The Specific Pathways by Which Marx Developed Historical Materialism

The establishment of historical materialism revealed the universal essence of human society and the general laws of social development, laying a solid philosophical foundation for the birth of Marxism as a whole. However, as a theorist and revolutionary, Marx never treated his own theory in a dogmatic manner. After the establishment of historical materialism, Marx, in the practice of guiding the workers’ movement and the proletarian revolution, continuously engaged in deep theoretical reflection, opening up three specific pathways for developing historical materialism, thereby demonstrating the dialectical interaction between universal theory and particular practice.

唯物史观的创立，揭示了人类社会的普遍本质和社会发展的一般规律，为整个马克思主义的诞生奠定了坚实的哲学基础。但作为理论家和革命家的马克思，从来不是以教条主义的态度对待自己的理论。唯物史观创立之后，马克思在指导工人运动和无产阶级革命的实践中，不断进行深入的理论思考，开启了发展唯物史观的三条具体路径，彰显出普遍理论与特殊实践之间的辩证互动。

Analyzing Specific Political Events in France

剖析法国的具体政治事件

In texts such as *The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850* and *The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte*, Marx applied historical materialism to analyze specific political events, grasping the situation of class struggle and political struggle in France during a particular period, and providing concrete strategic guidance for the proletarian revolution.

马克思在《1848年至1850年的法兰西阶级斗争》《路易·波拿巴的雾月十八日》等文本中，运用唯物史观分析特定政治事件，把握法国特定时期阶级斗争和政治斗争的形势，为无产阶级革命提供具体的策略指导。

The European revolutions of 1848 intensified class contradictions and class struggles in French society, and Louis Bonaparte took the opportunity to successfully restore the empire, staging a farce imitating the Empire. In response, Marx penetrated the surface of ideology and traditional notions, explaining it from the dimension of class struggle determined by the economic base. Initially, spurred by the ideology of “liberty, equality, fraternity,” the proletariat and the bourgeoisie briefly united to launch the February Revolution, overthrowing the July Monarchy and establishing a bourgeois republic. The new regime only safeguarded the interests of the bourgeoisie, disregarding the reasonable demands of the proletariat for social reform. The proletariat was forced to launch the June Uprising but was brutally suppressed by the bourgeoisie. Finally, under the illusion of the “Napoleonic idea,” the small-holding peasant class, which constituted the majority of the French population, supported Napoleon’s nephew, Louis Bonaparte, as the new emperor.

1848年的欧洲革命，加剧了法国社会的阶级矛盾和阶级斗争，路易·波拿巴趁机成功复辟，上演了一出模仿帝国的滑稽剧。对此，马克思穿透意识形态和传统观念的表象，从经济基础决定的阶级斗争维度予以阐释。起初，在“自由、平等、博爱”意识形态的鼓动下，无产阶级与资产阶级短暂联合发动二月革命，推翻七月王朝，建立起资产阶级共和国。新政权仅维护资产阶级的利益，置无产阶级社会改革的合理诉求于不顾，无产阶级被迫发动六月起义，但惨遭资产阶级血腥镇压。最后，在“拿破仑观念”的迷惑下，占法国人口多数的小农阶级拥护拿破仑的侄子路易·波拿巴成为新皇帝。

Marx noted that the “Napoleonic idea,” as “the idea born of the undeveloped, vigorous small-holding,” was essentially a concrete ideological reflection of the small-holding peasant economic relations in France. Although it lagged behind bourgeois ideology, in France, where the capitalist mode of production was already considerably developed, it still dominated the political choices of the numerically largest peasant class. The historical event of Bonaparte’s restoration precisely demonstrates that ideology possesses relative independence and can react upon social existence, accelerating or retarding historical development.

马克思注意到，“拿破仑观念”作为“不发达的、朝气蓬勃的小块土地所产生的观念”，实质上是法国小农经济关系在意识形态层面的具体反映。虽然它落后于资产阶级意识形态，但在资本主义生产方式已有相当发展的法兰西，却仍然支配着人数最为众多的农民阶级的政治选择。波拿巴复辟的历史事件恰恰表明，意识形态具有相对独立性，能够反作用于社会存在，加速或延缓历史的发展。

Marx believed that the February Revolution was a democratic revolution in which the bourgeoisie united with the proletariat to overthrow feudal fetters, while the June Uprising was a proletarian revolution directly triggered by the bourgeois republic’s betrayal of the proletariat’s class expectations. Had the June Uprising succeeded, France might have moved toward a socialist revolution; but its failure showed that for the revolution to develop in an ascending direction, the awakening of proletarian consciousness and the construction of a worker-peasant alliance were necessary. The proletariat not only had to form a clear class consciousness and political goals, fully playing its role as the revolutionary subject, but also had to lead the peasant class in jointly eliminating the remnants of the old system and its ideology. Through permanent revolution, the bourgeois democratic revolution would develop into a socialist revolution, establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat and gradually transitioning to a communist society.

马克思认为，二月革命是资产阶级联合无产阶级推翻封建桎梏的民主革命，六月起义则是因资产阶级共和国背叛无产阶级的阶级期望而直接引发的无产阶级革命。六月起义若胜利，法国或将走向社会主义革命；但它的失败表明，革命要沿着上升方向发展需要无产阶级意识的觉醒和工农联盟的建构。无产阶级不仅要形成清晰的阶级意识和政治目标，充分发挥革命主体作用，还要带领农民阶级共同清除旧制度及其意识形态残余。通过不断革命，资产阶级民主革命将发展为社会主义革命，建立无产阶级专政，逐步过渡到共产主义社会。

Through his concrete analysis of the living historical event of the class struggles in France in 1848, Marx deepened and developed historical materialism. He not only emphasized the determining role of economic relations but also revealed the complex and multidimensional interaction between class struggle, ideology, and the historical process, thereby making the theoretical content of historical materialism concerning revolutionary strategy, state power, and ideological critique more concrete and enriched.

马克思通过对1848年法国阶级斗争这一鲜活历史事件的具体化剖析，深化和发展了唯物史观。他不仅强调了经济关系的决定性作用，也揭示了阶级斗争、意识形态与历史进程之间复杂多维的相互作用，从而使唯物史观中关于革命战略、国家政权与意识形态批判的理论内容变得更加具体、丰富。

Elucidating the Laws of the Capitalist Mode of Production

阐明资本主义生产方式规律

The economic and philosophical research begun in 1843 paved the way for the establishment of historical materialism, and after 1848, Marx’s critique of political economy became a paradigm for the concrete development of historical materialism. The research and writing of *Capital* directly led to the birth of the theory of surplus value.

1843年开始的经济学哲学研究为唯物史观的创立作了铺垫，1848年之后马克思的政治经济学批判则成为唯物史观具体化发展的典范。而《资本论》的研究和写作，直接促成了剩余价值理论的诞生。

*Capital* reveals that the commodity, as the economic cell of capitalism, possesses two attributes: use-value and value. Within the capitalist relations of production, labor power becomes a special commodity; its use-value is the source of value, and in the process of consumption, it can create new value greater than the value of labor power itself. This new value consists of the value of labor power and surplus value. Workers are forced to sell their labor power on the market; capitalists, following the so-called principle of “equivalent exchange,” purchase the commodity of labor power and combine it with the means of production, thereby forming wage-labor relations. Beneath the cloak of equal exchange lies the exploitative and unequal essence of wage-labor relations.

《资本论》揭示，作为资本主义经济细胞的商品具有使用价值与价值两种属性。在资本主义生产关系中，劳动力成为一种特殊商品，其使用价值是价值的源泉，在消费过程中能创造出比劳动力本身价值更大的新价值。这一新价值由劳动力价值和剩余价值构成。劳动者被迫在市场上出售劳动力，资本家按照所谓的“等价交换”原则，购买劳动力商品，将其与生产资料结合，由此形成雇佣劳动关系。平等交换的外衣下掩盖着雇佣劳动关系的剥削和不平等本质。

The antagonism between capital and labor is the manifestation of the internal contradictions of the mode of production in capitalist society, the fundamental cause of which is the capitalists’ pursuit of surplus value. The wage labor of workers can be divided into two parts: necessary labor, which reproduces the value of their own labor power, and surplus labor, which creates surplus value that is appropriated by the capitalist without compensation. To extract more surplus value, capitalists often adopt two methods: first, under the condition of constant necessary labor time, by extending the working day or increasing labor intensity to extract absolute surplus value; second, under the condition of a constant working day length, by increasing productivity to shorten necessary labor time and extract relative surplus value. Capitalist exploitation plunges workers into a “dual predicament of material scarcity and spiritual impoverishment,” prompting workers to transform from a “class-in-itself” into a “class-for-itself,” becoming the main force for transforming capitalist society.

资本与劳动的对抗是生产方式内在矛盾在资本主义社会的表现，其根本原因是资本家对剩余价值的追逐。工人的雇佣劳动可以划分为两个部分：再生产自身劳动力价值的必要劳动、创造被资本家无偿占有的剩余价值的剩余劳动。为了攫取更多的剩余价值，资本家往往采取两种方法：一是在必要劳动时间不变的条件下，通过延长劳动时间或提高劳动强度，攫取绝对剩余价值；二是在工作日长度不变的条件下，通过提高生产率缩短必要劳动时间，攫取相对剩余价值。资本剥削导致工人陷入“物质短缺和精神贫乏的双重困境”，促使工人由“自在阶级”转变为“自为阶级”，成为变革资本主义社会的主体力量。

In his systematic critique of the capitalist economic structure, Marx not only elucidated the essence of the capitalist system and the historical mission of the proletariat but also proposed practical directions including shortening the working day, abolishing the old division of labor, and reconstructing individual property. By applying historical materialism to the concrete analysis of the capitalist production process, he founded the theory of surplus value, providing the proletariat with a scientific theoretical weapon and guide to action for its liberation, achieving the unity of universal law and particular practice.

在对资本主义经济结构的系统批判中，马克思不仅阐明了资本主义制度的本质和无产阶级的历史使命，也提出了包括缩短工作日、消灭旧式分工、重建个人所有制在内的实践方向。他将唯物史观贯彻于对资本主义生产过程的具体分析中，创立了剩余价值学说，为无产阶级解放提供了科学的理论武器和行动指南，实现了普遍规律与特殊实践的统一。

Exploring the Specific Pathway for Crossing the “Caudine Forks”

探寻跨越“卡夫丁峡谷”的具体路径

Marx’s investigative gaze shifted from the developed capitalist countries of Europe to the relatively backward Eastern societies. Through his examination of the “Asiatic mode of production” and the Russian rural commune, he explored the issue of the diversity of social formation development, continuously deepening and developing his theory of historical materialism.

马克思探究的眼光从欧洲资本主义发达国家转向相对落后的东方社会，通过对“亚细亚生产方式”以及俄国农村公社的考察，探寻社会形态发展的多样性问题，不断深化和发展自己的唯物史观理论。

In texts such as the *Ethnological Notebooks*, the letter to the editorial board of *Otechestvennye Zapiski*, and the letter to Vera Zasulich, Marx integrated the universal logic of the internal contradictions of the mode of production into the unique forms of communal labor and its internal contradictions. By analyzing the existential contradictions of the Russian rural commune, he provided a new pathway suited to its own national conditions for Eastern societies in a pre-capitalist stage of development to choose a path of social development and realize the free and comprehensive development of the individual.

在《人类学笔记》《给〈祖国纪事〉杂志编辑部的信》《给维·伊·查苏利奇的复信》等文本中，马克思将生产方式内在矛盾的普遍逻辑融入公社劳动及其内在矛盾的独特形式中，通过剖析俄国农村公社的生存矛盾，为处于前资本主义发展阶段的东方社会选择社会发展道路、实现人的自由全面发展，提供了契合自身国情的新路径。

The rural commune was the basic organizational form of traditional Russian society, and its evolutionary process exhibited three major characteristics: first, in terms of membership, the blood ties of the primitive commune gradually dissolved, replaced by social organizations composed of free individuals without blood ties; second, in terms of housing property rights, communal ownership of houses gradually disintegrated, with houses and attached garden plots becoming the private property of peasants; third, in terms of land distribution, although the periodically redistributed arable land retained its communal attribute, the products of labor belonged to private individuals.

农村公社是俄国传统社会的基本组织形式，其演进过程呈现三大特征：一是在成员构成上，原始公社的血缘纽带逐渐消解，代之以非血缘自由人构成的社会组织；二是在房屋产权上，房屋共有制逐渐解体，房屋及附属园地成为农民私有财产；三是在耕地分配上，定期重新分配的耕地虽保留公有属性，但劳动产品属于私有。

Influenced by the expansion of Western European capitalism and the concept of private property, a contradiction between private ownership and communal ownership emerged within the rural commune. These two opposing factors interacted, affecting the historical fate of the Russian rural commune and Russia’s development path. The 1861 Russian Emancipation Reform not only failed to completely break feudal fetters but instead created conditions for the penetration of capital exploitation into the countryside. The dual oppression of tsarist feudal rule and capitalist forces further intensified the antagonism between the tradition of communal land ownership and the trend toward privatization, placing the rural commune under “abnormal economic conditions.”

受西欧资本主义扩张和私有制观念的影响，农村公社内部产生了私有制与公有制的矛盾。这两种对立因素相互作用，影响着俄国农村公社的历史命运及俄国的发展道路。1861年俄国农奴制改革不仅未能彻底打破封建枷锁，反而为资本剥削渗透农村创造了条件。沙皇封建统治与资本主义势力的双重压迫进一步激化了土地公有制传统与私有化趋势的对抗，使农村公社处在“不正常的经济条件之下”。

Marx was deeply convinced that the Russian rural commune was the fulcrum for Russian society to move toward a new birth, but the exertion of this fulcrum’s force required eliminating the destructive influences assailing it from all sides and ensuring it possessed the normal conditions for natural development. That is to say, the Russian rural commune, coexisting simultaneously with Western European capitalism, could, while retaining the foundation of land public ownership, if it were able through a social revolution to eliminate the encroachment of European capitalist private ownership and fully absorb the positive achievements of capitalism, possibly leap over the “Caudine Forks” of the capitalist system and open up a brand-new path of development toward a socialist society.

马克思深信俄国农村公社是俄国社会走向新生的支点，但这一支点力量的发挥，需要排除从各方面向它袭来的破坏性影响，保证它具备自然发展的正常条件。也就是说，与西欧资本主义同时存在的俄国农村公社，在保留土地公有制的基础上，如果能通过社会革命排除欧洲资本主义私有制的侵袭，并充分吸收资本主义的积极成果，就有可能跨越资本主义制度的“卡夫丁峡谷”，开辟出一条通向社会主义社会的崭新发展道路。

(This article is a phased result of the National Social Science Fund project “Research on the Discourse Innovation of Chinese Marxist Philosophy in the New Era” (22BZX016))

（本文系国家社科基金项目“新时代中国马克思主义哲学话语创新研究”（22BZX016）阶段性成果）

(The authors are a professor at the School of Marxism, Anhui Normal University; and a doctoral candidate at the School of Marxism, Anhui Normal University)

（作者系安徽师范大学马克思主义学院教授；安徽师范大学马克思主义学院博士研究生）