to observe the past and the present with the keen eye of thought in order to recognize one's actual situation." Particularly during his period working on the editorial board of the Rheinische Zeitung, Marx was deeply influenced by radical liberalism. He favored Kantian and Hegelian ethical narratives, taking Enlightenment reason as the foundational principle for all else. He emphasized that reason is not only the basis of morality but also the means of its realization; moral autonomy and the "moral ought" based on rational universality are the foundations for exploring the origin, essence, and realization of morality.
First, in Marx’s view, morality possesses an internal necessity and is the manifestation of human free will and universal reason. In the article "Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction," Marx pointed out:
"The basis of morality is the autonomy of the human spirit, whereas the basis of religion is the heteronomy of the human spirit." Yet the censorship decrees promulgated and implemented by the Prussian government precisely inverted the relationship between morality and religion. Specifically, this manifested as the reinforcement of an external, particular, and contingent religion alongside the weakening of the moral conscience, which possesses internal necessity. "They represent the inner, universal essence of morality as an appendage of religion. ... Morality recognizes only its own universal and rational religion, while religion recognizes only its own particular and actual morality." Here, Marx had effectively rearranged the relationship between religion and morality, separating morality—previously a derivative of religious divinity—from that divinity and treating it as an independent, particular sphere alongside religious-divine sentiment. One is the sphere of autonomy; the other is the sphere of heteronomy. Similarly, in the "Draft of a Divorce Law" and his commentary articles on it, Marx emphasized that the essence of marriage is human ethicality [3]. He argued that moral principles and norms within the marital relationship are grounded in the subject's internal rational reflection and autonomy of will; one must "consciously submit to the natural force of ethics" rather than "blindly submit to a super-ethical and supernatural authority." Here, Marx can be said to have continued the Kantian tradition of rational voluntarism, employing Kantian moral expressions to emphasize that any ethical relationship is ethical and legal only if it conforms to the essence of the thing and achieves a confirmation of the thing's internal laws of necessity. Therefore, the implementation of divorce laws must be extremely strict: only when a marital relationship no longer corresponds to its profound ethical essence and mission is it fragile, at which point the legislator may permit dissolution. Otherwise, any "indulgence toward the individual’s wishes would become a harshness toward the individual’s essence, a harshness toward the individual’s ethical reason as embodied in the ethical relationship."
Furthermore, Marx identified with Hegel’s philosophy of the state and law, regarding reason, the state, and law as the foundation and mode of realization for morality. In Marx's view, law is permeated by the spirit of rationalism; it is the manifestation and objective regulation of the legal essence of things. The state, meanwhile, manifests as the realization of political reason and the reason of law. Thus, "the individual citizen's obedience to the laws of the state is nothing but obedience to his own reason, to the natural law of human reason." In "Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction" and in his polemical articles related to the Kölnische Zeitung (Cologne Gazette), Marx wielded reason as a weapon in the struggle against the actual privileged classes. He treated law as the primary form for realizing the ethical demand for universal human freedom, emphasizing that the new censorship decree was a formal law that prosecuted thought. "Laws that prosecute thought are based on a conception of the state that pursues material interests through thoughtlessness and immorality. These laws are the unconscious cry of a filthy conscience." For Marx, these legal forms contradicted their own content; that is, a particular form appeared in terms of content as something universally legal—as the opinion of the state. Consequently, these laws on thought were not true laws in substance but were means of infringing upon the free essence and rights of the poor by depriving them of the freedom of the press, thereby serving the interests of the privileged classes. Similarly, in the "Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood," Marx argued that the new law enforced by the authorities ignored the fundamental difference between gathering fallen branches and stealing timber. By criminalizing the gathering of wood, the law not only harmed the basic rights of the poor but violated the universal justice and rational essence of law; it was an "exception to general law" that unilaterally protected the private interests of the privileged estates.
Here, although Marx encountered practical problems regarding material interests and perceived how objective relations formed by social-material interests in real life constrained and dominated the state, law, and objective reason—noting that "considerations of private interest dominate the thoughts and actions of people, as well as the decision-making behavior of state officials and legislative representatives"—he still stood upon the ground of Hegelian legal philosophy. He affirmed the legitimacy of reason, viewing law as the embodiment of a universal, rational will, while regarding material interests as the expression of particular, illegal private interests. "Interest, by its very nature, is blind, immoderate, and one-sided; in a word, it possesses a natural instinct to disregard the law. Can that which disregards the law legislate?" Therefore, faced with this struggle over wood, Marx still pinned his hopes on reason and law, emphasizing that people should exercise their "legal consciousness"—the most prominent local characteristic of the Rhinelanders—to use the state and law to push material interests toward the universal interest and firmly uphold the internal regulations of the latter. Clearly, during this period, Enlightenment rationalism served as the theoretical foundation for Marx’s radical liberal moral outlook. This outlook centered on the universality of reason, and its methodology was deeply influenced by Hegelian speculative philosophy, exhibiting distinct logical deduction and a quest for abstract universality. It emphasized that morality originates from the autonomy of reason rather than empirical heteronomy, and that moral issues must be interpreted from an internal perspective—that of the state, law, and ethical spirit—rather than from an economic or social one. Yet, while Marx's moral critique in this period relied essentially on the Hegelian framework of the "rational state," his contact with real material interests and his hazy perception that "civil society determines the state" were internally undermining the a priori status of rational universality. This yielded the seeds of his transition from speculative philosophy to social analysis, foreshadowing the methodological shift from rational deduction to historical materialism.
III. The Transitional Period: A Revolutionary Humanist Moral Outlook Based on Philosophical Argumentation
As Marx’s understanding of the problem of material interests deepened, and through his attempts to resolve this dilemma, he gradually realized the massive chasm between Prussian social reality and the rational state posited by Hegel. This prompted a subtle shift in his attitude toward reason, moving from firm conviction to a degree of perplexity. This perplexity sowed seeds of doubt and reflection regarding the relationship between interest and law, which took root in his mind. Marx began to utilize Feuerbach’s humanist thought to critique reason and Hegelian idealism. He started to shift away from the tendency to discuss morality in a vacuum from a purely rational standpoint, beginning instead to analyze and interpret morality from the perspective of social reality. This led to the formation of a revolutionary humanist moral outlook rooted in the dimension of human nature and taking the "species-essence" [4] of man as its starting point.
In A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx began to recognize the rupture between the rational state and civil society. He saw that the universal interest of "man as a citizen" and the private interest of "man as a selfish individual" are not necessarily unified in reality, thereby establishing the correct methodological principle for analyzing the essence of man. In "On the Jewish Question," Marx pointed out the substantive difference between political emancipation and human emancipation. The freedom, equality, and human rights proclaimed by the political state resulting from political emancipation cannot achieve the emancipation of humanity; instead, they bring about a renewed split between the activities of the individual in real life and their "species-life." Only human emancipation can return social relations—formerly alienated from the real individual—to man himself, achieving a true resolution of the contradiction between the individual and the species. Here, Marx’s understanding of human emancipation was influenced by Feuerbach’s humanism. The rational-speculative "return to human nature" remained the core content of Marx’s exploration of the relationship between the individual and society: human emancipation meant returning the world of man and human relations to man himself.
In the "Introduction" to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx’s revolutionary humanist moral outlook received a more detailed elaboration. Marx made greater use of Feuerbachian terms such as "human essence" [5], "slavery," and "dehumanization" to express his moral views. "Through the mediation of Feuerbach, Marx was able to discover the general principles of man as man from an understanding of man's sensory existence and natural essence," grounding morality in the realization of the inherent essential characteristics of being human. He emphasized that the moral ideal of the free and well-rounded development of man is the realization of man’s supreme essence. For example, when discussing the emancipation of the Germans, Marx emphasized that it must stand on "the theory that declares man to be the supreme essence for man" and that it "must overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, and despicable being," otherwise a thorough revolution in Germany would be impossible. However, at this stage, Marx's understanding of the essence of man remained fixed on "man himself," describing it as the species-commonality and universality inherent in the single individual linked to nature. This understanding similarly influenced his interpretation of the position and role of the proletariat in social revolution. By this point, Marx had realized that the proletariat is the ultimate fulfiller of human emancipation, and he began to link an a priori, normative moral proposition (such as the "return to the essence of man") with the actual conditions and social status of the proletariat. Yet precisely because of this "return to human nature" understanding of human emancipation, Marx described the internal motivation for the proletariat’s participation in revolution as the total recovery of man. He viewed the proletariat as "a class with radical chains, a class of civil society which is not a class of civil society, an estate which is the dissolution of all estates, a sphere which has a universal character because of its universal suffering." Consequently, Marx did not reveal the practical power of social revolution from the perspective of a critique of political economy, but rather saw philosophical critique as the primary path to social transformation. "As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy. ... Philosophy cannot be realized without the abolition of the proletariat, and the proletariat cannot be abolished without the realization of philosophy." Evidently, in this phase, under the influence of Feuerbach’s abstract humanism, Marx was still thinking about morality from an internal, evaluative viewpoint. He examined the relationship between the development of material production and morality based on an abstract view of human nature; his discourse on morality carried a certain naturalistic tendency and a relatively heavy flavor of the philosophy of law.
Subsequently, Marx utilized Feuerbach’s materialist anthropology to launch a study and critique of classical political economy, resulting in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. He began to explore the relationship between modes of production, economic laws, social interests, and morality, using this to overcome the idealistic essence and conservative tendencies of Hegelian philosophy. In this stage, Marx began to focus on economic phenomena. He no longer spoke of morality as a sphere of rational autonomy but started from actual economic facts, emphasizing that morality is influenced by the division of labor, private property, and private ownership. He argued that morality is a specific mode of production governed by the general laws of production: "The movement of private property—production and consumption—is the perceptible revelation of the movement of all production until now. ... Religion, family, state, law, morality, science, art, etc., are only particular modes of production, and fall under its general law." Meanwhile, Marx no longer entrusted the critique of moral relations under private property or the pursuit of the moral ideal of fairness and justice to the state or law. Instead, he emphasized that man must, within a perceptible society and through objective practical activity [6], comprehensively appropriate his own essence. By creating a human being with rich, comprehensive, and profound senses, one could approach or confirm the essential core of the moral ideal of the human essence. From this, we can see that Marx was now interpreting morality more from an external, descriptive viewpoint, situating morality upon a socio-economic foundation and providing empirical explanations for moral concepts and value judgments. This fully demonstrates that Marx’s attitude and stance toward morality were undergoing a transformation.
Although Marx, in the—
In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx began to shift from a humanist philosophical perspective toward an economic perspective, and his discourse on morality began to exhibit a social and political realism that was more empirical and scientific. Taken as a whole, however, this discourse remained permeated by humanist thought; it constituted a more detailed explication of a humanist moral outlook. For example, Marx’s critique of alienated labor and the supersession of private property was not based on their contradiction with objective laws of historical development, but rather on their contradiction with human essence. Similarly, his discourse on communism was a kind of bucolic imagination, emphasizing that communism is the "real genesis of human essence"—an ideal to which reality ought to conform because it accords with human nature—rather than a necessary trend following objective laws of historical development. He wrote: "Communism is the positive supersession of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore the real appropriation of the human essence through and for man; it is the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being—a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development." It is evident that in the 1844 Manuscripts, Marx's analysis and critique of the capitalist economic system remained philosophically anthropological; overall, it inclined toward philosophical logical analysis rather than historical scientific analysis.
In summary, the methodology of this period presented an intertwining and conflict between speculative philosophy and the nascent seeds of scientific analysis. The methodology of this period retained the logical framework of Hegelian dialectics and the abstract critique of Feuerbachian humanism, while simultaneously initiating a concrete analysis of social history through preliminary research into political economy. One might say that the moral outlook of this stage is both the most philosophically anthropological part of Marx's thought and the critical turning point of his methodological breakthrough. It was both the "final stage" of his speculative philosophy and the "initial laboratory" of his scientific analysis. The internal tension and fierce collision between these two methodologies pushed Marx to shift the focus of moral critique from the "return of human essence" to the "transformation of relations of production," achieving a "transition from a speculative and abstract moral theoretical paradigm to a practical and historical moral theoretical paradigm," thereby laying the historical materialist epistemological foundation for his moral theory.
IV. The Mature Period: A Practical Moral Outlook Based on Political Economic Analysis
Subsequently, with the continuous deepening of his research into economic issues, Marx gradually realized that Feuerbach’s approach of explaining human essence from a purely sensory-intuitive perspective was merely an expression of an abstract ethical spirit of love and religious sentiment. It lacked the practical power to change reality. Only by placing man within the process of social history—and explaining human social needs, as well as the mode of production and relations of production that satisfy these social needs, in a concrete and historical manner—could a scientific method of revolutionary practice be provided for the abolition of exploitation and the realization of communism. This shift in the direction of thought was first reflected in texts such as the Theses on Feuerbach and The German Ideology. Here, Marx moved beyond Feuerbach’s paradigm and expression of revolutionary humanism, emphasizing that "all social life is essentially practical." "Practice" is the key to bridging nature and society, and the key to resolving the contradiction between the logic of humanism and the scientific logic based on social history. It was precisely on this basis that Marx developed for the first time the basic principles of all his empirical social science research—namely, the theory of historical materialism. In this process, Marx's moral outlook also made a breakthrough, achieving the transition from a humanist moral outlook to a practical moral outlook. By emphasizing that "philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it," he not only provided an epistemological foundation in historical materialism for morality but also clarified the practical orientation and revolutionary spirit of morality.
First, Marx proposed the theory of the ideological essence of morality. He argued that morality belongs to social ideology; it is a reflection of social material production and a product of the development of the social division of labor. This is the epistemological and methodological basis upon which Marx constructed his practical moral outlook. "Starting from wealthy civil society [7] to explain the various theoretical products and forms of consciousness, such as religion, philosophy, morality, etc., and tracing their process of emergence. ... It does not seek a category in every period, but always remains on the ground of actual history; it does not explain practice from ideas, but explains various forms of ideas from material practice." Marx used the scientific method of social existence determining social consciousness—the method for explaining socio-historical phenomena—to elucidate the real prescriptions of morality. He emphasized that morality is historically produced and developed, and that different living conditions and class interests determine the different forms of expression and concrete contents of morality. It is precisely based on this more empirical social-scientific explanation that Marx endowed his practical moral outlook with profound class-nature and people-centeredness. Morality is always class morality; a universal morality that transcends class does not exist. Only by scientifically analyzing and grasping the real basis of morality within the contradictory movement between the productive forces and relations of production—thereby escaping the shackles of "universal" or "eternal" morality and elevating the realization of "truly human morality" to the height of the cause of the proletariat and human liberation—can the liberating power inherent in the practical moral outlook be truly released.
Of course, the subjects of the practical activities of material production are the masses of the people [8]. The people are the creators of history, which inherently defines the people-centered quality of the practical moral outlook: it must fully reflect and conform to the fundamental interest demands of the masses, realizing the comprehensive development of the individual and the comprehensive progress of society. To this end, the practical moral outlook is not an abstract or idealized morality that constructs eternal moral principles or posits moral ideals; such things are useless for the cultivation of proletarian class consciousness. Rather, it is a scientific analysis based on concrete facts: "they will let the members of the working class know who they are, where their class interests lie, who they once were, and what they will become." Only by delving deep into the practical activities of material production to explore the historical roots of the dehumanized condition of the proletariat can one find the material basis and practical path for changing this value relationship. In this sense, the class-nature and people-centeredness of the practical moral outlook are internally consistent. Only by emphasizing the material, social, and class foundations of morality—and by facilitating the generation of the proletariat’s class character and a thoroughly revolutionary communist moral consciousness during the process of material production practice—can a powerful fighting collective be formed to use the means of violent practice to overthrow all existing social systems and realize an association of free individuals.
At the same time, Marx constructed the core content of his practical moral outlook through a critique of both old materialist and idealist moralities. In the process of "drawing closer" to Feuerbach, Marx gradually realized "how wrong Feuerbach was." Feuerbach set aside the historical process and understood human essence purely from the side of the object and the perspective of sensory intuition, using the abstract community of the "species" to define the natural commonality of human essence. Consequently, the morality understood by Feuerbach was merely the preaching of universal love for mankind: "this sentimental, utopian philosophy ultimately became an ambiguous ethics, an invisible religion of so-called universal happiness and love." Marx opposed this ambiguous philosophy that lacked all revolutionary passion. He emphasized that the practical interactive relationship between man and nature, and between man and his surrounding environment, is the basis for understanding moral relations. He argued that morality must be interpreted from the height of class struggle and socio-historical transformation to reflect the liberation of the sensory life of every individual, thereby endowing his practical moral outlook with the revolutionary power and liberating mission of practical critique. In texts such as The German Ideology and Moralizing Criticism and Critical Morality, Marx criticized petty-bourgeois figures like Stirner and Heinzen for being obsessed with empty moral preaching, using obsolete moral concepts to measure socio-historical development, and using universal human nature to dissolve class differences. He viewed these approaches as lacking reality and historicity. He argued that this moralizing treatment, which obscured the process of historical development with the analysis of moral concepts, was not only useless for awakening the class consciousness of the proletariat but was also detrimental to the communist revolutionary movement. "Communists do not oppose egoism to self-sacrifice or self-sacrifice to egoism; they do not grasp this opposition theoretically either in its sentimental or in its high-flown ideological form; rather, they demonstrate its material source, with the disappearance of which the opposition vanishes of itself. ... Communists do not put to people moral demands: love one another, do not be egoists, etc.; on the contrary, they are very well aware that egoism, as much as self-sacrifice, is a necessary form of self-assertion of individuals under certain conditions." In Marx’s view, morality is not the foundation of society, but a product of social history—an ideological manifestation of the developmental process of social history. Any attempt to oppose history to morality is absurd.
Subsequently, during the period from the writing of The Communist Manifesto to the publication of Capital, Marx’s reflections on morality gained a more solid scientific and empirical foundation, and his practical moral outlook consequently became more mature and perfected. At this stage, Marx increasingly utilized economic concepts such as commodities, productive forces, and surplus value to unfold a scientific analysis of the internal operating mechanisms of capitalism. Through a profound disclosure and thorough critique of the internal contradictions of capitalist society, he explained the internal principles and concrete manifestations of how the logic of capital dominates people's daily sensory lives, obstructs the rich and diverse essence of humanity, and imprisons the fate of human freedom and liberation. For example, Marx revealed that the so-called equal exchange of commodities and the labor-capital exchange relationship in the sphere of capitalist circulation merely reduce the value and meaning of human existence to homogenized exchange value. This formal equality and freedom only serve to cover up the reality of the oppression and exploitation of the proletariat. Simultaneously, by decoding the uniqueness of the value of labor-power and exposing the process by which capitalists appropriate surplus value without compensation, Marx explained the fundamental limitations to—and the ultimate way out for—achieving the free and comprehensive development of man. This way out can only be realized in the "realm of freedom," where the development of human energy occurs as an end in itself. "But this realm of freedom can only flourish upon the realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working day is its fundamental prerequisite." It is evident that although Marx proposed fewer explicit moral claims during this stage, the value orientation and moral ideals implicit in this series of economic facts and economic propositions did not change. This profound thread of humanistic value consistently ran through Marx’s concrete and historical scientific analysis of commodities, exchange, and capital under the capitalist system. This scientific analysis further highlighted the critical, revolutionary, and emancipatory spirit of Marx's practical moral outlook. The moral ideal of human liberation is an irreversible necessity of the laws of development of human society; what we must do is strive to discover the material basis, existential mechanism, and historical significance of this historical necessity, clarify the goal orientation of the practical moral outlook through social practical activities based on internal contradictory movement, and thereby realize the sublime moral ideal of human liberation.
In this period, the formation of Marx's practical moral outlook also marked his revolutionary leap in methodology from speculative philosophy to historical science. The moral outlook of this period no longer relied on abstract presuppositions of human nature or transcendental value scales, but instead revealed the socio-historical roots of moral phenomena through the critique of political economy. As McCarthy pointed out in interpreting Marx's moral theory, Marx transformed the questions of the modern tradition concerning right and wrong, good and bad, and the nature of the good life versus material well-being into an investigation of the structural institutions of modern society—that is, into political economy. Social classes, power relations, wealth ownership, and social relations of production became the entire background for understanding moral issues. To this end, in this stage, Marx transformed moral questions into a practical critique of the capitalist mode of production and integrated moral demands into the revolutionary liberation movement of the proletariat, thereby sublimating moral theoretical critique into a material force for transforming the world and providing a scientific practical weapon for the proletarian revolution.
Conclusion
Through a systematic tracing of the historical generative context of Marx’s view of morality, we find that Marx generally situated morality within the overall process of historical transformation characterized by the two-way interaction between productive forces and relations of production, and between the economic base and the superstructure. He gradually completed a paradigm shift from philosophical interpretation toward practical critique, ultimately forming a practical view of morality rooted in historical materialism. This practical view of morality possesses high-level social-practical characteristics that unify scientific and evaluative dimensions, class and popular dimensions, and realistic and idealistic dimensions.
First, its scientificity is primarily grounded in the revelation of the objective laws of historical materialism. It is embodied in the material conditioning of moral forms and the historical dialectics of moral development—that is, moral phenomena are constrained by social modes of production and develop alongside the productive forces. The path of historicist analysis constitutes the epistemological foundation for the scientific nature of Marx’s practical view of morality. Simultaneously, while conforming to the objective laws governing the transformation of the relations of production, this practical view of morality carries the moral mission of upholding the comprehensive development of the person and the abolition of the system of exploitation.
Second, the unification of the class and popular dimensions is reflected in the fact that the practical view of morality serves as the ideological expression of the class interests of the proletariat while assuming the function of moral critique in the class struggle. On the other hand, class liberation and human liberation are inherently unified; the class interests of the proletariat are isomorphic with the fundamental interests of the broadest masses of laborers. This means that the moral demands of the practical view of morality naturally contain a negation of the system of exploitation and a pursuit of the comprehensive development of the person. Its moral norms are thus transformed from tools of class rule into the conditions for the realization of the free essence of humanity.
Finally, the dialectical unity of the realistic and the idealistic is reflected in the fact that the practical view of morality is both a cognition of objective historical laws and a value choice in the human pursuit of liberation. It refuses both to indulge in the empty illusions of moral idealism and to yield to the compromises of realistic cynicism. In its essence, it is a revolutionary dialectic that continuously sublate [9] the existing world through actual practice.
The proposal of the practical view of morality resolves, to a certain extent, the historical debate between "moralism" and "amoralism" in Marxism. It indicates that Marx’s moral theory is neither a Kantian formalist deontology nor a utilitarian consequentialist theory; rather, by revealing the practice of the self-liberation of the working class itself, it realizes a practical ethics that unifies the normative and the descriptive, the critical and the constructive. Furthermore, through an examination of the historical periodization of Marx’s view of morality, we have further clarified its production mechanism. Consequently, communist ethics is no longer seen as a utopian presupposition, but is presented as a necessary demand of the movement of historical contradictions; the revolutionary practice of the proletariat must inevitably give rise to a new type of ethical relationship.
In summary, the historical generative path and the aforementioned practical characteristics of Marx’s practical view of morality, on the one hand, provide a detailed clarification of how Marxist ethics opens a practical path toward the "realm of freedom" [10] within the concrete practice of the working class struggle for liberation. On the other hand, they provide modern ethics with a brand-new perspective for understanding the relationship between morality and society, offering important guiding significance for resolving contemporary moral dilemmas.