Du Zeyan: Two Paths to Unlocking the Mystery of Abstract Rule
Surpassing the abstract rule of capital is the epochal theme of modern philosophy. Building upon a critique of Hegel’s logic of the alienation and reconciliation of the absolute spirit, Marx conducted a revolutionary exploration of the generative and terminal paths of abstract rule, producing significant theoretical and practical effects. However, since the Second World War, capitalist countries have experienced a Hegelian revival that remains unabated. This is manifested in several ways: First, with the establishment of the welfare state and democratic constitutionalism, capitalist states appear to have moved toward the Hegelian "ethical state" [1]; the state seems no longer a tool of class rule but a guarantee of democracy and freedom. Consequently, the revolutionary discourse of class exploitation in Marxist theory appears to have lost its efficacy. Theoretically, this is reflected in the decline of the revolutionary discourse of the critique of abstract rule—a discourse that, since Lukács, had been grounded in the construction of the revolutionary subject. Second, with the transition from industrial capital to finance capital, the logic of capital presents itself as the movement of the absolute spirit, wherein concepts create the world. Theoretically, this is seen in the rise of the "New Dialectics" [2] school, which utilizes Hegelian logic to analyze the abstract rule of capital. Through this, Marx’s historical dialectical method has been stamped with a Hegelian imprint, losing its originality and grounding in reality. Third, with the advent of the consumer society, the abstract rule of capitalist society no longer manifests as external institutional oppression but is internalized into every aspect of daily life through the all-pervasive means of culture and consumption. Theoretically, this is expressed in late-capitalist cultural critique theories, represented by Fredric Jameson, which pivot Marx’s theoretical stance—originally a critique of economic structures—toward a critique of culture and ideology.
From the above, it is evident that weakening or even abandoning the revolutionary and realist stance of Marxist critical theory is a common theoretical ailment in current Western academia regarding the study of abstract rule. The fundamental crux of the problem lies in the failure to properly consider the role of Hegel in Marx’s methodology for critiquing abstract rule, thereby blurring the boundaries between Marx’s and Hegel’s methodologies. Therefore, fully excavating the rich connotations of Marx’s methodology, restoring the authentic thought of Marx’s theory of the critique of abstract rule, achieving the "de-Hegelianization" of Marx’s methodology, and thus highlighting the originality and relevance of Marx’s thought for our time, is undoubtedly the most pressing task for contemporary Marxist philosophical research. The key to tackling this epochal task lies in discovering and interpreting the analytical methods of the "history of formation" and "modern history" of capital, which Marx developed during his polemics with Hegel on the problem of abstract rule.
I. Hegel’s Basic Logic in Analyzing the Reconciliation of Abstract Rule
The rule over individuals by monetary exchange relations, replacing relations of personal dependence, is the fundamental characteristic of modern society. Hegel was the first to summarize this from a philosophical perspective as "abstract rule." Based on the entire process of his intellectual development, one can see that Hegel’s analysis of the problem of abstract rule underwent two continuous stages: from phenomenal analysis to essential analysis.
During the Jena Manuscripts period, while analyzing the ancient and modern evolution of labor, Hegel discovered the problem of the abstraction of labor by monetary exchange relations in modern civil society. In traditional societies since ancient Greece, mediated by skill (Technik), an individual's subsistence labor was directly the expression of their universal life. However, in modern society, the meaning of labor has undergone a complete reversal: universal labor has lost its function as a life expression and has been directly reduced to mere subsistence labor. The reason for this is that money has replaced skill as the mediator for the transformation of individual labor into universal labor. On the one hand, monetary exchange relations take the form of the rule of value-abstraction and reification over modern society. From the perspective of modern modes of production, social production aimed at value presupposes a developed social division of labor, where the producer's individual labor becomes a part of the division of labor system. From the perspective of modern modes of exchange, social relations between people are inverted into value relations between things in monetary exchange. On the other hand, monetary exchange relations exert an alienated form of rule over modern individuals. This is specifically manifested as the modern mechanical system of division of labor dismantling the individual into production parts; monetary exchange severs the natural connection between the individual and the community found in traditional societies. This phenomenon of alienation makes modern civil society appear as a form of abstract rule.
After analyzing the phenomenal manifestations of abstract rule at the social and individual levels, the task of the Philosophy of Right was to reveal the historical roots behind these phenomena. Based on an idealist methodology of the identity of idea and reality, Hegel abandoned the materialist stance that starts from monetary exchange and the division of labor, turning instead to the perspective of the alienation of the absolute spirit to analyze the specific paths of the generation, development, and demise of abstract rule. Regarding the history of the generation of abstract rule, Hegel used the historical changes of the absolute spirit as a clue to discuss human history, attributing the root of abstract rule in modern society to the impact of the principle of subjectivity [3] on ethical universality (Sittlichkeit), and the resulting split between universality and particularity, and between community and the individual. He thus traced the abstract rule of modern society back to the disintegration of the ethical community of ancient Greece. Regarding the history of the development of abstract rule, Hegel, standing from the position of the modern world, fully affirmed the progressive historical significance brought by the abstract rule of civil society. Although the modern mechanical division of labor reduces individuals to tools, it greatly improves productivity. While the monetary exchange system severs the blood ties between the individual and the community, it also shapes modern ethics of freedom and equality. Regarding the history of the demise of abstract rule, Hegel pointed out that although civil society, as a "system of needs," destroys ethical universality and makes abstract rule a reality, it inherently contains ethical moments represented by the police and the corporations [4]. Therefore, it can be integrated into the ethical system to overcome the abstract rule brought about by the alienation of the ethical substance, thereby achieving the reconciliation of universality and particularity, and the community and the individual.
II. Marx’s Methodological Critique of Hegel’s Logic of Reconciliation
Hegel’s idealist methodology equates the conceptual object with the real object, smoothing over the specific social contradictions lurking behind the ideas, and achieving the reconciliation of social contradictions through the logical unfolding of categories from the abstract to the concrete. This methodological idealism rendered Hegel unable to thoroughly resolve the problem of abstract rule in modern society. In view of this, before analyzing abstract rule, Marx took the critique of Hegel’s identity of idea and reality as an entry point, transformed the idealist nature of his methodology, and thus made a clean break with Hegel’s idealist application of the "abstract to the concrete" methodology.
In Hegel’s idealist methodology, categories possess independence from specific social structures; the logical evolution of categories is the development of real history. In Marx’s view, however, the existence of categories must presuppose a specific social structure. Based on the relationship between categories and specific social structures, Marx divided categories into "specifically historical existences" and "ante-diluvian existences" (洪水期前存在). The former refers to categories whose existence must presuppose a specific socio-historical structure; the latter refers to categories that exist chronologically prior to a specific social structure—for example, capital and money as they existed before the birth of capitalist society. In Marx’s view, the historical priority of the ante-diluvian existence of a category is a logical reconstruction derived from "thinking backwards" (Nachdenken) based on the category's specifically historical existence. But in Hegel’s methodology, categories are regarded as moments in the dialectical development of the Absolute Idea; the ante-diluvian existence of categories is independent of specific socio-historical structures. The "thought-concrete" (思维具体) of the category is thus seized upon as an independent "real concrete" (现实具体). Consequently, the process of historical development is viewed as a smooth logical transition from the abstract to the concrete within thought-categories, detached from reality.
The critique of categories is the foundation for surpassing Hegelian idealist methodology. Furthermore, the historical dialectical method of "modern history" and "history of formation," constructed by demonstrating the relationship between categories and real history, directly declared the bankruptcy of Hegelian idealist methodology. Marx’s critique of Hegel’s methodology did not deny the general dialectical movement from the abstract to the concrete; rather, by distinguishing between the different natures of the history of formation and modern history, he defined the "abstract to the concrete" method as the analytical method for the history of formation.
The "history of formation" (形成史) consists of various conditions and prerequisites prior to the ante-diluvian existence of categories. Although Marx used a large number of historical examples to describe the history of the formation of capital, the method of the history of formation is not an empirical historical investigation; it is a logical reconstruction through "thinking backwards" based on a specific real concrete. Therefore, when thinking backwards from capitalist society, the historical order of categories is not a chronological order, nor is it a Proudhonian order of ideas, but rather the structural order of categories within capitalist society. "Modern history" (现代史) is the analysis of the specifically historical existence of categories. Since Marx’s object of study is capitalist society, "modern history" refers to the actual system of the mode of production ruled by capital. The characteristic of this system is that it "subordinates all elements of society to itself, or creates out of it the organs which it still lacks."
In Marx’s historical dialectical method, the following relationship exists between modern history and the history of formation: First, the analysis of modern history is the prerequisite for the analysis of the history of formation. If the analysis of the modern history of capital is missing, one would, like the classical political economists, ignore the essential difference between ancient merchant capital and modern capital, holding that the forms of modern capital exist in all social forms, thus regarding capitalist society as an eternal existence. Second, the analysis of the history of formation is the mediator for the realization of the analysis of modern history. For the synchronic structure of capital revealed by the analysis of modern history to function in reality, it must be mediated by specific historical events revealed by the analysis of the history of formation that led to the emergence of capital; these specific historical events break the independence of the synchronic structure. Third, the historical dialectical method of the interaction between modern history and the history of formation reveals the possibility of sublation (Aufheben) of capitalist society. Standing from the perspective of the history of formation—looking from the past to the future—history presents the transition of social forms. Standing from the perspective of modern history—looking from the present back to the past—history presents the synchronic structure of the transition of social forms, namely, the regular trend toward the emergence of a new society. This historical dialectics, which stands in the present, looks back at the past, and looks forward to the future, reveals that capitalist society nurtures the prerequisites for sublating itself and producing a new society.
III. Marx’s Historical Logic in Analyzing Abstract Rule
After completing his critique of Hegel’s logic of reconciliation and its underlying idealist methodology, Marx constructed a historical dialectical method based on the interaction between the history of formation and modern history, applying it to the analysis of abstract rule.
In the analysis of modern history, the operating logic of abstract rule is a triune structure of "real abstraction," "personal abstraction," and "conceptual abstraction." "Real abstraction" refers to the inverted social manifestation mechanism unique to capitalist society. "Personal abstraction" refers to individuals being reduced to moments in capital’s own reproduction within this inverted social manifestation mechanism; the capitalist appears as capital personified, while the worker is reduced to an organ for the self-valorization of capital in both physical constitution and conception. "Conceptual abstraction" refers to ideas becoming independent of specific relations of production and becoming a dominant social force. In capitalist society, economic ideological concepts such as freedom, equality, and property rights serve as eternal value-ideals that support the social and individual psychological structure, making the exploitation and oppression of capital even more concealed.
Since the essence of abstract rule in capitalist society is "inverted manifestation" (颠倒表现), Marx’s analysis of the history of the formation of abstract rule does not adopt a method of theoretical reproduction, but rather a narrative reconstruction. Within the horizon of the history of formation, the most fundamental inversion in the history of capitalist development is the treatment of labor power as a commodity. This inversion, in turn, presupposes the following historical conditions: First, the separation of the laborer from the means of production. Laborers who have lost their means of subsistence are transformed into wage workers; the means of production are concentrated in the hands of a few and transformed into capital. Modern individuals are divided into capitalists and wage workers. From this historical condition of the separation of the laborer from the means of production, "personal abstraction" arises. Second, the exchange of free labor for money. In the process of exchange between the wage worker and the capitalist, the wage-form—where "equal amounts of labor receive equal amounts of compensation"—conceals the exploitation of the worker in the production process; here, "conceptual abstraction" arises in the form of freedom and equality. The "free labor" exchanged for capital is not concrete labor but abstract labor; the purpose of labor is not use-value but exchange-value. Labor power is not an expression of the worker’s life but a means of subsistence. From the historical condition of the exchange of free labor for money, the "real abstraction" of the inverted social manifestation mechanism arises. Thus, the historical process of labor power becoming a commodity holds all the secrets of abstract rule.
In Marx’s historical logic, the rule of abstraction manifests, on the one hand, as a tripartite theoretical-structural existence—comprising real abstraction, the abstraction of personhood, and conceptual abstraction—within the analytical horizon of modern history. On the other hand, it manifests as a specific event-based existence, namely the transformation of labor power into a commodity, within the analytical horizon of the history of its formation. The synchronic structure revealed by the analysis of modern history is merely the theoretical necessity of the rule of abstraction. For the rule of abstraction to become a reality, it must be mediated by the specific historical event of labor power becoming a commodity, as revealed by the analysis of its formation history. This event-based existence provides a revolutionary opportunity to break the synchronic structure of the rule of abstraction in practice. According to this logic, in Volume I of Capital, after Marx completes his structural analysis of the production process of capital, he focuses his conclusion on the revolution to "reestablish individual property." In Volume IIII of Capital, after completing the structural analysis of the total process of capitalist production, he explores the basis of class division from the perspective of ownership, attempting to locate the revolutionary subject and the revolutionary opportunity.
In the history of thought, Hegel was the first to reveal the rule of abstraction exerted by monetary exchange relations over modern society. However, his idealistic methodology—which posits the identity of concept and reality—caused him to abandon a materialist standpoint rooted in money and labor. The real history of the rule of abstraction was internalized as the self-alienation and reconciliation of the Absolute Spirit, which completely dissolved the possibility of theory leading to reality. Marx grasped the fundamental crux of Hegel’s methodological idealism. Using the transformation of categories—the base points of the methodological system—as a theoretical handle, Marx revealed that, unlike Hegel's categories, his own possessed a specific historical existence and a "pre-flood" [5] existence, maintaining an open-ended generative relationship with real history. Proceeding from this, Marx constructed a historically dialectical method of "formation history" and "modern history" characterized by theoretical originality and realism. The former reveals the operational logic of the rule of abstraction, while the latter points toward the revolutionary path for breaking the "transcendental structure" of that rule. Thereby, Marx comprehensively transcended the theoretical approach of Hegel’s "logic of reconciliation," opening a path of practical philosophy for the realization of free human development.