Rethinking the Totality Characteristic of Marx’s Concept of “History”

“History” is one of the core concepts of Marx’s philosophy. Understanding the connotation and characteristics of this concept not only concerns how people grasp the basic intellectual horizon of historical materialism, but also concerns what theoretical attitude we adopt toward the contemporary life in which we find ourselves. Today, as human history faces an important turning point, rethinking the totality, as a prominent characteristic of Marx’s concept of “history,” holds even greater significance for the times.

“历史”是马克思哲学的核心概念之一。关于这一概念的内涵与特征的理解，不仅关乎人们如何把握历史唯物主义的基本思想视野，更关乎我们对身处其中的当代生活采取何种理论态度。在人类历史面临重要转折点的今天，重新理解作为马克思“历史”概念的突出特征的总体性，更具有重要的时代意义。

Lukács’s Elucidation of the Totality Characteristic of Marx’s Concept of “History”

卢卡奇对马克思“历史”概念的总体性特征的阐发

Regarding the question of the totality characteristic of Marx’s concept of “history,” Lukács provided a detailed elucidation in *History and Class Consciousness*.

关于马克思“历史”概念的总体性特征问题，卢卡奇在《历史与阶级意识》中曾予以详细阐发。

In this book, Lukács put forward the famous view that “orthodoxy in matters of Marxism refers solely to method,” and the method he refers to here is primarily the dialectics he understood Marx as having borrowed from Hegelian philosophy. From Lukács’s discussion, this dialectics has two basic dimensions: one dimension is the dialectics of the part and the whole in history, and the other is the dialectics of subject and object in history; the two are two sides of the same coin: the historical process, as a totality, always manifests itself in the form of parts or phenomena, while the proletariat, which is both the subject and object of history, will break the eternal illusion created by these parts or phenomena and achieve knowledge of the historical totality in revolutionary struggle. Thus, how to understand the question of the totality of Marx’s concept of “history” becomes the key to grasping Marx’s method.

在这本书中，卢卡奇提出了“马克思主义问题中的正统仅仅是指方法”的著名观点，而他这里所说的方法，主要就是他所理解的马克思从黑格尔哲学中借鉴而来的辩证法。从卢卡奇的讨论来看，这种辩证法具有两个基本维度，一个维度是历史中部分与总体的辩证法，另一个维度是历史中主体与客体的辩证法，二者是同一枚硬币的两面：历史过程作为一个总体，却总是以部分或现象的形式表现出来，而既作为历史主体又作为历史客体的无产阶级，将打破这种部分或现象所造成的永恒幻相，在革命斗争中实现对于历史总体的认识。这样一来，如何理解马克思“历史”概念的总体性问题，就成了把握马克思的方法的关键。

Lukács’s discussion of the totality of Marx’s concept of “history” has two different directions: one is vertical, the other is horizontal. The so-called vertical discussion refers to Lukács understanding the totality of history as the totality of the developmental process of human history; the so-called horizontal discussion refers to his understanding the totality of history in the sense of the sum of various elements at a specific historical stage. In his analysis of Marx’s method, Lukács primarily understands the question of historical totality from the horizontal perspective. That is to say, Lukács discusses the “historical totality” more in the sense of the structural totality of capitalist society.

卢卡奇对于马克思“历史”概念的总体性的讨论，有两个不同方向，一个是纵向的，另一个是横向的。所谓纵向的讨论，是指卢卡奇将历史的总体性理解为人类历史发展进程的总体；所谓横向的讨论，是指他从一个特定历史阶段各种要素的总和意义上理解历史的总体性。在关于马克思的方法的分析中，卢卡奇主要从横向的角度来理解历史总体性问题。这就是说，卢卡奇更多地是在资本主义社会的结构整体性的意义上来讨论“历史总体”的。

Lukács takes Marx’s thought on commodity fetishism in *Capital* as the basis for his own understanding of the historical totality, regarding commodity relations and the “relations between things” produced by these relations—that is, the phenomenon of “reification”—as the basic social phenomenon of the capitalist era. The rationalized character of “reification” possesses a considerable degree of deceptiveness, causing bourgeois thinkers to use this phenomenon to argue for the eternity of capitalist society, while being unable to see that this phenomenon is merely a necessary component of the historical totality in the sense of “relations between people,” i.e., the true “society.” Only when the proletariat has acquired a clear class consciousness can it grasp, in its struggle, the real historical totality, which is society.

卢卡奇将马克思《资本论》中关于商品拜物教的思想作为自己理解历史总体的根据，将商品关系以及由这种关系所产生的“物与物的关系”即“物化”现象视为资本主义时代的基本社会现象。“物化”的理性化特征具有相当程度的迷惑性，从而使得资产阶级思想家基于这种现象为资本主义社会的永恒性做论证，而无法看到这种现象只是“人与人的关系”也即真正的“社会”意义上的历史总体的一个必然组成部分。只有无产阶级具有了明确的阶级意识之后，才能在自己的斗争中把握作为现实的历史总体即社会。

The proletariat’s breaking through the fog of “reification” and grasping the historical totality of the capitalist era in struggle is achieved through the mediation of the object’s “structural principle of construction” and “genuine tendency of movement.” For an object or social phenomenon, its “structural principle of construction” and “tendency of movement” refer to the same thing: the necessary orientation toward the “objective and concrete structure itself” of this object. Its function is to transcend the immediacy of the existing object and reveal the totality as the “genuine historical force,” i.e., “society.”

无产阶级在斗争中打破“物化”的迷雾并把握资本主义时代的历史总体，是以对象的“结构性构造原则”和“真正的运动倾向”作为中介而实现的。就对象或社会现象来说，它的“结构性构造原则”和“运动倾向”指的是同一件事，那就是对于这种对象“自身的客观具体的结构本身”的必然朝向，其作用在于超越现存对象的直接性，揭示作为“真正的历史的力量”的总体即“社会”。

Lukács’s elucidation of the totality characteristic of Marx’s concept of history is of far-reaching significance for Marxist studies. On the one hand, according to this interpretive path, the “history” of historical materialism should be understood more from the perspective of “historical totality” rather than “historical facts”; thus, historical narrative in the Marxist context should shed the intuitiveness and one-sidedness of empiricism and pay more attention to the dimension of historical totality. On the other hand, since the historical totality is the fundamental dimension of history, the various objects involved in “history,” especially the “historical process of capitalism”—such as commodities, money, capital, and classes—can only be fully understood within the dimension of totality. Therefore, finding a mediation with certainty between these concrete historical elements and the historical totality is a basic task for the study of Marxist methodology.

卢卡奇对于马克思历史概念的总体性特征的这一阐发，对于马克思主义研究来说意义深远：一方面，按照这种解释路径，历史唯物主义的“历史”应当更多地从“历史总体”而不是“历史事实”的角度加以理解，因而马克思主义语境中的历史叙事，应摆脱经验主义的直观性和片面性，更加重视历史的总体性维度；另一方面，既然历史总体才是历史的根本性维度，“历史”特别是“资本主义历史过程”所涉及的各种对象，比如商品、货币、资本、阶级等要素，只有在总体性维度中才能得到充分理解，那么在这些具体历史要素与历史总体之间寻找到具有确实性的中介，就是马克思主义方法论研究的基本课题。

The Limitations of Lukács’s Thought on Historical Totality

卢卡奇关于历史总体性思想的局限性

Although Lukács’s understanding of the totality characteristic of Marx’s concept of history has important theoretical significance, this does not mean this thought is flawless. In fact, if we analyze its internal logic, we will find several instances of non-self-consistency implicit within it.

尽管卢卡奇关于马克思历史概念的总体性特征的理解具有重要理论意义，但这并不意味着这一思想无懈可击。事实上，如果我们从其内在逻辑展开分析的话，会发现其中隐含着若干非自洽性。

First, in his understanding of “historical totality,” Lukács grafts the dialectics of part and whole, which he understands as coming from Hegel, onto Marx’s critique of capitalism, which inevitably produces logical contradictions. On the surface, through this grafting, Lukács firmly constructs Marx’s concept of “history” on the basis of the dialectical relationship between the “part” as the phenomenon of reification and the “whole” as society itself. But in fact, the logic of this relationship is specious. For since a part separated from the whole is no longer a part, and a whole separated from the parts is no longer a whole, and since, at the same time, the so-called “dialectics of part and whole” implies that part and whole should first be treated as two different things, then how a discussion about the relationship between a part different from the whole and a whole different from the parts is possible is itself a question that needs to be explained. In the conceptual dialectics of Hegelian logic, this problem can be solved. This is because, there, the basic way concepts establish internal and dialectical relationships with each other is that the connotation of one concept always contains content that cannot be accommodated by the determination of this concept; this possibility of overflow will ultimately be revealed as being caused by the fact that the determination of this concept is part of the connotation of the totality, the Absolute Idea. And because the Absolute Idea, while being given as a concept of individuality, simultaneously exhibits its own totality in its connotation, it can thus, as the dialectical unity of totality and individuality, or being-in-and-for-itself, establish a dialectical relationship of part and whole with other concepts. Clearly, because the object Marx confronts (the social structure of capitalism) is completely different from Hegel’s, the dialectics of part and whole, which is valid in Hegel’s conceptual dialectics, can hardly be established logically without difficulty. On the contrary, since the totality of social structure itself is not an individual social phenomenon that can be juxtaposed with various social phenomena (such as commodity relations and capital relations), and thus does not possess the characteristic of the unity of individuality and totality of Hegel’s concept of the Absolute Idea, we cannot, in fact, establish a logically coherent dialectics of part and whole within Marx’s concept of “history.”

首先，卢卡奇在其关于“历史的总体性”的理解中，将他所理解的来自黑格尔的部分与整体的辩证法与马克思的资本主义批判相嫁接，必然产生逻辑矛盾。表面上看，通过这种嫁接，卢卡奇将马克思的“历史”概念稳固地建构在了作为物化现象的“部分”与作为社会本身的“总体”之间的辩证关系基础之上，但事实上这种关系的逻辑却是似是而非的。因为既然脱离了整体的部分就不再是部分，脱离部分的整体也不再是整体，而与此同时，所谓“部分与整体的辩证法”又意味着部分和整体首先应被当作两件不同事物来对待，那么关于与整体不同的部分和与部分不同的整体之间的关系的讨论何以可能，本身就是一个需要被说明的问题。在黑格尔逻辑学的概念辩证法中，这一问题是可以解决的，这是因为，在那里概念之间建立彼此间内在而辩证的关系的基本方式，是一个概念的内涵中总会包含这一概念的规定所无法容纳的内容，这种溢出的可能性将最终被揭示为是由这一概念的规定是作为总体的绝对理念的内涵的一部分而造成的，而绝对理念本身由于在作为个别性概念被给出的同时在内涵中展现出自己的总体性，于是就能够作为总体性和个别性的辩证统一或自在自为的存在而与其他诸概念建立起部分与总体的辩证关系。显然，由于马克思面对的对象（资本主义社会结构）与黑格尔完全不同，在黑格尔概念辩证法中可以成立的部分与整体的辩证法就很难在逻辑上无困难地建立起来。恰好相反，由于总体性的社会结构本身并不是一种可与诸社会现象（如商品关系和资本关系等）相并列的个别性社会现象，从而并不具有黑格尔绝对理念概念的个别性和总体性的统一这一特点，因此我们实际上无法在马克思的“历史”概念中建立一种逻辑上说得通的部分与总体的辩证法。

Secondly, Lukács’s understanding of Marx’s distinctive method of “rising from the abstract to the concrete” as “rising from the part to the totality” will miss a sure grasp of the totality character of Marx’s concept of “history” itself. Lukács understands Marx’s concept of reality as a historical totality, demanding a transcendence of the empiricist perspective that merely clings to the immediacy of “historical facts.” This undoubtedly reflects his profound theoretical insight, but the path Lukács envisions for transcending immediacy and reaching the historical totality is ambiguous. This is not only because the two concepts that Lukács treats as “mediations” between social phenomena and the historical totality — “the principle of structural construction” and “the true tendency of movement” — embody merely an external postulate of “orientation toward the totality,” and thus their content is unclear and they lack genuine operability. It is even more because, when Lukács treats the relationship between “relations between things” and “relations between persons” as the relationship between the phenomenon (as part) and the essence (as totality that can determine the parts), he is in fact unable to clearly explain why Marx’s analysis of relations between things in the critique of political economy is always actually combined with the analysis of relations between persons. Consequently, the “society” understood by Lukács as the totality does not in fact emerge only at the endpoint of all of Marx’s analyses.

其次，卢卡奇将马克思独特的“从抽象上升到具体”的方法理解为“从部分上升到总体”，会错失对于马克思“历史”概念本身的总体性的确实把握。卢卡奇将马克思的现实概念理解为历史总体，要求超越经验主义只拘泥于“历史事实”的直接性视野，这无疑体现了他深刻的理论洞见，但卢卡奇所设想的超越直接性、达至历史总体的路径却是含混不清的。这不仅是因为，“结构性构造原则”和“真正的运动倾向”这两个被卢卡奇当作社会现象与历史总体之间的“中介”的概念，由于所体现的其实只是“朝向总体”这一外在设定，因而其内涵并不清晰，也缺少真正的可操作性；更是由于，当卢卡奇将“物与物的关系”与“人与人的关系”的关系视为作为部分的现象与作为能决定部分的总体的本质的关系时，他实际上无法清楚地说明，马克思在政治经济学批判中关于物与物关系的分析为什么实际上总是与关于人与人关系的分析结合在一起，因而被卢卡奇理解为总体的“社会”其实并不是在马克思全部分析的终点才出现的。

Finally, according to Lukács’s mode of understanding, Marx’s concrete concept of “history” becomes an abstract concept applicable to different epochs. Lukács keenly saw that Marx’s concept of “history” is one that internally contains a historical dimension; that is, the “history” Marx speaks of mainly refers to the history of a “specific historical stage,” namely capitalist society, and not a one-dimensional linear history constituted by successive historical facts. However, because Lukács did not conduct a critique of the premises of the “dialectic of part and whole” itself, although he mainly discusses the problem of historical totality in the context of Marx’s critique of capitalism, his analysis in fact pushes this totality, together with “history” itself, toward a universalizable abstract logic.

最后，按照卢卡奇的这种理解方式，马克思的具体的“历史”概念就成了可适用于不同时代的抽象概念。卢卡奇敏锐地看到，马克思的“历史”概念是一个内在地包含历史性维度的概念，也就是说，马克思所说的“历史”主要指的是“特定历史阶段”即资本主义社会的历史，而不是由前后相继的历史事实所构成的一维线性历史；但由于卢卡奇并未对“部分与整体的辩证法”本身的适用性进行前提批判，因此尽管他主要是在马克思的资本主义批判的语境中来讨论历史的总体性问题的，但他的分析事实上却将这种总体性连同“历史”本身推向一种可普遍化的抽象逻辑。

The Totality Character of Marx’s Concept of “History”

马克思“历史”概念的总体性特征

The fundamental reason for the problems in Lukács’s work is that he equates the dialectic in Marx’s thought, especially in the critique of political economy, with the Hegelian dialectic, thereby overlooking the fundamental difference between the two. In a certain sense, it can be said that Marx’s dialectic and the Hegelian dialectic are fundamentally different in both their basic purport and their theoretical form. In fact, it is precisely for this reason that Marx’s dialectic can be called a “dialectic” in the true sense. If the dialectic is understood as the “form of the inner self-movement of the content” of a concrete object, and if Marx’s object of study is fundamentally different from Hegel’s, then it is naturally necessary to introduce a different dialectic that manifests the “form of self-movement” directly related to the concrete content of the object, i.e., the objective dimension presented in a processual form. This allows us to understand why Marx, on the one hand, calls his own dialectical method not only different from Hegel’s but “directly opposite” to it, yet on the other hand publicly acknowledges himself “a pupil of that mighty thinker.”

卢卡奇的工作之所以出现上述问题，根本原因在于，他将马克思思想、特别是政治经济学批判中的辩证法等同于黑格尔辩证法，从而忽视了二者的根本差别。在某种意义上可以说，马克思的辩证法与黑格尔辩证法无论在基本主旨还是理论形态上都是根本不同的。事实上，也正是由于如此，马克思的辩证法才能被称为真正意义上的“辩证法”。如果将辩证法理解为与具体对象“内容的内在自身运动的形式”，如果马克思的研究对象与黑格尔根本不同的话，自然需要引入不同的辩证法展现与对象的具体内容直接相关的“自身运动的形式”，即以过程性形式呈现的客观性维度。这样我们就能理解，何以马克思一方面称自己的辩证方法与黑格尔的辩证方法不仅不同，而且“截然相反”，但另一方面又公开承认自己“是这位大思想家的学生”。

The basic goal of Marx’s dialectic is to manifest the self-negation contained within the objective dimension of the capitalist social structure. Therefore, if the capitalist epoch, as a specific historical stage, possesses a historical totality, then this totality can certainly be understood as the direction toward which Marx’s dialectic is oriented, as we see in Lukács. However, this totality can no longer be understood as a whole that directly contains and determines the forms of existence of its various parts, but should rather be understood as the premise for the historical-real movement of the objects of the capitalist epoch. This premise does not treat concrete social phenomena (such as the objectal relations emphasized by Lukács) as the parts it “contains,” but rather treats these phenomena as the conditions or mechanisms by which universal “appearances” are produced. Thus, it is in fact the capitalist mode of production itself. This mode of production is not a ready-made substantive existence, but a specific social structure that deploys its universal plastic power through a structural operation. For Marx, there does not pre-exist a “historical totality” that is both directly opposed to and determines various partial phenomena. Rather, the totality dimension of history manifests itself precisely as the “mode of givenness” of phenomena. Therefore, it is not another object (even one with “absoluteness”), but a functional whole that accompanies all objects like a shadow yet cannot be objectified. In a certain sense, this whole is the “complicit relationship” of all human factors and material factors in the capitalist epoch.

马克思辩证法的基本目标，在于展现资本主义社会结构的客观性维度中所包含的自否性，因此如果说作为特定历史阶段的资本主义时代具有一种历史总体性的话，那么这种总体性当然可被理解为马克思辩证法所朝向的方向，就像我们在卢卡奇那里所看到的那样。不过，这种总体不能再被理解为一种直接包含并决定各个部分的存在形式的整体，而应被理解为资本主义时代诸对象的历史性现实运动前提。这种前提并不将具体的社会现象（如卢卡奇所强调的对象性关系）作为自己所“包含”的部分，而是将这些现象作为具有普遍性的“显像”被生产出来的条件或机制，因此实际上就是资本主义生产方式本身，这种生产方式并不是一种现成的实体性存在，而是要在一种结构性运作中展布其普遍性塑形力量的特定社会结构。对于马克思来说，并不先行存在一种与各种局部性现象既直接对立又决定前者的“历史总体”。毋宁说，历史的这种总体性维度正是作为诸现象的“给出方式”而展现自身的，因此它并不是另一种对象（哪怕是具有“绝对性”的对象），而是与诸对象如影随形却无法被对象化的功能性整体。在某种意义上可以说，这种整体就是资本主义时代的全部人的因素与物的因素的“共谋关系”。

Thus, a concept like “capitalist mode of production,” which can embody the totality character of history, manifests the epochal characteristic of the universal plastic shaping of persons and things in the capitalist epoch, not the more “essential” “relations between persons” concealed by “relations between things.” Consequently, the totality dimension of Marx’s concept of “history” is in fact a historical character. That is, it is a character that can only be linked to the specific historical stage of capitalism. The reason Marx can endow the concept of “history,” which embodies the basic connotation of the specific historical stage of the capitalist epoch, with a totality character is precisely that it is only under the capitalist mode of production that universal relations between persons and relations between things are generated. Therefore, it is by starting not from “objectality” but from historical “universality” that one can avoid abstractly treating Marx’s concept of “history” and its totality character.

这样，像“资本主义生产方式”这样的能够体现历史的总体性特征的概念所展现的，就是资本主义时代的人与物被普遍化塑形的时代特征，而不是被“物与物的关系”所掩盖的更具有“本质”性的“人与人的关系”，因而马克思的“历史”概念的总体性维度，实际上就是一种历史性特征。也就是说，是只能与资本主义这一特定历史阶段联系在一起的特征。马克思之所以能够赋予体现了资本主义时代特定历史阶段这一基本内涵的“历史”概念以总体性特征，也正是由于，只有在资本主义生产方式之下，才会产生具有普遍性的人与人的关系和物与物的关系。因此，不是从“对象性”出发，而是从历史性的“普遍性”出发，才能避免将马克思的“历史”概念及其总体性特征抽象化处理。

It is precisely for this reason that we can see how Marx can manifest his unique dialectic in the critique of political economy as a critique of ideology: the classical political economists, within their ideological conceptions, affirmed the universality of the social phenomena of the capitalist epoch in the mode of “eternity,” but, confined by their epoch and their own limitations, they were unable to identify this universality. In the critique of political economy, Marx starts from this universality (in political economy, this dimension is concretely embodied in the “formal determinations” of various economic categories), inquires into the historical premises that make this universality possible, and, in this inquiry, manifests his comprehensive and profound understanding of the totality character of history.

也正是如此，我们才能看到，马克思何以可能在作为意识形态批判的政治经济学批判中展现自己独特的辩证法：古典政治经济学家们在他们的意识形态观念中以“永恒性”的方式确认了资本主义时代诸社会现象的普遍性，但他们囿于时代以及自身的界限而无法辨识这种普遍性，马克思在政治经济学批判中则从这种普遍性（在政治经济学中这一维度具体体现在各经济范畴的“形式规定”中）出发，追问使得这种普遍性得以可能的历史性前提，并在这种追问中展现自己对于历史总体性特征全面而深入的理解。

(The author is a professor at the School of Philosophy, Fudan University.)

（作者系复旦大学哲学院教授）

Online editor: Huihui

网络编辑：慧慧