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New Foundations for Marxology

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New Foundation for Marxology

Content Summary

This book is the newest work by Wang Dong, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor in the Department of Philosophy at Peking University. It represents the culmination of forty years of independent research into Marx’s original works and twenty years of teaching Marxist philosophy at Peking University; it is a work of meticulous scholarship and innovation. The central thematic thrust emphasizes that we must greatly strengthen the systematic and in-depth study of Marx’s own texts, thoughts, and philosophy. By achieving a major innovation in the interpretative paradigms of Marx’s philosophy and establishing a "Marxology with Chinese characteristics," we can excavate and lay a solid, reliable philological and theoretical foundation for the innovation of Marxist philosophy and theory in the 21st century. The book is organized into three parts spanning ten chapters, totaling over 600,000 characters.

Part I, "The Three Great Interpretative Paradigms: Historical Reflections," posits that the three fifty-year periods in the history of Marxism have been dominated by three popular interpretative paradigms. In the late 19th century, the "interpreting Marx through Engels" paradigm prevailed—interpreting Marx’s philosophy through Engels’s popular and polemical works. In the early 20th century, the "interpreting Marx through the Soviet Union" paradigm was dominant—interpreting Marx’s philosophy according to the theoretical framework of the philosophy textbook system under the Soviet model. In the late 20th century, the "interpreting Marx through the West" paradigm was widespread—interpreting Marx’s philosophy based on the frameworks of modern and contemporary Western philosophy. The historical contributions and limitations of these three paradigms must be analyzed concretely and historically.

Part II, "Interpreting Marx through Marx: Innovation of Interpretative Paradigms," proposes that facing the 21st century, we must transcend the three aforementioned paradigms and initiate a new paradigm of "interpreting Marx through Marx." It outlines ten essential methodology points for this new paradigm.

Part III, "Marxology with Chinese Characteristics: The Four Cornerstones," proposes that we need to draw upon and transcend Soviet Marx studies and the Western "Marxology" [1] established by figures such as Maximilien Rubel. On this basis, we should create a Marxology that is rich in the zeitgeist of the 21st century and possesses Chinese characteristics—conducting systematic and in-depth comprehensive research into Marx’s documents, history, and theory. This will transform it into a rigorous historical, philological, theoretical, and philosophical science, thereby re-founding the innovation of Marxist philosophy and theory. To this end, four paving stones are required: a new hermeneutics, a new bibliography, a new edition studies, and a new textology.

This book is a research monograph rich in domestic and international academic materials and is one of a three-volume series on the new interpretation of Marx’s philosophy to be released successively by the author. It aims to explore new methods of reading and study, providing an entry point for theoretical research and a scholarly path toward independent innovation. It is thus suitable for teachers, professional researchers, undergraduates, and graduate students; broad audiences concerned with the historical fate of Marxism will also find inspiration herein.

Table of Contents

Part I: The Three Great Interpretative Paradigms: Historical Reflections

Chapter 1: The First Fifty Years: The "Interpreting Marx through Engels" Paradigm Section 1: Why the "Interpreting Marx through Engels" paradigm formed Section 2: Six historical contributions of Engels in elucidating Marxist philosophy Section 3: Five historical limitations of Engels in elucidating Marxist philosophy Section 4: A new inquiry into the relationship between Engels and Marx: The path to entering and deepening the study of Marxist philosophy Section 5: The historical status of the "Interpreting Marx through Engels" paradigm: Four conclusions

Chapter 2: The Second Fifty Years: The "Interpreting Marx through the Soviet Union" Paradigm Section 1: The historical background of the "Interpreting Marx through the Soviet Union" paradigm Section 2: Six stages in the formation of the "Interpreting Marx through the Soviet Union" paradigm

  1. Deborin’s Dialectical Materialism: The first attempt at systematization
  2. Bukharin’s Theory of Historical Materialism: The first attempt at systematization
  3. The first attempt to integrate dialectical materialism and historical materialism in the mid-1920s
  4. The historical role of Stalin’s Dialectical and Historical Materialism
  5. The Soviet philosophy textbook system and its three improvements from the 1950s to the 1980s Section 3: The basic theoretical framework of the Soviet philosophy textbook system and the "Interpreting Marx through the Soviet Union" paradigm Section 4: Historical contributions of the Soviet philosophical system and interpretative paradigm Section 5: Historical limitations of the Soviet philosophical system and interpretative paradigm

Chapter 3: The Third Fifty Years: The "Interpreting Marx through the West" Paradigm Section 1: What is the "Interpreting Marx through the West" paradigm? Section 2: The origins and development of the "Interpreting Marx through the West" paradigm

  1. Early 20th century: Mehring, Plekhanov, Lukács, Gramsci—Individual seeds of "Interpreting Marx through the West"
  2. 1930s and 40s: German Social Democrats, the early Frankfurt School, and Reich’s "Freudian Marxism"—Preliminary formation of the paradigm
  3. Late 20th century: Widespread popularity of the paradigm—Western Neo-Marxism and Marxology Section 3: The "Interpreting Marx through the West" paradigm: Ten types and ideological genealogies
  4. Hegelianizing Marx: The "Interpreting Marx through Hegel" paradigm
  5. Feuerbachianizing Marx: The "Interpreting Marx through Feuerbach" paradigm
  6. Freudianizing Marx: The "Interpreting Marx through Freud" paradigm
  7. Heideggerianizing or Existentializing Marx: The "Interpreting Marx through Heidegger" paradigm
  8. Althusser’s Structuralizing of Marx: The "Interpreting Marx through Althusser" paradigm
  9. Della Volpe’s Neo-Positivist approach to Marx: The "Interpreting Marx through Della Volpe" paradigm
  10. Reconstructing historical materialism via Habermas’s theory of communicative action: The "Interpreting Marx through Habermas" paradigm
  11. Kantianizing or Neo-Kantianizing Marx: The "Interpreting Marx through Kant" paradigm
  12. Weberianizing Marx: The "Interpreting Marx through Weber" paradigm
  13. Post-modernism and Post-Marxism: The "Interpreting Marx through the 'Post-'" paradigm Section 4: Four insights from "Interpreting Marx through the West"
  14. Highlighting the historical limitations of the "Interpreting Marx through the Soviet Union" paradigm
  15. Encouraging a deeper exploration of the theoretical sources of Marxist philosophy
  16. Highlighting the profound echoes of Marx’s philosophy within modern Western philosophy
  17. Encouraging the quest for growth points in the contemporary and future development of Marxist philosophy Section 5: Five fundamental flaws of "Interpreting Marx through the West"
  18. Simplistic historical reductionism
  19. A "frog in a well" [2] theoretical reduction
  20. Erasing the unique individuality and logic of Marx’s philosophy
  21. Creating the "Three Great Oppositions": Marx vs. Marx, Marx vs. Engels, and Marx vs. Marxism
  22. Fundamentally negating Marx’s epoch-making philosophical innovations

Part II: "Interpreting Marx through Marx": Innovation of Interpretative Paradigms

Chapter 4: Paradigms of Interpreting Marx’s Philosophy: Return and Innovation—The Focal Issue Across Centuries Section 1: Early 20th century: Lenin and Lukács take the lead in raising the issue of interpretative paradigms Section 2: Mid-20th century: Althusser and Lukács raise the issue again Section 3: Late 20th century: New explorations of interpretative paradigms in Chinese academia

Chapter 5: What is the New Paradigm of "Interpreting Marx through Marx"—Ten Methodological Steps Section 1: Based on his own texts Section 2: Restoring the unique context Section 3: Integrating his life path Section 4: Multiple historical backgrounds Section 5: Tracing theoretical sources Section 6: Grasping the origins and development Section 7: Seizing the theoretical starting point Section 8: Integrating the entire system Section 9: Observing the internal logic Section 10: Faithfulness to the spiritual essence Section 11: Marx’s own scientific naming: New Materialism—One proper name and three aliases

Chapter 6: Creating "Marxology with Chinese Characteristics" Section 1: What is "Marxology with Chinese Characteristics"? Section 2: Theoretical foundation for a new stage in the study of the history of Marxist philosophy

  1. The process of innovation and development in Marx’s philosophy
  2. The main thread of innovative thought in Marx’s philosophy
  3. The scientific naming and spiritual essence of Marx’s philosophy Section 3: Re-founding the theoretical innovation of Marxism Section 4: Theoretical foundation for transcending the Soviet model of Marx studies Section 5: Theoretical foundation for transcending the "Three Great Oppositions" in Western Marxology and Neo-Marxism
  4. The self-opposition of "Two Marxs" or even "Three Marxs"
  5. The "Marx-Engels opposition" theory
  6. The "Marx-Marxism opposition" theory Section 6: Founding philosophical innovation in response to the "Millennium Marx" and the New Era

Part III: Marxology with Chinese Characteristics: The Four Cornerstones

Chapter 7: The First Cornerstone of Marxology: A New Hermeneutics—The Unity of Objectivity and Subjectivity Section 1: Explaining the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity: A philosophical challenge across time and cultures Section 2: The objectivity of interpreting Marxist philosophical texts—Six grounds

  1. Marx the man and his thought: Objectivity as social and historical existence
  2. The objectivity of Marx’s philosophical texts and the textual system
  3. The objectivity of the historical background of Marx’s philosophical texts
  4. The objectivity of the language, context, and semantics of Marx’s philosophical texts
  5. The objectivity of the theoretical content and developmental trajectory of Marx’s philosophy
  6. The objectivity of the internal connections between Marx’s philosophical texts and categories Section 3: The subjectivity of interpreting Marxist philosophical texts—Four levels
  7. General subjectivity of the interpretative activity
  8. Temporal subjectivity of the interpretative activity
  9. National subjectivity of the interpretative activity
  10. Individual subjectivity of the interpretative activity Section 4: The unity of interpretative objectivity and subjectivity—Four points of integration

Chapter 8: The Second Cornerstone of Marxology: A New Bibliography—The Ten Great Texts of Marx’s Philosophical Innovation Section 1: Where the difficulty lies in identifying texts of Marx’s philosophical innovation—Four major problems Section 2: Marx’s texts: Ten bibliographies in the history of bibliography—Comparative research on Engels, Lenin, the Russian editions, MEGA2, etc. Section 3: Three stages of Marxian textual bibliography: From few to many to refined Section 4: Marx’s philosophical innovation: The sum of three stages and the Ten Great Texts

Chapter 9: The Third Cornerstone of Marxology: A New Edition Studies—Four Major Tasks of Edition Research Section 1: Edition research: The entry-level ladder of Marxology—Why there is an urgent need for a new edition studies Section 2: The necessity of clarifying edition origins: Case study I of Theses on Feuerbach Section 3: The necessity of clarifying edition history: Case study II of the ten editions of Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 Section 4: The necessity of conducting edition comparison: Case study III of the ten arrangements of The German Ideology Section 5: The necessity of making edition evaluations: Case study IV of the Capital textual series Section 6: Four major tasks of edition research—Basic problems and categories of the new edition studies Section 7: Clarifying edition origins—The "Ten Elements" theory Section 8: Clarifying edition history—The "Five Categories of Editions" theory Section 9: Conducting edition comparison—The "Six Similarities and Differences" theory Section 10: Making edition evaluations—The "Eight Grades of Editions" theory Section 11: The historical fate of Marx’s texts—Six stages of transmission and preservation Section 12: The evolutionary trajectory of editions of Marx’s texts Section 13: Three stages, two systems, and one red thread—Three conclusions from comparative edition research

Chapter 10: The Fourth Cornerstone of Marxology: A New Textology—Four Levels of Marx’s Texts: Pieces, Groups, Series, and Clusters Section 1: The four levels of Marx’s texts Section 2: "Pieces"—The cells of Marx’s textual system Section 3: Marx’s 10 groups of works, 7 groups of manuscripts, and 30 groups of notes Section 4: Four series of Marx’s texts: Works, manuscripts, notes, and letters Section 5: The four great textual clusters of Marx’s life Section 6: From the materialist conception of history to the world-historical conception—Marx’s late-stage textual clusters: A new stage of philosophical innovation Section 7: Pursuing the greater ideal of self-transcendence—Marx and Einstein: A comparison of commonalities in their late thought