The Inner Evolution of Marx's Theory of Ideology

Since the 1960s, Western Marxists represented by Althusser have advanced the thesis of an "epistemological break" in the development of Marx's thought. This thesis, marked by the emergence of a new materialism grounded in Feuerbach's philosophy, holds that the young Marx's thought still bore the imprint of a Hegelian presupposition of subjective logic, whereas the mature Marx devoted himself to an objective analysis of social structure. Althusser's "epistemological break" thesis has exerted a profound influence in Western Marxist scholarship, to the extent that in the field of research on Marx's theory of ideology, the manifestation and causes of the "break" in ideological theory between the young Marx and the mature Marx are often treated by scholars as the primary question to be confirmed and resolved. For example, scholars such as Joé Lalanne and Étienne Balibar have pointed out that in Marx's texts after 1850, the frequency of use of the concept of ideology declines markedly, until it nearly disappears altogether. Lalanne emphasizes the "principle of time" in the study of Marx's theory of ideology, namely, understanding changes in the concept's meaning by analyzing its diachronic evolution from the young Marx to the mature Marx. Balibar, by contrast, places greater emphasis on the "principle of paradigm," focusing on how the mature Marx effected a paradigm shift in which the critique of fetishism replaced the critique of ideology. Žižek not only agrees that the mature Marx replaced the critique of ideology with the critique of fetishism but further explores the intellectual origins of this paradigm shift in Marx's theory of ideology. He points out that in *The German Ideology*, the concept of ideology is still proposed merely as "delusion," and that "as soon as Marx engaged in the 'critique of political economy,' things became complicated: what he encountered there, disguised as 'commodity fetishism,' was no longer a 'fantasy' that 'reflects' reality, but an unfathomable enigma at work in the actual process of social production." It is not difficult to see that diachronic studies of the concept of ideology downplay the important role of philosophical transformation in the evolution of Marx's theory of ideology. Overly exaggerating the Feuerbachian factor in the transformation of Marx's philosophical views easily leads to neglecting the propulsive role of the critique of ideology in the emergence of the materialist conception of history, and also to severing the innovativeness and wholeness of Marx's thought, including his theory of ideology. Moreover, overemphasizing the replacement of the critique of ideology by the critique of fetishism, and understanding ideology as a negative "false consciousness," also eliminates the possibility and reality that modern discourses, including Marxist theory itself, are likewise a form of ideology. When Francis Fukuyama advanced the "end of history" thesis in the 1990s, he was in effect reintroducing the topic of ideology into the historical horizon as a major event, projecting a theoretical picture of the "advanced" and "eternal" nature of capitalist ideology and the "obsolescence" of Marx's theory of ideology. If we step beyond the limits of the texts, connect Marx's early thought with *Capital* (*Capital* and its manuscripts), and clarify the theoretical construction and critical intent of ideology within the trajectory of Marx's thought, we can respond to the judgments of the aforementioned scholars and likewise rebut Fukuyama's "misjudgment."

自20世纪60年代起，以阿尔都塞为代表的西方马克思主义者提出了马克思思想发展中存在“认识论断裂”的论断。这一论断以费尔巴哈哲学基础之上的新唯物主义的出场为标志，认为青年时期的马克思思想中仍残留黑格尔式主体逻辑预设的印记，而成熟时期的马克思则致力于对社会结构进行客观分析。阿尔都塞的“认识论断裂说”在西方马克思主义研究学界产生了深远的影响，以至于在马克思意识形态理论的研究领域，意识形态理论在青年马克思与成熟马克思之间“断裂”的表现与原因，往往被学者视为一个需要确证和解答的首要问题。例如，乔·拉兰和埃蒂安纳·巴利巴尔等学者指出，在马克思1850年以后的文本中，意识形态概念的使用频率显著下降，直至后来几近消失。拉兰强调马克思意识形态理论研究的“时间原则”，即通过分析意识形态概念从青年马克思到成熟马克思的历时性演变来理解其内涵的变化。而巴利巴尔则更加强调“范式原则”，即关注成熟马克思何以实现用拜物教批判取代意识形态批判的范式变革。齐泽克不仅认同成熟马克思用拜物教批判取代意识形态批判的观点，还进一步探讨了马克思意识形态理论范式变革的思想渊源。他指出，在《德意志意识形态》中，意识形态概念还只是作为“妄想”被提出来的，而“只要马克思从事了‘政治经济学的批判’，事情就变得复杂起来：他在此所遇到的伪装成‘商品拜物教’出现的东西不再是‘反映’现实的一个‘幻想’，而是在社会生产的实际过程中心起作用的一个不可思议的谜。”不难发现，意识形态概念的历时性研究淡化了哲学变革在马克思意识形态理论嬗变中的重要作用。过分夸大马克思哲学观念转变过程中的费尔巴哈因素，则容易忽视意识形态批判在唯物史观出场中的策动作用，也容易割裂包括意识形态理论在内的马克思思想的创新性与整体性。此外，过分强调拜物教批判对意识形态批判的取代作用，把意识形态理解成否定性的“虚假意识”，也绝除了包括马克思主义理论在内的现代话语同样也是一种意识形态的可能性和现实性。20世纪90年代弗朗西斯·福山提出“历史终结论”，实际上是将意识形态话题作为一个重大事件重新引回历史视野，渲染出资本主义意识形态“先进论”“永恒论”与马克思意识形态理论“过时论”的理论图景。假如我们跳出文本的限制，将马克思早期思想与“资本论”（《资本论》及其手稿）加以连接，从马克思思想脉络中澄清意识形态的理论建构与批判意图，即可回应以上学者的断定，同样也能回击福山的“误判”。

I. Clarifying the Problematic of the Critique of Ideology

一、意识形态批判的问题域澄清

In the early nineteenth century, the concept of "ideology" proposed by the French philosopher Destutt de Tracy had already initiated a theoretical endeavor: to convert ideology from an epistemological category into a political term, calling it "the science of ideas." This science of ideas was in essence a doctrine of political consciousness, constituting the ideological protective mechanism of the political system. In other words, within the framework of actual rationality, Tracy provided a justification of political legitimacy. Marx, from the height of philosophical critique, expanded the theoretical horizon for research into the internal workings of ideology, pulling ideology down from the political pedestal and reducing it to the coordinated action of "original" and "copy." Here, the "original" is the social reality of the development of capital, while the "copy" is the form of ideological expression whose main contents are religion, philosophy, culture, and art. In the evolution of Marx's intellectual history, the theory of ideology presents a clear and coherent thread, and is not, as David McLellan claims, such that "the concept of ideology in Marx is far from clear: his remarks on ideology are mostly incidental, and he never gave it systematic treatment." In fact, Marx's theory of ideology runs through the research process of both the materialist conception of history and *Capital*, presenting itself as a profound and systematic exposition.

19世纪初，法国哲学家特拉西所提出的“意识形态”概念，其实已经开启了一项理论尝试：将意识形态从认识论范畴转换为政治学术语，称之为“观念学”。这种观念学本质上是关于政治意识的学说，构成了政治体制的意识形态保护机制。换言之，在现实合理性的框架内，特拉西对政治合法性进行了论证。马克思则从哲学批判的高度，拓展了意识形态内部机理研究的理论视野，将意识形态从政治的神坛上拉下，将其还原为“原本”与“副本”的协同行动。其中，“原本”是资本发展的社会现实，“副本”则是以宗教、哲学、文化、艺术等为主要内容的意识形态表现形式。在马克思思想史演进中，意识形态理论呈现出清晰而连贯的脉络，并非大卫·麦克里兰所说的“意识形态概念在马克思那里远不清晰：他关于意识形态的评论多为顺便提到的，他从未进行系统的论述”。事实上，马克思的意识形态理论贯通唯物史观与《资本论》的研究过程，呈现为深刻而系统的论述。

Marx's critique of ideology can be traced back to the "perplexity over material interests" he faced during the *Rheinische Zeitung* period, and then developed into a questioning of the rationality of social existence as expounded by Hegel's theory of self-consciousness. During the *Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher* period, Marx put forward the important view that ideology is dependent on private property, and private property thereby became the principal object of critique in his theory of ideology. The *Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction* is undoubtedly the most appropriate text through which to enter Marx's thought on the critique of ideology. Although the theoretical thrust of this text is directed at Hegel's philosophy of right, its intellectual content far exceeds this scope, encompassing critical content directed at Hegel's philosophy, classical political economy, socialist currents of thought, and more. Thus, the *Introduction* is both a profound reflection on Hegel's philosophy of right and a comprehensive analysis of bourgeois ideology as a whole. It can be said that the *Introduction* presents the grand configuration of the critique of ideology, namely, on the foundation of Hegel's philosophy of right, redrawing the "map of bourgeois ideology," taking it as the theoretical copy of the critique of ideology, and unfolding the critique of ideology under a dual horizon.

马克思的意识形态批判可追溯至《莱茵报》时期他所面临的“物质利益困惑”，进而发展为对黑格尔自我意识理论所阐释的社会存在合理性的质疑。在《德法年鉴》时期，马克思提出了意识形态依附于私有财产的重要观点，私有财产由此成为其意识形态理论的主要批判对象。《〈黑格尔法哲学批判〉导言》无疑是切入马克思意识形态批判思想的最恰当文本。尽管该文本的理论矛头直接指向黑格尔的法哲学，但其思想内容却远远超出了这一范围，涵盖了对黑格尔哲学、古典经济学、社会主义思潮等多方面的批判内容。因此，《〈黑格尔法哲学批判〉导言》既是对黑格尔法哲学的深刻反思，也是对整个资产阶级意识形态的全面剖析。可以说，《〈黑格尔法哲学批判〉导言》呈现出意识形态批判的宏大构境，即在黑格尔法哲学的地基上，重新绘制“资产阶级意识形态图”，将其作为意识形态批判的理论副本，并在双重视域下展开意识形态批判。

On the one hand, theory must return to the reality of private property. Marx reversed the direction of judgment in Hegel's philosophy of right, emphasizing that it is not "the state that determines civil society," but "civil society that determines the state." Theory is the intellectual product of civil society and conforms to the developmental needs of civil society. For "the degree to which a theory is realized in a country always depends on the degree to which the theory satisfies the needs of that country," and "it is not enough for thought to strive to become reality; reality itself must strive toward thought." As the actual form of expression of thought, ideology is in essence a high-level abstraction of social reality, and through the externalization process from theory to practice, it provides a justification of rationality for social existence. In Marx's view, all past theories of ideology were intellectual products of private property; in other words, private property is the key factor shaping the content and form of all past ideologies. As Žižek puts it, private property constitutes the entire network of dependency relations of social reality, and ideology is often a distorted reflection of this network of dependency relations: "'ideology' can include everything from a meditative attitude that misrecognizes its dependency on social reality, to a series of action-oriented beliefs, from the indispensable medium through which individuals form their relations to social structure, to the erroneous ideas that provide legitimacy for the dominant political force."

一方面，理论必须回归至私有财产现实。马克思扭转了黑格尔法哲学的研判路向，强调不是“国家决定市民社会”，而是“市民社会决定国家”。理论是市民社会的思维产物，契合市民社会的发展需要。因为“理论在一个国家实现的程度，总是取决于理论满足这个国家的需要的程度”，“光是思想力求成为现实是不够的，现实本身应当力求趋向思想”。作为思想的现实表现形式，意识形态在本质上是对社会现实的高度抽象，并通过理论到实践的外化过程，为社会存在提供合理性辩护。在马克思看来，过去的一切意识形态理论都是私有财产的思维产物，换言之，私有财产是塑造过去一切意识形态内容与样态的关键因素。正如齐泽克所说，私有财产构成了整个社会现实的依赖关系网络，而意识形态往往是对这种依赖关系的扭曲反映，“‘意识形态’可以包括从错误认知其对社会现实的依赖关系的冥想态度，到一系列行为导向的信仰，从个体藉以形成其关系的不可或缺的媒介到社会结构，以致于为支配性政治力量提供合法性的错误思想”。

On the other hand, critique must return to the critique of private property, in order to clarify the essential content of bourgeois ideology and to demarcate socialist ideology from it. Although the *Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right* does not exhaustively reveal the generative mechanism and operational laws of socialist ideology, it does clarify the essence of bourgeois ideology and explicitly points out its symbiotic relationship with private property. In the subsequent *The Holy Family*, Marx, from the perspective of the critique of private property, detaches thought from the old social structure and points out that thought is deeply influenced by the old world order. "In any case, what thought can surpass is only the ideological scope of the old world order." Therefore, the critique of ideology must return to the critique of private property. Marx emphasizes that if critique attempts to directly discard the content of private property, then such critique will remain merely at the level of the movement of thought. Philosophy is the head of human liberation, and its heart is the proletariat. Thus, although Germany at that time did not yet possess the actual capacity to undertake social revolution, it did possess its own proletarian force, which meant that Germany, at the theoretical level, had the actual capacity to advance a philosophical revolution. Here, Marx transforms the problem of constructing ideology into the problem of constructing a proletarian philosophy—namely, within the "mirror" of bourgeois ideology, how is a proletarian philosophical system to be constructed?

另一方面，批判必须回归至私有财产批判，以澄清资产阶级意识形态的本质内容，并使社会主义意识形态与之划清界限。尽管《〈黑格尔法哲学批判〉导言》并未详尽揭示社会主义意识形态的生成机制与运行规律，但澄清了资产阶级意识形态的本质，明确指出了其与私有财产之间的共生关系。在随后的《神圣家族》中，马克思从私有财产批判的视角，将思想从旧的社会结构中剥离，并指出思想深受旧世界秩序的影响。“在任何情况下，思想所能超出的只是旧世界秩序的思想范围。”因此，对意识形态的批判，必须回归至私有财产批判。马克思强调，如果批判试图直接摒弃私有财产的内容，那么这种批判将仅仅停留在思想运动的层面。哲学是人的解放的头脑，它的心脏是无产阶级。因此，尽管当时的德国尚未具备承担社会革命的现实能力，但德国拥有自己的无产阶级力量，这就使得德国在理论层面具备了推动哲学革命的现实能力。在此，马克思将意识形态的建构问题转化为无产阶级哲学的建构问题，即在资产阶级意识形态的“镜像”中，如何建构无产阶级的哲学体系？

Althusser, on the one hand, regards the young Marx's critique of ideology (the humanist critique) as the theoretical bridge by which Marx arrives at philosophical science, and on the other hand emphasizes that Marx's thought underwent a "rupture" from "ideology" to "science." In Althusser's assessment, the young Marx's critique of ideology is comparatively backward relative to other theories. For "ideology is regarded as a pure illusion, a pure dream, that is, as nothing. All its reality is external to it." This rupture-style theoretical logic suspends the theoretical efforts of Marx's early critique, foreshadowing that Marx would reconstruct the theoretical outline of the critique of ideology after *Theses on Feuerbach* and *The German Ideology*. In fact, the dual critical perspective displayed in the *Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right* shows that Marx had already revealed, from within Hegel's philosophy of right, the close connection between bourgeois ideology and private property. If the *Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right* is the most appropriate text for entering into Marx's critique of ideology, then the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844* may be regarded as the most exemplary text of Marx's critique of ideology, for it displays the critical direction of Marx's theory of ideology in *Capital* and its manuscripts.

阿尔都塞一方面将青年马克思的意识形态批判（人本主义批判）视为马克思通往哲学科学的理论桥梁，另一方面强调马克思的思想发生了从“意识形态”向“科学”的“断裂”。在阿尔都塞的评判中，青年马克思的意识形态批判与其他理论相比较为落后。因为“意识形态被视为一种纯粹的虚幻、纯粹的梦想，也即无。它所有的现实性都外在于它”。这种断裂式的理论逻辑悬置了马克思早期批判的理论努力，预示着马克思将在《关于费尔巴哈的提纲》《德意志意识形态》之后重新建构意识形态批判的理论大纲。事实上，《〈黑格尔法哲学批判〉导言》所展现的双重批判视域表明，马克思已从黑格尔法哲学内部揭示出资产阶级意识形态与私有财产之间的紧密关联。如果说《〈黑格尔法哲学批判〉导言》是切入马克思意识形态批判的最恰当文本，那么《1844年经济学哲学手稿》则堪称马克思意识形态批判的最典范文本，它展现了《资本论》及其手稿中马克思意识形态理论的批判路向。

Usually, the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844* is regarded as the "secret birthplace" of Marx's thought, and its theory of alienated labor contains three major critiques: the economic critique with alienated labor as its content, the philosophical critique with the reduction of alienated labor as its core, and the social critique with the supersession of alienated labor as its goal. These three critiques jointly construct the future direction of Marx's theoretical research and harbor the theoretical "prototype" of Marx's critique of ideology. Specifically, the theory of alienated labor displays a "trinity" structural feature. Among them, the "one body" is the economic critique, which is the critique of the content of alienated labor, namely private property; the "three aspects" are manifested as follows: the philosophical critique serves as the precursor to the economic critique, providing it with theoretical support and a framework of thought; the social critique serves as the ultimate goal of the economic critique, aiming to achieve the supersession of alienated labor and the transformation of social relations; and the critique of ideology serves as the supplement and extension of the economic critique, subordinate to the philosophical critique and the social critique. These three critiques jointly construct, from a holistic path, Marx's critical framework of ideology. This critical framework not only reveals the root and essence of ideology but also points out the future direction of development for Marx's theoretical research on ideology.

通常，《1844年经济学哲学手稿》被视为马克思思想的“秘密诞生地”，其异化劳动理论包含着三大批判：以异化劳动为内容的经济批判、以异化劳动还原为核心的哲学批判、以异化劳动扬弃为目标的社会批判。这三大批判共同建构了马克思理论研究的未来方向，并潜藏着马克思意识形态批判的理论“雏形”。具体来说，异化劳动理论展现了一种“三位一体”的结构特征。其中，“一体”是经济批判，是对异化劳动内容即私有财产的批判；“三位”则体现为：哲学批判作为经济批判的先导，为其提供了理论支撑和思维框架；社会批判作为经济批判的终极目标，旨在实现异化劳动的扬弃与社会关系的变革；意识形态批判则作为经济批判的补充和扩展，从属于哲学批判与社会批判。这三大批判从整体性路径共同构建了马克思对意识形态的批判格局。这一批判格局不仅揭示了意识形态的根源和本质，而且为马克思的意识形态理论研究指明了未来发展方向。

First, the critique of ideology originates in the economic critique. The economic critique in the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844* lifts the ideological veil of bourgeois economics, subjecting it to a philosophical reduction, reducing the complex categories, propositions, and principles of classical economics to more essential laws of social movement, especially the laws of the movement of private property. Marx points out that although classical economics puts forward the core content of the movement of capitalist society, namely the labor theory of value, this highly abstract theory is in essence still a scientific expression of the movement of private property. Classical economics "puts the material process that private property undergoes in reality into general, abstract formulas," thereby concealing its ideological coloring. In Marx's view, reducing bourgeois economics to the movement of private property is only a preliminary philosophical reduction, which still requires further reduction. Only by further inquiring into the essential origin of private property, namely alienated labor, can one truly see through the ideological content of bourgeois economics. Although Marx at this time had not yet truly understood the mechanism of movement of capitalist society, he had already raised a critique of the labor standpoint of classical economics, transforming the ideological discourse power of classical economics—the principle of pursuing economic priority in development and the "consciousness mechanism" of human optimization—into the developmental right of private property. In other words, the "labor theory of value" constructed by classical economics is in essence the scientific expression of bourgeois ideology, whose inner core is the "theory of the value of alienated labor." This theory of value continuously provides justification and legitimation for the development of capital, thereby concealing the real contradictions of capitalist society. Marx's critique of ideology closely revolves around the contradictory interaction between "alienated labor" and "private property," revealing from a philosophical height the falsity of bourgeois ideology. This falsity is manifested not only in the general understanding of the externalized forms of wealth, such as the mercantilist abstract understanding of monetary wealth, but also in the inquiry into the subjective essence of wealth. In this process, Marx points out the fundamental demand of the critique of ideology: while promoting the birth of a new society, it is necessary to thoroughly eliminate the old ideological content and construct a proletarian ideological system.

第一，意识形态批判起源于经济批判。《1844年经济学哲学手稿》的经济批判揭开了资产阶级经济学的意识形态面纱，对其进行了哲学式的还原，将复杂的古典经济学范畴、命题与原理，还原为更为本质的社会运动规律，特别是私有财产的运动规律。马克思指出，尽管古典经济学提出了资本主义社会运动的核心内容，即劳动价值论，但这种经过高度抽象的理论，本质上仍是对私有财产运动的科学表述。古典经济学“把私有财产在现实中所经历的物质过程，放进一般的、抽象的公式”，从而掩盖了其意识形态色彩。在马克思看来，将资产阶级经济学还原为私有财产运动还只是初步的哲学式还原，尚需要进一步还原。唯有进一步追问私有财产的本质来历，即异化劳动，才能真正洞察资产阶级经济学的意识形态内容。尽管此时的马克思尚未真正理解资本主义社会的运动机制，但他已经对古典经济学的劳动立场提出了批判，将古典经济学的意识形态话语权——追求经济优先的发展原则与人性优化的“意识机制”，转化为私有财产的发展权。换言之，古典经济学所建构的“劳动价值论”，在本质上是资产阶级意识形态的科学表达，其内核为“异化劳动价值论”。这一价值论不断为资本的发展提供合理性与合法性的辩护，从而掩盖了资本主义社会的真实矛盾。马克思的意识形态批判紧密围绕“异化劳动”与“私有财产”之间的矛盾互动展开，从哲学的高度揭示了资产阶级意识形态的虚假性。这种虚假性不仅体现在对财富外化性形式的一般性理解上，如重商主义关于货币财富的抽象认识，更体现在对财富主体性本质的追问中。在这一过程中，马克思指出了意识形态批判的根本诉求，即在推动新社会诞生的同时，必须彻底清除旧有的意识形态内容，构建无产阶级的意识形态体系。

Second, the critique of ideology is subordinated to philosophical critique. The *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844* grasps, in terms of its lineage, the theoretical source of modern bourgeois ideology, namely the Hegelian philosophical system. Hegelian philosophy elevates the abstract tradition of speculative philosophy to the level of the dialectical movement of concepts and categories, conferring actuality upon capital from the height of philosophy, and constructing for bourgeois ideology a spiritual system and an Enlightenment mechanism. Around Hegel’s design for the content of bourgeois ideology, Marx carries out an in-depth exposition: on the one hand, ideology, as mental existence, is generated within the production history of the absolute spirit’s self-creation. In Hegel’s theory, ideology is subordinate to the absolute spirit, and the external real world—such as “sensuousness, religion, state power, etc.—is the essence of spirit.” As a thought-form of the absolute spirit, ideology continuously demonstrates the actuality of the existence of civil society and state power. However, Marx points out that this demonstration is built on pure abstraction, namely the reduction of the real movement of society to a production history of concepts and categories, thereby exhibiting the idealist character of logical priority. On the other hand, the operation of ideology follows the principle of subjectivization. A core proposition of Hegelian philosophy is that “substance is subject,” that is, self-consciousness endows substance with the principle of activity, thereby achieving in thought the unity of substance and subject. Likewise, although Hegel grasps the essential role of labor in practical development, the shaping of ideas, and other processes, because he remains within the discourse system of alienated labor, “the only labor Hegel knows and recognizes is abstract mental labor.” In criticizing ideology, Hegel ignores the social practice (sensuous activity) that generates ideology, so that ideology remains stuck in the conversion between idea and spirit, failing to transcend the domain of the absolute spirit’s self-creation. Thus, when there occurs “the struggle of the noble consciousness and the base consciousness,” this struggle is located by Hegel merely as the absolute spirit’s immanent transcendence of the sensuous and the religious in the form of dialectical movement. Marx holds that even if Hegel puts forward the dialectic, this dialectic itself fails to investigate deeply the essence of object-oriented activity, thereby forming a theoretical abstraction lacking real content.

第二，意识形态批判服从于哲学批判。《1844年经济学哲学手稿》从脉络上把握住近代资产阶级意识形态的理论来源，即黑格尔哲学体系。黑格尔哲学将思辨哲学的抽象传统提升至概念、范畴的辩证运动层面，从哲学的高度赋予了资本以现实性，为资产阶级意识形态构建了精神系统与启蒙机制。围绕黑格尔对资产阶级意识形态内容的设计思路，马克思进行了深入的阐述：一方面，意识形态作为思维实存，生成于绝对精神自我创造的生产史。在黑格尔的理论中，意识形态从属于绝对精神，外在的现实世界如“感性、宗教、国家权力等等是精神的本质”。意识形态作为绝对精神的思想形式，持续不断地论证着市民社会和国家权力存在的现实性。然而，马克思指出，这种论证建立在纯粹的抽象之上，即将社会现实运动简化为概念范畴的生产史，从而表现出逻辑优先的唯心主义特征。另一方面，意识形态的运行遵循主体化的原则。黑格尔哲学的一个核心命题是“实体即主体”，即自我意识赋予实体以能动性原则，从而在观念上实现实体与主体的统一。同样，尽管黑格尔把握了劳动在实践发展、观念塑造等过程中的本质作用，但由于他处在异化劳动的话语体系之中，因此“黑格尔唯一知道并承认的劳动是抽象的精神的劳动”。在批判意识形态时，黑格尔忽略了生成意识形态的社会实践（感性活动），使得意识形态仍然停留于观念与精神之间的转换，未能超越绝对精神自我创造的领域。因此，当出现“高尚的意识和卑鄙的意识的斗争”时，这种斗争就仅仅被黑格尔定位为绝对精神以辩证运动的形式对感性、宗教的内在超越。马克思认为，即使黑格尔提出了辩证法，这种辩证法本身也未能深入考察对象性活动的本质，从而形成了缺乏现实内容的理论抽象。

Third, the critique of ideology is subsumed under social critique. On the ground of the actuality of capital, classical political economy constructs an ideal world in which capital and labor, capitalist and proletarian, coexist harmoniously. Yet this conception, on the one hand, provides an accidental and external demonstration of the opposition between capital and labor in theory; on the other hand, it conceals the social reality that alienated labor determines private property. Therefore, classical political economy’s demonstration of the legitimacy of private property not only fails to reveal the endogenous dynamic of social progress, but actually blocks the endogenous path of social progress. Likewise, the socialists of Germany, France, and other countries, in attempting to correct capitalist society through external technical means, also fail to touch the core problem that alienated labor determines private property. These socialists directly criticize the inequality of private property, yet fail to analyze deeply the essence of alienated labor behind it, thereby falling into the predicament of taking the result of demonstration as its premise, and losing profound insight into the essence of alienated labor. Against this background, Marx in the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844* raises the core issue of social critique: the inner opposition between labor and capital. Here, social critique delimits the historical limit of the critique of ideology, namely that only when the opposition between labor and capital reaches the degree of highly developed capital can the critique of ideology truly reveal the essential content of private property. Marx further points out: “The relation of private property latently contains within itself the relation of private property as labor and the relation of private property as capital, as well as the mutual relation of these two expressions.” This relation determines that bourgeois ideology must demonstrate three kinds of legitimacy: the legitimacy of wage labor with wages as its content, the legitimacy of profit-taking with capital as its content, and the legitimacy of class existence with the harmony of labor and capital as its content. Yet these demonstrations of legitimacy in fact conceal the most central component of capitalist social relations—the relation between capital and surplus value. This is precisely what *Capital* and its manuscripts were later to criticize profoundly. In short, for the critique of ideology, one must analyze deeply the inner opposition between labor and capital and reveal the essential content of private property, in order to expose the real contradictions and essential problems of capitalist society.

第三，意识形态批判归属于社会批判。在资本现实性的地基上，古典经济学构建了一种资本与劳动、资本家与无产者和谐共处的理想世界。然而，这种构想一方面在理论上为资本与劳动之间的对立提供了一种偶然的、外部的论证；另一方面掩盖了异化劳动决定私有财产这一社会现实。因此，古典经济学对私有财产合法性的论证，不仅未能揭示社会进步的内生性动力，反而阻断了社会进步的内生性路径。同样，德国、法国等国的社会主义者试图通过外部技术手段修正资本主义社会时，也未能触及异化劳动决定私有财产这一核心问题。这些社会主义者直接批判私有财产的不平等性，却未能深入剖析其背后的异化劳动本质，从而陷入了将论证结果作为论证前提的困境，丧失了对异化劳动本质的深刻洞察。在此背景下，马克思在《1844年经济学哲学手稿》中提出了社会批判的核心议题：劳动与资本的内在对立。在这里，社会批判划定了意识形态批判的历史限度，即只有当劳动与资本的对立达到资本高度发展的程度时，意识形态批判才能真正揭示出私有财产的本质内容。马克思进一步指出：“私有财产的关系潜在地包含着作为劳动的私有财产的关系和作为资本的私有财产的关系，以及这两种表现的相互关系。”这种关系决定了资产阶级意识形态必须论证三大合法性：以工资为内容的雇佣劳动合法性、以资本为内容的获取利润合法性、以劳动资本和谐为内容的阶级存在合法性。然而，这些合法性论证实际上掩盖了资本主义社会关系中最为核心的部件——资本与剩余价值之间的关系。这正是后来《资本论》及其手稿所要深刻批判的。总之，对于意识形态批判而言，必须深入剖析劳动与资本的内在对立关系，揭示私有财产的本质内容，才能揭露资本主义社会的真实矛盾和本质问题。

It goes without saying that the critique of ideology in the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844* does indeed suffer from blurred boundaries among economic critique, philosophical critique, and social critique, which makes it difficult to provide a scientific interpretation of core issues such as the generative mechanism, operative mechanism, content system, and future trajectory of ideology. *The German Ideology* takes up these remaining problems and systematically resolves them at the philosophical height of the materialist conception of history.

毋庸讳言，《1844年经济学哲学手稿》的意识形态批判在经济批判、哲学批判及社会批判方面确实存在界限模糊的问题，这导致它难以对意识形态的生成机制、作用机制、内容体系及未来走向等核心议题进行科学的诠释。《德意志意识形态》承接了这些遗留问题，并在唯物史观的哲学高度上对其进行了系统解答。

II. The Materialist-Conception-of-History Character of the Critique of Ideology

二、意识形态批判的唯物史观性质

If the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844* preliminarily clarified the core problem-domain of the critique of ideology, then *The German Ideology*, as the theoretical stronghold of the critique of ideology, successfully resolves the many remaining difficulties concerning ideology left by the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844*. And the *Theses on Feuerbach* pre-plans for *The German Ideology* the macroscopic outline of the critique of ideology, namely, to decipher the theoretical positioning of ideology within the horizon of real practice or sensuous activity; at the same time, it is necessary to criticize the one-sided mode of understanding, represented by Feuerbach’s philosophy, that separates ideology and practice into “subject and object.” Although Feuerbach, through the principle of sensuous intuition, brings the object into the subject’s horizon and reveals the subjective factor or principle of objectivity within the object, because he fails to understand that “the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice,” he therefore understands ideology only as content independent of practice. In Marx’s view, the revolutionary character of practice is manifested not only in the process of generating secularized content such as civil society, but also in shaping ideological content including religious views and the like. It can be said that it is precisely in the *Theses on Feuerbach* that Marx explicitly raises the theoretical demand to decipher the generative mechanism and operative mechanism of ideology, starting from civil society as secularized content. This demand subsequently opens up the correct critical procedure and revolutionary path of *The German Ideology*.

如果说《1844年经济学哲学手稿》初步澄清了意识形态批判的核心问题域，那么《德意志意识形态》则作为意识形态批判的理论据点，成功解决了《1844年经济学哲学手稿》关于意识形态的诸多遗留难题。而《关于费尔巴哈的提纲》则预先为《德意志意识形态》规划了意识形态批判的宏观目录，即在现实实践或感性活动的视野中破解意识形态的理论定位；同时要批判以费尔巴哈哲学为代表的意识形态与实践“主客二分”的片面理解模式。尽管费尔巴哈通过感性直观原则，将客体纳入主体视域，揭示了客体中的主体性因素或对象性原则，然而，由于未能理解“环境的改变和人的活动或自我改变的一致，只能被看做是并合理地理解为革命的实践”，因此他只是把意识形态理解为独立于实践之外的内容。在马克思看来，实践的革命性不仅体现在生成市民社会等世俗化内容的过程中，同时也体现在塑造包括宗教观点等在内的意识形态内容方面。可以说，正是在《关于费尔巴哈的提纲》中，马克思明确提出了从世俗化内容的市民社会出发，破解意识形态的生成机制与作用机制的理论诉求。这一诉求继而开启了《德意志意识形态》正确的批判程式和革命道路。

As regards its inner structure, *The German Ideology* presents a “polyphonic structural diagram” of “one rising while the other falls,” which endows its critique of ideology with a dual logic: through the philosophical demonstration of division of labor and ownership, and through the economic analysis of the forms of capital, it explores core issues such as the generative mechanism, operative mechanism, content system, and future trajectory of ideology. In the part of the philosophical demonstration of division of labor and ownership, Marx aims to resolve the question of the origin of alienated labor left over from the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844*. Marx holds that once this question is resolved, the corresponding ideological questions are also explained.

就内在结构而言，《德意志意识形态》呈现出一幅“此消彼长”的“复调结构图”，这使其意识形态批判具备双重性逻辑：它通过对分工与所有制的哲学论证，以及对资本形态的经济分析，探讨了意识形态的生成机制、作用机制、内容体系及未来走向等核心议题。在分工与所有制的哲学论证部分，马克思旨在解决《1844年经济学哲学手稿》遗留的异化劳动起源问题。马克思认为，解决了这一问题，也就解释了相应的意识形态问题。

First, spontaneous division of labor reveals the generative mechanism of ideology. Spontaneous division of labor, as a reflection of social structure and real life, becomes the material carrier of ideology. “Morality, religion, metaphysics, and other ideologies, together with the forms of consciousness corresponding to them, no longer retain the appearance of independence,” but are highly subordinate to social structure and real life.

其一，自发分工揭示了意识形态的生成机制。自发分工作为社会结构与现实生活的反映，成为意识形态的物质载体。“道德、宗教、形而上学和其他意识形态，以及与它们相适应的意识形式便不再保留独立性的外观”，而是高度从属于社会结构与现实生活。

Second, the spontaneous division of labor provides the operative mechanism of ideology. Ideology is a historical product of the spontaneous division of labor, constrained by the conditions of social production and life, and its content is generated in the concrete unfolding of sensuous activity. Specifically, sensuous activity generates the four core elements of the original historical relations: the production of the needs of subsistence, the reproduction of the satisfaction of needs, the reproduction of the species, and the production of social relations. It is precisely on the basis of these foundational elements that the content of ideology is nurtured and formed. Therefore, although “the ‘mind’ is from the outset afflicted with the curse of being ‘burdened’ with matter,”[8]8 All quotations from Marx and Engels in this article follow the standard English translations of their works; the Chinese text cites the *Collected Works of Marx and Engels* (Chinese edition). with the continuous development of the mode of production and the mode of intercourse, “consciousness can flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it really represents something without representing something real; from now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to the formation of ‘pure’ theory, theology, philosophy, ethics, and so on.” At the same time, the mode of production and the mode of intercourse also constrain the operative mechanism of ideology: on the one hand, they determine the mechanism by which ideology articulates interests, thereby shaping the content of the illusory community; on the other hand, they bring about the formation of an ideological justification mechanism that renders the spontaneous division of labor reasonable.

其二，自发分工提供了意识形态的作用机制。意识形态是自发分工的历史产物，受社会生产生活条件的制约，其内容生成于感性活动的现实展开。具体而言，感性活动生成了原初历史关系的四个核心要素：生活资料的需要的生产、满足需要的再生产、种族的繁衍与社会关系的生产等。正是在这些基础要素之上，意识形态的内容得以孕育和形成。因此，虽然“‘精神’从一开始就很倒霉，受到物质的‘纠缠’”，但随着生产方式和交往方式的不断发展，“意识才能摆脱世界而去构造‘纯粹的’理论、神学、哲学、道德等等”。同时，生产方式和交往方式也制约着意识形态的作用机制，即一方面决定了意识形态的利益表述机制，从而塑造出虚幻的共同体内容；另一方面也促成了自发分工合理的意识形态论证机制的形成。

Third, the content system of ideology. As a form of social existence, the content of ideology is defined in contrast to the content of material labor (or sensuous activity). Marx and Engels point out: “The division of labor only becomes truly such from the moment when a division of material and mental labor appears.” In other words, the separation of material and mental labor is the true starting point of the spontaneous division of labor. At this crucial stage, people begin to become conscious of the unique value and status of mental labor and to distinguish it clearly from material labor. Material labor is concerned with the production and transformation of the real world, while mental labor is devoted to the understanding and interpretation of the real world. This division of labor enables ideology to acquire independence and autonomy, thereby allowing it to cast off the constraints of the real world and to construct a rich and abstract content system. The classical economists, and philosophers and economists such as Hegel and Proudhon, all attempted to abstract and generalize the real world, employing concepts, categories, and other theoretical tools to understand and transform the world.

其三，意识形态的内容体系。意识形态内容作为社会存在的一种形式，是相对于物质劳动（或感性活动）内容而言的。马克思恩格斯指出：“分工只是从物质劳动和精神劳动分离的时候起才真正成为分工。”换句话说，物质劳动和精神劳动的分离是自发分工的真正起点。在这一关键阶段，人们开始意识到精神劳动的独特价值和地位，并将其与物质劳动明确区分。物质劳动关注的是现实世界的生产和改造，而精神劳动则致力于对现实世界的理解和阐释。这种分工使得意识形态获得了独立性和自主性，从而能够摆脱现实世界的束缚，构建出丰富而抽象的内容体系。古典经济学家，黑格尔、蒲鲁东等哲学家和经济学家，都试图对现实世界进行抽象和概括，运用概念、范畴等理论工具来认识和改造世界。

Fourth, the future trajectory of ideology. *The German Ideology* profoundly analyzes the problem of alienated labor and clearly points out that the key to resolving this problem lies in the combination of the materialist conception of history and the class standpoint. Together, these two constitute the theoretical foundation for eliminating bourgeois ideology and establishing proletarian ideology. This theoretical foundation contains several aspects. First, proletarian ideology must obtain the support of material force, because “the class which has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently also controls the means of mental production”; second, proletarian ideology is a thoroughly revolutionary social consciousness, because “this class constitutes the majority of all members of society, and from this class arises the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness”; finally, proletarian ideology possesses a distinct conception of history and resolutely opposes the hypocritical content of bourgeois ideology. The bourgeoisie claims that its ideology possesses historical universality and is the highest narrative of the development of human thought. However, Marx exposes the true face of this false universality—bourgeois ideology represents only the particular interests of the bourgeoisie, and its essence is merely a fragment of historical development.

其四，意识形态的未来走向。《德意志意识形态》深刻剖析了异化劳动问题，并明确指出解决这一问题的关键在于唯物史观与阶级立场的结合。这两者共同构成了消灭资产阶级意识形态、确立无产阶级意识形态的理论基石。这一理论基石包含多个方面的内容。首先，无产阶级意识形态必须取得物质力量的支持，因为“支配着物质生产资料的阶级，同时也支配着精神生产资料”；其次，无产阶级意识形态是彻底革命的社会意识，原因在于“这个阶级构成了全体社会成员中的大多数，从这个阶级中产生出必须实行彻底革命的意识，即共产主义的意识”；最后，无产阶级意识形态具有鲜明的历史观，坚决反对资产阶级意识形态的虚伪性内容。资产阶级声称其意识形态具有历史普遍性，是人类思维发展的最高叙事。然而，马克思揭露了这种虚假普遍性的真实面目——资产阶级意识形态代表的只是资产阶级的特殊利益，其本质不过是历史发展的一个片段而已。

*The German Ideology* carries out its philosophical argument with the division of labor and relations of ownership at its core, advancing the theory of alienated labor put forward in the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844*. From the perspective of the materialist conception of history, this text clearly delineates the logical chain by which the spontaneous division of labor generates alienated labor and ideology, providing a profound philosophical interpretation of ideology. In short, ideology is the product of real practice or sensuous activity, a historical idea processed through abstract thought, just as “Hegel’s philosophy of history is the final result, reaching its ‘purest expression,’ of this entire German historiography.” On this basis, *The German Ideology* continues to inquire into the mode of existence of ideology in modern capitalist society and opens up an economic analysis of the evolution of the forms of capital. This text briefly traces the course of capital’s development, including the “estate capital” under the guild system of ownership, the “circulating capital” of the manufactory period, and the “industrial capital” of modern large-scale industry. Although, limited by the inadequacy of economic knowledge at the time and the need to answer the questions left by the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844*, *The German Ideology* did not provide an in-depth analysis of these three forms of capital, it nonetheless offered a new theoretical perspective for the political-economic critique of ideology. The developmental logic of capital itself, as a point of theoretical growth, was embedded within the trajectory of Marx’s thought and became an important content successively interpreted in later texts such as *The Poverty of Philosophy*, *Wage Labor and Capital*, *The Communist Manifesto*, and *Capital* and its manuscripts.

《德意志意识形态》以分工与所有制为核心展开哲学论证，推进了《1844年经济学哲学手稿》提出的异化劳动理论。该文本从唯物史观视角，清晰勾勒出自发分工生成异化劳动与意识形态的逻辑链条，为意识形态提供了深刻的哲学诠释。简而言之，意识形态是现实实践或感性活动的产物，是经过思维抽象加工后的历史理念，正如“黑格尔的历史哲学是整个这种德国历史编纂学的最终的、达到自己‘最纯粹的表现’的成果”。在此基础上，《德意志意识形态》继续追问现代资本主义社会中意识形态的存在方式，并开启了对资本形态演进的经济分析。该文本简要梳理了资本的发展历程，包括同业公会所有制下的“等级资本”、工场手工业时期的“流动资本”，以及现代大工业生产中的“工业资本”。尽管受限于当时经济学知识的不足与解答《1844年经济学哲学手稿》遗留问题的需要，《德意志意识形态》未能对这三种资本形态进行深入分析，但它为意识形态的政治经济学批判提供了新的理论视角。资本本身的发展逻辑作为理论生长点，被内置于马克思思想进程中，并成为《哲学的贫困》《雇佣劳动与资本》《共产党宣言》与《资本论》及其手稿等后续文本接力诠释的重要内容。

*The Poverty of Philosophy* is a text of ideological critique that has been rendered more precise, deeply analyzing the influence of the sensuous activity (the material mode of production) of capitalist society on the various conceptual forms of bourgeois economics. Proudhon attempted to invert the philosophical understanding of economics, but Marx points out that this theoretical inversion still follows the methodology of Hegelian philosophy. Proudhon tried to regulate social and economic life with the metaphysical framework of economic categories, yet this seriously departed from reality and fundamentally failed to escape the shackles of bourgeois ideology. Nevertheless, Proudhon’s research still provided a new perspective for ideological critique, establishing and distinguishing the regularity of the movement of capital (the “original”) from the regularity of categories (the “copy”). Marx further points out: “In acquiring new productive forces, men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.” Proudhon interpreted the movement of capital from the perspective of natural laws, but in fact he did not understand the internal connection between the original and the copy, neglecting the historical inquiry into real relations of production. At the same time, Marx also analyzes the representative schools of bourgeois ideology in economic theory, such as the fatalist school and the humanitarian school. The fatalist school served the real needs of the rising bourgeoisie in its struggle against feudal society, providing theoretical support for the bourgeoisie’s seizure of political power; the humanitarian school, by contrast, no longer regarded the internal contradictions of the bourgeoisie (such as economic crises) as the “growing pains” of the rising bourgeoisie, but rather as a “loss of subjectivity” of all humanity, and accordingly sought paths of improvement.

《哲学的贫困》是精准化了的意识形态批判文本，深入剖析了资本主义社会的感性活动（物质生产方式）对资产阶级经济学各种观念形态的影响。蒲鲁东尝试翻转哲学的经济学理解，但马克思指出，这种理论翻转依然沿用黑格尔哲学的方法论。蒲鲁东试图用经济学范畴的形而上学框架来规范社会经济生活，却严重脱离了现实，基本未能脱离资产阶级意识形态的桎梏。尽管如此，蒲鲁东的研究还是提供了一个意识形态批判的全新视角，确立并区分了资本运动的规律性（“原本”）与范畴的规律性（“副本”）。马克思进一步指出：“人们按照自己的物质生产率建立相应的社会关系，正是这些人又按照自己的社会关系创造了相应的原理、观念和范畴。”蒲鲁东从自然规律的角度解读资本运动，实际上并没有理解原本与副本之间的内在联系，忽略了对现实生产关系的历史追问。与此同时，马克思还分析了资产阶级意识形态的经济学理论代表，如宿命派和人道学派。宿命派服务于新兴的资产阶级对抗封建社会的现实需求，为资产阶级夺取政权提供理论支撑；而人道学派则不再将资产阶级内部矛盾（如经济危机）视为新兴资产阶级的“增长性疼痛”，而是将其视作全人类的“主体性缺失”，并据此寻求改善之路。

Marx’s next theoretical task was to interrogate and restore the copy-content of these economic categories, so as to clarify that economic categories do not “narrate the economic relations that constitute the material basis of modern class struggle and national struggle.” In *Wage Labour and Capital*, Marx first presents the copy-content represented by classical political economy. Classical political economy upheld the theory that labour creates value, constructing an ideological system grounded in “equality between capital and labour” and “justice between capital and labour.” However, because labour is transformed into wage labour as a specific social relation, the theoretical system of classical political economy encounters a twofold dilemma: first, the problem of “circular argumentation” in which the value of labour and the value of commodities mutually determine each other; second, the problem of the determining factors of the value of labour and the value of commodities. *Wage Labour and Capital* pushes the critique of the copy forward to the critique of the original, clearly pointing out that labour-power is a commodity, emphasizing that it is not labour itself that is transformed into a commodity, but rather that labour capacity is transformed into a commodity in the process of the objectification of labour time. This view not only successfully resolves the two great dilemmas of classical political economy, but also overturns the ideological myth of “equality between capital and labour” and “justice between capital and labour.” For the commodification of labour-power is the core of the wage-labour relation, and the wage-labour relation itself contains capital’s unpaid appropriation and exploitation of surplus value. Marx further points out: “To assert that the interests of capital and the interests of the workers are identical is, in fact, merely to say that capital and wage labour are two aspects of the same relation.” This “same relation” is jointly constructed by wage labour and industrial capital, and its historical mission lies in continuously producing the wage-labour relation that supplies capital with the unpaid appropriation and exploitation of surplus value. Thus, from the perspective of the genesis of capital, Marx reveals the material basis of capitalist ideology—the wage-labour system of capitalist society. The essence of this system lies in the fact that “living labour serves accumulated labour as the means of preserving and increasing its exchange value,” and it is the concrete embodiment of alienated labour in capitalist society. Therefore, the core of capitalist ideology lies in providing justification for the legitimacy of self-expanding value in capitalist society, thereby ensuring the stability and continuation of the capitalist system.

马克思接下来的理论任务，便是追问与还原这些经济学范畴的副本内容，以剖明经济学范畴并未“叙述构成现代阶级斗争和民族斗争的物质基础的经济关系”。在《雇佣劳动与资本》中，马克思首先呈现了以古典经济学为代表的副本内容。古典经济学秉持劳动创造价值理论，构建了以“劳资平等”“劳资公正”为基石的意识形态体系。然而，由于劳动转变为雇佣劳动这一特殊的社会关系，古典经济学的理论体系遭遇了双重困境：一是劳动价值与商品价值相互决定的“循环论证”难题；二是劳动价值与商品价值的决定因素问题。《雇佣劳动与资本》将副本批判推进至原本批判，明确指出劳动力是商品，强调并非劳动本身转变为商品，而是劳动能力在劳动时间的对象化过程中转化为商品。这一观点不仅成功破解了古典经济学的两大难题，更颠覆了“劳资平等”“劳资公正”的意识形态神话。因为劳动力商品化是雇佣劳动关系的核心，而雇佣劳动关系本身就包含着资本对剩余价值的无偿占有与剥削。马克思进一步指出：“断言资本的利益和工人的利益是一致的，事实上不过是说资本和雇佣劳动是同一种关系的两个方面罢了。”这种“同一种关系”由雇佣劳动与工业资本共同构建，其历史使命在于不断生产出供资本无偿占有与剥削剩余价值的雇佣劳动关系。由此，马克思从资本发生学的视角，揭示了资本主义意识形态的物质基础——资本主义社会的雇佣劳动制度。这一制度的实质在于“活劳动是替积累起来的劳动充当保存并增加其交换价值的手段”，是异化劳动在资本主义社会中的具体体现。因此，资本主义意识形态的核心在于为自行增殖的价值在资本主义社会中的合法性提供论证，从而确保资本主义制度的稳定与延续。

The *Communist Manifesto* can be regarded as the most concentrated text of the critique of capitalist ideology, for it thoroughly settles accounts with the false ideologies that uphold the rule of capital. Here, we will not dwell on the *Communist Manifesto*’s critique of the “original” of capital, but rather focus on its profound exposure of the essence of false ideology. For example, petty-bourgeois socialism attempts to restore old social relations; “true” socialism defends the private interests of the petty bourgeoisie; conservative socialism proposes external critique within the framework of capital; utopian socialism severs the essential connection between capital and wage labour while criticizing private property. None of these ideologies takes anything other than the existence of capital as its theoretical foundation. Therefore, even when bourgeois theorists raise the issue of the “right to work,” Marx regards it as the “theoretical nonsense” of bourgeois ideology. The so-called “right to work” is in essence nothing other than capital’s right to control and appropriate labour. The *Communist Manifesto* points out for us the major课题 that *Capital* must investigate in depth: How does capital give birth to these ideologies? How are the harms of these ideologies manifested? How does capitalist ideology gradually evolve into proletarian ideology within the framework of the capitalist system? To answer these questions, it is necessary to analyze in depth the internal mechanisms of capitalist society, because “the main mode of economic production and exchange of each historical epoch, together with the social structure necessarily resulting from it, is the basis on which the political and intellectual history of that epoch is founded, and only from this basis can this history be explained.” Thus, Marx directs the question toward the critique of political economy of modern capitalism, thereby clarifying the positioning of the ideological critique work of *Capital*.

《共产党宣言》堪称资本主义意识形态批判的最为集中的文本，它彻底清算了维护资本统治地位的虚假意识形态。在此，我们不再赘述《共产党宣言》对资本“原本”的批判，而是着重阐述其对虚假意识形态本质的深刻揭露。如小资产阶级的社会主义试图恢复旧的社会关系、“真正的”社会主义维护的是小市民的私利、保守的社会主义在资本的框架内提出外源性批判、空想的社会主义割裂资本与雇佣劳动的本质联系而批判私有财产等。这些意识形态无一不是以资本的存在为理论基石，因此，即使资产阶级理论家提出了“劳动权”的议题，马克思也将其视作资产阶级意识形态的“理论胡说”。所谓的“劳动权”本质上不过是资本对劳动的控制权与占有权，别无他物。《共产党宣言》为我们指明了《资本论》所要深入研究的重大课题：资本是如何孕育出这些意识形态的？这些意识形态的危害又是如何体现的？资本主义意识形态又是如何在资本体制的框架内逐步向无产阶级意识形态演变的？要解答这些课题，必须深入剖析资本主义社会的内在机制，因为“每一历史时代主要的经济生产方式和交换方式以及必然由此产生的社会结构，是该时代政治的和精神的历史所赖以确立的基础，并且只有从这一基础出发，这一历史才能得到说明”。由此，马克思将问题引向对现代资本主义的政治经济学批判，从而明确了《资本论》意识形态批判工作的定位。

III. The Positioning of Ideological Critique in *Capital*

三、意识形态批判的《资本论》定位

Because the concept of ideology presents a “state of withdrawal” in *Capital*, if one stubbornly clings to the “exoteric expression” on the surface of *Capital*, not only will it be difficult to discover the “traces” of ideology in *Capital*, but one will also easily fall into the trap of the “epistemological break” that Althusser identified, artificially severing the integrity of Marx’s theory of ideology. Therefore, it is necessary to leap beyond the text itself, grasp the “esoteric state” of the theory, and comprehend and distill the narrative mode of ideology from a macro perspective.

由于意识形态概念在《资本论》中呈现出一种“退隐状态”，因此，如果固执于《资本论》表层的“显白表述”，不但难以发现意识形态在《资本论》中的“踪迹”，而且容易落入阿尔都塞所指认的“认识论断裂说”的窠臼，人为割裂马克思意识形态理论的整体性。因此，要跳出文本本身，把握理论的“隐微状态”，从宏观上把握并提炼意识形态的叙事方式。

First, the generative mechanism of capitalist ideology. *Capital* and its manuscripts, using the research methods of political economy, scientifically reveal the special ideology of capitalist society and its generative mechanism. Marx clearly points out that there are two main research methods in political economy: one proceeds from economic categories, presupposing a priori the rationality of private property; the other proceeds from social relations, directly clarifying that the categories borne by private property are in fact reflections of the mechanism of interests. In *The Poverty of Philosophy*, Marx on the one hand points out that “economic categories are only the theoretical expressions, that is, the abstractions, of the social relations of production.” For example, machinery itself is only a part of the productive forces; only when it is integrated into the capitalist factory and combined with the capital relation does machinery manifest its character as a social relation of production, and only then is it abstracted into an economic category. For example, exchange value, as a social relation of production, “can exist only as an abstract, one-sided relation of an already given, concrete, living whole,” whereas as a category, “exchange value has an antediluvian existence.” On the other hand, Marx also criticizes Proudhon’s research method. He holds that Proudhon’s method inverts the relation between theory and reality, abstracting the social relations of production into eternal conceptual categories, thereby concealing the true essence of capitalist society.

第一，资本主义意识形态的生成机制。《资本论》及其手稿利用政治经济学研究方法，科学揭示了资本主义社会的特殊意识形态及其生成机制。马克思明确指出，政治经济学的研究方法主要有两种：一是从经济范畴出发，先验预设了私有财产的合理性；二是从社会关系出发，直接剖明了私有财产所承载的范畴实际上是利益机制的反映。在《哲学的贫困》中，马克思一方面指出，“经济范畴只不过是生产的社会关系的理论表现，即其抽象”。例如，机器本身只是生产力的一部分，只有当它融入资本工厂，与资本关系相结合时，机器才展现出其作为生产的社会关系的特性，进而被抽象为经济范畴。例如，交换价值作为生产的社会关系，“只能作为一个具体的、生动的既定整体的抽象的单方面的关系而存在”，而作为范畴，“交换价值却有一种洪水期前的存在”。另一方面，马克思还批判了蒲鲁东的研究方法。他认为蒲鲁东的研究方法颠倒了理论与现实的关系，将生产的社会关系抽象为永恒的概念范畴，从而掩盖了资本主义社会的真实本质。

Differences in research methods necessarily lead to different ideologies. On the one hand, the research method that proceeds from economic categories leads to an ideology centered on theoretical abstraction. This ideology processes the social relations of production through forms such as categories, concepts, and thought, and constructs the real content of society through the movement of ideas. For example, Hegel, through this method, condenses the living history of humanity into a history of categories and arranges it into the various moments of the self-movement of absolute spirit, thereby eliminating real historical differences and endowing it with historical eternity. However, this non-historical narrative of ideology in fact serves the requirement of justifying the rationality of production in capitalist society. It often reduces capital to a material form and, in the name of science, conceals the opposition between labour and capital and the mechanism of exploitation within society. As Marx criticizes, this ideology shapes capital into a material form, in which case capital is regarded as a pure thing rather than a relation of production.

研究方法的不同必然会导向不同的意识形态。一方面，从经济范畴出发的研究方法，导向以理论抽象为核心的意识形态，这种意识形态通过范畴、概念、思维等形式，对生产的社会关系进行加工，并以思想运动的方式建构现实的社会内容。例如，黑格尔便通过这种方法，将鲜活的人类史浓缩为范畴史，并将其编排入绝对精神自我运动的各个环节之中，从而消除了现实的历史性差别，赋予其历史的永恒性。然而，这种意识形态的非历史叙事，实际上服务于资本主义社会生产合理性的论证要求。它往往将资本简化为一种物质形态，并以科学的名义掩饰社会内部的劳资对立与剥削机制。正如马克思所批判的那样，这种意识形态将资本塑造成物质样态，在这种情况下，资本被看作纯粹的物，而不是生产关系。

On the other hand, the research method proceeding from social relations leads to a profound critique of the mechanism of interests. Bourgeois economists used the “labor theory of value” to provide a justification for the legitimacy of capital’s self-expansion. Smith, for instance, dogmatically treated capital as a certificate entitling its holder to a return on investment, holding that capital shares in the same mechanism of returns as rent and wages, and supplied two theoretical supports for this: the assumption of the rational economic man and Hobbes’s “law of the jungle.” Marx pointed out that these two theoretical supports essentially reduce social interests without limit to the interests of capital, thereby shaping an illusory social conception, namely, that “each person pursues his own private interest, and only his own private interest; in this way, he unconsciously serves the private interests of all, serves the universal interest.” [12]12 Marx, *The Holy Family*, in *Marx Engels Collected Works*, vol. 4, p. 197 (Chinese edition: *Collected Works of Marx and Engels*, vol. 2, p. 103). If we examine the French Revolution from the perspective of ideology, it is not difficult to discover that the French Revolution was in fact an Enlightenment movement of reality full of the cunning of reason. In this movement, secular individuals were endowed with atomic rationality and a high degree of economic self-awareness, and were no longer merely a tiny part or cog in the machine of feudal hierarchical society. Atomized individuals broke free from the bonds of religious moral norms and turned instead to the pursuit of economic freedom as a core value. This freedom was not a castle in the air, but was driven and guaranteed by a powerful mechanism of interests.

另一方面，从社会关系出发的研究方法，导向对利益机制的深刻批判。资产阶级经济学家通过“劳动价值论”为资本增殖的合法性提供了论证，如斯密教条地把资本视为取得投资回报的凭证，认为资本分享着与地租、工资相同的收益机制，并为此提供了两大理论支撑：理性经济人假设与霍布斯“丛林法则”。马克思指出，这两大理论支撑本质上是使社会利益无限倒退为资本利益，进而塑造出一种虚幻的社会观念，即“每个人追求自己的私人利益，而且仅仅是自己的私人利益；这样，也就不知不觉地为一切人的私人利益服务，为普遍利益服务”。假如我们从意识形态的视角审视法国大革命，不难发现，法国大革命实际上是一场充满理性的狡黠的现实启蒙运动。在这场运动中，世俗的个体被赋予了原子理性与高度经济自觉的特性，而不再仅仅是封建等级社会机器的一个微小部分或齿轮。原子化的个体挣脱了宗教道德规范的束缚，转而追求经济自由这一核心价值。这种自由并非空中楼阁，而是受到强大利益机制的驱动与保障。

Second, the operative mechanism of capitalist ideology. Capitalist ideology is devoted to constructing the social conception of the legitimate “enrichment” of capital, ceaselessly stimulating the desire of capitalists to create wealth. A close analysis of Max Weber’s *The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism* reveals that the Reformation was in essence a fresh reshaping of capitalist ideology: with the self-expansion of capital at its core, it injected elements of religious ideology so as to adapt to the needs of the continuous development and progress of capitalist production. Both Marx and Weber proceeded from labor, analyzing in depth the close connection between labor and the capitalist spirit (ideology). Weber, on the basis of the transformation of the modern world’s conception of labor, examined in detail how the Protestant ethic (especially the Puritan ethic and the Calvinist notion of the “calling”) made labor the most charismatic material activity in the world of production, thereby creating unprecedented wealth for the capitalist world. Marx, by contrast, examined labor from the perspective of political economy (which was likewise established on the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right), converting the category of abstract labor in classical economics into the economic-critical category of alienated labor, and overturning it into social critique (the critique of the opposition between capital and labor in capitalist relations) and philosophical critique (the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of spirit).

第二，资本主义意识形态的运行机制。资本主义意识形态致力于构建资本合法化“致富”的社会观念，不断激发资本家创造财富的欲望。深入剖析马克斯·韦伯的《新教伦理与资本主义精神》不难发现，宗教改革本质上是对资本主义意识形态的一次全新塑造，它以资本增殖为核心，同时注入了宗教意识形态的元素，以此适应资本主义生产持续发展与进步的需求。马克思与韦伯均从劳动出发，深入剖析了劳动与资本主义精神（意识形态）之间的紧密联系。韦伯基于现代世界劳动观念的转变，详细考察了新教伦理（特别是清教伦理与加尔文教的“天职观念”）如何使劳动成为生产世界中最具魅力的物质活动，从而为资本主义世界创造了前所未有的财富。而马克思则从政治经济学的视角（这同样建立在对黑格尔法哲学批判的基础上）审视劳动，将古典经济学中的抽象劳动范畴转换为经济批判范畴——异化劳动，并翻转为社会批判（对资本主义劳资关系对立的批判）和哲学批判（对黑格尔的精神哲学的批判）。

In terms of the height of critique, Marx opened up a critical path entirely different from Weber’s. Marx took his stand on the production mechanism of capital, clarified the core task of the critique of modernity, and, employing the discursive system of historical materialism, analyzed in depth the developmental thread of the “diachronic” and the “synchronic.” Marx revealed that the secret of the production of surplus labor is entirely different from that of pre-capitalist societies. In capitalist society, laborers are compelled to submit to the laws of commodity exchange under the logic of capital, selling their labor-power to obtain the means of subsistence needed to stay alive. The capitalist, by contrast, as the personification of capital, is devoted to the self-expansion of capital, and in this process forms the false ideology of the “eternity” of capital. Proceeding from the core secret of capitalist ideology, Marx pointed out that the essence of capital lies in capital’s possessive domination over labor. Capitalists engage in fierce competition in pursuit of profit maximization, while labor is reduced to an appendage of capital, subject to capital’s market regulation. Hence, the content of labor is distorted into a philosophy of the power of capital, and is demonstrated through the linguistic system of modern economics, thereby constructing a discourse system centered on “the greatness of capital” and “the glory of the capitalist,” forming a specific ideology.

就批判高度而言，马克思开辟了一条与韦伯截然不同的批判路径。马克思立足于资本的生产机制，明确了现代性批判的核心任务，并运用唯物史观的话语体系，深入剖析了“历时性”与“共时性”的发展脉络。马克思揭示出，剩余劳动的生产秘密与前资本社会截然不同。在资本主义社会，劳动者被迫服从于资本逻辑的商品交换规律，通过出卖劳动力以获取维持生计的生存资料。而资本家则作为资本的人格化代表，致力于资本的增殖，并在此过程中形成了资本“永恒”的虚假意识形态。马克思从资本主义意识形态的核心秘密出发，指出资本的本质在于资本对劳动的占有性支配。资本家为追求利润最大化而展开激烈竞争，而劳动则沦为资本的附属品，受制于资本的市场规制。因此，关于劳动的内容被扭曲为一种资本权力哲学，并通过现代经济学的语言体系加以论证，进而构建了以“资本伟大”“资本家光荣”为核心的话语体系，形成了特定的意识形态。

Horkheimer and Adorno continued this line of thought in *Dialectic of Enlightenment*, revealing how capitalist ideology takes effect through the culture industry. Horkheimer and Adorno analyzed in depth the external carriers of capitalist ideology, pointing out that those culture industries highly dependent on capital—such as film, radio, and advertising—constitute a special system for the dissemination of ideology. In this system, “capital has become the absolute master, deeply imprinted upon the hearts of the dispossessed toiling on the production line; whatever plot the producer chooses, the content of every film is nothing more than this.” [13]13 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, *Dialectic of Enlightenment*, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), p. 97 (Chinese edition: *Collected Works of Horkheimer and Adorno*, vol. 1, p. 112). Horkheimer and Adorno emphasized that capitalist ideology also continuously shapes mass consciousness through the culture industry, which constitutes a summons in the genetic sense of mass consciousness, thereby elevating capital’s power of assimilation and its charm of self-expansion without limit into a socially recognized force of identification. Although *Dialectic of Enlightenment* recognized the powerful force of capital within ideology and revealed how capitalist ideology takes effect through the culture industry, its analysis remains confined to the social surface, treating individuality as the key clue for seeing through the labyrinth of capitalist ideology. In the view of Horkheimer and Adorno, “individuality is nothing but the label that the power of the universal stamps upon contingent details, and only in this way can it accept this power.” [14]14 Ibid., p. 125 (Chinese edition: *Collected Works of Horkheimer and Adorno*, vol. 1, p. 140). Horkheimer and Adorno’s attempt to uncover the secret of the operation of capitalist ideology by taking individuality alone as the breakthrough point was evidently futile.

霍克海默与阿多诺（也译作阿道尔诺）在《启蒙辩证法》中延续了这一思路，揭示了资本主义意识形态如何通过文化工业发挥效用。霍克海默与阿多诺对资本主义意识形态的外在载体进行了深入的剖析，指出那些高度依附于资本的文化工业，如电影、广播和广告等，构成了一个特殊的意识形态传播系统。在这个系统中，“资本已经变成了绝对的主人，被深深地印在了在生产线上劳作的被剥夺者的心灵之中；无论制片人选择了什么样的情节，每部影片的内容都不过如此”。霍克海默与阿多诺强调，资本主义意识形态还通过文化工业不断塑造大众意识，这构成了大众意识发生学意义上的召唤，进而将资本的同化威力与增殖魅力无限擢升为社会性的认同力量。尽管《启蒙辩证法》认识到了资本在意识形态中的强大力量，揭示了资本主义意识形态如何通过文化工业发挥效用，但其分析仅限于社会表层，把个性视为洞悉资本主义意识形态迷障的关键线索。在霍克海默与阿多诺看来，“个性不过是普遍性的权力为偶然发生的细节印上的标签，只有这样，它才能够接受这种权力”。霍克海默与阿多诺试图仅以个性为突破口，揭开资本主义意识形态运行的秘密，显然是徒劳无功的。

In fact, *Capital* indicates two relatively clear directions of critique: first, the capitalist mode of production gives birth to capitalist ideology; second, the sphere of social intercourse forms economic fetishism. Classical economics, however, attempted to use economic intercourse (the sphere of exchange value) as its point of entry, forcibly defending the rationality of capitalist production. In view of this, Marx displayed this distinction in advance in Part 1 of Volume 1 of *Capital*: the capitalist ideology of the commodity-production process is concealed, while the economic fetishism of the process of social intercourse is brought to the fore.

事实上，《资本论》指明了两个相对明确的批判方向：一是资本主义生产方式孕育了资本主义意识形态，二是社会交往领域形成了经济拜物教。然而，古典经济学却试图用经济交往（交换价值领域）作为切入点，强行为资本生产的合理性进行辩护。鉴于此，马克思在《资本论》第1卷第1篇中提前展示了这种区别，即商品生产过程的资本主义意识形态被隐置，而社会交往过程的经济拜物教则被凸显出来。

First, the “mutual demonstration” between capitalist ideology and economic fetishism. Economic fetishism holds that value is the basic premise of social intercourse. In the process of intercourse, value “transforms every product of labor into a social hieroglyphic,” [15]15 Karl Marx, *Capital*, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin, 1976), p. 167 (Chinese edition: *Collected Works of Marx and Engels*, vol. 44, p. 91). endowing money with social significance. Yet “it is precisely this finished form of the world of commodities—the money form—that conceals, behind the form of things, the social character of private labor and the social relations of private laborers.” [16]16 Ibid., p. 168 (Chinese edition: *Collected Works of Marx and Engels*, vol. 44, p. 93). Through the mode of monetary intercourse, the products of private labor are transformed into commodities that can be exchanged as equivalents, thereby realizing the transformation of social relations into commodity relations. In the process of intercourse, the objective form of commodity exchange is gradually abstracted into the various categories of bourgeois economics (including philosophy). These categories presuppose the process of the commodification of labor-power and express it in the form of the laws of the movement of capital, thereby completing the ideological demonstration based on private property. When fetishism enters the accumulation stage of “capital producing surplus value,” capital fetishism truly reveals its essence: with the wage-labor relation as its legitimating content, it constitutes the core content of capitalist ideology.

首先，资本主义意识形态与经济拜物教之间的“互通论证”。经济拜物教认为价值是社会交往的基本前提。在交往过程中，价值把“每个劳动产品转化为社会的象形文字”，赋予了货币以社会意义。然而，“正是商品世界的这个完成的形式——货币形式，用物的形式掩盖了私人劳动的社会性质以及私人劳动者的社会关系”。通过货币交往的方式，私人劳动的产物得以转化为可等价交换的商品，从而实现了社会关系向商品关系的转变。在交往过程中，商品交换的客观形式逐渐抽象化为资产阶级经济学（包括哲学）中的各种范畴。这些范畴预设了劳动力商品化的过程，并将其以资本运动规律的形式表述出来，从而完成了以私有财产为基础的意识形态论证。当拜物教进入“剩余价值生产资本”的积累阶段时，资本拜物教才真正显露出其本质，即以雇佣劳动关系为合法性内容，构成了资本主义意识形态的核心内容。

Second, capital production achieves its legitimation at the ideological level. *Capital* profoundly reveals the close connection between capital domination, capital production, and capitalist ideology: by promoting the development of capital production, it skillfully conceals the domineering essence of capital. Specifically, from the shift from mercantilism to physiocracy, and then to the formation of classical economic thought, the content of capitalist ideology is continuously enriched and perfected in this process. The rise of mercantilism established the subjective status of money, overturning the outdated notion of “forced labor” in traditional feudal society; subsequently, physiocracy innovated the understanding of commercial surplus, taking natural forces as the main source of surplus; and classical economics elevated human subjectivity to the height of a ruling force, fully commodifying human labor capacity. The ultimate result of this series of transformations is that the notion “labor is not a base thing” was widely disseminated, thereby achieving the unity of “labor and capital” at the level of ideology. However, this unity is in fact a kind of ideological disguise, “thoroughly concealing the true nature of the labor contract and the greedy nature of the economic system.”

其次，资本生产得以在意识形态层面实现合法性论证。《资本论》深刻揭示了资本统治、资本生产与资本主义意识形态之间的紧密关联：通过推动资本生产的发展，巧妙地掩盖了资本的统治本质。具体来说，从重商主义向重农主义的转变，再到古典经济学思想的形成，资本主义意识形态内容在这一过程中不断丰富和完善。重商主义的兴起确立了货币的主体性地位，颠覆了传统封建社会中“强制劳动”的陈旧观念；随后，重农主义则对商业增殖的理解进行了革新，将自然力作为增殖的主要来源；而古典经济学更是将人的主体性擢升至统治力量的高度，使人的劳动能力全面商品化。这一系列变革的最终结果是，“劳动并不是下贱的事情”这一观念得以广泛传播，从而在观念学层面上实现了“劳动与资本”的统一。然而，这种统一实际上是一种意识形态的掩饰，“彻底掩盖了劳动契约的真实本质以及经济体系的贪婪本性”。

Finally, the concrete presentation of capitalist ideology. Against the background of machine-based large-scale industrial production, a machine ideology emerged. This ideology mistakenly holds that machines can indefinitely reduce the intensity of workers’ production and replace workers in producing surplus value, thereby providing an exploitative theoretical basis for “the machine abolishing all moral and natural limits of the working day”; the “factory code” and the “factory system” demonstrate the rationality of large-scale industrial production from the level of legal norms, thus forming an automatic mechanism of ideology. “Factory legislation is the first conscious and planned reaction of society to the spontaneous form of its production process.” Its basis lies in the fact that through legislation, profit can be maximally extracted, thereby clothing capitalist ideology in the legal guise of legitimacy. As Marx criticized, this law in fact only safeguards the interests of capitalists, while “the worker’s tuberculosis and other lung diseases are a condition of capital’s survival”; corresponding to factory legislation, capitalist ideology also manifests a tendency toward “anarchism.” This tendency advocates that capital production should transcend the physiological and moral limits of labor power, without needing to be constrained by law, the state, or other contents.

最后，资本主义意识形态的具体呈现。在机器大工业生产的背景下，机器意识形态应运而生。这种意识形态错误地认为，机器能够无限制地降低工人的生产强度，并取代工人完成剩余价值的生产，从而为“机器消灭了工作日的一切道德界限和自然界限”提供剥削的理论依据；“工厂法典”与“工厂制度”从法律规范层面上论证了大工业生产的合理性，由此形成了意识形态的自动化机制。“工厂立法是社会对其生产过程自发形态的第一次有意识、有计划的反作用”。其依据在于，通过立法的方式可以最大化地获取利益，从而使资本主义意识形态披上法律的合法外衣。正如马克思所批判的那样，这种法律实际上仅仅维护了资本家的利益，而“工人的肺结核和其他肺部疾病是资本生存的一个条件”；与工厂法相应的是，资本主义意识形态还表现为一种“无政府主义”的倾向。这种倾向主张资本生产应超越劳动力的生理与道德界限，无须受到法律、国家等内容的限制。

Third, the mechanism of destruction of capitalist ideology. Horkheimer and Adorno, in *Dialectic of Enlightenment*, deeply analyze the coercive, rationalized ideological phenomenon brought about by enlightenment. They point out that within the framework of the modern economic system, the model of economically compelled progress often conceals the role of ideology, thereby promoting a highly fused state among enlightenment, political domination, and ideology. This fusion makes it difficult for people to discern and resist ideology. Therefore, Horkheimer and Adorno hold that ideology persists in religious form, “what remains is only a reified form of religion.” This reified form continuously strengthens the “concealment effect” of ideology through materialized content, thereby intensifying “ideological pessimism”—the view that capitalist ideology cannot be eliminated. However, Marx holds a unique view on the elimination of ideology. Marx believes that to eliminate ideology, “one must explain it from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between social productive forces and relations of production,” that is, by eliminating capital and abolishing wage labor to accelerate the demise of ideology. Specifically, on the one hand, eliminating capital and reestablishing individual ownership is the core of the mechanism of destruction of capitalist ideology. Marx’s theory of the three major social forms points out that the capitalist social form provides the material basis for the new society, helping to form a free association of individuals and reestablish the system of individual ownership, thereby eliminating the system of private capital ownership and capitalist ideology; on the other hand, abolishing wage labor and promoting social common production are also important steps in accelerating the demise of ideology. In capitalist society, capitalist ideology emphasizes that “the equal exploitation of labor power is capital’s primary human right,” that is, an ideology of equality before capital exploitation; however, in the new society, workers will take possession of the means of production, and the surplus labor produced will belong to the whole society, thereby forming a new pattern of social common production. This transformation will powerfully promote the demise of capitalist ideology and achieve a fundamental change in social thought.

第三，资本主义意识形态的毁灭机制。霍克海默和阿多诺在《启蒙辩证法》中深入剖析了启蒙带来的强制化、理性式的意识形态现象。他们指出，在现代经济制度的框架下，经济强制进步的模式往往掩盖了意识形态的作用，进而促使启蒙、政治统治与意识形态之间形成高度融合的状态。这种融合导致人们对意识形态的甄别与抵制变得困难重重。因此，霍克海默与阿多诺认为，意识形态以宗教的形式存续，“保留下的仅仅是一种宗教的物化形式”。这种物化形式通过物质化的内容不断强化意识形态的“隐置效应”，从而加剧了“意识形态的悲观论”——资本主义意识形态是无法消除的。然而，马克思对于意识形态的消灭持有独特的见解。马克思认为，消灭意识形态，“必须从物质生活的矛盾中，从社会生产力和生产关系之间的现存冲突中去解释”，即通过消灭资本、消除雇佣劳动来加速意识形态的消亡。具体而言，一方面，消灭资本与重建个人所有制是资本主义意识形态毁灭机制的核心。马克思的三大社会形态理论指出，资本主义社会形态为新社会提供了物质基础，有助于形成自由人联合体并重新建立个人所有制度，进而消灭资本私人占有制度与资本主义意识形态；另一方面，消除雇佣劳动与推动社会共同生产也是加速意识形态消亡的重要步骤。在资本主义社会中，资本主义意识形态强调“平等地剥削劳动力，是资本的首要的人权”，即在资本剥削面前人人平等的意识形态；然而，在新社会中，工人将占有生产资料，生产出的剩余劳动归整个社会所有，从而形成社会共同生产的新格局。这一转变将有力推动资本主义意识形态的消亡，实现社会思想的根本性变革。

(Author bios: Zhou Luping is an associate professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Marxism, Shanghai Jiao Tong University; Wu Ting is a doctoral student at the School of Marxism, Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

（作者简介：上海交通大学马克思主义学院副教授、博士生导师；吴婷，上海交通大学马克思主义学院博士研究生）

(This article is a phased result of the Shanghai Philosophy and Social Science Planning Fund project “The Critique of the Working Day in *Capital* and Its Manuscripts and Its Dual Effects” (project no.: 2022BZX006))

（本文系上海市哲学社会科学规划基金项目“《资本论》及手稿的工作日批判及其双重效应”（项目号：2022BZX006）的阶段性成果）

Online editor: Tongxin

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