The Rise of Financial Capitalism and the End of Western Marxism

At the beginning of the 21st century, Chinese scholars, in the debate surrounding the “logical end” of Western Marxism, realized that the transformation of the philosophical methodology of Western Marxism fundamentally reflects changes in social-historical reality. It is a necessary task to examine the intellectual logic and limits of Western Marxism from the perspective of the evolutionary logic of capitalism since the 20th century, and to reflect on the methodological issues in the study of Western Marxism.

21世纪初，我国学者在围绕西方马克思主义“逻辑终结”所进行的争论中意识到，西方马克思主义哲学方法论的转变，从根本上反映出的是社会历史现实的变化。从20世纪以来资本主义发展演变逻辑，来看待西方马克思主义的思想逻辑及其限度，反思西方马克思主义研究的方法论问题，是一个必要的课题。

The Thought and Reality of Western Marxism

西方马克思主义的思想与现实

Perry Anderson, as early as his *Considerations on Western Marxism*, had already pointed out that the outbreak of a new round of crisis in Western capitalism in the 1970s highlighted the limits of Western Marxism, which was already a kind of “end thesis” in a certain sense. But Perry Anderson did not pursue the substance of this end. Some Chinese scholars believe that the “logical end thesis” of Western Marxism refers to the end of the philosophical methodology of Western Marxism in a narrow sense. Its logical main line is the humanist Marxism initiated by Lukács and others, which disintegrated in the 1960s under the counter-current of the scientism represented by Althusser; Adorno’s *Negative Dialectics* marked the complete negation of this philosophical methodology, thus logically ending Western Marxism. The Western left-wing theories and radical currents of thought after the 1970s should be summarized as entirely heterogeneous postmodern Marxism, post-Marxist currents, and late Marxism, among others. Scholars who oppose this “logical end thesis” argue that the unity of subject and object and totality are not the intellectual premises of all Western Marxism; they advocate defining Western Marxism in a broad sense, and consider postmodern Marxism and post-Marxism as a diversification and deepening of the research themes and methodologies of Western Marxism.

佩里·安德森早在其《西方马克思主义探讨》中就已经指出，20世纪70年代西方资本主义新一轮危机的爆发，凸显了西方马克思主义的限度，这已经是某种意义上的“终结论”了。但佩里·安德森并未追问这种终结的实质。我国一些学者认为，西方马克思主义“逻辑终结论”指的是狭义上的西方马克思主义哲学方法论的终结。其逻辑主线是卢卡奇等人开启的人本主义的马克思主义，它在20世纪60年代随着阿尔都塞所代表的科学主义的反拨而走向瓦解，阿多诺的《否定辩证法》则标志着对这一哲学方法论的彻底否定，从而在逻辑上终结了西方马克思主义。而20世纪70年代后的西方左翼理论和激进思潮应概括为完全异质的后现代马克思主义、后马克思思潮和晚期马克思主义等。反对这种“逻辑终结论”的学者，认为主客体统一性和总体性并非全部西方马克思主义的思想前提，主张从广义上来界定西方马克思主义，而后现代马克思主义和后马克思主义，要被认作为西方马克思主义在研究主题和方法论上的多元化和深化。

Leaving aside the differences, both sides of the debate acknowledge that there is a deep connection between the development of Western Marxism and the changes in capitalism after the 1970s. Therefore, how to understand this connection becomes an important issue. Echoing the Chinese academic community, the international academic community has also discussed the theoretical nature and limits of Western Marxism.

抛开区别不谈，争论两方都承认西方马克思主义的发展与20世纪70年代后资本主义的变化存在着深层的联系。所以如何理解这种联系，就成为一个重要问题。与中国学界相呼应，国际学界对西方马克思主义的理论性质和限度也进行过讨论。

Susan Strange studied the dramatic changes in the world’s credit system, banking, and production structures after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, pointing out that Western Marxism completely failed to pay attention to this transformation, and even held views on this issue indistinguishable from those of financial conservatives. The separation of theory and practice in Western Marxism is particularly reflected in its scant attention to the economic development and financialization transformation of capitalism, focusing instead on philosophical themes. David Graeber argued that the left-wing theory represented by Western Marxism only focused on the superficial results of capitalist bureaucracy; however, the financialization of capitalism caused class restructuring and cultural change, permeating capitalist bureaucracy into daily life in a more comprehensive way. Yet Western Marxism, having lost the specific state form of bureaucracy, showed aphasia in the face of this new object. The judgments of Strange and Graeber are in the same vein as the “logical end thesis” of Western Marxism.

苏珊·斯特兰奇对布雷顿森林体系瓦解之后世界信用体系和银行业，以及生产结构的剧烈变化进行了研究，她指出西方马克思主义完全没有关注到这一转型，甚至在这一问题上与金融保守主义者的观点并无二致。西方马克思主义理论与实践的分离，尤其体现为对资本主义的经济发展、金融化转型关注很少，而更多将注意力集中在哲学主题上。大卫·格雷伯认为，西方马克思主义所代表的左翼理论仅仅关注资本主义官僚制度的表层结果，然而，资本主义的金融化造成了阶级的重组和文化变革，将资本主义的官僚制以更为全面的方式渗透到了日常生活之中，但西方马克思主义却因为失去了特定国家形式的官僚制度，而在这一新的对象上表现出了失语状态。斯特兰奇和格雷伯的判断与西方马克思主义的“逻辑终结论”异曲同工。

From the perspective and method of Marxism, defining the historical logic of capitalist development since the 20th century, we can argue that the capitalist reality corresponding to classical Western Marxism is the capitalism of the period of the formation and completion of state monopoly capitalism. We can find much evidence for this in the representative figures of Western Marxism.

根据马克思主义的观点和方法对20世纪以来资本主义发展的历史逻辑进行界定，我们可以认为，经典西方马克思主义所对应的资本主义现实，是国家垄断资本主义形成和完成时期的资本主义。对此，我们可以在西方马克思主义代表人物那里找到诸多证明。

In *History and Class Consciousness*, Lukács already took the fact that capitalism had begun to adopt planning as an important basis for argumentation. In his judgment of capitalism at the time, Lukács clearly accepted the basic view of “state capitalism.” In his understanding of the revolutionary subject, Lukács also took the antagonistic struggle of class and class consciousness as a theoretical premise, and attempted to use the dialectics of the identity of subject and object to demonstrate the potential of the reflexivity of proletarian class consciousness to promote historical progress.

在《历史与阶级意识》中，卢卡奇就将资本主义开始采取计划这件事情作为一个重要的论证基础。在对当时资本主义的判断上，卢卡奇显然接受了“国家资本主义”的基本观点，在对革命主体的认识上，卢卡奇也将阶级和阶级意识的对抗斗争作为理论前提，并试图以主客体同一辩证法论证无产阶级阶级意识的自反性对推动历史进步的潜能。

In the early stages of the construction of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory, its main representatives first confronted the reality of state capitalism and conducted systematic and in-depth research on this issue. Horkheimer’s summary of the political priority and the “gang” characteristics of social relations in the “authoritarian state” of state capitalism served as the theoretical groundwork for the *Dialectic of Enlightenment*. The reality of state capitalism directly proved that capitalism, built on the method of individualism, had begun to turn into its opposite, dissolving the principle of individualism and establishing comprehensive domination.

在法兰克福学派批判理论建构的初期，其主要代表就首先直面了国家资本主义的现实，并对这个问题展开了系统而深入的研究。霍克海默对国家资本主义的“独裁主义国家”所表现出的政治上的优先性和社会关系上的“匪帮”特征的总结，是《启蒙辩证法》的理论铺垫。国家资本主义这一现实直接证明了建立在个体主义方法之上的资本主义，开始走向了自己的反面，消解了个体主义的原则，建立了全面的统治。

Foucault also discovered that the Freiburg School, as the theoretical origin of German neoliberalism, and the Frankfurt School were in a “parallel, analogous” “strange proximity relationship,” namely, both started from the Weberian “problem of the irrational rationality of capitalist society.” Later, Honneth also pointed out that Adorno’s understanding of society was based on “centrally organized capitalism.” Even the economists of the French Regulation School judged the reality basis of Althusser’s structuralist Marxism as state monopoly capitalism based on Keynesian theory, arguing that it only focused on the static structure of capitalist reproduction.

福柯也发现，作为德国新自由主义理论渊源的弗莱堡学派和法兰克福学派处于一种“平行、类似”的“奇怪临近关系”之中，即他们都从韦伯主义的“资本主义社会非理性的合理性问题”出发。后来，霍耐特也指出，阿多诺对社会的理解立足于“中央集权地组织起来的资本主义”之中。甚至，法国调节学派的经济学家也将阿尔都塞的结构主义马克思主义的现实基础，判断为凯恩斯主义理论之上的国家垄断资本主义，认为它只是关注了资本主义再生产的静态结构。

If we accept the judgment that the historical reality corresponding to Western Marxism in theory is the state monopoly capitalism of the 1920s to 1960s, then we will understand how the change in the reality of state monopoly capitalism itself led to the theoretical paradigm’s effectiveness falling into difficulty.

如果我们接受了西方马克思主义在理论上对应的历史现实就是20世纪20—60年代的国家垄断资本主义这一判断的话，那么就会明白国家垄断资本主义的现实本身发生的改变，如何导致这种理论范式的效力陷入困境之中。

The Financialization Transformation of Capitalism and the Discursive Turn of Western Left-Wing Theory

资本主义金融化转型与西方左翼理论的话语转向

Regarding the financialization of capitalism and the closely related neoliberal transformation, the academic community at home and abroad has already fully discussed it. We first summarize the core features of this transformation.

关于资本主义的金融化以及与之密切相关的新自由主义转型，国内外学术界已经作出了充分讨论。我们首先对这一转变的核心特征作一个概括。

(I) The Financialization Transformation of Capitalism

（一）资本主义的金融化转型

Economically, the transformation of capitalist financialization directly stems from the crisis of state monopoly capitalism. After World War II, state monopoly capitalism was established. Domestically, this form of capitalism generally adopted a welfare state system of state intervention in distribution, easing class contradictions, and promoting social welfare; internationally, it established a world economic order dominated by the United States, marked by the Bretton Woods system. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Western capitalism began to encounter a severe crisis, and the post-war model of state monopoly capitalism became unsustainable. The reasons are: first, due to post-war U.S. global military expansion and monopoly capital export, the United States quickly transformed from a creditor nation to a debtor nation; the severe imbalance in international trade made the gold standard of the Bretton Woods system unsustainable. Second, after 1970, along with the post-war reconstruction and the arrival of the limits of a new round of capital accumulation, the economies of major capitalist countries began to stagnate. At the same time, Western capitalist countries, adhering to Keynesianism as their guiding principle, continued to stimulate the economy with fiscal and monetary policies, thus causing severe inflation and creating a “stagflation crisis.”

从经济上看，资本主义金融化的转型直接源于国家垄断资本主义的危机。二战后，国家垄断资本主义得以确立，这种资本主义在国内普遍采取了国家干预分配，缓和阶级矛盾，推动社会福利的福利国家制度；而在国际上，则确立了以布雷顿森林体系为标志的、美国主导的世界经济秩序。20世纪60年代末70年代初，西方资本主义开始遭遇严重危机，二战后的国家垄断资本主义模式难以为继，其原因在于：其一，由于战后美国全球军事扩张和垄断资本输出，使得美国迅速从债权国转变为债务国，国际贸易的严重不平衡，致使布雷顿森林体系的金本位无法维系；其二，1970年之后，伴随着战后重建和新一轮资本积累限度的到来，主要资本主义国家经济开始陷入停滞，与此同时，奉凯恩斯主义为圭臬的西方资本主义国家继续以财政政策和货币政策来拉动经济，因此造成了严重的通货膨胀，造成了“滞涨危机”。

Faced with the abolition of the gold standard and the stagflation crisis, the neoliberal economics represented by Hayek and Friedman quickly dominated economic policy. They advocated placing the value of currency into international market competition and implementing floating exchange rates. At the same time, they sharply criticized Keynesianism, pointing out that inflation was an inevitable result of state intervention, and advocated returning the right to issue currency to the market; otherwise, it would become a means of exploitation by the bureaucratic group. Marketization and privatization became the core tenets of neoliberalism. Concurrently, regulation of the banking and financial industries was relaxed, and the process of financialization, primarily through credit and financial derivatives expansion, began to accelerate significantly.

面对金本位的取消和滞涨危机，哈耶克和弗里德曼所代表的新自由主义经济学迅速主导了经济政策，他们主张将货币的价值放入国际市场的竞争之中，推行浮动汇率；与此同时，他们尖锐批判凯恩斯主义，指出通货膨胀是国家干预的必然结果，主张将货币的发行权还给市场，否则它就将成为官僚集团的剥削手段。市场化、私有化成为新自由主义的核心主张。与此同时，对银行业和金融业的监管也随之放松，以信贷和金融衍生品为主要扩张手段的金融化进程开始大大加速。

Alongside the process of financialization, the class relations of bourgeois society have begun to restructure. Enterprise owners and managers no longer maintain a “unstable” community of interest with enterprise workers to a certain extent, as manifested in the historical process from the 1920s to the 1960s; instead, they have begun to unite with banks and investors, and enterprise operations increasingly submit to the rate-of-return requirements of financial capital. At the same time, the processes of financialization and neoliberalization have greatly accelerated the global expansion of monopoly capital. During this process, industrial capital has been massively transferred to late-developing countries, which has also caused the working class within developed capitalist countries to lose its bargaining power. However, the rapid development of the tertiary sector dominated by finance and services has changed the class structure of capitalist countries. The consequence of this restructuring of class relations and social structure is that the workers’ movement in developed capitalist countries has rapidly atrophied, the discourse of class analysis has thus lost its foundation, while the discourse of identity politics has increasingly come into play. Furthermore, along with the financialization of capitalism, crisis and risk have begun to be embedded in everyday life.

伴随着金融化的进程，资产阶级社会的阶级关系开始了重组。企业主和管理人员不再像20世纪20—60年代的历史进程中所表现出的那样，与企业工人在一定程度上保持一种“不稳定的”利益共同体，而是开始与银行和投资人团结在一起，企业的经营日渐服从于金融资本的回报率要求。与此同时，金融化和新自由主义化进程，大大加速了垄断资本的全球扩张，产业资本在这一过程中大规模转移到后发国家，这也造成了发达资本主义国家内部的工人阶级失去了议价权，但金融业和服务业主导的第三产业快速发展，改变了资本主义国家的阶级结构。这种阶级关系和社会结构重组的后果是，发达资本主义国家的工人运动迅速萎缩，阶级分析的话语因此失去了基础，而身份政治的话语则日益发挥作用。此外，伴随着资本主义的金融化，危机与风险开始逐渐被植入到日常生活之中。

(II) The Ideological Effects of the Financialization of Capitalism

（二）资本主义金融化转型的思想效应

The financialization of capitalism has produced a twofold ideological effect:

资本主义金融化转型，造成了两重的思想效应：

First, the dialectic of subject-object identity constructed by Western Marxism on the basis of the analysis of commodity production has lost its critical efficacy. Western Marxism, especially the critique of reification and the critique of ideology founded by Lukács on the dialectic of subject-object identity, can no longer analyze financialized and neoliberalized capitalism. After the 1970s, new explorations in contemporary Western leftist thought often manifest as attempts to find new critical frameworks outside commodity production, which simultaneously implies the possibility of seeking new revolutionary subjects outside the traditional setting of the revolutionary subject. The restructuring of social class relations driven by financialization incorporates all individuals into the logic of capital valorization, transforming individuals into “human capital,” thereby eliminating subjectivity. The critique of the logic of identity by Horkheimer and Adorno cannot effectively analyze the mobilization mechanisms of financialization and neoliberalization. The compulsory identity of capitalism revealed through exchange abstraction is, rather, a critical antithesis of the economic man model based on Keynesianism. The financialization of capitalism and neoliberalism produce an ideology of modern cynicism, a situation that exceeds the theoretical scope of the Western Marxist critique of ideology.

其一，西方马克思主义在商品生产分析之上所建构的主客体同一辩证法失去了批判效力。西方马克思主义，特别是卢卡奇所奠基的、建立在主客体同一辩证法之上的物化批判和意识形态批判，已经无法对金融化和新自由主义化的资本主义进行分析。20世纪70年代后，当代西方左翼思想的新探索，往往体现为试图在商品生产之外寻找新的批判框架，这同时也意味着在传统的革命主体设定之外，寻找新的革命主体的可能。金融化所推动的社会阶级关系重组，将一切个体都纳入资本增殖逻辑之中，将个体改造为“人力资本”，从而消除了主体性。霍克海默和阿多诺的同一性逻辑批判并不能有效分析金融化和新自由主义化的动员机制。通过交换抽象揭示出的资本主义同一性强制，毋宁说是以凯恩斯主义为基础的经济人模型的批判性反题。资本主义的金融化和新自由主义所制造的是现代犬儒主义的意识形态，这一状况超出了西方马克思主义意识形态批判的理论范围。

Second, the issue of money has gradually become a focal point of increasing concern in Western leftist theory. Financialization and the neoliberal transformation, at their theoretical root, represent a return by Hayek and Friedman to the quantity theory of money of classical political economy; they constructed a modern monetarism. The modern monetarism of neoliberalism, in principle, advocates re-anchoring money to a natural principle free from human intervention. Although classical Western Marxism had the theoretical guidance of Marx’s critique of the fetishism of money, it rarely conducted in-depth research on the intrinsic relationship between money and the concrete forms of capitalism, neglecting Marx’s approach of unifying the theory of money with the capitalist mode of production.

其二，货币问题开始逐渐成为西方左翼理论日益关注的焦点。金融化和新自由主义转型，在理论根基上，就是哈耶克和弗里德曼对古典政治经济学的货币数量论的回归，他们建构了一种现代货币主义。新自由主义的现代货币主义在原则上主张将货币重新锚定在一个不受人为干预的自然性原则之上。经典西方马克思主义尽管有马克思货币拜物教批判的理论指导，但在货币与资本主义具体形式的内在关系问题上很少进行深入研究，它忽视了马克思将货币理论与资本主义生产方式统一在一起的做法。

Faced with the above ideological effects, numerous thinkers and theorists have stepped outside the theoretical horizon of Western Marxism, launching critical analyses of the reality of financial capitalism with a clear problem-consciousness, thereby forming a discursive turn.

面对以上思想效应，众多思想家、理论家跳出了西方马克思主义理论视域，以明确的问题意识对金融资本主义现实展开了批判性分析，形成了话语上的转向。

(III) The Discovery of Credit Money and Its Critical Dimension

（三）对信用货币及其批判性维度的发现

Western leftist critical social theory, seeking theoretical tools from outside the analytical discourse of traditional Marxism to critique financial capitalism, is centrally embodied in the theory of credit money.

西方左翼社会批判理论从传统马克思主义的分析话语之外找寻理论工具来对金融资本主义展开批判，集中体现在信用货币理论上。

On the one hand, the theory of credit money has been reactivated within leftist theory and has gradually replaced the theory of commodity money. As David Harvey quotes in *The Limits to Capital*: “Western economies have been almost continuously in a commodity-money system from the dawn of history right up to the present day. More precisely, it is only from 1973 that it has been claimed that a monetary system having no connection with the world of commodities is the normal state of affairs.” The Regulation School and the views of Michael Hudson have influenced scholars including David Graeber, who, from the perspective of credit money—specifically, by approaching the origin and essence of money through debt—analyzes contemporary capitalism. The reality of financial capitalism and the explanatory trend of credit money have prompted reflection on the nature of Marx’s theory of money. In contemporary Western academia, an increasingly consensual understanding is that, in Marx’s theory, money need not necessarily be a commodity, even in its function as a measure of value.

一方面，信用货币理论开始在左翼理论中被激活并逐步取代了商品货币理论。正如大卫·哈维在《资本的限度》中所引用的判断：“西方的经济体从历史的黎明一直到当前的时代几乎都处于商品货币的体系中。更确切地说，人们只是从1973年开始才宣称，与商品世界没有任何联系是货币体系的正常特征。”调节学派和迈克尔·赫德森的观点影响了包括大卫·格雷伯在内的学者，后者从信用货币的角度，具体而言从债务切入货币的起源和本质，从而分析当代资本主义。金融资本主义的现实和信用货币的解释潮流，促使人们反思马克思货币理论的性质问题，在当代西方学界，一个越来越具有共识性的认识是，在马克思的理论中，货币并不必一定是一种商品，即便是在价值尺度这一功能上。

On the other hand, the introduction of the theory of credit money has opened up space for explaining the social content that underpins the monetary system. From the perspective of philosophy and cultural studies, leftist critical social theory since the 1970s has begun to focus on the mobilization mechanisms of financial capitalism. The core logic of the financialization of capitalism is to use expectations of future valorization to dominate present transactions based on credit money. Desire and confidence have become the cornerstones supporting exchange value and maintaining the world capitalist order of the present era. Deleuze and Guattari began to reinterpret history and capitalism using desire production, the territorialization and deterritorialization of desire; this interpretation is precisely rooted in an insight into the inner logic of financial capitalism: the driving force that makes the world order function is no longer the need for use value, but desire. Baudrillard, too, based on the theory of symbolic exchange provided by anthropological research, perceived that symbolic meaning has become the motive for consumption. Furthermore, Negri and Hardt, as well as Italian Marxists including Lazzarato, have also consciously taken the financialization of capitalism as their basic starting point, thereby focusing their attention on immaterial labor, which is inseparable from the financialization of capitalism.

另一方面，信用货币理论的引入，为解释支撑货币体系的社会内容打开了空间。从哲学和文化研究的角度来看，20世纪70年代以来的左翼社会批判理论开始关注金融资本主义的动员机制。资本主义的金融化，其核心逻辑就是以未来增殖的预期来主导当下建立在信用货币之上的交易。欲望和信心成为支撑交换价值、维系当代世界资本主义秩序的基石。德勒兹和瓜塔里开始用欲望生产、欲望的辖域化和去辖域化来重新解释历史和资本主义，这一解读恰恰根植于对金融资本主义内在逻辑的洞见：使得世界秩序得以运转的动因已经不再是使用价值的需要，而是欲望。而鲍德里亚也基于人类学研究提供的象征交换理论洞见到，符号意义成为消费的动机。此外，奈格里和哈特，以及包括拉扎拉托在内的意大利马克思主义者，也自觉地将资本主义的金融化作为基本的出发点，从而将目光聚焦在与资本主义金融化密不可分的非物质劳动之上。

Examining Western Leftist Intellectual Resources with the Marxist Method of Totality

以马克思主义的总体性方法审视西方左翼思想资源

Contemporary world capitalism is undergoing its most profound crisis since the 1970s; it is one of the fundamental causes of the changes unseen in a century in which the world finds itself today. The significance of examining Western Marxism and contemporary Western leftist theory within the transformation of capitalism is manifested in the following two aspects:

当代世界资本主义正在经历着自20世纪70年代以来最深刻的危机，它是当今世界所处的百年未有之大变局的根本诱因之一。将西方马克思主义和当代西方左翼理论放置在资本主义的转变中进行考察，其意义体现在如下两个方面：

From a theoretical perspective, examining the development, changes, and discursive turns of Western Marxism and contemporary leftist theory, as well as their intrinsic connection with the transformation of the capitalist mode of accumulation, is precisely a manifestation of the Marxist method of totality. Marxism is “a single block of steel”; as a science of liberation, Marxism is by its essential nature characterized by breaking through disciplinary boundaries. The Marxist method of totality thus provides us with an entry point for breaking through the disciplinary boundaries of philosophy, political economy, and social theory, and for re-examining the history of the development of Marxism.

从理论的角度来看，考察西方马克思主义和当代左翼理论的发展变迁和话语转向，以及与资本主义积累方式的转型之间的内在联系，正是马克思主义理论总体方法的表现。马克思主义是“一块整钢”，作为解放的科学，马克思主义在本质规定性上就具有突破学科壁垒的属性。马克思主义的总体性方法因而为我们突破哲学、政治经济学和社会理论的学科界限，重新审视马克思主义发展史提供了一个入口。

From a practical perspective, the analysis by contemporary Western leftist theory of the transformation of financial capitalism and its social, political, and cultural consequences has a certain enlightening significance for us. The world today is in the midst of changes unseen in a century, the essence of which is that the capitalist mode of accumulation since the 1970s is exhausting its space for development. The negative factors inherent in the processes of capitalist financialization and neoliberalization are becoming increasingly prominent, pushing contemporary world capitalism into an ever more dangerous situation.

从现实的角度来看，当代西方左翼理论对金融资本主义的转型及其社会、政治和文化后果的分析，对我们有一定的启示性意义。当今世界正处于百年未有之大变局，其本质就是20世纪70年代以来的资本主义的积累模式正在耗尽其发展空间。资本主义的金融化和新自由主义化的进程之中所蕴含的否定性因素开始日益凸显出来，并将当代世界资本主义推向了日益危险的境地。

At the same time, socialism with Chinese characteristics presents a completely different situation. This is the standpoint from which we examine Western leftist theoretical resources with the Marxist method of totality, and conduct research on them with a clear historical consciousness and a Chinese position.

与此同时，中国特色社会主义则呈现出完全不同的状况，这是我们以马克思主义的总体性方法审视西方左翼理论资源，以明确的历史性思维和中国立场对之展开研究的立足点。

On the one hand, we must re-examine the historical context and historical status of Western Marxism. In the process of understanding, studying, and applying the critical tools and theoretical categories of Western Marxism, we must pay attention not only to the complex relationship between the macro-level history of capitalist social development and the history of thought, but also, from a micro perspective, to the specific theoretical situation in which particular ideas, particular figures, and particular works emerge. If these are uncritically applied to the analysis of China’s practical problems, multiple dislocations between theory and reality will appear, reducing academic research to a “marking the boat to find the sword”[15]15 A Chinese idiom from the *Spring and Autumn Annals* (Lüshi Chunqiu), meaning to act rigidly according to outdated methods, ignoring changed circumstances. approach.

一方面，我们要重新审视西方马克思主义的历史语境、历史地位。在理解、研究和运用西方马克思主义的批判工具和理论范畴的过程中，我们既要注意宏观层面的资本主义的社会发展史与思想史之间的复杂关联，更要重视微观视角下特定思想、特定人物和特定著作出场的具体理论形势。如果不加批判地将之用于中国现实问题的分析，就会呈现理论与现实的多重错位，沦为“刻舟求剑”式的学术研究。

On the other hand, reflecting on the intellectual-historical, theoretical, and practical dimensions of the logical tradition of Western left-wing theory has a certain reference significance for Marxist research in China. As socialism with Chinese characteristics enters the New Era, China is building a modern socialist great power; at the same time, China has already deeply integrated into the contemporary world, and Chinese-path modernization has become a solution attracting worldwide attention. While closely tracking the study of Marxism abroad, we should also bid farewell to the apprentice mentality, conduct research with a confident and equal attitude, and with a problem-consciousness rooted in the times.

另一方面，对西方左翼理论传统逻辑的思想史、理论和现实维度的反思，对中国的马克思主义研究，有着一定的参考意义。中国特色社会主义进入新时代，中国正在建设社会主义现代化强国，同时中国也已经深度融入当代世界，中国式的现代化成为一个备受世界人民瞩目的方案。我们在密切跟踪国外马克思主义研究的同时，还应当告别学徒心态，以自信和平等的态度，以立足时代的问题意识开展研究。

(Excerpted from *Journal of Nanjing University (Philosophy, Humanities and Social Sciences)*, Issue 5, 2024; original title: “The Rise of Financial Capitalism and the End of Western Marxism—Also on Methodological Issues in the Study of Western Marxism”)

(摘自《南京大学学报（哲学·人文科学·社会科学）》2024年第5期；原题为《金融资本主义的兴起与西方马克思主义的终结——兼论西方马克思主义研究的方法论问题》)

Online editor: Zhang Jian

网络编辑：张剑