The Political and Revolutionary Nature of Marx and Engels' Thought and Its Contemporary Significance

Interviewer: Over the course of 40 revolutionary years, Marx and Engels influenced each other intellectually, forged a great friendship, and together created the great Marxist doctrine. Today, it is necessary to further discuss the intellectual relationship between Marx and Engels, as well as the political and revolutionary nature of their thought and its contemporary significance. For this purpose, we have interviewed Professor Terrell Carver of the University of Bristol, UK.

在长达40年的革命岁月中，马克思恩格斯在学术思想上相互影响，建立了伟大的友谊，共同创造了伟大的马克思主义。今天，有必要进一步讨论马克思与恩格斯之间的学术思想关系，以及马克思恩格斯思想的政治性、革命性及其当代启示。为此，我们采访了英国布里斯托大学特里尔卡弗教授。

I. Marx and Engels

一、马克思与恩格斯

Interviewer: Professor Carver, thank you very much for accepting this interview. Most Chinese scholars know you through your in-depth research on Marx and Engels' texts and your thorough examination of the intellectual relationship between them. Although you may have answered such questions many times, we would still like to ask you to give an overall overview of the intellectual relationship between Marx and Engels.

▲（采访者简称▲，下同）：卡弗教授，您好！非常感谢您接受本刊的采访。大多数中国学者对您的了解，是基于您对马克思恩格斯文本的深入研究以及对马克思恩格斯之间学术思想关系的深度考察。尽管您也许已经多次回答过这样的问题，但我们还是想请您从总体上概述一下马克思与恩格斯之间的学术思想关系。

Carver: Before Marx and Engels began their collaboration in Brussels in 1845, each had his own independent ideas and aspirations. Their political collaboration lasted nearly 40 years. After Marx's death, Engels repeatedly invoked Marx's name in his writings and promoted Marx's ideas in political movements in various places. Therefore, it is important not to simply conceptualise "Marx" and "Engels" as thinkers who are self-consistent and mutually consistent in some eternal sense. Thus, in attributing certain ideas to Marx or Engels (especially those on which the two are said to have agreed), one must carefully consider the specific circumstances of publication or intended publication, the censorship of the time and the self-censorship it induced, as well as their political partners, target audience and intended achievements. This is precisely what I explore in detail in my book *Marx and Engels: A Conceptual Inquiry*; moreover, in my articles "Marx–Engels or Engels on Marx" and "The First Draft: The *German Ideology* Main Manuscript", there are further examples.

●（被采访者简称●，下同）：马克思和恩格斯在1845年于布鲁塞尔开始合作之前，都有各自独立的思想和抱负。他们的政治合作关系持续了近40年。马克思去世后，恩格斯在其著作中多次引用马克思的名字，并在多个地方的政治运动中推广马克思的思想。因此，重要的是不要将“马克思”和“恩格斯”简单地概念化为在某种永恒意义上自我一致且相互一致的思想家。因此，在将某些思想归于马克思或恩格斯(特别是两人共同达成一致的观点）时，必须仔细考虑出版或计划出版的具体情况、当时的审查制度及其导致的自我审查，以及他们的政治伙伴、目标受众和预期成果。这正是我在《马克思与恩格斯：学术思想关系》一书中详细探讨的内容；此外，在我的文章《“马克思—恩格斯”还是“恩格斯对马克思”》《草创之作：‹德意志意识形态›主手稿》中，还有更多例证。

Both Marx and Engels were very skilled at political writing, works that later came to be understood as 'theory', 'philosophy' or 'economics'; however, what they did was not to write for their readers in academic terms, since those readers rarely found themselves in academic settings. They were not philosophers writing philosophical works or economists writing economic works for posterity, even though in later years their works were shaped and understood by others as philosophical and economic works. Therefore, I am reluctant to speak in generalities in order to construct images of 'Marx' and 'Engels'. My most important generalisation is that from a young age, they both regarded themselves as political activists of a certain kind. In their native contexts – that is, in the Kingdom of Prussia, the German Empire and the Free City Federation, and the Austrian Empire – such ideas were seditious and such activity was treasonable. Like many people of a similar disposition, they were exiled in their thirties. Their journey was not an intellectual one but a political one, though it was conducted primarily in the form of ideas in order to avoid suspicion and censorship, and to attract educated readers with similar sympathies. They were activist-journalists and pamphleteers dedicated to inspiring a politics that was anti-authoritarian and that promoted a liberalising and industrialising modernity.

马克思和恩格斯都非常擅长政治写作，这些作品后来被理解为“理论”“哲学”或“经济学”；然而，他们所做的并不是用学术术语来为他们的读者写作，因为这些读者很少处于学术环境中。他们并非为后世撰写哲学著作和经济学著作的哲学家或经济学家，尽管在后来的岁月中，他们的作品被他人塑造并理解为哲学著作和经济学著作。因此，我不愿泛泛而谈，从而构建“马克思”和“恩格斯”的形象。我最重要的概括是，从年轻时起，他们都将自己视为某种意义上的政治活动家。在他们的本土背景中，即在普鲁士王国、德意志帝国和自由城市联邦以及奥地利帝国，这种思想具有煽动性，这种活动具有叛国性质。与许多类似性格的人一样，他们在30岁左右被流放。他们的旅程并非思想之旅，而是政治之旅，但主要以思想的形式进行，以避免怀疑和审查，并吸引具有相似倾向的受过教育的读者。他们是活动家式的记者和小册子作者，致力于激发一种反威权的政治，推动自由化和工业化的现代性。

Interviewer: Western scholars generally believe there is a significant distinction between the 'young Marx' and the 'old Marx', a distinction premised on a break or leap in Marx's theoretical thinking. This question has generated considerable discussion and controversy in academia. Louis Althusser first raised this issue in his famous book *For Marx* (1965). Althusser argued that Marx achieved a decisive 'breakthrough' in 1844–1845, when he simultaneously discovered historical materialism and the 'continent of history'. This argument by Althusser is quite controversial. In an article in the journal *Actuel Marx*, Urs Lindner argued that in those years the break was still philosophical; the real break did not occur until 1850, when Marx resumed his study of economics. Of course, this view may be somewhat exaggerated. Marx had already begun studying economics in 1844, and his works from 1847 to 1849 – *The Poverty of Philosophy* (1847), *The Communist Manifesto* (1848, co-authored with Engels – translator’s note), and *Wage Labour and Capital* (1849) – are to a large extent about economics. Marx's scientific standpoint corresponds in philosophy to historical materialism. Moreover, after this period, Marx paid relatively less attention to philosophy, leaving the key tasks to Engels. Engels never ceased to assist Marx in his scientific work, and continued this work after Marx's death. Nevertheless, traces of a philosophy of history remain. Althusser himself spoke of a continuous break that was destined to persist through the works of Marx's intellectual maturation and his mature works. What is your view on this? Is Marx's historical materialism a break or a leap? Do you think there is a break between the young Marx and the mature Marx? Or should Marx and his thought be seen as a whole?

▲：西方学者普遍认为存在着“青年马克思”与“老年马克思”之间的显著区别，这种区分的前提是马克思的思想理论存在着断裂或飞跃。这个问题在学术界引发了大量的讨论，争议也很大。阿尔都塞（Louis Althusser）在其著名的《保卫马克思》(1965年）一书中首次提出了这一问题。阿尔都塞认为，马克思在1844—1845年实现了决定性的“突破”，他同时发现了历史唯物主义和“历史的大陆”（the “continent of history”）。阿尔都塞这一论点颇具争议性。乌尔斯林德纳（Urs Lindner）在Actuel Marx杂志上发表的一篇文章中认为，在那些年里，断裂仍然是哲学上的。真正的断裂直到1850年马克思恢复经济学研究时才发生。当然这种观点可能有些夸张。马克思在1844年就已经开始研究经济学，他在1847年至1849年间的著作《哲学的贫困》(1847年）、《共产党宣言》(1848年，与恩格斯合著——译者注）、《雇佣劳动与资本》(1849年）在很大程度上都是关于经济学的。马克思的科学立场在哲学领域对应的是历史唯物主义。另外，在此之后，马克思对哲学的关注相对较少，他把关键任务留给了恩格斯。恩格斯从未停止协助马克思的科学工作，并在马克思逝世后继续从事这项工作。然而，历史哲学的痕迹依然存在。阿尔都塞自己也谈到了一种持续的断裂，这种断裂注定要在马克思思想成熟过程中的著作和他的成熟时期的著作中延续下去。那么您如何看待这个问题呢？马克思的历史唯物主义是一个断裂或飞跃吗？您认为存在青年马克思与成熟的马克思之间的断裂吗？还是应当将马克思及其思想作为一个整体来看待？

Carver: Here there are four projections onto an author, that is, the concepts of the commentator are projected onto the textual materials through which 'Marx' – as an image – is understood. These projections onto Marx by commentators are as follows.

●：这里有四个和作者有关的投射，即评论者的概念被投射到文本材料中。通过这些材料，“马克思”——作为一个形象——被理解。这些评论者投射到马克思身上的观点具体如下。

First, binary oppositions such as young/old, early/late, youthful/mature: commentators use these binaries to construct a biographical narrative that attracts readers by presenting it as a 'life story'.

其一，年轻/年老、早期/晚期、青年/成熟等二元对立：评论者通过这些二元对立来构建一种传记叙事，以吸引读者将其视为“人生故事”。

Second, binary oppositions such as break/rupture, unscientific/scientific, confused/clear: these oppositions likewise generate interest and drama for readers of intellectual biography and academic commentary.

其二，断裂/决裂、非科学/科学、混乱/清晰等二元对立：这些对立同样为思想传记和学术评论的读者制造了兴趣和戏剧性。

Third, 'philosophy' and 'economics': these concepts as understood by mid-20th-century and current 21st-century commentators seem to enable today's readers to grasp the mid-19th-century German context (e.g., Marx's context), but in fact this is highly anachronistic and very misleading. What interested Marx during the 'pre-March period' [1]1 The *Theses on Feuerbach* are eleven short philosophical notes written by Marx in 1845, published posthumously by Engels as an appendix to *Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy*. of the 1840s looked like academic philosophical questions, but were actually political questions that the authorities and radicals were engaging with in a struggle over legitimate authority (kings and God versus popular sovereignty and republican self-government). Discussions of these issues today are conducted among university-educated elites in a particular coded manner. Understanding the political issues of the time as 'economic' questions is equally highly anachronistic, because political economy at that time was very different from modern economics (which originated in the late 1870s), and in Marx's world it was not even a discipline.

其三，“哲学”和“经济学”：20世纪中期和当前21世纪评论者所理解的这些概念似乎使今天的读者得以理解19世纪中期的德国背景（如马克思的背景），但实际上这是高度时代错位的，极具误导性。马克思在19世纪40年代“三月革命前时期”感兴趣的东西看上去像是学术性哲学问题：但实际上是政治性问题，当局和激进分子在合法权威（国王与上帝——人民主权和共和自治）的斗争中涉及这一问题。今天关于这些问题的讨论是在受过大学教育的精英中以特定编码方式进行的。将当时的政治问题理解为“经济”问题同样是高度时代错位的，因为当时的政治经济学与现代经济学（起源于19世纪70年代后期）截然不同，而且在马克思的世界里，这甚至不是一个学科。

Fourth, the social orientation of Marx's early thought: as mentioned above, Marx's thinking and writing in the early 1840s addressed social problems such as poverty and wealth (issues that some intellectuals had approached in a philosophical, i.e., non-religious, way, with reference to French and British/Scottish political economy works, which were almost unknown in the German Confederation and the Austrian Empire at that time). Biographers and commentators studying Marx's extant early 1840s manuscripts and occasional published texts almost universally ignore a point Marx makes in his short 1859 autobiography: that his experience working on the *Rheinische Zeitung* brought him into contact for the first time with what he called 'material' (i.e., this-worldly, as opposed to other-worldly philosophical) interests, which later biographers and commentators mistakenly understood as 'economic' or 'physical'. Marx had had an early interest in non-religious discussions of poverty, especially the subversive politics contained within them, whether in forests or in vineyards, as reflected in his early articles. Michael Heinrich's recent biography of Marx faithfully records Marx's early experiences and sympathies, although it does not yet cover his first contacts with the owners and journalists of the *Rheinische Zeitung*.

其四，马克思早期思想的社会导向：正如上文所提到的，马克思在19世纪40年代早期的思想和写作是针对贫困和财富等社会问题的(一些知识分子曾以哲学方式，即非宗教的方式触及这些问题：并参考了法国以及英国/苏格兰的政治经济学著作，而这些著作在当时的德意志邦联和奥地利帝国几乎不为人知）。传记作者和评论者在研究现存的马克思的19世纪40年代早期手稿和偶尔发表的文本时：几乎无一例外地忽略了马克思在1859年的简短自传中提到的一点：他进入《莱茵报》报社的经历，使他首次接触到他所谓的“物质”(即此世的，而非彼世的哲学）利益，后来的传记作者和评论者错误地将其理解为“经济的”或“物理的”。关于贫困的非宗教性讨论，尤其是对于其中包含的颠覆性政治，无论是在森林中还是在葡萄园中，马克思都早有兴趣，这在他的早期文章中有所反映。米夏埃尔海因里希(Michael Heinrich）在最近的马克思传记就如实记录了马克思的早年经历和同情心，尽管该传记尚未涵盖马克思与《莱茵报》所有者和记者的首次接触。

Thus, I believe that the development of Marx's thought, writing and activity was from the very beginning subversively political and continued in this context throughout his life, while being influenced by constantly changing contexts and circumstances. While not excluding transformations in his thinking, I think it is important to understand that the statements and ideas of Marx that we possess are responses to rapidly changing circumstances and possibilities (rather than the result of purely theoretical-philosophical reflection).

因此，我认为马克思的思想、写作和活动的发展从一开始就具有颠覆性的政治色彩，并在这种背景下贯穿他的一生，同时受到不断变化的背景和环境的影响。虽然不排除他思想的转变，但我认为重要的是去理解，我们所掌握的马克思的言论和思想是对环境和可能性迅速变化的回应（而不是纯粹的理论－哲学思考的结果）。

Marx undoubtedly thought outside the 'boxes' of the academic disciplines we have constructed. Consequently, he actually transcends what is today called 'interdisciplinarity', because he thought and worked as a political activist rather than merely as a scholar. He gave up academic research in 1842, although, as I have said, for his target audience his discourse often appeared academic (and sometimes seemed so even to some of his readers).

马克思无疑是在我们所构建的学术学科的“框框”之外思考。因此，他实际上超越了今天流行的所谓“跨学科性”，因为他是作为一名政治活动家而不是仅仅作为学者进行思考和工作。他在1842年放弃了学术研究，尽管如我所说，对于他的目标受众，他的论述常常显得学术化（有时对他的部分读者来说也是如此）。

Interviewer: The discussion of two Marxes reminds me of a similar question. In several of your works you mention 'two Engels', namely the 'young Engels' and the 'old Engels', and you give a relatively high evaluation to the 'young Engels', believing that his early writings display his personal brilliance, whereas in his later writings this brilliance seems no longer visible. How do you view this question?

▲：关于两个马克思的讨论让我想起一个类似的问题。您在几部著作中提到了“两个恩格斯”，即“青年恩格斯”和“晚年恩格斯”，并且对“青年恩格斯”给予了较高评价，认为青年恩格斯的著作显示了他的个人才华，而晚年恩格斯的著作中似乎再也看不到这种才华，您如何看待这个问题？

Carver: Engels's life before his collaboration with Marx has been almost completely ignored by biographers and commentators, and certainly underestimated. That period of Engels's life is either described and evaluated as insignificant, or, where it is considered important, as a prelude to his intellectual collaboration with Marx, which obviously in no way diminishes 'the greatness of Marx'. In short, Engels's life story is presented as he himself wished it to be presented, that is, with Engels as the 'junior partner' and 'second fiddle'. This is clearly anachronistic: Engels did not actually get to know Marx and think with him until he was 24. Unlike the case of Marx, we have preserved Engel's manuscripts and various texts from the ten years before their political collaboration. Seen from their own perspective and context, with no reference to Marx at all (since for Engels and most people at the time, Marx was not yet an important figure), these texts are not juvenile works but a brilliant encounter with the radicalism of the late 1830s and early 1840s, far more than early Romanticism or student fantasies. In the English-language literature, the ideas and figures of that era are reduced to comfortable clichés, erasing many subversive and dangerous aspects of that important period of revolutionary liberalism. Therefore, it is very exciting to recover these things from the materials of the young, pre-Marx Engels.

●：恩格斯在与马克思合作之前的生活几乎完全被传记作者和评论者忽视，并且肯定被低估了。恩格斯那段时期的生活要么被描述和评价为无关紧要，要么在重要的情况下，被视为他与马克思思想合作的序幕，而且显然丝毫没有掩盖“马克思的伟大”。简而言之，恩格斯的生活故事被呈现为他被希望呈现的样子，即恩格斯自己是“次要伙伴”和“第二小提琴手”。这显然是有时间错位的：因为恩格斯直到24岁才真正认识马克思并与他一起思考。与马克思的情况不同，我们保存了在他们政治合作之前的十年里恩格斯的手稿和各种文本。从它们自身的角度和背景来看，完全不考虑马克思（因为对恩格斯和当时的大多数人来说，马克思尚未成为重要的存在），恩格斯的这些文本并非幼稚之作，而是与19世纪30年代末40年代初激进主义的一次精彩邂逅，它们远不止是早期的浪漫主义或学生时代的幻想。在英语文献中，那个时代的思想和人物被简化为舒适的陈词滥调，抹去了革命自由主义这一重要发展时期的许多颠覆性的和危险的方面。因此，从恩格斯年轻时期、前马克思时代的材料中恢复这些内容是非常令人兴奋的。

I am less interested in the later Engels, because the materials from after his encounter with Marx and the formation of their political alliance have been thoroughly studied, albeit from a Marx-centred perspective. Kaan Kangal's book *Friedrich Engels and the Dialectics of Nature* (2020) is an excellent example of Engel-centric scholarship, because he considers what Engels wrote in his own intellectual and political context (rather than in relation to Marx's brief remarks on dialectics in different periods).

我对后期的恩格斯兴趣较少，因为从他与马克思相遇并形成政治联盟之后的材料已经被彻底研究过了，尽管是从以马克思为中心的视角。康加恩（Kaan Kangal）的著作《弗里德里希恩格斯与自然辩证法》(2020年）是一个以恩格斯为中心的学术研究的优秀例子，因为他考虑了恩格斯在其思想和政治背景下的写作内容（而不是与马克思在不同时期对辩证法的简短评论相关的内容）。

I have written about the period of 'Engels after Marx' after Marx's death, because many biographers and commentators rely on these texts to argue that Engels's works are (a) a supplement to Marx's works; (b) complementary to Marx's works; or (c) a substitute for Marx's works. I tend not to make these methodological assumptions, but instead to explore questions and circumstances in a very detailed manner, so as to reach reasonable judgments based on the factual outcomes of the investigation, rather than on pre-existing judgments that already tell us what we should discover.

我写过关于马克思去世后“马克思之后的恩格斯”时期的文章，因为许多传记作者和评论家依赖这些文本来论证恩格斯的作品是（a）对马克思著作的补充；（b）与马克思的著作互补；（c）对马克思著作的替代。我倾向于不做这些方法论假设，而是以非常详细的方式探究问题和情况，以便根据调查事实的结果做出合理判断，而不是预先存在判断，这些判断已经告诉我们应该发现什么。

This is extensively covered in my *Marx and Engels: A Conceptual Inquiry* (1983), my little book *Engels* (1984 and reprints), and various book chapters, including chapters I contributed to the volume *After Marx* edited by Ball and Farr. My comparison of the preface to the second edition of *Anti-Dühring*, which Engels wrote after Marx's death, with the preface to the first edition, which Engels wrote while Marx was alive, is particularly important, because it carefully studies the context in which the ideas and viewpoints that constitute Marxism were formed.

这在我的《马克思与恩格斯：学术思想关系》(1983年）和我的小书《恩格斯》(1984年及再版）以及各种书章中都有广泛涉及，鲍尔和法尔所编的《马克思之后》中也有我撰写的这方面的章节。我将恩格斯在马克思去世后写的《反杜林论》第二版序言与马克思在世时写的第一版序言进行的比较尤为重要，因为它细致研究了构成马克思主义的思想和观点的形成背景。

II. Which Marx?

二、哪个马克思？

Interviewer: You believe that the Marx narrated by Engels after Marx's death is not the real Marx, and you attempt to restore Marx's original face, but at the same time you emphasise that it is important to study Engels and to study Marx through Engels. Could you explain this in detail?

▲：您认为马克思逝世后恩格斯所叙述的马克思并不是真正的马克思，并试图还原马克思的本来面目，但同时又强调研究恩格斯以及通过恩格斯来研究马克思这一点很重要。您能向我们详细解释一下其中的缘由吗？

Carver: My research concludes that Engels presented 'a Marx' at different times for political purposes, so both during Marx's lifetime and after his death Engels acted rather like a biographer or commentator. In fact, Engels was Marx's first biographer, beginning in 1859 when, through a book review, he introduced Marx's 'first instalment' of a critique of political economy. [2]2 The Brussels manuscripts refer to *The German Ideology*, written by Marx and Engels in Brussels in 1845–1846, first published in full in 1932. Even Marx himself was not the 'real Marx'; that is a rhetorical device of biographers, assuming that we can present a clearly defined and consistently unchanging author from the extant manuscripts and texts. Like us, even if Marx were alive, he could not access and describe 'the real Marx' in terms of a 'true self'.

●：我的研究结论是，恩格斯在不同时期出于政治目的呈现了“一个马克思”，因此恩格斯在马克思生前和死后都类似于传记作者和评论者。事实上，恩格斯是马克思的第一位传记作者，从1859年开始，他通过书评介绍了马克思对政治经济学批判的“半卷”尝试。甚至马克思本人也不是“真正的马克思”，这是传记作者的一种写作手法，即假设我们可以通过现存的手稿和文本呈现出一个被明确界定并且一贯不变的作者。像我们一样，即使马克思还活着，他也无法按照“真正的自我”触及和描述“真正的马克思”。

This may be difficult to grasp; I am simply questioning whether it can really be said that anyone possesses a 'true self' that can be presented as a lifelong constant. This is a basic argument of poststructuralism, but to me it seems intuitively obvious.

这么说可能不太好理解，我只是在质疑是否真的可以说有人拥有“真正的自我”，可以呈现为一种终身的恒定存在。这是后结构主义的一个基本论点，但对我来说这在直觉上似乎是显而易见的。

Interviewer: In several of your works you refer to such concepts as 'one Marx', 'multiple Marxes', and 'another Marx'. Could you explain the different meanings of these concepts? You emphasise that you use a 'relatively moderate postmodernist approach' to study Marx's thought. Why did you choose this method or perspective?

▲：您在几部著作中分别提到了“一个马克思”“多个马克思”“另一个马克思”等概念，您能向我们具体解释一下这几个概念的不同含义吗？您强调您是用一种“较为温和的后现代主义方法”来研究马克思的思想，请问您选择这样一种方法或视角的原因是什么？

Carver: I explicitly articulated my poststructuralist approach in the 1990s, but it was already intuitively present in my early work beginning in 1975. It understands humans as language users, and language itself as indeterminate, because our understanding of experience – and therefore of ourselves – is individualised. My approach also understands communicative activities (including bodily self-projection and the creation of visual images) as rhetorical and purposive, and these activities differ from individual to individual, so each of us is different from others. Thus, in the order of social power, hierarchies are created and established. Meaning does not reside in texts; it is constructed by readers; each reader – due to individual differences – will understand what they read differently. Hence, there are 'multiple Marxes', and as an author my task is to persuade readers to recognise the interest and practicality of thinking of 'one Marx'.

●：我在20世纪90年代明确阐述过我的后结构主义方法，但早在1975年开始的早期工作中：这种方法就已经是直观存在的了。它将人类理解为语言使用者，而语言本身是不确定的，因为我们对经验的理解——进而对我们自身的理解——是个体化的。我的方法还将交流活动（包括身体上的自我投射和视觉图像的创造）理解为修辞性的、有目的的，这些活动因个体差异而不同，所以我们每个人都与他人不同。因此，在社会权力的秩序中，等级被创造和确立。意义并不存在于文本中：而是由读者构建的；每个读者——由于个体差异——会对他们所读的内容有不同的理解。因此，存在“多个马克思”，而作为作者，我的任务是说服读者，让他们认识到思考“一个马克思”的兴趣和实用性。

Interviewer: In your works, you mention that Marx is regarded by many as a revolutionary, philosopher and economist, but you emphasise Marx as 'a critical theorist' and 'a politician'. Why do you define Marx's identity in this way, and in your view, are the former and latter identities contradictory?

▲：您在著作中提到，马克思被许多人视为一个革命家、哲学家和经济学家，但您更强调马克思是“一位批判理论家”“一个政治家”，请问您为什么这样界定马克思的身份，在您看来，其前一种身份和后一种身份是矛盾的吗？

Carver: 'Identity' is a cliché that obscures the fact that identification is a two-way projective process – projecting the self onto others in various ways (which may encounter imperfect understanding), and projecting different categories of others onto each of us in various ways (whether or not we accept those categories and understandings). Moreover, to ask whether Marx now has a certain 'identity', such as philosopher, economist, etc., is in any case anachronistic. In his own time, Marx responded or might have responded to countless projections in various ways (e.g., German, Prussian, Jew, baptized Christian, exile, traitor, radical, communist, etc.). I choose to understand most of the manuscripts and texts that we possess as products of his self-understanding as a radical political activist (with the exception of the revolutionary period from March 1848 to the end of 1849), who was engaged in subversive activities in the German states and the Austrian Empire. Hence, my conclusion contrasts with most biographies and commentaries, which anachronistically and counterfactually understand him as a philosopher, economist, historian, and so on.

●：“身份”是一个陈词滥调，它掩盖了身份认同作为一种双向投射过程——以各种方式将自我投射给他人（有可能会遇到不完美的理解），以及以各种方式将不同类别的他人投射到我们每个人身上（无论我们是否接受这些分类和理解）。此外，询问马克思现在是否具有某种“身份”，比如哲学家、经济学家等，无论如何都是一种时代错位。在他自己的时代，马克思以多种方式回应或可能回应了无数的投射（例如德国人、普鲁士人、犹太人、受洗的基督徒、流亡者、叛徒、激进分子、共产主义者等）。我选择将我们拥有的大部分手稿和文本理解为他作为一名激进政治活动家的自我认知的产物（除去从1848年3月至1849年年底的革命时期），他一直在德意志各邦和奥地利帝国中进行着颠覆性的活动。因此，我的结论与大多数传记和评论形成了对比，那些传记和评论以时代错位和反事实的方式将他理解为哲学家、经济学家、历史学家等。

Interviewer: In your works, we see that you attempt to deconstruct Marx as 'truth' and 'authority'. In your view, do Marx's thought and Marxism still have the function of guiding the proletariat to achieve human emancipation?

▲：在您的著作中，我们看到您试图消解作为“真理”和“权威”的马克思。在您看来，马克思的思想以及马克思主义是否还具有指引无产阶级实现人类解放的功能？

Carver: Transforming social relations and achieving human emancipation are very long-standing aspirations in politics and political philosophy. As we have seen, Marx's writings are an important inspiration for people everywhere. He is still the most comprehensive analyst and critic of capitalism we have ever seen. This is because he reinterpreted what historiography should focus on, and (briefly) rewrote the history of capitalism in Part Eight of *Capital* [3]3 Vera Zasulich was a Russian Marxist revolutionary. In 1881, she wrote to Marx asking about the possibility of a socialist revolution in Russia based on the peasant commune. Marx drafted a reply (the “Zasulich letter”) in which he considered the potential for a non-capitalist path of development.. Moreover, he regarded social class as political struggle around production, rather than a simple matter of monetary redistribution. Marxism and Marxists have always been a progressive force, committed to human emancipation.

●：变革社会关系并实现人类解放，是政治和政治哲学中一个历史非常悠久的抱负。正如我们所看到的，马克思的著作对世界各地的每个人来说都是一个重要的灵感来源。他仍然是我们迄今为止所见过的对资本主义最全面的分析者和批判者。这是因为他重新诠释了历史书写应该关注的内容：并在《资本论》第八部分中（简要地）重写了资本主义的历史。此外，他将社会阶级视为围绕生产的政治斗争，而不是简单的货币再分配问题。马克思主义和马克思主义者一直都是一股进步的力量：致力于人类解放。

III. Marx's Theoretical Contributions and Critique of Reality

三、马克思的理论贡献与现实批判

Interviewer: Engels summarised Marx's two great contributions: the theory of surplus value and historical materialism. My following question concerns Marx's scientific contributions. In the 'Introduction' to the *Grundrisse*, Marx says: 'The method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind. But it is by no means the process of the concrete itself.' This remark has a strongly Kantian flavour. Does it reflect a certain intellectual lineage? What do you consider the most important thing Marx inherited from classical German philosophy?

▲：恩格斯总结了马克思的两大贡献：剩余价值论和历史唯物主义。我下面的问题是关于马克思的科学贡献的。马克思在《‹政治经济学批判›导言》中说过这样的话：“从抽象上升到具体的方法，只是思维用来掌握具体、把它当做一个精神上的具体再现出来的方式。但决不是具体本身的产生过程。”这句话的康德色彩比较浓，它是否反映了某种思想脉络？您认为马克思从德国古典哲学中所继承的最重要的东西是什么？

●: Engels was absolutely correct: Marx solved a puzzle concerning the labor theory of value within the academic framework (though not the political framework) set by the political economists before him. Marx himself never used the terms “historical materialism” (coined by Engels in 1859) or “historical materialism” (popularized by Plekhanov in the 1890s). Marx referred many times in his publications and correspondence to a “viewpoint,” “insight” or “conception,” and described it with sometimes rather loose phrases; he also denied that his work provided a “master key” to human activity. He was a researcher driven by curiosity and anger, not a dogmatist driven by certainty and self-absorption. In the *Theses on Feuerbach*, Marx summed up his critique of materialism (i.e., French and English empiricism), while pointing out that (German) idealism abstractly developed the “active side” of materialism, to the extent that humans can practically change their society and themselves. I understand this viewpoint as a rejection of binary opposites such as matter/consciousness, materialism/idealism, body/spirit.

●：恩格斯说得非常正确：马克思在他之前的政治经济学家设定的学术框架（尽管不是政治框架）内解决了关于劳动价值论的一个难题。马克思本人从未使用过“唯物史观”（恩格斯于1859年创造的）或“历史唯物主义”（普列汉诺夫在19世纪90年代推广的）这些术语。马克思在出版物和通信中多次提到一种“观点”“见解”或“观念”，并用一些有时相当松散的短语来描述它；他还否认他的工作为人类活动提供了“万能钥匙”。他是一个由好奇和愤怒驱动的研究者，而不是由确定性和自我专注驱动的教条主义者。在《关于费尔巴哈的提纲》中，马克思总结了他对唯物主义（即法国和英国的经验主义）的批判，同时指出（德国）唯物主义抽象地发展了唯物主义“能动的方面”，在一定程度上让人类能以实际的方式改变他们的社会和他们自己。我将这种观点理解为对诸如物质/意识、唯物主义/唯心主义、身体/精神等二元对立的拒绝。

▲: Regarding another contribution of Marx — specifically, what exactly did Marx inherit from British classical political economy, and what did he sublatingly discard? Looking at today’s world, if science and technology can be called direct productive forces, what impact do digital technology and automation technology have on our understanding of the labor theory of value?

▲：关于马克思的另一个贡献，具体而言，马克思究竟从英国古典政治经济学中继承了什么？又扬弃了什么？放眼今天的世界，如果科学技术可以被称为直接生产力，那么数字技术和自动化技术对我们理解劳动价值论有什么影响？

●: Marx inherited from the political economy of his time the “problem of profit”: how is profit, as the property of the capitalist, generated if exchange in a commodity-producing society is as equal and fair as it was then claimed to be? If the exchange of money for labor is unfair, then are workers in some way cheated by capitalists, so that capitalists get something for nothing?

●：马克思从他所处时代的政治经济学中继承了“利润问题”，即：如果商品生产社会中的交换像当时人们声称的那样是平等和公平的，那么作为资本家财产的利润是如何产生的？如果货币与劳动的交换不公平，那么工人是否在某种程度上被资本家欺骗了，从而使资本家不劳而获？

Marx solved this problem within the framework of the political economy of his day. He argued that human labor has a unique attribute: one that no animal or machine involved in the production process possesses. This attribute refers to the fact that labor, as the output of the human body, can produce more products than the minimum labor products needed for its own subsistence. For Marx, the labor output of the human body is converted into labor products, while the human body sustains itself through the input of labor products. Thus, output and input are comparable at the level of labor, whether potential (as labor power) or actual (as labor products). Labor output exceeds the required labor input, thereby generating a surplus. Exchange value, as a quantitative manifestation of labor input and labor output, records “surplus value,” from which capitalist profit ultimately derives. Profit does not come from a “fair return” for the capitalist’s frugality and restraint, nor from an “unfair” exchange between capitalist and worker, although people at the time generally oscillated between these two understandings. However, according to Marx, profit fundamentally comes not from exchange, but from production. And in production, Marx believed, profit can only come from this special attribute of human labor.

马克思在当时的政治经济学框架内解决了这个问题。他提出，人类劳动具有独一无二的属性：这是任何动物或参与生产过程的机器都不具备的。这种属性指的是：劳动作为人类身体的输出，能够产生比维持自身生存所需的最低劳动产品更多的产品。对马克思来说，人体的劳动输出转化为劳动产品，而人体则通过劳动产品的输入来维持生存。因此，输出和输入在劳动层面是可比的，无论是潜在的（作为劳动力）还是实际的（作为劳动产品）。劳动输出超过了所需的劳动输入，从而产生了剩余。交换价值作为劳动输入和劳动输出的量化表现，记录了“剩余价值”，而资本主义利润最终正是来源于此。利润并非来自对资本家节俭和克制的“公平回报”，也不是来自资本家与工人之间的“不公平”交换，尽管当时人们普遍在这两种理解之间摇摆。然而，根据马克思的观点，利润从根本上来说，不是来自交换，而是来自生产。而在生产中，马克思认为，利润只能来自人类劳动的这种特殊属性。

From the 1870s onward, “marginalist” economics abandoned the intellectual and moral question of profit and became a social science to help capitalists efficiently create profit for themselves. Yet, as Marx and Engels argued, class struggle within capitalism is a political struggle, not a theoretical struggle over whether a certain economic theory is “correct.” The theoretical chapters at the beginning of Marx’s *Capital* are the prelude to a political critique of the brutal capitalist system, a critique that culminates in Parts Seven and Eight, and at the end of the book is the real message — as he hoped, one the censors would never notice — the overthrow of non-constitutional monarchical and despotic rule. In view of the enormous and growing wealth and power gaps between classes that capitalism continually produces, the political struggle for liberation from cruel and dehumanizing rule requires Marx’s theory of value, and on that basis, a political critique of the current economic “science.” Because this science, as Marx said, obscures and blurs what is really happening. As in Marx’s time, the problem now is that some people try to justify these huge inequalities, turning them into eternal truths about “human nature” and powerful myths about who deserves what.

从19世纪70年代开始，“边际主义”经济学摒弃了利润在思想和道德方面的问题，成为一门帮助资本家为自己高效创造利润的社会科学。然而，正如马克思和恩格斯所言，资本主义内部的阶级斗争是一场政治斗争而不是一场关于某种经济理论是否“正确”的理论斗争。马克思在《资本论》开篇的理论章节是对残酷的资本主义制度进行政治批判的序幕，这种批判在第七部分和第八部分中达到高潮，在书的结尾是当时的审查者永远不会注意到的——正如他所希望的——真正的信息，即推翻非宪政的君主的和专制的统治。鉴于资本主义持续产生的巨大且不断加剧的阶级间财富和权力差距，从残酷的非人性统治下获得解放的政治斗争需要马克思的价值理论，在此基础上，更需要对当前的经济“科学”进行政治批判。因为这种科学，正如马克思所说，掩盖和模糊了真正发生的事情。正如马克思时代一样，现在的问题是一些人试图将这些巨大的不平等正当化，转化为关于“人性”的永恒真理和关于谁应得什么的强大神话。

Technology has changed since the Stone Age, and so have social structures and cultures. Humans are very good at changing their world and themselves. When technological changes occur, it is easy to get over-excited, and commentators want to grab headlines. Sometimes change is very rapid in some places, sometimes quite slow in others. Marx was a pioneer in studying the changes he could see and experience; he also studied what did not change and asked why not; he also reflected on slow and rapid changes in different places, but he did not jump to conclusions, nor do I.

自石器时代以来，技术一直在变化，社会结构和文化也是如此。人类非常擅长改变他们的世界和他们自己。在技术变革发生时，人们很容易过度兴奋，而评论家们则希望抓住头条新闻。有时某些地方的变化非常迅速，有时某些地方的变化则相当缓慢。马克思是研究他所能看到和体验到的变化的先驱；他还研究了没有发生的变化，并询问为什么没有发生；他还思考了不同地方的缓慢和快速变化，但他没有草率下结论，我也没有。

▲: I recently heard an economics professor publicly declare that capital is neutral and also participates in the creation of value. This seems to echo the vulgar economics that Marx once criticized. How do you evaluate this resurgence of thought?

▲：我最近听到有经济学教授公开宣称资本是中性的，并且也参与了价值的创造。这似乎在呼应马克思曾经批判过的庸俗经济学（Vulgar economics），您如何评价这种思想回潮？

●: Such comments are exactly what Marx understood as “vulgar economics,” because they obscure and blur the brutal reality of capitalism, thereby weakening all the forces driving the politics of class struggle.

●：这样的评论正是马克思所理解的“庸俗经济学”，因为它们掩盖和模糊了资本主义的残酷现实，从而削弱了所有推动阶级斗争政治的动力。

▲: Regarding an important proposition of Marx, namely the relationship between material life and ideological forms, or between economic base and superstructure, what was the dominant understanding before him? At least we know that after him, debates on this issue have never ceased. How do you view this issue? Did Marx have different stages of understanding on this? Also, Stuart Hall and the Birmingham School seem to have some unique insights on this issue. What do you think of so-called final determination?

▲：关于马克思的一个重要命题，即物质生活与意识形态形式，或者说经济基础与上层建筑之间的关系，在他之前的主导性认识是怎样的呢？至少我们知道，在他之后，关于这个问题的争论一直没有停歇。您是怎样看待这个问题的？马克思是否在这个问题上有不同阶段的认识？另外，斯图亚特霍尔（Stuart Hall）及其伯明翰学派似乎对这个问题有一些独到见解，您怎么看所谓的最终决定论？

●: Marx’s critique of the historical understanding of his time was that it was rooted in a belief that “ideas” (such as religion and philosophy) created history, and therefore historiography only recorded those thinkers who were considered to have brought these ideas into historically worthy events — or “driven by these ideas.” Thus, it was assumed that ordinary people engaged in the production and reproduction activities that sustain social life were unimportant, and these seemingly mundane activities were not worth studying. In the Brussels manuscripts of 1845–1846, Marx and Engels completely overturned this view of civilization. They proposed that the daily activities performed (and changed) by ordinary people are the real content of history, and that there is a connection between productive activities and technology, and the resulting social structures, on the one hand, and legal, moral, political, and philosophical understandings, on the other. This is a viewpoint, insight, or conception — we might call it a “lens” through which we can examine and understand what is happening in any given period. Marx’s *The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte* is a model of his acute investigation and critical analysis. In this text, the base/superstructure metaphor appears only in the form of “superstructure,” and the complete metaphor appears only once in his entire work. Later Marxist intellectuals isolated this metaphor from its context and misinterpreted Marx’s political project as an intellectual activity. Furthermore, Marxists in the English-speaking world fell into a kind of “determinism” and a misunderstanding of “science” that does not exist in Marx’s German writings, and thus is inconsistent with some of Engels’s later comments. These comments were made in the context of a particular philosophical/scientific thinking, distant in time from both Marx’s thought and late 20th-century thought. As Marxist intellectuals, Stuart Hall and many others were immersed in this philosophical and methodological puzzle, which many now consider a rather outdated and unproductive debate.

●：马克思对当时历史理解的批判在于，它根植于一种信念：“观念”（如宗教和哲学）创造了历史，因此历史编纂只记录了那些被认为将这些观念带入了值得记录的历史事件——或“被这些观念所驱动”——的思想家。因此，人们假设普通人在从事维持社会生活的生产和再生产活动时并不重要，这些看似平凡的活动不值得研究。在1845—1846年的布鲁塞尔手稿中，马克思和恩格斯彻底颠覆了这种文明观。他们提出，普通人从事（并改变）的日常活动才是历史的真正内容，并且生产活动与技术之间，以及由此产生的社会结构与法律、道德、政治和哲学理解之间，存在着联系。这是一种观点、见解或观念——我们可以称之为“透镜”，通过它，我们可以考察并理解任何特定时期正在发生的事情。马克思的《路易波拿巴的雾月十八日》是他进行敏锐调查和批判性分析的典范作品。在这篇文章中，基础/上层建筑的隐喻仅以“上层建筑”的形式出现，而完整的隐喻在他的著作中只出现过一次。后来的马克思主义知识分子将这一隐喻从其语境中孤立出来，并将马克思的政治计划误解为一种思想活动。此外，英语世界的马克思主义者陷入了一种“决定论”和对“科学”的误解，这种决定论并不存在于马克思的德语著作中，因此与恩格斯后期的一些评论也不一致。这些评论是在某种特定哲学/科学思维的背景下提出的，既与马克思的思想有时间上的距离，也与20世纪后期的思想有时间上的距离。作为马克思主义知识分子，斯图亚特霍尔和其他许多人都沉浸在这一哲学和方法论的谜题中，而如今很多人认为这是一场相当过时且缺乏建设性的辩论。

IV. Marx in the Course of Historical Development

四、历史发展过程中的马克思

▲: After Marx read a large amount of literature on social conditions outside Europe (India, ancient Egypt, Java, the Americas, China, etc.), did he change his view on colonialism (he originally saw these societies as Oriental despotism and believed that colonial conquest objectively promoted the development of their productive forces)?

▲：马克思在阅读了大量有关欧洲以外（印度、古埃及、爪哇、美洲、中国等）的社会状况的文献后，是否改变了对于殖民主义的看法（他原来把这些社会看作东方专制主义，认为殖民征服客观上推动了其生产力的发展）？

●: As mentioned earlier, I believe that Marx responded in his writing to changing circumstances, rather than dramatically changing his mind. Therefore, to interpret his responsive journalistic writing as a personal intellectual journey, a “theorist” shifting from one idea to another in closed thinking, is a misunderstanding. Moreover, he wrote for specific readerships: and under the supervision of particular editors and newspaper owners. There are conflicting aspects in Marx’s views on colonialism and industrial modernity, and these conflicting views still exist and remain unresolved today. His view is that industrial modernity comes with violence and coercion, and there is no stable moral standpoint from which to judge these facts and outcomes. In other words, in the face of capitalist-driven industrial modernity, whether in the past or the present, we have hardly any “good choices” morally. I do not want to make a conclusive judgment on such a complex situation. As Marx pointed out, modernity has brought both enormous suffering and enormous benefits — but unfortunately, the distribution of these benefits is extremely uneven. This unevenness will persist unless we make great efforts to achieve an equality directly opposed to the capitalist ideology of inequality.

●：正如前面提到的，我认为马克思在他的写作中会对不断变化的环境作出回应，而不是以戏剧性的方式改变他的想法。因此，将他的回应性新闻写作解读为一种个人化的、作为“理论家”在封闭思考中从一个观念转向另一个观念的思想旅程，是一种误解。而且他是为特定的读者群体写作：并在特定的编辑和报纸老板的监督下进行。马克思关于殖民主义和工业现代性的观点有相互冲突之处，这些相互冲突的观点至今仍然存在且尚未解决。他的观点是，工业现代性伴随着暴力和强制而来，对于这些事实和结果，没有一个稳固的道德评判点。或者换句话说，在资本主义驱动的工业化现代性面前，无论是在过去还是现在，我们在道德层面上都几乎没有“好的选择”。我不想对如此复杂的情况作出总结性判断。正如马克思所指出的，现代性既带来了巨大的苦难，也创造了巨大的利益——但不幸的是，这些利益的分配极不均衡。除非我们付出巨大努力，去实现一种与资本主义不平等意识形态直接对立的平等，否则这种不均衡将一直存在。

▲: In his later years, Marx questioned whether poor peasants in backward countries could provide strong support for the proletarian revolution. If Marx had read Mao Zedong’s views on surrounding the cities from the countryside and on contradiction, do you think he might have found an answer?

▲：马克思晚年曾有疑问，落后国家的贫苦农民能否为无产阶级革命提供强有力的支持。如果马克思读到毛泽东的农村包围城市、矛盾论等观点，您认为他是否有可能得到答案呢？

●: Indeed, Marx was enthusiastic about the potential of modern industrial production to improve the lives of ordinary people, was relatively uninterested in “peasants” and small-scale agriculture, and was skeptical of any “communist” romanticism about the supposed virtues of rural life. However, he was always interested in the possibility of transforming society through political struggle, so it is not surprising that he would have been interested in Russian socialist revolutionaries (such as Vera Zasulich) and even hypothetically in Mao Zedong’s works. Marx undoubtedly sided with anti-despotic national liberation movements, pointing out that the revolutionary struggles of 1848–1849 were also struggles for national unity. In the 19th century, these struggles were essentially struggles against the contemporary despotic rulers. These rulers regarded their territories as dynastic property and a personal gift from God. Marx’s journalistic writing on the “Opium War” clearly shows his opposition to Western colonial imperialism and its economic exploitation and oppression.

●：确实，马克思对现代工业生产改善普通人生活的潜力充满热情，相对而言他对“农民”和小规模农业兴趣不大，而且他对任何关于乡村生活所谓美德的“共产主义”浪漫主义都持怀疑态度。然而，他对通过政治斗争改造社会的可能性始终充满兴趣，因此他对俄国社会主义革命者（如查苏利奇）甚至假设中对毛泽东的著作感兴趣也就不足为奇了。马克思无疑站在反专制的民族解放运动一边，他指出1848—1849年的革命斗争同时也是争取民族统一的斗争。在19世纪，这些斗争从本质上就是反对当时的专制统治者的斗争。这些统治者将他们的领土视为王朝财产和上帝赐予他们个人的礼物。马克思关于“鸦片战争”的新闻写作清楚地表明了他对西方殖民帝国主义及其经济剥削与压迫的反对。

▲: Following this question, James Connolly in his work actually talked about the national and social dual dimensions of the Irish freedom struggle. When class struggle intertwined with anti-colonial oppression struggle, he and Marx shared similar views on the role of workers and peasants in the Fenian movements. Can you comment on Marx’s view of the relationship between socialist/communist revolution and national liberation?

▲：接着这个问题，詹姆斯康诺利（James Connolly）在他的作品中实际上谈到了爱尔兰自由斗争的民族和社会双重维度。在阶级斗争与反殖民压迫斗争交织时，他和马克思对芬尼亚运动（Fenian Movements）中工人和农民的作用持有相似观点。您能评论一下马克思对社会主义/共产主义革命与民族解放之间关系的看法吗？

●: Marx was always interested in this issue and discussed it in a nuanced way, but always expressed political views as much as possible through the print media available to him. Although I have not made a specific comparison, I am convinced that Marx’s response would be encouraging, as well as nuanced and non-dogmatic, and as always cautious, not presupposing a judgment that would necessarily encourage and support popular sovereignty.

●：马克思一直对这个问题感兴趣，并以一种细致入微的方式进行了论述，但总是尽可能地通过他所能接触的印刷媒体表达政治观点。我虽然没有专门进行过这种比较，但我确信马克思的回应会是鼓励性的，同时也是细致且非教条式的，并且一如既往地谨慎，不会预先设定对人民主权必然会鼓励和支持的判断。

▲: Some scholars criticize Marx’s theory or Marxism as Eurocentric. What is your assessment of this? How do you view the development of Marxism today in countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America?

▲：一些学者认为马克思的理论或马克思主义是欧洲中心主义的，进而对其进行批判，您对此有何评价？您如何看待今天马克思主义在亚非拉地区国家的发展？

●: “Eurocentrism” is a poorly expressed critical category that focuses on geographical origin and context rather than viewpoint and substance. Marx’s views were always global when it came to capitalism, even in the 1840s. But politically, his focus was on subverting the despotic and religious neo-medievalism of the German states and the Austrian Empire, which was very localized. The *Communist Manifesto*, renamed and republished in the early 1870s, is arguably the most successful political pamphlet ever written, because its theory is global, but at the same time it refers to the connection between class struggle anywhere and local conditions: conditions familiar to readers there. Moreover, it is very unclear what a “non-Eurocentric” theory actually is, and how useful it would be to whom. People and theories come from somewhere, but that does not necessarily mean they are irrelevant to people elsewhere.

●：“欧洲中心主义”是一个表述不佳的批判性范畴，它关注的是地理起源和背景，而不是观点和实质。马克思的观点在涉及资本主义时始终是全球性的，即使在19世纪40年代也是如此。但在政治上，他关注的重点却是颠覆德意志各邦和奥地利帝国的专制的和宗教的新中世纪主义，这又显得非常本土化。19世纪70年代初重新命名并再版的《共产党宣言》可能是有史以来最成功的政治小册子，因为它的理论是全球性的，但同时提到了任何地方的阶级斗争与当地条件之间的联系：而这些当地条件是那里的读者所熟悉的。此外，一种“非欧洲中心主义”的理论究竟是什么，以及这种理论对什么人有多大用处，都非常不明确。人和理论都来自某个地方，但这并不一定意味着他们对其他地方的人无关紧要。

▲: Apart from studying the texts of Marx and Engels, gender studies is also an important research field for you. You believe that in feminist theory and gender studies, Marx’s works are authoritative texts worth reading. Can you elaborate on which of Marx’s works discuss gender issues? Do you consider yourself a Marxist feminist or a feminist Marxist?

▲：除了对马克思恩格斯文本的研究以外，性别研究也是您的一个重要研究领域。您认为，在女性主义理论和性别研究中，马克思的著作是值得阅读的权威文本。您能详细介绍一下马克思在哪些著作中论述了性别问题吗？您认为，您是一个马克思主义女性主义者或女性主义马克思主义者吗？

●: Marx described in detail the exploitation, atrocities, and cruel treatment of women and children under capitalist industrialization, but beyond that: he had little more to say on the topic, probably because it was not an urgent issue for the male socialists and anti-despotic activists in his target audience. August Bebel’s *Women and Socialism* raised the question of women’s role in a future society among German socialist readers, but as a banned and criminalized work, it sparked more controversy than substantive discussion in male-centered circles. Almost all political discussions about women at the time (sometimes raised by women) focused on the moral reform of men to eliminate domestic violence caused by poverty and alcoholism; few then advocated that women’s liberation from male oppression could or should be achieved outside the family. In his controversial book, Bebel proposed that in a future socialist society, women could have equal say with men. Engels explored the oppression of women within the family and responded to Bebel’s view. Engels advocated solving this problem through technological progress, increased productivity, and improvement of public services, although his stage analysis of human reproduction and marriage and the nature of male and female sexuality based on Darwinian evolution is now outdated. *The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State* became an inspiring feminist classic for two reasons: (1) it rewrote historical materialism from the perspective of women’s production and reproduction of human life and society (though understanding men as naturally and essentially non-familial), and (2) it declared women to have been “the first oppressed class” in history (but located oppression in modern society in class, rather than in men).

●：马克思详细描述了资本主义工业化对妇女和儿童的剥削、暴行和残酷对待，但除此之外：他对此话题几乎没有更多的论述，很可能是因为这对他目标受众中的男性社会主义者和反专制活动家来说并不是一个紧迫的问题。倍倍尔的《妇女与社会主义》在德语社会主义读者群中提出了妇女在未来社会中的角色问题，但由于这是一部被禁且被定罪的作品，它在以男性为中心的圈子里更多引发的是争议而非实质性讨论。当时几乎所有关于妇女的政治讨论（有时由妇女提出）都集中在男性的道德改良上，以消除因贫困和酗酒导致的家庭暴力；当时很少有人主张妇女从男性压迫中解放可以或应该在家庭之外实现。倍倍尔在他那本引起争议的书中提出，在未来的社会主义社会中，妇女可以与男性拥有平等的话语权，恩格斯探讨了家庭内部对妇女的压迫并对倍倍尔的这一观点作出了回应。恩格斯主张通过技术进步、生产力提高和公共服务改善来解决这一问题，尽管他基于达尔文进化论对人类生殖和婚姻以及男女性本质的阶段性分析如今已经过时。《家庭、私有制和国家的起源》成为一部具有启发性的女权主义经典，原因有二：(1）它从妇女对人类生活和社会进行生产和再生产的角度重写了唯物史观（尽管将男性理解为天生且本质上非家庭的），(2）它宣称妇女在历史上是“第一个被压迫的阶级”（但将现代社会的压迫定位于阶级，而非男性）。

▲: Since the beginning of the 21st century, social contradictions in the West have intensified, with issues of gender, ecology, race, and class intertwined: making these issues themselves increasingly complex and difficult to resolve. How do you view this complexity? Will these issues continue to intensify and become irresolvable, ultimately leading to social collapse, or will they lead to human liberation? What is the fundamental path to human liberation?

▲：进入21世纪以来，西方社会矛盾日益加剧，性别、生态、种族、阶级等问题交织在一起：使这些问题本身变得越来越复杂和难以解决。您如何看待这种复杂性，这些问题是会持续加剧而无法解决，最终导致社会崩溃，还是会导向人类的解放？人类解放的根本途径是什么？

●: Although Marx understood the oppressions of gender, race, ecology, and class within the economic structures that promote the accumulation of wealth and power by the elite class, in his time he did not see the theoretical elaboration of these oppressions and the diverse political struggles against them. Since the mid-20th century, Marxists have tried to unify these struggles into class struggle, rather than struggling for civil rights (and the survival of the planet) within the political structures under which capitalism operates. Indeed, Marxists have made the opposite argument — as Marx and Engels wrote, these political structures have become instruments for managing economic affairs to serve the wealthy business class. Local and specific identity struggles are more weakly connected to the anti-capitalist views of Marx and Engels, because many struggles aim to integrate into capitalist society rather than transform capitalist society into a socialist one. Moreover, Marxist struggles for national liberation are also often weakly connected to specific identity struggles such as gender, race, and ecology. This is the current dilemma; unfortunately, the prospect of improving global society — anti-capitalist but pro-productivity — is rather bleak.

●：尽管马克思在促进精英阶级积累财富和权力的经济结构中理解了性别、种族、生态和阶级的压迫，但在他那个时代，他并未看到对这些压迫的理论阐释和抵抗这些压迫的多样化政治斗争。自20世纪中叶以来，马克思主义者一直试图将这些斗争统一为阶级斗争，而不是在资本主义运作的政治结构内为公民权利（以及地球的存续）而斗争。的确，马克思主义者提出了相反的观点——正如马克思和恩格斯所写，这些政治结构已成为管理经济事务的工具，以服务于富裕的商业阶级。地方性和特定的身份斗争与马克思和恩格斯的反资本主义观点联系较弱，因为许多斗争旨在融入资本主义社会，而不是将资本主义社会转变为社会主义社会。此外，马克思主义者为民族解放而进行的斗争与性别、种族和生态等特定身份的斗争也常常联系较弱。这就是当前的困境，遗憾的是，改善全球社会的前景——反资本主义但支持生产力——相当渺茫。

▲: What important issues in current academic research on the texts of Marx and Engels do you think deserve further in-depth exploration?

▲：您认为当前学术界对于马克思恩格斯文本思想的研究还有哪些重要问题值得深入探讨？

●: The ongoing problem for Marx studies, Engels studies, and Marxist studies is how to break free from overly familiar frameworks that treat the three as a unified or at least unifiable phenomenon. All three would benefit greatly if some unconventional, unexpected but appropriate analytical concepts were adopted. This means abandoning hackneyed terms and adopting new concepts and insights, as Bruno Leipold has done in his new book *Citizen Marx*. In other words, we can assess the usefulness of these concepts by comparing them with alternative ones. Some of these alternative concepts may be closer to our 21st-century world than those developed mainly from 1859 to the first few decades of the 20th century.

●：马克思研究、恩格斯研究、马克思主义研究面临一个持续的问题，即如何摆脱那些过于熟悉的框架概念，这些概念将三者视为一个统一的或至少是可统一的现象。如果能采用一些非传统且出人意料但又恰如其分的分析概念，三者都将受益匪浅。这意味着我们需要摒弃那些老生常谈的术语，转而采用新的概念和见解，就像布鲁诺莱波尔德（Bruno Leipold）在其新书《公民马克思》中所做的那样。或者换一种说法，我们可以通过对比这些概念与替代概念来评估它们的实用性。其中一些替代概念可能比那些主要从1859年到20世纪头几十年发展起来的概念和框架更贴近我们21世纪的世界。

There is another issue for Marx studies, Engels studies, and Marxist studies that needs consideration: the question of priority — theory above practice; classic texts above all other materials; books and manuscripts above journalistic articles and letters; separating general works from “economic works” as in the MEGA. There is a large amount of Marx/Engels/Marxist material in various archives and collections, some of which remains to be studied and published (although the MEGA does not include valuable family letters and third-party materials). Our research would greatly benefit from studies that are closer to the lived experiences of Marx, Engels, and Marxists. Such research would not only provide us with biographical “background” and historical details, but would also give new meaning to what Marx, Engels, and Marxists said, because it would present a truer picture of their actions to change the world.

马克思研究、恩格斯研究、马克思主义研究还有另一个需要考虑的问题，那就是优先级问题：理论高于实践；经典文本高于其他所有材料；书籍和手稿高于新闻文章和信件；像MEGA那样，将一般著作与“经济学著作”分开。各种档案和收藏中有大量马克思/恩格斯/马克思主义的材料，其中一些仍有待研究和出版（尽管MEGA中不包括有价值的家庭信件和第三方材料）。我们的研究将极大地受益于更贴近马克思、恩格斯和马克思主义者生活经历的研究。这种研究不仅会为我们提供传记性的“背景”和历史细节，还将为马克思、恩格斯和马克思主义者的言论赋予新的意义，因为它将更真实地呈现他们试图改变世界的行动。

(Translator: Liu Zixu, Associate Research Fellow, Academy of Marxism, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

（译者：刘子旭，中国社会科学院马克思主义研究院副研究员）

Online editor: Tongxin

网络编辑：同心