The Problematic Consciousness and Theoretical Tension of Classical Western Marxism

Classical Western Marxism refers to the Western Marxist theory from Lukács to Althusser, spanning the 1920s to the 1960s, which exerted a significant influence on the theoretical construction and development of new currents in foreign Marxism.

经典西方马克思主义是指20世纪20年代至60年代从卢卡奇到阿尔都塞的西方马克思主义理论，其对国外马克思主义新思潮的理论建构和理论发展产生了重要影响。

The problematic consciousness of classical Western Marxism originated from the strategic debates over how to carry out revolution in the West—namely, the different positions and views on how to conduct socialist revolution in developed capitalist countries. At the theoretical level, this was primarily manifested as reflection and inquiry into the essence of Marx’s philosophy. In terms of historical conditions, twentieth-century capitalism was an era where contradictions and crises overlapped, and adjustments and repairs coincided. First, at the level of economic structure, an oligopolistic pattern adapted to the high socialization of production took shape, extending the life cycle of capital accordingly. Second, the restructuring of industrial sectors fragmented the working class; in particular, the formation of a “labor aristocracy” [1]1 “Labor aristocracy” (工人贵族) refers to a privileged stratum of skilled workers who, benefiting from imperialist super-profits, adopted reformist rather than revolutionary positions. to a certain extent undermined the cohesion of revolutionary ideology. Finally, the mode of capital’s domination shifted from direct violent repression to covert and flexible ideological manipulation—for example, through “false needs” and “symbolic consumption” [2]2 “False needs” and “symbolic consumption” are concepts drawn from the Frankfurt School’s critique of consumer society, particularly Herbert Marcuse’s *One-Dimensional Man* and Jean Baudrillard’s *The Consumer Society*. fostered by consumerism and mass culture, which redirected subjects’ focal points and areas of interest, thereby colonizing the lifeworld and maintaining political rule. Regrettably, the theorists of the Second International not only failed to grasp these changes but also placed their revolutionary hopes in a dogmatic interpretation of Marxism. Yet a strong determinist stance could ultimately not bridge the disjuncture between theory and practice. With the successive failures of the proletarian revolution in Western Europe, some theorists within Western communist parties and progressive Western intellectuals began to explore revolutionary paths suited to the characteristics of the era and the practical environment, forming a Western Marxist camp renowned for its focus on the cultural superstructure.

经典西方马克思主义的问题意识源于如何进行西方革命引发的策略之争，即针对发达资本主义国家如何进行社会主义革命的问题，形成了不同的立场和观点。反映到理论层面，则主要表现为关于马克思哲学本质的反思和追问。就历史条件来看，20世纪的资本主义是矛盾与危机叠加、调整与修复重合的时代。首先，经济结构层面形成了与生产高度社会化相适应的寡头垄断格局，资本的生命周期获得相应延展；其次，产业结构的调整分化了工人阶级队伍，特别是“工人贵族”的形成一定程度上影响了革命意识形态的凝聚；最后，资本的支配方式由直接的暴力镇压转向隐蔽且柔性的意识形态操控，如通过消费主义、大众文化等营造的“虚假需求”和“符号消费”，牵引主体的兴奋点和关注领域，从而达到殖民生活世界和维系政治统治的目的。令人遗憾的是，第二国际理论家不仅未能把握上述变迁，反而将革命期许寄托于马克思主义的教条化解读，但强势的决定论立场终究无法弥补理论与实践的错位。随着西欧无产阶级革命相继失败，西方共产党内的部分理论家和西方进步知识分子开始探索符合时代特征和实践环境的革命道路，形成了以关注文化上层建筑领域著称的西方马克思主义阵营。

The classical Western Marxists, from Lukács to Althusser, advocated restoring the critical academic tradition of Marx’s philosophy and sought to reveal the ruling strategies of contemporary capitalism by starting from the levels of culture, ideology, and values. In the face of the reified consciousness propagated by the bourgeoisie, the economic determinism within Western proletarian parties and the Marxist camp, classical Western Marxism emphasized that the degree of development of class consciousness directly determines the success or failure of revolution, and that revolutionary action should adopt a total strategy based on cultural-psychological revolution, encompassing both political and economic revolution. This required bringing into play the ideological function of Marxist philosophy, cultivating the proletariat’s mature class consciousness and people’s autonomous consciousness, and sublating the total alienation and total domination of the bourgeoisie.

从卢卡奇到阿尔都塞的经典西方马克思主义者主张恢复马克思哲学的批判性学术传统，并试图由文化、意识形态和价值观等层面入手，揭示当代资本主义的统治策略。面对资产阶级宣扬的物化意识、西方无产阶级政党和马克思主义阵营的经济决定论思想，经典西方马克思主义强调阶级意识的发育程度直接关乎革命成败，而革命行动应当采取以文化心理革命为基础的、包括政治和经济革命在内的总体性策略。这需要发挥马克思主义哲学的意识形态职能，培育无产阶级成熟的阶级意识和人的自主意识，扬弃资产阶级的总体异化和总体统治。

Differences in revolutionary strategy reflected differences in philosophical outlook. Classical Western Marxism and the Second International developed divergent understandings of the form, nature, and function of Marxist philosophy. From the former’s perspective, the philosophical form of Marxism possesses modern characteristics; it is a new type of materialist philosophy that transcends modern philosophy. Accordingly, we should start from the rupture between modern and contemporary philosophy and interpret it as a philosophy of subjective practice that takes social history as its content and emphasizes the dialectical unity of philosophy, history, and politics. This means that the philosophical function of Marxism lies not in inquiring into the unchanging essence of the world or abstract metaphysical laws, but rather, on the basis of sublating modern rationalist philosophy and its dualist worldview, in returning to the perceptual domain opened up by subjective practical activity—a domain encompassing the relations between humans and nature and between humans and humans—to reveal the reifying logic of capital and to find a real path to human freedom and emancipation. In contrast, the Second International, influenced by modern rationalist philosophy, posited Marxist philosophy as a determinist theoretical form. Its greatest characteristic was confusing historical laws with statistical natural laws, neglecting the subjective dimension of historical materialism and historical dialectics. At the same time, because this interpretive model detached itself from Marx’s concept of practice and his view of history, it could not only fail to reflect the critical value attributes of historical dialectics but also prove powerless to counter the reifying mechanism of capital and the resulting fatigue of revolutionary will, thus falling into the rut of dogmatism and political pragmatism. Classical Western Marxist theorists delved deeply into the indigenous logic of revolutionary paths, focusing on deriving radical ideological strategies from changes in capital’s production technology and from differences in Eastern and Western historical and cultural conditions, thereby demonstrating a strong critical consciousness, historical consciousness, and practical consciousness. These three types of consciousness have positive significance for opposing dogmatic and determinist Marxism, as well as for examining issues such as technological rationality, consumerism, and ecological alienation prevalent in contemporary Western society.

革命策略的差异折射出哲学观的不同，经典西方马克思主义和第二国际对马克思主义哲学的形态、性质和功能等都形成了不同的理解。在前者看来，马克思主义的哲学形态具有现代特质，是超越了近代哲学的新型唯物主义哲学。据此，我们应当从近现代哲学的断裂点出发，将其阐释为一种以社会历史为内容，强调哲学、历史和政治三者辩证统一的主体实践论哲学。这意味着马克思主义的哲学功能不在于探究世界的不变本质或抽象的形而上学规律，而是要求在扬弃近代理性主义哲学及其二元论世界观的基础上，通过回归主体实践活动开辟的包含人与自然、人与人的关系的感性领域，揭示资本的物化逻辑，找寻人类自由和解放的现实道路。相较而言，第二国际由于受到近代理性主义哲学的影响，将马克思主义哲学设定为决定论式的理论形态，其最大特点是将历史规律混同为统计学意义上的自然规律，忽视了唯物史观和历史辩证法的主体向度；与此同时，这种解读模式由于脱离了马克思的实践观和历史观，不仅难以反映出历史辩证法的批判价值属性，也无力对抗资本物化机制以及作为结果的革命意志倦怠，从而陷入教条主义和政治实用主义窠臼。经典西方马克思主义理论家深耕革命道路的本土逻辑，注重从资本生产技术变迁和东西方历史文化条件的差异中引申激进的意识形态战略，体现了较强的批判意识、历史意识和现实意识。这三类意识对于反对教条主义和决定论式的马克思主义，以及审视当代西方社会普遍存在的技术理性、消费主义和生态异化等问题具有积极意义。

However, how to achieve the dialectical unity of the critique of capitalist ideology and revolutionary practical activity constituted both the axis around which the theoretical tension of classical Western Marxism formed and unfolded, and it also exposed its subjectivist and romanticist tendencies at the level of practice. On the basis of this issue, two interpretive models—humanist and scientistic—emerged within the classical Western Marxist camp. The former includes the Hegelian Marxism represented by Lukács, Korsch, and Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, and existential Marxism; the latter is mainly represented by Althusser’s structural Marxism. Although both share common ground in transcending the epistemological orientation of modern philosophy, promoting Marx’s critical philosophical tradition, and highlighting the critique of ideology and cultural values, at the level of narrative logic they exhibit a divergence of perspectives: history versus structure, monism versus pluralism, practice versus theory, necessity versus contingency. In short, while humanist scholars followed the Hegelian elements implicit in Marx’s early texts to refine a subjective consciousness capable of generating a logic of action, Althusser, at the point of Marx’s “epistemological break” [3]3 “Epistemological break” (认识论断裂) is Althusser’s term for a radical rupture in Marx’s thought, which he dated to 1845, separating the early “ideological” works from the mature “scientific” works of historical materialism. with modern philosophy, elaborated a Marxist conception of “theoretical anti-humanism.” On the one hand, through propositions such as “theoretical practice” and “class struggle in the theoretical domain,” he sought to prevent humanist ideology from eroding the “science of historical materialism”; on the other hand, by emphasizing the synchronic principle and the “overdetermined” dialectic of structural causality, he interpreted the multi-layered nature of social structure and the overdetermined contradictory mechanism of historical development. Yet the pronounced anti-subject and anti-historical character ultimately reduced Althusser’s effort to seek the invariant amid historical variation to a theoretical monologue, and the radical discourse that had castrated the orientation toward practice could achieve coherence only in the mysterious atmosphere of “aleatory encounter.” [4]4 “Aleatory encounter” (偶然相遇) refers to Althusser’s later concept of a “materialism of the encounter,” which emphasizes contingency and the absence of a predetermined telos in history.

然而，如何实现资本主义意识形态批判与革命实践活动的辩证统一，既构成了经典西方马克思主义理论张力形成和展开的问题轴心，也暴露出其在实践论层面的主观主义和浪漫主义倾向。基于这一问题，在经典西方马克思主义阵营内部形成了人本主义和科学主义两种理解模式，前者包括以卢卡奇、科尔施和葛兰西为代表的黑格尔主义的马克思主义、法兰克福学派和存在主义的马克思主义，后者主要以阿尔都塞的结构主义的马克思主义为代表。二者虽然在超越近代哲学的知识论路向、弘扬马克思的批判性哲学传统以及凸显意识形态与文化价值观批判等层面有共性认知，但具体到叙事理路层面，则存在历史与结构、一元与多元、实践与理论、必然与偶然的视域分野。简言之，在人本主义学者遵循马克思早期文本中蕴含的黑格尔因素，提炼一种足以引申行动逻辑的主体意识之际，阿尔都塞却在马克思与近代哲学的“认识论断裂”处阐发了一种“理论上的反人道主义”的马克思主义观。他一方面借由“理论实践”和“理论领域的阶级斗争”等命题避免人道主义意识形态对于“历史唯物主义科学”的侵蚀，另一方面通过强调共时态原则和结构因果性的“多元决定”的辩证法，诠释社会结构的多层次性和历史发展的多元决定的矛盾机制。但鲜明的反主体和反历史色彩终究使阿尔都塞在历史变式中寻求不变之努力流于理论独白，而阉割了实践论取向的激进话语也只有在“偶然相遇”的神秘氛围中方可自洽。

After the baptism of the “May Storm” of 1968, classical Western Marxism as a trend of thought had already shown signs of decline, yet its overflowing theoretical tensions still permeated the complex picture of the integration and breakthrough of the old and new left. As the organizational form of capital production shifted toward flexible and post-Fordist modes, traditional humanist and scientistic narratives were both unable to grasp the diverse historical-geographical landscape of capital: some relied on popular social currents to maintain a radical theoretical posture, others revised the details of Marx’s arguments to ensure the “uncompromising” nature of discourse, and still others simply abandoned the demand for emancipation, leaving only personalized fashionable expectations. For example, in ecological Marxism, which emphasizes the unity of the materialist view of nature and the view of history, we can see the critique of technological rationality, consumerism, and cultural values that originated with Lukács and was elaborated in detail by the Frankfurt School; we can also find, in post-Marxism, which contains diverse interests and favors marginal narratives, the presence of Gramsci’s “hegemony” and Althusser’s “overdetermination” and “ideological state apparatuses.” As for the topics favored by late Marxism—the body, culture, space, and liberation politics—they likewise have an intertextual relationship with Gramsci’s theory of ideology, Althusser’s structuralist method, and the “spatial turn” initiated by Lefebvre. We can even regard the theoretical map of Marxism abroad as the result of being shaped and molded by the problematic of classical Western Marxism as its source, through the tension structures of “history–structure, time–space, substance–discourse, class–individual, construction–deconstruction, liberation–disengagement.” From this perspective, lacking academic self-awareness of the problematic of classical Western Marxism makes it difficult to grasp the history and current state of Marxism abroad from the perspective of intellectual history, and it also easily leads to misjudgments of the history of interpretation, dissemination, and effects of Western Marxism, thereby weakening the contemporary consciousness and global vision contained in adapted Marxism in China.

经历1968年“五月风暴”的洗礼后，作为思潮的经典西方马克思主义已显颓势，但外溢的理论张力依旧渗透于新老左派整合与突围的复杂图景中。随着资本生产组织形式转向弹性且灵活的后福特主义，传统的人本主义和科学主义叙事都无力驾驭资本纷繁的历史地理景观，它们或是倚重流行的社会思潮以维系理论的激进姿态，或是修正马克思的论证细节以确保话语之“不妥协性”，又或是干脆放弃解放诉求而空余个性化的时尚期许。例如，我们既可以在强调唯物主义自然观和历史观相统一的生态学马克思主义那里，看到发端于卢卡奇并由法兰克福学派细化阐释的技术理性、消费主义和文化价值观批判，也能够在蕴含多元旨趣且偏好边缘叙事的后马克思主义中，发现葛兰西的“领导权”与阿尔都塞的“多元决定”和“意识形态国家机器”的身影；至于晚期马克思主义青睐的身体、文化、空间和解放政治等议题，则同样与葛兰西的意识形态理论、阿尔都塞的结构主义方法和列斐伏尔开启的“空间转向”存在互文性关系。我们甚至可以将国外马克思主义的理论版图，看作以经典西方马克思主义的问题意识为源，经由“历史—结构、时间—空间、实体—话语、阶级—个体、建构—解构、解放—解脱”等张力结构统摄与形塑的结果。由此看来，如果缺乏对经典西方马克思主义问题意识的学术自觉，既难以在思想史视域中把握国外马克思主义的历史与现状，也极易对西方马克思主义的解释史、传播史和效应史形成误判，从而弱化中国化马克思主义蕴含的时代意识与世界眼光。

Classical Western Marxism occupies an important position in the theoretical map of Marxism abroad. Against the historical background of the continuous differentiation and recombination of contemporary foreign left-wing trends of thought, accurately grasping its problematic and theoretical tensions is not only conducive to an overall theoretical positioning and evaluation of the gains and losses of classical Western Marxism, but also has positive significance for exploring the internal logic and theoretical essence of cutting-edge foreign left-wing trends of thought from a dialectical perspective.

经典西方马克思主义在国外马克思主义理论版图中占据重要位置。在当代国外左翼思潮不断分化和重新组合的历史背景下，准确把握其问题意识与理论张力，不仅有利于对经典西方马克思主义展开总体性的理论定位和得失评价，同时对于在辩证视域中探究国外左翼前沿思潮的内在逻辑和理论实质也有积极意义。

Online editor: Zhang Jian

网络编辑：张剑