Marxist philosophy is one of the three major components of Marxism formed by inheriting and developing German classical philosophy, British classical political economy and French utopian socialism. Its main theoretical sources are dialectics and materialism. Dialectical materialism and historical materialism are two major components of Marxism, and the concept of practice is its foundation.
The theoretical content of Marxist philosophy is to combine materialism with dialectics, materialistic view of nature and materialistic view of history to form a theoretical system of dialectical materialism and historical materialism.
The source of Marxist philosophy:
The theory founded by Marx and Engels. Including scientific world outlook, social and historical development theory, proletarian revolution theory and socialism and socialist construction theory, the theoretical basis and guiding ideology of working-class political parties. The word "Marxism", as the general name of the theory founded by Marx and Engels, appeared before Marx's death and was widely used in the works of French socialists in the late 1970s from 65438 to 2009. However, its content was distorted and Marx sharply criticized it. Engels began to use the word "Marxism" in the early 1980s, and made a special explanation in 1886.
Marxism came into being in the 1940s of 19, which is the product of the intensification of capitalist contradictions and the development of the workers' movement. Marked by the appearance of the Manifesto of the Productive Party. It absorbed and transformed all the outstanding achievements of human thought and culture, especially the achievements of social science and natural science in the middle of18th century and the first half of19th century. Its main theoretical sources are German classical philosophy, British classical political economy and utopian socialism in Britain and France. In addition, the thoughts of French enlightenment scholars and the class struggle theory of French restoration historians also provide useful ideological materials for the theory of scientific socialism. /kloc-the new achievements of science and technology in the 0/9th century, especially the establishment of cell theory, the discovery of the law of energy conservation and transformation, and the new development of evolution, have laid a solid natural science foundation for the emergence of Marxism.
The basic characteristics of Marxist philosophy;
I. Revolutionary changes in the history of philosophy
The birth of Ma Zhe is the inevitable product of social, political and economic development, the great progress of natural science and the inevitable result of the development of philosophical theory itself.
In Europe, from 65438 to 1940s, capitalism entered a higher stage of development. The mature capitalist mode of production gave birth to the mature proletariat, and the European proletariat is gradually growing from a comfortable class to a self-sufficient class. The rise of the workers' movement needs the guidance of scientific theory. During this period, natural science made unprecedented great achievements: three scientific discoveries (cell theory, law of conservation and transformation of energy, Darwinian evolution theory) summarized the outstanding achievements of European social science at that time, critically inherited and creatively developed the materialism and dialectics traditions in human philosophical thinking.
It makes theoretical preparation for the establishment of philosophy.
Direct theoretical source:
Classical economics represented by Adam Smith and david ricardo, especially their labor theory of value; 19th century French restoration historians' exposition on the role of class struggle; /kloc-the utopian socialist theory of Britain and France represented by Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen in the early 20th century; German classical philosophy is mainly Hegel's dialectics and Feuerbach's materialism.
Second, the main viewpoints and basic viewpoints of Marxist philosophy.
The practical viewpoint is the primary and basic viewpoint of Ma Zhe, and the practical principle is the construction principle of Ma Zhe.
Ma Zhe starts from practice to review, see through and understand the existing world, and understands the object, reality and sensibility as practice.
Marx defined his philosophical object as human's practical activities as the foundation of the existing world, and defined the task of philosophy as solving the relationship between human and the world, subject and object, and subjective and objective in practical activities, thus providing methodology for changing the world.
For the first time, Marx promoted practice to the fundamental principle of philosophy and transformed it into a philosophical way of thinking, thus creating a new form of modern materialism with practice as the core and foundation.
The view of scientific practice is the ideological mechanism for Marx to establish dialectical materialism and historical materialism. Practical viewpoint is not only a sharp weapon for Marxist philosophy to criticize idealism, but also a dividing line with old materialism, thus ending traditional philosophy.
Third, the unity of dialectical materialism and historical materialism.
Dialectical materialism historical materialism
materialistic dialectics
Materialist view of nature materialistic view of history
Existence determines thinking, matter determines consciousness, and nature precedes human existence. This is the fundamental principle that all materialism must adhere to.
Human's material practice is materialistic and dialectical, as well as social and historical. On the basis of practice, Ma Zhe reveals the unity of natural view and historical view, thus correctly and thoroughly solving the basic problems of philosophy and carrying out materialism to the end.
Fourth, the theory is critical, open and constantly developing.
Criticism is the basic spirit of Ma Zhe. Criticism means breaking the old and establishing the new, and replacing the old with the new, which is the inherent requirement of practice.
As the basic way of human existence, practice is a negative relationship between human and external nature.
In close contact with his contemporaries, with a strong sense of historical responsibility, Ma Zhe creatively enriched and developed his own theory in strict accordance with the development of practice and scientific progress, and corrected some individual viewpoints and conclusions that were proved to be outdated by practice in time, thus maintaining and developing the scientificity and truth of his theory. At the same time, adhere to the scientific world outlook and methodology, adhere to the distinct principle of party spirit, criticize and struggle with anti-Marxist and other wrong viewpoints and theories from all sides in a clear-cut manner, guide reality in the right direction and road, and enrich and develop themselves in the same wrong criticism and struggle.
Ma Zhe is an open theoretical system, which has both sublation and absorption. The theoretical vitality of Ma Zhe comes from practice. It is a critical inheritance of past achievements in natural science, social science and thinking science. With the development, it will constantly sum up new experiences, enrich and develop its own theoretical content and its corresponding theoretical forms.
Ma Zhe is developing constantly. He regards Ma Zhe as a living development theory, making it consistent with the development of practice and science forever, and opposing dogmatic, absolute and rigid Marxist tendency.
The function of Marxist philosophy;
First, the ideological wisdom of today's times.
Ma Zhe is the most advanced scientific world outlook and methodology in modern times and the ideological wisdom of our times.
1, reflection function.
Reflection is not only a repeated reflection on the object of thinking, but also a reflexive reflection on thinking itself. Reflection is first of all to think repeatedly, to think again, to think twice and to think more about the object of thinking. Reflection has the double meanings of repetitive thinking and reflexive thinking, and it is the dialectical unity of object consciousness and self-consciousness of thinking.
2. Summarize the function.
Philosophy is the theoretical reflection of the overall relationship between man and the world. On the basis of summarizing all aspects of knowledge, a picture of the philosophical world including people has been formed.
3. Key functions.
Ma Zhe critically evaluates the realistic relationship between man and the world. To change the world, we must hold a critical attitude towards the existing world, establish the ideal as a negative form of reality in the criticism of reality, and then turn the ideal into a new reality through practice. Criticism in the dialectical sense is not negation of negation.
4. Prediction function.
Philosophy is based on reality and faces the future, guiding us from the present to the future. It can generally grasp the development trend of the relationship between man and the world. The prediction of philosophy is different from that of specific scientific, which has the characteristics of macro-integrity, comprehensiveness and generality.
Second, the fundamental guide to life
The scientific outlook on life is an integral part of Ma Zhe's scientific world outlook. Outlook on life is an aspect of the world outlook.
Outlook on life is the fundamental view of life. It is his world outlook that plays a fundamental guiding role in the outlook on life. The outlook on life of socialism and capitalism was formed and developed under the guidance of Ma Zhe. The value and significance of life lies in the responsibility and contribution to society. Serving the people and selflessly contributing all your wisdom and strength to the cause of socialism and productism is the greatest value and significance of life.
Collectivism is the core of socialism and capitalism. Carrying forward patriotism, collectivism and socialist spirit is the main theme of socialist spiritual civilization construction in China, the ideological premise of correctly realizing the value of life, and the indispensable content of Marxist scientific outlook on life. It is necessary to establish and strengthen the outlook on life of socialism and materialism, improve the consciousness of building socialist spiritual civilization, and resist decadent ideas such as money worship, hedonism and extreme individualism.
Third, the construction is based on Socialism with Chinese characteristics's philosophy.
Ma Zhe is not only a great spiritual weapon to know the world, but also a great spiritual weapon to transform the world. Emancipating the mind and seeking truth from facts are the soul of Marxism, the essence of Socialism with Chinese characteristics Theory and China's ideological line. Only by emancipating the mind can we prevent and break the lag or rigidity of thought, make subjective thoughts constantly conform to the new reality and truly seek truth from facts. Emancipating the mind is the premise and guarantee of seeking truth from facts, and seeking truth from facts is the basis and purpose of emancipating the mind. They are dialectical unity. We should respect the objective laws of social development and give full play to people's enthusiasm and creativity.
Integrating theory with practice is the fundamental way to learn from Ma Zhe.
As long as we understand and treat the philosophy of Ma Zhe according to its inherent scientificity and logic, we can really give full play to its great social function in the practice of dealing with the relationship between man and the world and building Socialism with Chinese characteristics.
The significance of Marxist philosophy;
Marxist philosophy sets out from practice to solve the basic problem of philosophy, that is, the relationship between thinking and existence is the highest abstraction of the relationship between man and the world. Marxist philosophy profoundly points out that the relationship between man and the world is essentially the relationship between man and the world through practice.
Solving the relationship between man and the world from practice is the essence and key to realize the great philosophical change of Marxist philosophy. It is practice that provides people with the object of understanding. Therefore, in practice, people not only know the world, but also transform it, creating a human world and a natural comfortable world based on nature. Therefore, practice has not only epistemological significance, but also world outlook significance.
The fundamental difference between Marxist philosophy and all other philosophies lies in its unique way of solving basic philosophical problems. Neither the old materialism nor idealism understood human practical activities and their significance, which led to their great defects in understanding and observing the world. Marxist philosophy understands the real world from practice, thus obtaining a brand-new explanation in the world outlook, natural outlook, historical outlook and epistemology, and constructing a unified, thorough and scientific philosophical system.
Practical viewpoint is the foundation of Marxist philosophy, which runs through all dialectical materialism and historical materialism.
The revolutionary changes in Marxist philosophy are mainly manifested in:
Established the historical materialism and ended the dominant position of the historical idealism in the field of social history. It ended the situation that the old materialism lacked the dynamic principle. Understanding the material world on the basis of practical activities makes materialism a dynamic scientific theoretical system. It provides ideological weapons for the proletariat and human liberation.
Eighteen basic principles of Marxist philosophy;
1. The principle of the debate relationship between matter and consciousness;
2. The principle of the relationship between the regularity of material movement and people's subjective initiative;
3. The principle that things are universally connected;
4. Things are the principle of change and development;
5. The principle of universality of contradiction;
6. Principle of particularity of contradiction;
7. Principle of relationship between universality and particularity of contradiction;
8. The principle that the principal contradiction and the secondary contradiction are interrelated;
9. The principle of the relationship between the major and minor aspects of contradiction;
10. The principle that internal and external factors are interrelated;
1 1. The principle of the relationship between quantitative change and qualitative change;
12. The principle of the unity of gradualism and gradualism in the development of things;
13. The principle of the relationship between cognition and practice;
14. the principle of the relationship between phenomenon and essence;
15. The principle of the relationship between perceptual knowledge and rational knowledge;
16. the principle of the relationship between transforming the objective world and transforming the subjective world;
17. The principle of dialectical relationship between social existence and social consciousness;
18. Principles of human values.
Revolutionary and practical significance of Marxist view of practice
1. Speculative, intuitive and scientific view of practice. It is not Marx's creation to bring practice into philosophy and make it a core concept. Before Marx, Kant, Fichte and even Csekovszky and Hess in young hegelians did the same. However, as we all know, the practice they talked about is not the same as that of Marx. In the final analysis, they all construct practice within the spiritual scope and attribute it to the activity of will. This idealistic view of practice is well known. But there is also a view of practice, which is not Marxist, but it seems difficult to be classified as an idealistic view of practice. For example, Feuerbach understands practice as a purely utilitarian behavior, a trivial life and self-interested activities, and its typical form is "despicable Jewish money-making activities." Feuerbach's view of practice is actually an intuitive view of practice. He regards the current form of practice, that is, concrete practice under certain historical conditions, as the totality of practice. So he thinks that practice is essentially exclusive of theory. In order to maintain the authority of theory and his humanitarian ideal, Feuerbach categorically excluded practice from the philosophical field of vision. His theoretical error is usually attributed to his prejudice against practice, that is, he made a negative judgment on practice; However, his intuitive view of practice itself is not taken seriously. In this way, this concept of practice may even be very popular when it is transformed. Most liberal economists are empirical in methodology, and their views on practice are inevitably intuitive and narrow. All their economic analysis is based on practice, that is, industry, market and commodity exchange. Therefore, they seem to have the right to accuse Marx's practice of being too abstract, because the latter regards transcending this premise as the foothold of his philosophy, that is, "socialized people or human society." In this way, Marx seems to be caught in a crack: for the abstract view of practice, he is a realistic and concrete view of practice; For the intuitive and empirical view of practice, he seems to have become an "abstract" view of practice If the above analysis is only of academic significance, it is of great practical significance to reiterate the difference between Marx's view of practice and intuitive view of practice when people completely forget Marx's view of practice and use intuitive view of practice to guide current practice. In a word, Marx's view of practice contains the desire for theory, so it is conscious and oriented to certain social goals; It contains the universal interests of reality, that is, the value orientation of people's interests, so it is revolutionary and critical; It contains the life orientation of dissolving individual's limited life in the great cause of human liberation and obtaining the meaning of life from it, so it is positive. On the contrary, the intuitive view of empirical practice regards practice as spontaneous, self-interested and individual, so its practice fundamentally rejects theory and is the territory of personal interests and pure self. This leads to two fundamentally opposing views on social development. From the intuitive point of view of practice, social activities are essentially individual spontaneous activities. Everyone starts from himself and enters the society in order to realize personal interests. It is in the sharp conflict of spontaneous personal interests that people gradually explore increasingly perfect social norms such as administration, law and morality, whose function is to protect people's free competition and aim at realizing personal interests. So the so-called "society" is just synonymous with "abstract rules of the game". This is the basic analysis of western liberalism on state, law, historical progress and social justice. In Hayek's words, this is a kind of "spontaneous extension of human order", in which human rationality is not so-called "constructive rationalism" characterized by constructing a certain social goal, but so-called "evolutionary rationalism" that constantly corrects mistakes in spontaneous activities. It should be said that this is a true portrayal of the development path of capitalism for hundreds of years. The question is whether this is the only possible choice. All the efforts of Marxism, including the construction of socialist theory with China characteristics, are actually aimed at breaking this superstition. Can there be such a choice, that is, based on the "realistic universal interests" (the overall interests of society), to reduce social conflicts and accelerate social development through more conscious interest coordination, so that backward ethnic groups can obtain equal development rights and avoid various social drawbacks brought about by the development of western capitalism? The answer should be yes. The great practice of Socialism with Chinese characteristics in the construction of contemporary China has initially realized this choice. We insist on Socialism with Chinese characteristics Theory in Deng Xiaoping's construction, that is, we should continue to advance along this already-opened road. Second, the highest form of human practice is that proletarian practice is based on "the general interests of reality", which is by no means a speculative fiction. As we all know, Marx followed Feuerbach, denied the cruel reality of capitalism with abstract "quasi-essence" and criticized the practice form defended by bourgeois economists, which was called "alienation activity". However, when Marx became more and more aware of the weakness of this criticism, he turned to the practical point of view. He abandoned the prejudice that Feuerbach imposed on practical activities, and no longer regarded industry and the world market as "inhuman activities", but as a form of human practical activities with historical inevitability; At the same time, he also overcame the aura of bourgeois economists in the market economy, and did not regard it as the only form of human practice, but only as one of the concrete forms of historical practice. The key to Marx's unique and scientific attitude lies in his discovery of "proletarian practice", a brand-new form of practice. As we all know, in Marx's era, materialism and idealism attributed the power that can transcend personal narrowness to rationality. Only the former is often called "universal interest" in order to avoid making reason a pure spiritual phenomenon. However, if the general interest does not get its own way of existence from the "civil society", it will always be just an ideological principle and belief. However, it is really difficult to find the general interests of reality if it is only based on experience or intuition. Marx laid a realistic foundation for the general interests by relying on the following findings: First, history, especially the history of the French Revolution, shows that the class interests of any class trying to lead the revolution must be consistent with the general interests of mankind in one way or another. Marx wrote, "This class and the whole society are inseparable from each other like brothers. It is regarded as a universal representative of society; At this moment, the demands and rights of this class itself have really become the rights and requirements of society itself, which is really the core of social rationality and society. " (The Complete Works of Marx and Engels, Volume I, page 464) Secondly, the proletariat can represent the general interests of mankind for a long time, so it is the only social force that can break through the narrow personal relationship of capitalism. All Marx's exposition on this point boils down to one point, that is, the proletariat is "a civil social class that is not a civil society". It is called "civil social stratum" because it is a growing real social force equal to its economic status; It is said to be a "non-civil social stratum" because it is not a stratum in the traditional sense (constrained by the possession of specific means of production), rather, its formation itself means the extinction trend of this stratum and the disintegration of the existing society. Marx also emphasized that the proletariat is the first exploited class with "self-awareness" in human history. This is not only because the working class mastered the means of culture and education for the first time (which was forced by the bourgeoisie), but also because the revolutionary class really mastered the weapon of self-criticism, so it can finally get rid of the bondage of employment and labor relations and stand on the historical height of "human liberation". It can be seen that it is precisely because the proletariat consciously regards itself as a human being that it can avoid being "deified". Marx did not deify the proletariat. If the class struggle was not discovered by Marx, his unique contribution lies in demonstrating the historical roots, historical timeliness and realistic road of class elimination, and pointing out that class struggle will inevitably lead to proletarian dictatorship, then it is no exaggeration to say that introducing practice into philosophy and making it the core concept is not Marx's initiative. His unique contribution lies in the discovery of proletarian practice, a brand-new form of social practice, thus revealing the internal mechanism of the unity of direct reality and universality of practice. There is no doubt that the forms of practice are diverse. There are spontaneous, blind, and also
Strong sense and organization; There are production, economy, daily life, politics, military, and even science education; There are individuals, small groups, regions, classes, nationalities and even the whole world. However, from the perspective of the development trend and height of today's times, conscious practical activities with a broad mass base play a leading role in it. In Marx's words, it is "with the deepening of historical activities, it is bound to be the expansion of the masses." With the development of history, it is no longer possible for the blind struggle of personal interests to spontaneously form some norms and rules to "treat the headache and treat the foot pain", but we can rely on the conscious power of society to comprehensively coordinate various interests and strive to safeguard the interests of the majority and make the people more satisfied.