The Epistemological Premise of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy

Although epistemological questions in philosophy were not the center of Marx’s theoretical concerns, the critique of political economy, as Marx’s core work, clearly rests on epistemological premises very different from those of modern mainstream natural and social science, and Marx was fully conscious of this. Marx’s critique of political economy continued the tradition of German critical philosophy, especially on the so-called epistemological question: he refused, as the national economists did, to treat capitalist economic activity as a natural, eternal objective fact, and to devote himself to obtaining precise knowledge of universal economic laws from such natural and eternal human nature and human activity. Marx’s “critique” likewise, in the sense of clarifying premises and drawing boundaries, shattered the bourgeois “myth of the given,” revealing the various conditions and presuppositions concealed behind those immediate economic “facts.” Contrary to those who regard nature as simply given, Marx held that nature is not directly “given” to human consciousness; the present world of the senses is a product of modern industry, a result of the historical process.

尽管哲学上的认识论问题并不是马克思理论思考的中心，但作为马克思核心工作的政治经济学批判显然有着与现代主流的自然科学和社会科学非常不同的认识论前提，对于这一点马克思完全是自觉的。马克思的政治经济学批判延续了德国批判哲学的传统，尤其是在所谓认识论问题上，他拒绝像国民经济学家那样把资本主义的经济活动作为一个自然的、永恒的客观事实来看待，并致力于从这种自然而永恒的人性和人类活动中获得对普遍的经济规律的确切认识。马克思的“批判”同样在澄清前提、划清界限的意义上破除了资产阶级的“所与神话”，揭示了那些直接的经济“事实”背后被掩盖的种种条件和预设。与那些将自然视为简单给予的人相反，马克思认为自然不是直接“给予”人类意识的，当前的感官世界是现代工业的产物，是历史进程的结果。

The knowledge claim of changing the world

改变世界的知识主张

To avoid misunderstanding and vulgarizing Marx, what we need is not to completely sever Marx’s thought from epistemological questions, nor to emphasize the ontological character of Marx’s historical materialism and downplay its epistemological coloring, but rather to break through the epistemological paradigm framed by the philosophy of subjectivity and establish a new epistemological premise that can truly grasp and know the diverse, active things themselves, thereby making the changing of the world possible.

要避免对马克思的误解和庸俗化，我们需要做的不是把马克思的思想与认识论问题完全切割开来，或者强调马克思唯物史观的本体论特征，淡化它的认识论色彩，而是应该突破主体性哲学所框定的认识论范式，确立一个能够真正把握和认识多样的、能动的事物自身，从而使改变世界得以可能的新的认识论前提。

Before Marx, Hegel had already realized that Kant’s “Copernican revolution” in epistemology restricted knowledge to the world of appearance conforming to the legislation of the understanding, with the intention of limiting knowledge in order to leave room for the unconditioned that grounds meaning and value. But the enormous side effect of this epistemological transformation was that it actually solidified modern science’s monopoly on knowledge and its domination over modern life, and produced a fundamental rupture between the ideal of practical reason and the reality of theoretical reason; and to reject the possibility of knowing things themselves means refusing to recognize another reality distinct from the “facts” and “laws” revealed by science. The possibility of changing the world that Kant saw in practical reason was suffocated by his overly conservative epistemology, which insisted that certainty is truth.

在马克思之前，黑格尔已经意识到，康德在认识论上的“哥白尼革命”将知识限制在符合知性立法的显象世界，其意图在于限制知识，为构成意义与价值之基础的无条件者留出地盘。但这一认识论变革的巨大副作用在于，它实际上固化了现代科学对知识的垄断和对现代生活的宰制，并且造成了实践理性的理想与理论理性的现实之间的根本性断裂；而拒斥对事物本身的认识的可能性就意味着拒绝承认存在不同于科学所揭示的“事实”和“规律”的另一种真实性。康德在实践理性中看到的改变世界的可能性被他过于保守的、坚持确定性即真理的认识论所窒息了。

As Habermas puts it, Hegel’s critique of Kant’s epistemology made epistemological critique itself superfluous. This does not mean that epistemological questions thereby ceased to be important, but rather that epistemological questions must shift from examining the cognitive capacities and methods of the subject to the critique of the knowledge of things themselves and of the rationality and limits of the various forms of knowledge. Knowledge in the true sense should not be merely knowledge of objects constructed by the subject. When Marx questioned the scientificity of national economy itself, he was in fact inheriting a basic demand of post-Kantian philosophy in epistemology, namely, “to know things themselves.” Venturing beyond the boundaries Kant’s epistemology drew for knowledge in order to know things themselves inevitably shakes the certainty of knowledge, but for Hegel and Marx, contradiction and difference provide the real possibility for the generation and manifestation of things themselves, for grasping unity in diversity, and for the different modes of human existence.

恰如哈贝马斯所言，黑格尔对康德认识论的批评使得认识论批判本身变得多余。这并不意味着认识论问题因此而不再重要，而是说认识论问题必须从对主体的认识能力和认识方法的考察转向对物自身的认识和对于知识的各种不同形态的合理性与有限性的批判。真正意义上的知识不应该仅仅是对主体所建构的对象的认识。当马克思质疑国民经济学自身的科学性时，他实际上继承了后康德哲学在认识论上的一个基本诉求，那就是“认识事物本身”。冒险超出康德认识论为知识所划定的界限去认识事物本身，虽然不可避免地会动摇知识的确定性，但对黑格尔和马克思来说，矛盾和差别为事物自身的生成与显现、为把握多样性中的统一、为人类生存的不同样态提供了现实的可能。

As far as national economy is concerned, this means that another truth about human needs, production, and intercourse exists and is real, even necessary. Presuppositions such as the isolated atomized individual, private property, the division of labor, and production for exchange constitute the premises of national economy; these elements exist as the result of abstracting and reducing the complex reality in order to attain the universality and certainty of knowledge. Although this so-called scientific knowledge possesses certainty in the mathematical sense, it uncritically takes the mode of production and intercourse under specific socio-historical conditions as the universal, natural mode of human behavior, and the reproduction of capitalist society in turn further consolidates in reality these things that were originally only abstractions and presuppositions, maintaining the scientific name of national economy in the alienated and abstracted reality. At its epistemological root, the classical political economists could not escape the influence of the metaphysics of subjectivity of their age.

就国民经济学而言，这意味着关于人的需要、生产、交往的另一种真理是存在的并且是现实的，甚至是必然的。诸如孤立的原子化个人、私有财产、分工、为交换而生产等各种预设构成了国民经济学的前提，这些要素的存在是为了达到认识的普遍性和确定性而对复杂的现实进行抽象、还原的结果；这种所谓的科学知识虽然具有数学意义上的确定性，但它非批判地将特定社会历史条件下的生产和交往方式当作人类普遍的、自然的行为模式，而资本主义社会的再生产反过来又在现实中进一步巩固了这些原本只是作为抽象和预设的东西，在异化和抽象化的实在中维护了国民经济学的科学之名。在认识论根源上，古典政治经济学家摆脱不了他们那个时代的主体性形而上学的影响。

Seeking rational abstraction

寻求合理的抽象

Of course, Marx’s critique of the abstraction of classical political economy does not mean that he abandoned rational reflection and the method of abstraction. Epistemologically speaking, all scientific knowledge seeks to find the essential connections behind particular phenomena and to grasp unity in diversity, and thus inevitably must abstract from sensory experience through thought. The basic defect of the method of abstraction in epistemology before Hegel was that it was based on the separation of identity and difference, setting aside the particularity and difference of the object, setting aside the internal connections among the object’s own factors, and isolating an “abstract identity” divorced from concrete content. Therefore, the concepts formed by this method of cognition, which claims to be scientific, are empty, content-poor abstract concepts.

当然，马克思批判古典政治经济学的抽象性并不意味着他放弃了理性的反思和抽象的方法。从认识论上说，所有科学认识都试图寻找特殊现象背后的本质联系、把握多样性中的统一，因而不可避免地要通过思维对感性经验加以抽象。而黑格尔之前的认识论中的抽象方法的基本缺陷在于，它是以同一和差异的分离为基础，撇开客体的特殊性和差异性，撇开客体自身的诸因素之间的内在联系，孤立地抽出某种脱离了具体内容的“抽象同一性”。因此，这种自诩为科学的认识方法所形成的概念是空洞的、内容贫乏的抽象概念。

Marx criticized the national economists’ research for abandoning particular forms and resorting to excessive abstraction, accustomed to reaching empty abstract identity; the abstraction of production is such a case: they appealed to what is common to production in all epochs while forgetting the essential differences among the production of each epoch. Marx pointed out, “There are characteristics which are common to all stages of production and which are fixed in thought as general characteristics; but the so-called general conditions of all production are nothing but these abstract elements, and with these abstract elements it is impossible to understand any real historical stage of production.” Once one leaves aside the particular society of modern capitalism and strips away its differences from other social production, the result can only be this: “Capital is a general, eternal natural relation.” Such abstraction “can mix and melt all historical differences into general human laws,” and the secret of the bourgeoisie’s appropriation of surplus value dissolves into this general human law.

马克思批评国民经济学家的研究抛弃特殊形式而诉诸过度的抽象，习惯于达到空洞的抽象同一性，对生产的抽象就是如此：他们诉诸所有时代的生产的共同点，而忘记了各个时代生产的本质差别。马克思指出，“一切生产阶段所共有的、被思维当作一般规定而确定下来的规定，是存在的，但是所谓一切生产的一般条件，不过是这些抽象要素，用这些抽象要素不可能理解任何一个现实的历史的生产阶段”。离开了现代资本主义这个特殊的社会，抽掉了它与其他社会生产的差别，结果只能是这样：“资本是一种一般的、永存的自然关系。”这样的抽象，“可以把一切历史差别混合和融化在一般人类规律之中”，资产阶级占有剩余价值的秘密也就消融在这个一般人类规律之中了。

In Marx’s method, by contrast, what is abstracted from the whole is not separated from its relations to other things and to the whole. For example, if we want to understand property as a truly concrete thing, we should conceptualize in thought the social relations involved in property abstracted from the real concrete thing, social relations that develop differently in different societies and different epochs. Marx emphasized the same point in his discussion of the concept of production: whenever we speak of production, what is meant is always production at a particular stage of social development. Although some determinations of production belong to all epochs, other determinations can be seen only in a few or in particular epochs.

而在马克思的方法中，从整体中抽象出来的东西并没有从它与其他东西和整体的关系中分离出来。比如，如果我们想把财产理解为真正的具体事物，应该在思维中把从现实的具体事物中抽象出来的财产所涉及的社会关系概念化，这些社会关系在不同的社会和不同的时代有不同的发展。马克思在关于生产概念的讨论中同样强调了这一点：每当我们谈到生产时，所指的总是社会发展的某一特定阶段的生产。虽然生产的一些规定属于所有时代，但生产的另一些规定只能在少数或特定的时代看到。

For Marx, national economy [political economy] did not, through the abstraction of thought, achieve the understanding, grasp, and reproduction of real, concrete things. The classical political economists regarded the homogenized abstract labor, commodities, exchange, and capital in capitalist society as natural, ahistorical, eternal, and universal human activities. Their epistemology, on the one hand, required those empirical phenomena that the abstract identity ignored, or even contradicted, to accommodate themselves to general laws, and thus could only achieve a false synthesis; on the other hand, it stopped halfway where scientific abstraction was needed, remaining at particular forms of appearance and being submerged in the complex relations of profit, interest, rent, wages, and so on. Therefore, they could not see surplus value, could not see the twofold character of labor and the twofold character of the commodity, nor the unequal, dominating social relations among human beings hidden in capital, commodities, and wage labor—all of which are undoubtedly real, concrete things existing in capitalist society. In contrast, Marx’s critique of political economy is the genuine scientific knowledge of modern capitalism. Its epistemological premise enables it to grasp identity within difference and to achieve a true synthesis through the discovery of the inner contradictions of things, so that it recognizes the truth of capitalism more completely and fully than classical political economy itself. But it is precisely as scientific knowledge that Marx’s critique of political economy, while revealing the real elements and actual driving forces that enable capitalism to function effectively, also demonstrates the inner, practical necessity that the existing facts of capitalism, which conceal and suppress these elements and forces, must be changed.

对马克思来说，国民经济学没有通过思维的抽象达到对真实的具体事物的理解、把握和再现。古典政治经济学家们将资本主义社会中的均质化的抽象劳动、商品、交换、资本看作自然的、无历史的、永恒的、普遍的人类活动。他们的认识论一方面要求那些被抽象同一性无视的，甚至与理论相矛盾的经验现象来迁就一般规律，因而只能达到一种虚假的综合；另一方面又在需要进行科学抽象的地方半途而废，停留在特殊的表现形式上，淹没在利润、利息、地租、工资等各种复杂关系中。因此，他们看不到剩余价值，看不到劳动的二重性和商品的二重性，以及在资本、商品和雇佣劳动中所隐藏的存在于人与人之间的不平等的、支配性的社会关系，而这些无疑都是资本主义社会中真实存在的具体的事物。相比之下，马克思的政治经济学批判才是真正的关于现代资本主义的科学认识，它的认识论前提使它坚持在差异中来把握同一，通过对事物内在矛盾的发现来实现真正的综合，因而它比古典政治经济学本身更加完备和充分地认识到资本主义的真相。但也正是作为科学认识的马克思的政治经济学批判在揭示了使资本主义能够有效运转的真实要素和现实动力的同时，证明了掩盖、压制这些要素和动力的现存的资本主义的事实必将被改变的内在的、实践的必然性。

(This article is a phased result of the National Social Science Fund general project “Research on Plessner’s Philosophical Anthropology” (24BZX069))

（本文系国家社科基金一般项目“普莱斯纳哲学人类学思想研究”（24BZX069）阶段性成果）

(The author is a professor in the Department of Philosophy, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Xi’an Jiaotong University)

（作者系西安交通大学人文社会科学学院哲学系教授）

Online editor: Tongxin

网络编辑：同心