Marx and Engels on the Scientific Nature of Marxism – Commemorating the 130th Anniversary of Engels’s Death

On 5 August 1895, Engels died. In the autumn of that same year, Lenin wrote the article “Friedrich Engels” to commemorate him. The article opens with a quotation from the famous poet Nekrasov: “What a bright lamp of wisdom has been extinguished, what a great heart has ceased to beat!” Lenin pointed out: “After his friend Karl Marx (who died in 1883), Engels was the most outstanding scholar in the entire civilized world and the teacher of the modern proletariat. From the moment fate brought Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels together, the life’s work of these two friends became their common cause. Therefore, to understand what Friedrich Engels contributed to the proletariat, one must clearly grasp the significance of Marx’s doctrine and activity for the development of the modern workers’ movement.” He believed that Marx and Engels were both teachers of the modern proletariat, and that they jointly founded Marxism, but Marx should be ranked before Engels; Marx had been the most outstanding scholar in the entire civilized world. This assessment is consistent with Engels’s own self-evaluation. In his later years, Engels consciously placed himself after Marx, and he opposed the practice of placing himself alongside Marx as a co-founder of Marxist theory. He stressed: “I worked together with Marx for 40 years, and before that and during that period I participated, to a certain extent independently, in the founding of this theory, and especially in its elaboration. But the overwhelming majority of the basic guiding ideas (especially in the economic and historical fields), and above all the final, clear formulation of these guiding ideas, belong to Marx. What I contributed, Marx could have done without me, except perhaps in a few specialized fields. But what Marx achieved, I could not have done. Marx stood higher, saw farther, and observed more and faster than all of us. Marx was a genius; we were at most talents. Without Marx, our theory would be far from what it is today. So it is only right that this theory bears his name.” Marxism is a living theory that takes living practice as its object of cognition; it is a historical science with a distinct epochal character. Self-criticism is an inherent attribute of Marxism, and it is precisely this that makes it a new science with a clearly demarcated boundary from other forms of thought. This self-criticism is aimed at precisely grasping its own era. From this perspective, it can be seen that Engels’s view of Marxism still has extremely important practical significance for our correct understanding of Marxism in the present era.

1895年8月5日，恩格斯逝世。同年秋，列宁写作《弗里德里希·恩格斯》一文纪念恩格斯，文章开头引用了著名诗人涅克拉索夫的诗：“一盏多么明亮的智慧之灯熄灭了，一颗多么伟大的心停止跳动了!”列宁指出：“在他的朋友卡尔·马克思(1883年逝世)之后，恩格斯是整个文明世界中最卓越的学者和现代无产阶级的导师。自从命运使卡尔·马克思和弗里德里希·恩格斯相遇之后，这两位朋友的毕生工作，就成了他们的共同事业。因此，要了解弗里德里希·恩格斯对无产阶级有什么贡献，就必须清楚地了解马克思的学说和活动对现代工人运动发展的意义。”他认为，马克思、恩格斯同为现代无产阶级的导师，他们共同创立了马克思主义，但马克思要排在恩格斯之前，马克思曾是整个文明世界中最卓越的学者。这一评价同恩格斯的自我评价是一致的。恩格斯晚年自觉地把自己排在马克思之后，对于当时人们把他与马克思并列起来作为马克思主义理论的创立者这一做法表示反对。他强调：“我和马克思共同工作40年，在这以前和这个期间，我在一定程度上独立地参加了这一理论的创立，特别是对这一理论的阐发。但是，绝大部分基本指导思想(特别是在经济和历史领域内),尤其是对这些指导思想的最后的明确的表述，都是属于马克思的。我所提供的，马克思没有我也能够做到，至多有几个专门的领域除外。至于马克思所做到的，我却做不到。马克思比我们大家都站得高些，看得远些，观察得多些和快些。马克思是天才，我们至多是能手。没有马克思，我们的理论远不会是现在这个样子。所以，这个理论用他的名字命名是理所当然的。”马克思主义是以活的实践为认识对象的活的理论，是具有鲜明时代性的历史科学。自我批判是马克思主义的固有属性，正是这一点使它成为同其他思想有着截然分明界限的新科学。这种自我批判是为了精准地把握自己的时代。从这一角度可以看到，恩格斯的马克思主义观在当今时代对于我们正确认识马克思主义仍然有着无比重要的现实意义。

I. Practice or Actual History as the Criterion for Distinguishing Old and New Sciences

一、作为新旧科学划界标准的实践或现实历史

Marx and Engels regarded their theory as a scientific theory, and Engels explicitly called the communist theory he and Marx developed “scientific socialism.” In *Socialism: Utopian and Scientific*, he pointed out: “These two great discoveries – the materialist conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalist production through surplus value – are both due to Marx. With these two discoveries, socialism became a science. The next task is to investigate further all the details and interconnections of this science.” Marx and Engels’s understanding of science differed not only from that of their contemporaries but also from that of later generations. Based on the power of modern natural science, people attempted to reshape all theories according to the paradigm of natural science and, depending on their object of study, created historical science, cultural science, spiritual science, human science, and so on. Marx and Engels proposed: “We know only one single science, the science of history. History can be examined from two sides; it can be divided into the history of nature and the history of humanity. But these two sides are inseparable; as long as human beings exist, the history of nature and the history of humanity mutually condition each other.” Although natural science, which takes the history of nature as its object, is distinct from the various sciences of humanity or humanities and social sciences that take the history of humanity as their object, it is still subsumed by Marx and Engels within the broad sense of historical science (i.e., the new science that takes as its object the mutual conditioning of the history of nature and the history of humanity, which constitutes human practice or actual history). This differs from traditional views. They pointed out that the opposition between humanity and nature, and the opposition between the old “science of humanity” and the old natural science, were caused by private property. With the entry into communist society and the abolition of private property, this opposition will also disappear. “Natural science will in time subsume the science of humanity, just as the science of humanity will subsume natural science: there will be one science” – this science is historical science in the broad sense. “History is nothing but the succession of individual generations.” Both natural science and the science of humanity possess historicity and epochal character.

马克思、恩格斯把他们的理论视为科学理论，恩格斯明确地把他和马克思的共产主义理论称为“科学社会主义”。他在《社会主义从空想到科学的发展》中指出：“这两个伟大的发现——唯物主义历史观和通过剩余价值揭开资本主义生产的秘密，都应当归功于马克思。由于这两个发现，社会主义变成了科学，现在首先要做的是对这门科学的一切细节和联系作进一步的探讨。”马克思、恩格斯对科学的理解不仅与当时的人们，而且与后世的人们都不一样。基于近代自然科学的威力，人们试图用自然科学的范式改造一切理论，并根据自己的研究对象，分别创造历史科学、文化科学、精神科学、人文科学等。马克思、恩格斯提出：“我们仅仅知道一门唯一的科学，即历史科学。历史可以从两方面来考察，可以把它划分为自然史和人类史。但这两方面是不可分割的；只要有人存在，自然史和人类史就彼此相互制约。”以自然史为对象的自然科学虽然区别于形形色色以人类史为对象的人的科学或各类人文社会科学，但它仍然被马克思、恩格斯归纳在广义的历史科学(即以自然史和人类史彼此相互制约所形成的人类实践或现实历史作为对象的新科学)之内，这与传统观点不同。他们指出，人与自然的对立，以及旧的“关于人的科学”与旧的自然科学的对立是私有制造成的，进入共产主义社会，随着私有制的灭亡，这种对立也将消失。“自然科学往后将包括关于人的科学，正像关于人的科学包括自然科学一样：这将是一门科学”,这门科学即广义的历史科学。“历史不外是各个世代的依次交替。”无论是自然科学，还是关于人的科学，都具有历史性、时代性。

The views of Marx and Engels differ both from those that conflate the history of humanity with the history of nature and from those that set them in stark opposition. Engels pointed out in his early years: “History is nothing but the activity of human beings pursuing their own ends.” This means that, for Marx and Engels, actual history and human practice are one and the same thing. In the sense that actual history is opposed to non-actual history, i.e., the history of nature before the appearance of humanity, the humanities are historical science in the narrow sense, dealing with the actual history of humanity, and thus differ from natural science. Especially under conditions of private property, the opposition between human beings creates the opposition between humanity and nature (manifested in the capitalist era as the opposition between labor and capital), which in turn creates the opposition between natural science and the humanities. In this situation, it is necessary to divide historical science into historical science in the narrow sense (referring to the humanities) and historical science in the broad sense (including both natural science and the humanities). When Engels said, “All science that is not natural science is historical science,” he was referring to historical science in the narrow sense. But on the other hand, Marx and Engels explicitly opposed the naturalistic conception of history. The nature that serves as the object of study for natural science can only be actual nature, the nature in which human beings live, nature that has been transformed by human beings; it cannot be nature before the appearance of humanity or nature unrelated to humanity. In other words, actual nature can only be nature as the product of human practical activity, not nature as a “thing-in-itself.” Not only is the nature that serves as the object of study for natural science a product of human practical activity, possessing historicity and epochal character, but the scientists who serve as the subjects of natural science research are also like this: “Feuerbach speaks in particular of the intuitive contemplation of natural science, mentioning secrets that only the eyes of physicists and chemists can penetrate, but without industry and commerce, where would natural science be? Even this ‘pure’ natural science achieves its purpose and obtains its materials only through commerce and industry, through the sensuous activity of human beings.” Science arises and develops along with human practical activity, and is therefore linked to the history of actual human beings.

马克思、恩格斯的观点既同把人类史与自然史混淆起来的观点有所区别，也同把两者截然对立起来的观点有所区别。恩格斯早年指出：“历史不过是追求着自己目的的人的活动而已。”这意味着，对马克思、恩格斯来说，现实的历史和人类实践是一回事。在现实的历史与非现实的历史即人类出现以前的自然史相对立的意义上，人文科学就是狭义的历史科学，涉及的是人类的现实的历史，因而不同于自然科学。特别是在私有制条件下，人与人的对立造成了人与自然的对立(在资本主义时代表现为劳动与资本的对立),进而造成自然科学与人文科学的对立。这种情况下，有必要将历史科学划分为狭义的历史科学(指人文科学)和广义的历史科学(包括自然科学和人文科学)。当恩格斯讲“凡不是自然科学的科学都是历史科学”时，他指的就是狭义的历史科学。但是另一方面，马克思、恩格斯明确反对自然主义历史观。作为自然科学研究对象的自然界，只能是现实的、人生活于其中的自然界，是经过人类改造的自然界，而不可能是人类出现以前的自然界或与人无关的自然界。换言之，现实的自然界只能是作为人类实践活动产物的自然界，而不可能是作为“自在之物”的自然界。不仅作为自然科学研究对象的自然界是人类实践活动的产物，具有历史性、时代性，作为自然科学研究主体的科学家也是这样，“费尔巴哈特别谈到自然科学的直观，提到一些只有物理学家和化学家的眼睛才能识破的秘密，但是如果没有工业和商业，哪里会有自然科学呢?甚至这个‘纯粹的’自然科学也只是由于商业和工业，由于人们的感性活动才达到自己的目的和获得自己的材料的”。科学是随着人类实践活动而产生和发展的，因而与现实的人的历史联系在一起。

Marx and Engels consistently emphasized that the object of study of historical science is the actual natural world and actual human society created by human practical activity. When discussing the second aspect of the fundamental question of philosophy, namely the identity of thinking and being, Engels explicitly opposed the reflection-theory view that takes the “thing-in-itself” as the object of cognition and discusses objectivity divorced from practice. Engels explained that the so-called problem of the identity of thinking and being refers to “what is the relation of our thoughts about the world surrounding us to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of cognizing the real world? Are we able to produce a correct reflection of reality in our representations and concepts of the real world?” The so-called surrounding world, real world, or world in which human beings live is nothing other than the product of human practical activity; human thinking itself is also a product of practical activity, so thinking is certainly capable of cognizing the real world through “representations and concepts of the real world.” As for the fact that our surrounding world is a material world, Engels emphasized that matter here refers to “various existing, material things,” that is, concrete matter as object, reality, and sensuousness, and matter at a specific historical stage, not so-called matter itself. “Matter as such is a pure creation of thought and an abstraction. We leave out of account the qualitative differences of things when we subsume them as materially existing things under the concept of matter. Hence matter as such, as distinct from definite existing material things, is not something sensuously existing.” Our object of cognition is nature as “object, reality, sensuousness,” not nature as “thing-in-itself.” Nature as “object, reality, sensuousness” has already been transformed into “being-for-us” through human practical activity.

马克思、恩格斯一贯强调，历史科学的研究对象是由人类实践活动造成的现实的自然界和现实的人类社会。在谈到哲学基本问题的第二个方面即思维和存在的同一性问题时，恩格斯明确反对把“自在之物”当做认识对象、脱离实践去讨论客观性的反映论观点。恩格斯解释说，所谓思维和存在的同一性问题指的是“我们关于我们周围世界的思想对这个世界本身的关系是怎样的?我们的思维能不能认识现实世界?我们能不能在我们关于现实世界的表象和概念中正确地反映现实?”所谓周围世界、现实世界或人类生活于其中的世界，无非是人类实践活动的产物，人类的思维本身也是实践活动的产物，因此思维当然能够通过“现实世界的表象和概念”认识现实世界。至于说我们的周围世界是一个物质世界，恩格斯强调，这里的物质指的是“各种实存的、物质的东西”,即作为对象、现实、感性的具体物质和处于特定历史阶段的物质，而不是所谓物质本身。“物质本身是纯粹的思想创造物和纯粹的抽象。当我们用物质概念来概括各种有形地存在着的事物的时候，我们是把它们的质的差异撇开了。因此，物质本身和各种特定的、实存的物质的东西不同，它不是感性地存在着的东西。”我们的认识对象是作为“对象、现实、感性”的自然界，而不是作为“自在之物”的自然界。作为“对象、现实、感性”的自然界已经通过人类的实践活动，被转化为“为我之物”了。

For Marx and Engels, the identity of thinking and being does not mean that human cognition conforms to the thing-in-itself, nor does it mean separating and opposing the subjective and the objective and then demanding that the subjective conform to the objective. Since “existence is even an open question outside the field of our observation,” an objective divorced from the subjective naturally cannot be taken and compared with the subjective. The scientific truth that Marx and Engels speak of is not understood in the sense of the subjective conforming to the objective or thinking conforming to being divorced from thinking, but in the sense of whether thinking possesses objectivity, that is, in the sense of the reality and sensuous character of thinking. According to Lenin’s view, the second thesis of Marx’s *Theses on Feuerbach* discusses the question of whether human thinking possesses objective truth, that is, whether thinking possesses reality or sensuous character; hence, from the requirement that object, reality, and sensuousness must be understood as practice, the question of truth in the sense of the objectivity of thinking is a practical question. Lenin always linked objectivity with object, reality, and sensuousness, opposing the understanding of objectivity divorced from practice. In his view, the question of objectivity in the epistemological sense can only take the standpoint of life and practice as its foundation: “The standpoint of life, of practice, should be the first and basic standpoint of the theory of knowledge.”

对马克思、恩格斯来说，思维与存在的同一并不是人类认识符合自在之物，不是把主观和客观分离开、对立起来，然后要求主观符合客观。既然“在我们的视野的范围之外，存在甚至完全是一个悬而未决的问题”,脱离主观的客观当然也就不可能被拿来同主观相比较。马克思、恩格斯所说的科学真理，并不是在主观符合客观或思维是否符合脱离思维的存在意义上讲的，而是在思维是否具有对象性也就是在思维的现实性和感性性质意义上讲的。按照列宁的看法，马克思《关于费尔巴哈的提纲》第二条讲的是人的思维是否具有对象的真理性的问题，也就是思维是否具有现实性或感性性质的问题，因而从对象、现实、感性必须当做实践去理解的要求看，思维的对象性意义上的真理性问题是一个实践的问题。列宁总是把客观性与对象、现实、感性联系在一起，反对脱离实践去理解客观性。在他看来，认识论意义上的客观性与否的问题，只能以生活、实践的观点作为基础，“生活、实践的观点，应该是认识论的首要的和基本的观点”。

Since actual history is the history of human practical activity, the natural history before the emergence of human beings, the history of nature unrelated to human beings, and the history of nature divorced from human beings are naturally non-actual histories, merely inferred and imagined on the basis of the actual world surrounding people. Because private property creates the opposition between human beings and nature, people easily draw the conclusion that nature outside the sphere of human activity, including nature before the emergence of human beings, nature unrelated to human beings, and nature divorced from human beings, is unknowable. Such a conclusion arises precisely because people are unaware of the influence of private property on human practical and cognitive activity. Private property causes nature to be divided among different subjects, creating your land, my house, etc., and further forming the separation of labor from the means of production and the opposition between human beings and nature, which in philosophy manifests as the separation and opposition of subject and object. In fact, human beings themselves are also nature, inner nature, just as nature is also the human body, the external body. Through practice, human beings continuously realize the unity of inner nature and external nature, of the inner organic body and the external inorganic body. Since this is so, the science applicable to actual nature and actual human beings can naturally also be used to analyze and study nature and human beings in history. In this sense, although nature and human beings in history are imperceptible, they are cognizable in the sense of rational thought. Private property, the separation and opposition of labor from the means of production, and the division of labor create the opposition between human beings and nature, and this opposition at the level of actual existence in turn creates opposition at the level of cognition and thought. This is both the historical root of philosophical agnosticism and the historical root of the opposition between the humanities and social sciences and the natural sciences. The clarification of historicity and contemporaneity by the materialist conception of history provides an epistemological proof for eliminating this historical root and provides a theoretical basis for the criterion of demarcation of the sciences.

既然现实的历史就是人类实践活动的历史，那么，人类出现以前的自然史、与人无关的自然史、脱离人的自然界的历史，当然是非现实的、只是根据人们周围的现实世界推断和想象出来的历史。由于私有制造成人与自然的对立，人们极容易得出这样的结论：人类活动范围以外的自然界，包括人类出现以前的自然界、与人无关的自然界、脱离人的自然界，是不可知的。这样的结论，恰恰是由于人们没有意识到私有制对人的实践活动和认识活动的影响才得出的。私有制使得自然界被分割给不同的主体，造成你的土地、我的房子等，进而形成劳动与生产资料的分离、人与自然的对立，在哲学上则表现为主体与客体的分离和对立。实际上，人本身也是自然、是内在的自然，正如自然界也是人的身体、是外在的身体一样。人类通过实践不断实现内在自然与外在自然、内在的有机身体与外在的无机身体的统一。既然如此，适用于现实的自然和现实的人的科学，当然也可以用来分析和研究历史上的自然和人。在这一意义上，虽然历史上的自然和人是不可感知的，但在理性思维的意义上，却是可以认识的。私有制、劳动与生产资料的分离和对立、分工，造成了人类与自然的对立，而这种现实存在层面上的对立又造成了认识层面、思维层面的对立。这既是哲学上的不可知论的历史根源，也是人文社会科学与自然科学对立的历史根源。唯物史观对历史性、时代性的澄明为消除这种历史根源提供了认识论的证明，为科学的划界标准提供了理论根据。

II. The Materialist Conception of History and Historical Science

二、唯物史观与历史科学

Engels not only explicitly pointed out that the materialist conception of history and the theory of surplus value transformed socialism from utopia into science, but also explicitly stated that philosophy has come to an end and that modern materialism “is no longer a philosophy at all but simply a world outlook,” and that “this world outlook is not to be established in a particular science of sciences, but is to be demonstrated and expressed in the actual sciences.” [6]6 Engels, *Anti-Dühring*, in *Marx Engels Collected Works*, vol. 25, p. 131. The phrase “a particular science of sciences” refers to the traditional conception of philosophy as a meta-science that claims to provide foundational knowledge for all other sciences. Since the materialist conception of history is not a philosophy but “simply a world outlook,” its relationship with the concrete sciences is no longer the relationship between philosophy and science, but the relationship between a world outlook and methodology and their concrete application. Marx and Engels abolished the boundary between “a particular science of sciences” (i.e., philosophy) and “the actual sciences” (i.e., concrete sciences), transforming them into the relationship between “world outlook” and “the actual sciences.” Before Marx and Engels, scientific methodology came from the philosophical world outlook; after them, scientific methodology comes from the new world outlook of the materialist conception of history. Take dialectics as an example: Hegel’s idealist dialectics is a philosophical method, while Marx and Engels’s materialist dialectics is a scientific method.

恩格斯不仅明确指出，唯物史观和剩余价值理论使社会主义从空想变成了科学，而且明确提出哲学已经终结、现代唯物主义“已经根本不再是哲学，而只是世界观”,“这种世界观不应当在某种特殊的科学的科学中，而应当在各种现实的科学中得到证实和表现出来”。既然唯物史观不是哲学，而“只是世界观”,它与具体科学的关系就不再是哲学与科学的关系，而是世界观、方法论与其具体应用之间的关系。马克思、恩格斯取消了“某种特殊的科学的科学”(即哲学)和“各种现实的科学”(即具体科学)之间的界限，把它们变成了“世界观”与“各种现实的科学”的关系。在马克思、恩格斯之前，科学方法论来自哲学世界观；他们之后，科学方法论来自唯物史观这种新世界观。以辩证法为例，黑格尔的唯心辩证法是哲学方法，而马克思、恩格斯的唯物辩证法则是科学方法。

When Engels speaks here of “a particular science of sciences,” he is referring specifically to the philosophy of Hegel and the Young Hegelians, who treated philosophy as a particular science, namely philosophical science. People at that time believed that the method of philosophical science was speculation, which differed from the empirical method of the positive sciences. In his early years, Marx used speculative methods to solve practical problems; for example, his doctoral dissertation attempted to apply the relationship between “material cause” and “formal cause” inherited by Hegel from Aristotle, using speculative methods to demonstrate “the freedom of self-consciousness.” In the “Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” Marx clearly stated that “philosophy as philosophy” had come to an end, and what needed to be established was “a philosophy that serves history.” This was still clearly viewing the issue within the horizon of philosophy, except that at this point Marx regarded “a philosophy that serves history” as a philosophy that was “non-philosophy.” In this sense, Marx pointed out: “Philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, just as the proletariat finds its spiritual weapons in philosophy.” [7]7 This is a direct quotation from Marx’s “Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” (1844). Up to the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844*, Marx’s argument for communism was still based on philosophy, that is, on the negation of the negation of private property as capital. The turning point where the philosophical worldview was transformed into the worldview of historical science appeared in the “Theses on Feuerbach.” Marx pointed out: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” From then on, Marx no longer regarded himself as a philosopher, but as a scientist. The new worldview was no longer a worldview that interprets the world or a philosophical worldview, but a worldview that transforms the world, or a historical worldview, a worldview of reality; dialectical materialism thus became the method of positive science. In *The German Ideology*, Marx and Engels called “real positive science” historical science and opposed it to philosophy. From then on, their materialism was no longer philosophical materialism, a materialism that interprets the world, but materialism in the sense of a worldview, a materialism that transforms the world. Materialism in the sense of a historical worldview no longer focused on the relationship between matter and consciousness, but on the relationship between life and consciousness, that is, the relationship between human social existence and social consciousness. “The existence of people is their actual life process”; people’s consciousness cannot come from an objective reality unrelated to people, but can only originate from the existence of real individuals.

恩格斯在这里讲的“某种特殊的科学的科学”,特指黑格尔和青年黑格尔派的哲学，它们把哲学当做一种特殊的科学，即哲学科学。当时的人们认为，哲学科学的方法是思辨，它有别于实证科学的经验方法。马克思早年曾经运用思辨方法解决现实问题，如他的博士论文就试图运用黑格尔从亚里士多德那里继承来的“物质因”和“形式因”的关系，以思辨的方法论证“自我意识的自由”。在《〈黑格尔法哲学批判〉导言》中，马克思明确指出“作为哲学的哲学”已经终结，需要建立的是“为历史服务的哲学”。这显然还是在哲学的视野中看问题，只不过此时马克思是把“为历史服务的哲学”视为作为“非哲学”的哲学。在这一意义上，马克思指出：“哲学把无产阶级当做自己的物质武器，同样，无产阶级也把哲学当做自己的精神武器”。一直到《1844年经济学哲学手稿》,马克思对共产主义的论证还是基于哲学，即基于对作为资本的私有财产的否定之否定。把哲学世界观化为历史科学的世界观的转折点出现在《关于费尔巴哈的提纲》中。马克思指出：“哲学家们只是用不同的方式解释世界，问题在于改变世界。”从此以后，马克思不再把自己当做一个哲学家，而是当做一个科学家。新的世界观不再是解释世界的世界观或哲学世界观，而是改造世界的世界观或历史世界观、现实世界观，唯物辩证法由此成为实证科学的方法。在《德意志意识形态》中，马克思、恩格斯把“现实的实证科学”称为历史科学，并把它们与哲学对立起来。从此以后，他们的唯物主义不再是哲学唯物主义、解释世界的唯物主义，而是世界观意义上的唯物主义、改造世界的唯物主义。历史世界观意义上的唯物主义关注的不再是物质和意识的关系，而是生活和意识的关系，即人的社会存在和社会意识的关系。“人们的存在就是他们的现实生活过程”,人们的意识不可能来自与人无关的客观实在而只能来源于现实的个人的存在。

Starting from the principle that “life determines consciousness,” Marx and Engels pointed out: “Where speculation ends—in real life—there real, positive science begins: the description of the practical activity and actual development process of people. Empty talk about consciousness will cease, and it will be replaced by real knowledge. The description of reality will deprive independent philosophy of its living environment; what can take its place is at most a summary of the most general results abstracted from the investigation of the historical development of humanity.” The issue here is not whether people’s subjective consciousness conforms to an objective reality unrelated to people, but whether “real positive science” describes people’s practical activity and actual development process. The “real positive science” that Marx and Engels spoke of is not the positivism of sense experience, but the positivism of “people’s practical activity and actual development process.” The world does not satisfy people; people are determined to change the world. Change is not simply the transposition of objective facts into subjective sensations or thoughts, but the negation of given objective facts, transforming them into another kind of fact in order to meet human needs. Analyzing whether the subjective conforms to the objective apart from practice cannot avoid the so-called “problem of the immanence of consciousness,” that is, the objective that can be compared with the subjective can only be the objective that enters the subjective world, not the objective unrelated to the subjective; thus, the objective facts that conform to the subjective can only be objective facts as they appear to people, not objective facts as “things-in-themselves”; consciousness cannot go beyond itself to reflect “things-in-themselves” unrelated to people. Engels’ response to this was: the “thing-in-itself” is an object imagined for the purpose of constructing philosophical epistemology; it is an object of philosophy, not a real object of cognition, not an object of life. What humanity needs to cognize is not the “thing-in-itself,” but the process by which the imagined “thing-in-itself” is transformed through practice into the “thing-for-us” in reality. “Since we can ourselves produce a given natural process, produce it under its conditions and make it serve our purposes, thereby proving that our understanding of this process is correct, then Kant’s elusive ‘thing-in-itself’ comes to an end.” Engels gave the examples of “chemical substances in plants and animals” and “the coloring matter of madder,” saying that “once we produce them, the ‘thing-in-itself’ becomes a thing-for-us.” What practice tests is not whether consciousness conforms to matter as a “thing-in-itself,” but whether people’s thought process conforms to people’s life activity process.

马克思、恩格斯从“生活决定意识”的原理出发，指出：“在思辨终止的地方，在现实生活面前，正是描述人们实践活动和实际发展过程的真正的实证科学开始的地方。关于意识的空话将终止，它们一定会被真正的知识所代替。对现实的描述会使独立的哲学失去生存环境，能够取而代之的充其量不过是从对人类历史发展的考察中抽象出来的最一般的结果的概括。”这里的问题不在于人们的主观意识是否符合与人无关的客观实在，而是“真正的实证科学”是否描述了人们的实践活动和实际发展过程。马克思、恩格斯讲的“真正的实证科学”不是对感觉经验的实证，而是对“人们实践活动和实际发展过程”的实证。世界不能满足人，人决心改变世界。改变并不是单纯地把客观事实移入主观感觉或思想中，而是否定既定的客观事实，把它变为另外一种事实，以便满足人类的需要。脱离实践去分析主观是否符合客观，无法避免所谓“意识的内在性难题”,即能够与主观相比较的客观只能是进入主观世界的客观，而不是与主观无关的客观，从而与主观相符合的客观事实只能是向人显现的客观事实，而不是作为“自在之物”的客观事实；意识不能超出自身去反映与人无关的“自在之物”。对此，恩格斯的回答是：“自在之物”是为了建构哲学认识论而想象出来的对象，是哲学的对象，不是现实的认识对象，不是生活的对象。人类需要认识的并不是“自在之物”,而是想象中的“自在之物”通过实践被转化为现实中的“为我之物”的过程。“既然我们自己能够制造出某一自然过程，按照它的条件把它生产出来，并使它为我们的目的服务，从而证明我们对这一过程的理解是正确的，那么康德的不可捉摸的‘自在之物’就完结了。”恩格斯举了“动植物体内的化学物质”和“茜草的色素”的例子，说“一旦把它们制造出来，‘自在之物’就变成为我之物了”。实践检验的并不是意识是否与作为“自在之物”的物质相符合，而是人们的思维过程是否与人们的生命活动过程相符合。

Marx and Engels criticized abstract empiricists for leaving aside people’s life activity and treating history as a “collection of dead facts”; they criticized idealists for leaving aside people’s cognitive activity and treating history as “the imagined activity of imagined subjects.” The real object of cognition can only be living facts, that is, “objects, reality, sensuousness” as products of the practical activity of real people, not the sensations, impressions, and representations that served as the starting point for modern British empiricists, nor the collection of “atomic facts” in the sense of contemporary philosophy of science. Similarly, the subject of cognition can only be real people who are generated in the process of practical activity, not some spirit existing outside real people and real nature as advocated by German idealism. The reality that Marx and Engels spoke of differs both from the fragmented facts of British empiricists and from the facts grasped through imaginary connections as advocated by German idealism; it is “the facts grasped from the connections of the facts themselves, not from imaginary connections.” Whether it is the object of cognition or the subject of cognition, only when placed in the totality of connection and development can it be historical and real. Engels pointed out: “The world is not a collection of ready-made things, but a collection of processes.” Modern natural science advocated that “one must first study things, and then study processes,” which belongs to the mode of thinking of old metaphysics; contemporary natural science, however, is “the science of processes, of the origin and development of these things and of the connections that bind these natural processes into a great whole,” which belongs to the dialectical mode of thinking. The relationship between the various natural sciences and the dialectics of nature that Engels later elaborated embodies precisely the relationship between the “description of reality” and the “summary of the most general results abstracted from this description” that Marx and Engels spoke of in their early years.

马克思、恩格斯批判抽象的经验主义者离开人的生命活动，把历史当成“僵死的事实的汇集”;批判唯心主义者离开人的认识活动，把历史当成“想象的主体的想象活动”。认识的现实对象只能是活的事实，即作为现实的人的实践活动产物的“对象、现实、感性”,而不是作为近代英国经验论者出发点的感觉、印象、表象，也不是当代科学哲学意义上的“原子事实”的集合。同样，认识的主体只能是在实践活动中生成着的现实的人，而不是德国观念论所主张的那种在现实的人和现实的自然之外存在的某种精神。马克思、恩格斯所说的现实既不同于英国经验论者所说的碎片化的事实，也不同于德国观念论所主张的那种从幻想的联系来把握的事实；这是那种“从事实本身的联系而不是从幻想的联系来把握的事实”。无论是认识对象还是认识主体，只有放在联系和发展的整体中才是历史的、现实的。恩格斯指出：“世界不是既成事物的集合体，而是过程的集合体。”近代自然科学主张“必须先研究事物，尔后才能研究过程”,属于旧形而上学的思维方式；当代自然科学则是“关于过程、关于这些事物的发生和发展以及关于联系——把这些自然过程结合为一个大的整体——的科学”,属于辩证的思维方式。恩格斯后来所阐发的各门自然科学同自然辩证法的关系，体现的正是马克思、恩格斯早年所说的“对现实的描述”和从这种描述中“抽象出来的最一般的结果的概括”之间的关系。

Since the object of historical science is reality and process, rather than facts and things, scientific truth cannot be the correspondence of subjective thought with an objective reality, facts, or things independent of human beings; it can only be the correspondence with reality (i.e., “facts grasped in their own interconnection, not in an imaginary interconnection”) and process. In Engels’s words: “The most essential and immediate basis of human thought is precisely the change in nature brought about by human beings, not nature alone.” He called the view that “first reduces society to nature, and then reduces nature to matter itself” the naturalistic conception of history, and held that the view that “natural science can only know concrete matter, not matter itself” is precisely rooted in this naturalistic conception of history. He criticized the naturalistic conception of history as one-sided: “it thinks that only nature acts on human beings, that only natural conditions everywhere determine human historical development; it forgets that human beings also react upon nature, change it, and create new conditions of existence for themselves.” Just as “the science of humanity” is the cognition of the human world, i.e., the state and society, rather than the cognition of atomistic individuals unrelated to the state and society, so natural science is the cognition of the conditions of human existence and their development and change, rather than the cognition of an objective material world unrelated to human beings.

既然历史科学的对象是现实和过程，而不是事实和事物，科学真理就不可能是主观思维同与人无关的客观实在、事实、事物的符合，而只能是同现实(即“从事实本身的联系而不是从幻想的联系来把握的事实”)和过程的符合。用恩格斯的话说：“人的思维的最本质的和最切近的基础，正是人所引起的自然界的变化，而不仅仅是自然界本身。”他将那种“先把社会归结为自然、再把自然归结为物质本身”的观点称为自然主义历史观，认为那种主张“自然科学只能认识具体物质、不能认识物质本身”的观点，恰恰根源于自然主义历史观。他批判自然主义的历史观是片面的，“它认为只是自然界作用于人，只是自然条件到处决定人的历史发展，它忘记了人也反作用于自然界，改变自然界，为自己创造新的生存条件”。正如“人的科学”是对人的世界即国家和社会的认识而不是对与国家和社会无关的原子式个人的认识一样，自然科学是对人类的生存条件及其发展变化的认识而不是对与人无关的客观物质世界的认识。

Consequently, the method of the new science, i.e., historical science, is no longer the traditional inductive or deductive method, nor is it dialectics in the sense of Aristotle or Hegel; it becomes the historical dialectics, the dialectical materialism, of Marx and Engels. Aristotle’s dialectics of thought is the method of reduction to absurdity or refutation in the process of inference, and is therefore a negative method of thought. Hegel’s idealist dialectics is not only a dialectics of thought but also the method of the self-generation of absolute spirit, “whose core is negativity as the principle of driving and creation.” As long as “absolute spirit” is replaced by “human being,” one can see the materialist essence of Hegel’s idealist dialectics, namely, labor. Hegel “grasps the essence of labor and understands objective humanity, real humanity as the result of humanity’s own labor.” Labor creates human beings themselves and at the same time changes the surrounding world; in this sense, labor is a dialectical negation of the surrounding world and of human beings themselves. Since “change” implies “negation,” scientific cognition includes not only the moment of verification but also the moment of falsification. Engels thus points out: “As long as natural science employs thought, its form of development is hypothesis.” Hypotheses are not directly verified but are placed within a theoretical system from which specific conclusions are deduced. These conclusions may be verified or overturned, but genuine science must undergo the dual test of verification and falsification. The falsification here does not refer to the “falsifiability” of contemporary Western philosophers of science (such as Karl Popper), but rather to confronting a particular disconfirmation that appears after many verifications and finding the cause of that disconfirmation.

由此，新科学即历史科学的方法就不再是传统的归纳法或演绎法，也不再是亚里士多德或黑格尔意义上的辩证法，而成为马克思、恩格斯的历史辩证法、唯物辩证法。亚里士多德的思维辩证法是推论过程中的归谬法或反证法，因此是一种否定性的思维方法。黑格尔的唯心辩证法不仅是思维辩证法，而且是绝对精神自我生成的方法，“其核心是作为推动原则和创造原则的否定性”,只要把“绝对精神”替换成“人”,就可以看到黑格尔唯心辩证法的唯物本质，即劳动。黑格尔“抓住了劳动的本质，把对象性的人、现实的因而是真正的人理解为人自己的劳动的结果”。劳动创造了人本身，同时改变周围世界，在这一意义上，劳动是对周围世界和人自身的辩证否定。既然“改变”意味着“否定”,科学认识就不仅包含证实的环节，而且包含证伪的环节。恩格斯由此指出：“只要自然科学运用思维，它的发展形式就是假说。”假说并不是被直接验证的，而是被置于理论体系中，从中演绎出特定的结论。这个结论可能被证实，也可能被推翻，但真正的科学必须经历证实和证伪的双重验证，其中的证伪并不是指当代西方科学哲学家(如卡尔·波普尔)的“可证伪性”,而是指面对在很多次的证实之后出现的某一次否证，并找到造成这种否证的原因。

The reason Engels emphasizes that the materialist conception of history and the theory of surplus value transformed socialism from utopia into science lies precisely in Marx and Engels’s unique criterion for demarcating science. If the materialist conception of history, as a new worldview, provides this demarcation criterion, then the theory of surplus value is the first successful instance of applying this new worldview.

恩格斯之所以强调唯物史观和剩余价值理论使社会主义从空想变成科学，背后的根据正在于马克思、恩格斯独特的科学划界标准。如果说作为新世界观，唯物史观提供了这种划界标准，那么，剩余价值理论就是应用这种新世界观的第一个成功的实例。

III. The Theory of Surplus Value and Economic Science

三、剩余价值理论与经济科学

Engels points out: “The ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in the minds of human beings, not in their growing insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the mode of production and exchange; they are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of the epoch concerned.” The first sentence indicates that the materialist conception of history, as a new worldview, is not an ethics concerning people’s social consciousness, but a practical science concerning people’s social being; the second sentence indicates that both truth and justice, and the mode of production and exchange, are epochal. Therefore, “the working class is not to realize any ideal, but only to liberate those new social elements which are already developing within the old collapsing bourgeois society itself.” The socialist and communist theories of Marx and Engels are fundamentally different from utopia; the former “is not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself,” but a scientific solution to real problems. The core of this solution is to replace the economic principles of capitalism with the economic principles of socialism or communism.

恩格斯指出：“一切社会变迁和政治变革的终极原因，不应当到人们的头脑中，到人们对永恒的真理和正义的日益增进的认识中去寻找，而应当到生产方式和交换方式的变更中去寻找；不应当到有关时代的哲学中去寻找，而应当到有关时代的经济中去寻找。”前一句表明，唯物史观这种新的世界观不是关于人们的社会意识的伦理学，而是关于人们的社会存在的实践科学；后一句表明，无论是真理和正义，还是生产方式和交换方式，都具有时代性，因此，“工人阶级不是要实现什么理想，而只是要解放那些由旧的正在崩溃的资产阶级社会本身孕育着的新社会因素”。马克思、恩格斯的社会主义和共产主义理论与乌托邦有着根本区别，前者“不是应当确立的状况，不是现实应当与之相适应的理想”,而是解决现实问题的科学方案。这套方案的核心，是用社会主义或共产主义的经济原则代替资本主义的经济原则。

The economic principle of socialism is society, i.e., the union and solidarity of human beings with one another, while the economic principle of capitalism is capital, i.e., value that valorizes itself. On the surface, the former’s principle is human beings, the latter’s principle is things. But in reality, human beings are not atomistic individuals detached from things and economic relations; they are always human beings within specific economic relations. If private ownership means that what is yours is yours and not mine, and what is mine is mine and not yours, thus a chasm or a wall that divides and opposes human beings, then public ownership means that what is mine is yours and what is yours is mine, thus a bond that connects and unites human beings. On the surface, capital is a thing, and capitalism is the rule of things over human beings; but in reality, capital is merely accumulated labor, and therefore a relation of production, except that: first, the precondition of this relation of production is the separation of the worker from the means of production; if the worker cannot reunite with the means of production, they cannot support themselves through labor. Second, to achieve this reunion, the worker must sell their labor-power to the capitalist, because only through the capitalist’s capital can labor be combined with the means of production. Third, only when this labor can bring surplus value or profit to the capitalist can the worker be employed by the capitalist; otherwise, they starve. Thus, labor is subordinate to capital, and human beings are subordinate to things.

社会主义的经济原则是社会，即人与人的联合和团结，而资本主义的经济原则是资本，即自我增殖的价值。表面上看，前者的原则是人，后者的原则是物。但在实际上，人不是脱离物、脱离经济关系而存在的原子式个人，而总是特定经济关系中的人。如果说私有制意味着你的就是你的，不是我的；我的就是我的，不是你的，因而是一道鸿沟或一堵墙，把人和人分割、对立起来，那么公有制则意味着我的就是你的，你的就是我的，因而像一条纽带，把人和人联系、凝聚起来。表面上看，资本是物，资本主义是物对人的统治；但实际上，资本不过是积累起来的劳动，因而是一种生产关系，只不过：第一，这种生产关系的前提是劳动者和生产资料的分离，如果劳动者不能重新实现与生产资料的结合，就无法通过劳动养活自己；第二，要实现这种结合，劳动者就必须出卖自己的劳动力给资本家，因为只有通过资本家的资本才能实现劳动与生产资料的结合；第三，只有当这种劳动能够给资本家带来剩余价值或利润的时候，劳动者才有可能被资本家雇佣，否则就只有饿死，因此劳动从属于资本，人从属于物。

From a historical and epochal perspective, the capitalist mode of production has not always existed and will not exist forever. Volume I of *Capital* expounds the conditions for the emergence of the capitalist mode of production, namely, labor-power becoming a commodity. Volume II expounds the internal contradiction between the circulation process of capital and the production process of capital: the production process of capital requires lowering the price of labor-power to reduce workers’ wages and increase surplus value, while the circulation process of capital requires raising wages to realize demand-pull and realize the surplus value congealed in the product. Volume III expounds the results of capital’s own contradictory movement, i.e., the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, demonstrating the inevitability of the demise of the capitalist mode of production. The basic contradiction of capitalism expounded in Volumes I and II is concentrated in the economic phenomenon of surplus. Capitalist enterprises must sell their products at specific prices so that the money recovered can compensate for the value of the consumed means of production, pay workers’ wages, and obtain surplus value. When everything produced can be sold, the contradiction between the production process and the circulation process of capital is not prominent. Once commodity surplus and overcapacity appear, they manifest in the form of capital surplus: money can no longer valorize itself in the form of capital, and capital reverts to being mere money. The capitalist mode of production encounters its own historical limits, its epochal limits.

从历史性、时代性的角度看，资本主义生产方式不是从来就有的，也不会永恒存在下去。《资本论》第一卷阐述了资本主义生产方式产生的条件，即劳动力成为商品；第二卷阐述了资本的流通过程与资本的生产过程的内在矛盾，即资本的生产过程要求压低劳动力价格，以降低工人工资，提高剩余价值，而资本的流通过程则要求提高工资，以便实现需求拉动，使凝结在产品中的剩余价值得到实现；第三卷阐述资本自身矛盾运动所导致的结果，即利润率下降趋势的规律，论证了资本主义生产方式灭亡的必然性。第一卷和第二卷所阐述的资本主义基本矛盾，集中体现在过剩这一经济现象中。资本主义企业必须按照特定的价格把产品卖出去，这样收回的货币才能补偿所消耗的生产资料的价值、给工人发的工资，并获得剩余价值。当所生产的东西都能卖出去，资本的生产过程和流通过程的矛盾并不突出；一旦出现商品过剩、产能过剩，就会以资本过剩的形式表现出来，货币不能再以资本的形式实现自我增殖，资本重新变回了货币。资本主义生产方式遇到了自己的历史界限、时代界限。

Capitalist production aims at extracting profit; capitalism is essentially profit-supremacism. Only if capitalists can obtain profit can workers be employed; otherwise, they cannot find work. Workers are tools for capitalists to make profit, not “human beings” equal to capitalists. Under the capitalist system, it is meaningless to talk about human rights from the perspective of eternal truth and justice. Only the living have human rights; the dead have no human rights, and if workers cannot find work, they can only become dead. For workers to find work, they must sell their labor-power to the capitalist. Therefore, whether worker or capitalist, both can only treat the worker as a commodity. Profit or surplus value is the limit of the capitalist mode of production. When the capitalist finds that the commodities he produces by purchasing means of production and workers’ labor-power and combining them, when sold, both satisfy consumers’ needs and can compensate for the value of the means of production consumed, and can also pay workers wages, but if there is no profit, he will halt production. In this way, the corresponding needs of consumers go unsatisfied, upstream enterprises supplying means of production to that enterprise go bankrupt, and workers starve. This creates a domino effect, later called the “multiplier effect” by Keynes. [8]8 John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), British economist, who developed the concept of the multiplier effect to describe how an initial change in spending can lead to a larger change in national income. When one enterprise halts production because it has no profit, it causes numerous upstream enterprises that originally had profit to go bankrupt, leading to a large-scale, even society-wide economic crisis. Marx called this the limit of capitalist production.

资本主义生产以攫取利润为目的，资本主义本质上是利润至上主义。只有资本家能够获取利润，工人才可能被雇佣，否则就找不到工作。工人是资本家牟利的工具，而不是同资本家一样的“人”。在资本主义制度下，从永恒真理和正义的角度谈论人权是没有意义的。只有活人有人权，死人无所谓人权，而工人找不到工作，就只能变成死人。工人要想找到工作，就必须把自己的劳动力卖给资本家。因此无论工人还是资本家，都只能把工人当成商品。利润或剩余价值是资本主义生产方式的界限。当资本家发现，他通过购买生产资料和工人的劳动力并使之结合所生产的商品卖出去，既满足了消费者的需要，能够补偿所消耗的生产资料的价值，也能够给工人发工资，但是如果没有利润，他就会中止生产。这样，消费者的相应需要就得不到满足，为该企业提供生产资料的上游企业就会破产，工人就会饿死。由此形成多米诺骨牌效应，也就是后来凯恩斯所说的“乘数效应”。某一个企业因为没有利润而停产，导致的是众多本来有利润的上游企业破产，形成大面积的，甚至是整个社会范围内的经济危机。马克思把之称为资本主义生产的界限。

To solve this type of capital surplus problem—that is, the overall economic crisis caused when one enterprise or a portion of enterprises halt production because they are not making money—the method is simple: just nationalize these enterprises. State-owned enterprises, in order to meet market needs, ensure workers are not unemployed, and ensure that upstream enterprises’ production can proceed smoothly, can operate without profit, because the purpose of state-owned enterprises is not profit but meeting social needs. As the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall operates, while other enterprises can still obtain profit and some even have rising profit rates, more and more enterprises see their profit rates fall to zero and are thus nationalized. As for the source of funds to acquire these enterprises, it can be drawn, based on the principle of the “multiplier effect,” from the profits of upstream enterprises driven by the production of state-owned enterprises; these enterprises would have collapsed, but due to the socialization of production they can now continue to exist. Since their profits come from the state-owned enterprises’ underwriting, ensuring the existence of state-owned enterprises naturally becomes their bounden duty. In this way, the capitalist mode of production gradually moves toward its self-negation.

要解决这种类型的资本过剩问题，即某一企业或某一部分企业因不赚钱而停产导致的整体经济危机问题，办法很简单，只要把这部分企业收归国有就行了。国有企业为了满足市场需要、确保工人不失业、确保上游企业的生产能够顺利进行，可以在没有利润的情况下运行，因为国有企业存在的目的不是为了利润，而是为了满足社会需要。随着利润率下降趋势的规律发挥作用，在其他企业仍然能够获得利润甚至有的企业利润率越来越高的同时，越来越多的企业利润率降低为零因而被收归国有。至于收购这些企业的资金来源，则可以根据“乘数效应”的原理，从国有企业生产所带动的上游企业利润中抽取，这些企业本来是要垮掉的，由于生产的社会化现在能够继续存在下去了，既然它们的利润来自国有企业的兜底，那么确保国有企业的存在自然也就是它们义不容辞的义务。由此，资本主义生产方式逐渐走向自我否定。

The premise assumption of economics is “scarcity” or “shortage”; the method to solve this problem is to obtain the maximum output with the minimum input. The arrival of the era of surplus economy renders not only traditional economics but also the traditional relations of ownership established to solve the problem of shortage completely obsolete. Different from the traditional worldview based on private ownership, and different from traditional economics that takes solving the problem of shortage as its research purpose, the new worldview of Marx and Engels, the new economics founded by Marx, is a worldview and economic theory for solving the problem of surplus. The communist theory based on this also differs from utopian communism, becoming a scientific plan to solve various social problems brought about by overcapacity and capital surplus.

经济学的前提假设是“稀缺”或“短缺”,解决这一问题的办法是以最少的投入获得最多的产出。过剩经济时代的到来不仅使得传统的经济学，而且使得传统的为解决短缺问题建立的所有制关系彻底过时了。与传统的建立在私有制基础上的世界观不同，与传统的以解决短缺问题作为自己研究目的的经济学不同，马克思、恩格斯的新世界观、马克思所创立的新经济学，是解决过剩问题的世界观、经济理论，以此为基础的共产主义理论也与空想共产主义不同，成为解决由产能过剩和资本过剩所带来的各种社会问题的科学方案。

However, solving the problem by scientific understanding alone is insufficient. “In the domain of political economy, free scientific inquiry meets not only the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.” [9]9 Karl Marx, “Preface to the First German Edition,” *Capital*, Volume I (1867). The distortions, slanders, and attacks Marxism has encountered have constantly obscured its scientific truth in developed countries, while the reality of shortage economies in backward countries has transformed Marxism from a scientific plan for solving practical problems into a lofty ideal. This shows that to overthrow the entire capitalist system based on the capitalist mode of production, scientific understanding alone is not enough; what is more important is the revolutionary practice of the proletariat overthrowing the bourgeoisie.

然而，问题的解决单靠科学的认识是不够的。“在政治经济学领域内，自由的科学研究遇到的敌人，不只是它在一切其他领域内遇到的敌人。政治经济学所研究的材料的特殊性质，把人们心中最激烈、最卑鄙、最恶劣的感情，把代表私人利益的复仇女神召唤到战场上来反对自由的科学研究。”马克思主义所遭到的歪曲、诬蔑和攻击，使得它的科学真理性在发达国家不断被遮蔽，而落后国家短缺经济的现实则把马克思主义由解决现实问题的科学方案变成了一种远大理想。这表明，要推翻建立在资本主义生产方式基础上的整个资本主义制度，仅有科学认识是不够的，更重要的是无产阶级推翻资产阶级的革命实践。

IV. The Timeliness of Scientific Socialism and the Scientific Nature of Marxism in the 21st Century

四、科学社会主义的时代性与21世纪马克思主义的科学性质

The real world includes both the real natural world and the real human world. Humans not only live in nature but also in the state and society. “Man is the world of man, the state, society.” [10]10 Karl Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. Introduction” (1843–1844). The state and society are both generated through human labor and are historical. Under the capitalist system, the alienation of labor leads to the universal alienation of value. All value must be measured by money and capital; anything that cannot be measured by money and capital is regarded as valueless. Money, currency “is the universal, independent value of all things; therefore it has robbed the whole world—both the human world and nature—of their intrinsic value”; “Money is the alienated essence of man’s labor and existence; this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it.” [11]11 Karl Marx, “Comments on James Mill, *Élémens d’économie politique*” (1844). The value of nature must be measured by money; under the capitalist system, it appears as constant capital. The value of humans must also be measured by money; this is a person’s “price.” Under the capitalist system, as the personification of capital, the capitalist’s price is the value of his capital, while the proletarian’s price is the value of his labor-power. The entire value system of capitalism is built on the foundation of monetary values and capital values marked by atomistic individuals. The whole world is bound by money and capital. Therefore, Marx and Engels opposed confusing human emancipation with political emancipation, and opposed separating human emancipation from the emancipation of nature. The separation and opposition between humans and nature, the separation and opposition between the political state and civil society, and the separation and opposition between humans and humans are all results of the development of private ownership. Capitalist private ownership pushes this separation and opposition to the extreme, developing into the binary opposition of subject and object, that is, the opposition between labor and capital. When private property develops into capital and labor develops into alienated labor, the contradictory relationship between subject and object is restored to the objectal relationship between subject and object. “The supersession of self-alienation follows the same path as self-alienation.” [12]12 Karl Marx, *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844*. The supersession of capital first manifests as “the universalization and completion of private property relations,” second as the supersession of the state and civil society as the negative form of private property relations, third as “the positive supersession of private property, i.e., of human self-alienation,” [13]13 Ibid. and finally achieves the emancipation of labor, the emancipation of society, and the emancipation of humans, realizing the comprehensive and free development of humans.

现实世界包括现实的自然界和现实的人的世界。人类不仅生活在自然界中，而且生活在国家、社会中。“人就是人的世界，就是国家，社会。”国家、社会都是在人类劳动中生成的，具有历史性。在资本主义制度下，劳动的异化导致普遍的价值异化。一切价值都必须用货币和资本衡量，凡不能用货币和资本衡量的就被当做没有价值的。金钱、货币“是一切事物的普遍的、独立自在的价值”,“因此它剥夺了整个世界——人的世界和自然界——固有的价值”;“金钱是人的劳动和人的存在的同人相异化的本质；这种异己的本质统治了人，而人则向它顶礼膜拜”。自然界的价值要用钱衡量，在资本主义制度下，它表现为不变资本；人的价值也要用钱衡量，这就是人的身价。在资本主义制度下，作为资本的人格化，资本家的身价就是他的资本的价值，而无产者的身价则是他的劳动力的价值。资本主义的全部价值体系都建立在以原子式个人为标志的货币价值观和资本价值观基础上。整个世界都被货币和资本束缚起来。因此，马克思、恩格斯反对把人类解放同政治解放混淆起来，反对把人的解放同自然界的解放分离开来。人和自然的分离与对立、政治国家和市民社会的分离与对立、人与人的分离与对立，都是私有制发展的结果。资本主义私有制把这种分离和对立推广到极致，发展到主体和客体的二元对立，即劳动和资本的对立。当私有财产发展为资本、劳动发展为异化劳动的时候，主体和客体的矛盾关系就重新还原为主体和对象的对象性关系。“自我异化的扬弃同自我异化走的是同一条道路”,资本的扬弃先是表现为“私有财产关系的普遍化和完成”,其次表现为作为私有财产关系的否定形式的国家和市民社会的扬弃，再次表现为“私有财产即人的自我异化的积极扬弃”,最终达到劳动的解放、社会的解放、人的解放，实现人的全面和自由发展。

Engels pointed out: “To accomplish this act of world-emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, and to impart to the now oppressed class a full knowledge of the conditions and the meaning of the act, is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.” [14]14 Friedrich Engels, *Anti-Dühring*, Part III, Chapter II, “Theoretical.” The quotation is from the English edition (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1947), p. 292. If we consider that, just as the proletarian is merely the personification of wage labor, the capitalist is merely the personification of capital, and that both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are equally bound by capital, then the emancipation of the entire world includes not only the emancipation of the proletariat but also the emancipation of the bourgeoisie from the constraints of capital. The problem is that, although under the capitalist system both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are constrained by capital, the bourgeoisie does not feel itself to be bound. “The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-alienation. But the former class feels at home in this self-alienation, it feels itself confirmed by it, it recognizes alienation as its own power and possesses in it the semblance of a human existence. The latter class feels itself annihilated in alienation, it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence… Within this antithesis, the private owner is therefore the conservative side, the proletarian the destructive side. From the former arises the action of preserving the antithesis, from the latter the action of annihilating it.” [15]15 Karl Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s *Philosophy of Right*: Introduction,” in *Marx-Engels Collected Works*, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 183. Under these circumstances, to speak of the unity of proletarian emancipation and human emancipation, to propose that abolishing the capitalist system liberates not only the proletariat but also the bourgeoisie, is not only too abstract in theory but also too wishful in practice. Engels recalled in his later years that in his early years he “strongly emphasized the thesis” that “communism is not a mere party doctrine of the working class, but a theory whose ultimate goal is to free the whole of society, including the capitalists, from the narrow confines of existing relations. This is correct in the abstract, but in practice it is useless, and even harmful, in most cases. As long as the propertied class not only feels no need for emancipation itself, but actively opposes the self-emancipation of the working class, the working class must prepare and carry out the social revolution on its own.” [16]16 Friedrich Engels, “Letter to Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky,” December 28, 1886, in *Marx-Engels Collected Works*, vol. 47 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1995), p. 534. To emancipate all humanity, the proletariat must first emancipate itself and emancipate labor. The epochal character of scientific socialism lies not only in the objective conditions of capital’s self-sublation but also in the subjective conditions of the proletariat’s maturity. The reason utopian socialism was not scientific was, on the one hand, that at the time the capitalist mode of production had not yet become an obstacle to the development of productive forces, and the objective conditions for realizing socialism and communism were absent; on the other hand, the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie had not yet developed into a “developed contradiction,” [17]17 The phrase “developed contradiction” (*entwickelter Widerspruch*) is a reference to Marx’s discussion in the *Grundrisse* of the contradictions of capital reaching a point where they become “developed” and thus historically resolvable. and the subjective conditions for realizing socialism and communism were absent. In short, because neither objective nor subjective conditions were present, socialism could not yet become a reality at that time, which determined the utopian character of utopian socialism.

恩格斯指出：“完成这一解放世界的事业，是现代无产阶级的历史使命。深入考察这一事业的历史条件以及这一事业的性质本身，从而使负有使命完成这一事业的今天受压迫的阶级认识到自己的行动的条件和性质，这就是无产阶级运动的理论表现即科学社会主义的任务。”如果考虑到正如无产者不过是雇佣劳动的人格化一样，资本家不过是资本的人格化，资产阶级和无产阶级都同样受到资本的束缚，那么整个世界的解放就不仅包括无产阶级的解放，而且包括把资产阶级从资本的限制下解放出来。问题在于，虽然在资本主义制度下，无论是无产阶级还是资产阶级都受到资本的限制，但资产阶级并不感到被束缚。“有产阶级和无产阶级同样表现了人的自我异化。但是，有产阶级在这种自我异化中感到幸福，感到自己被确证，它认为异化是它自己的力量所在，并在异化中获得人的生存的外观。而无产阶级在异化中则感到自己是被消灭的，并在其中看到自己的无力和非人的生存的现实……在这种对立内，私有者是保守的一方，无产者是破坏的一方。从前者产生保持对立的行动，从后者则产生消灭对立的行动。”在这种情况下，谈论无产阶级解放与人类解放的一致，提出消灭资本主义制度不仅是解放无产阶级，而且是解放资产阶级，这不仅在理论上过于抽象，而且在实践上过于一厢情愿。恩格斯晚年回顾说，他早年“很强调这样一个论点”:“共产主义不是一种单纯的工人阶级的党派性学说，而是一种最终目的在于把连同资本家在内的整个社会从现存关系的狭小范围中解放出来的理论。这在抽象的意义上是正确的，然而在实践中在大多数情况下是无益的，甚至是有害的。只要有产阶级不但自己不感到有任何解放的需要，而且还全力反对工人阶级的自我解放，工人阶级就应当单独地准备和实现社会变革”。要解放全人类，无产阶级首先必须解放自身、解放劳动。科学社会主义的时代性不仅在于资本自我扬弃的客观条件，而且在于无产阶级成熟的主观条件。空想社会主义之所以不是科学，一方面是由于在当时资本主义生产方式尚未构成生产力发展的障碍，不具备实现社会主义和共产主义的客观条件；另一方面是因为无产阶级与资产阶级的对立尚未发展到“作为发展了的矛盾关系”,不具备实现社会主义和共产主义的主观条件。总之，由于客观条件和主观条件都不具备，社会主义当时还不可能成为现实，这决定了空想社会主义的乌托邦性质。

Both the real natural world and real human history are based on human activity. The reason Marx and Engels called the unity of changing circumstances and human self-change “revolutionary practice” is precisely that nature and human society cannot be understood apart from human activity; otherwise, what is obtained is not a picture of the real natural world and real human society, but a picture of an imagined nature and an imagined human society. The reality of nature in history and of human society lies in its epochal character. “All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.” [18]18 Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” Thesis VIII, in *Marx-Engels Collected Works*, vol. 5 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), p. 5. In this regard, the theoretical “two inevitables” (the inevitable doom of capitalism and the inevitable victory of socialism) and the practical “two inevitables” (the fall of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable) cannot be treated as the same proposition. The former belongs to theoretical necessity, which can be obtained through the demonstration of the theory of surplus value; the latter belongs to practical necessity, which can only be realized through the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. The historical and epochal character of the theory of scientific socialism must be re-examined from the perspective of the historical subject.

无论是现实的自然界，还是现实的人类历史，都以人的活动为基础。马克思、恩格斯之所以把环境的改变和人的自我改变一致称为“革命的实践”,原因正在于不能脱离人的活动去理解自然界和人类社会，否则所得到的就不是现实的自然界和现实的人类社会的图景，而是想象中的自然界和想象中的人类社会的图景。历史中的自然界和人类社会的现实性就在于它的时代性。“凡是把理论引向神秘主义的神秘东西，都能在人的实践中以及对这种实践的理解中得到合理的解决。”就此而言，不能把理论上的“两个必然”(资本主义必然灭亡，社会主义必然胜利)和实践上的两个“不可避免”(资产阶级的灭亡和无产阶级的胜利是同样不可避免的)当成同一个命题。前者属于理论上的必然性，通过剩余价值理论的论证就可以得到；后者属于实践上的必然性，要通过无产阶级的革命斗争才能实现。对于科学社会主义理论的历史性、时代性，必须从历史主体的角度重新考察。

In this sense, adapting Marxism to the Chinese context and the needs of the times is not only the Sinicization and modernization of historical materialism and the theory of surplus value, but also the Sinicization and modernization of the theory of scientific socialism. The end of the first chapter of the *Communist Manifesto* speaks, on the one hand, of the bourgeoisie’s existence being “no longer compatible with society,” and on the other hand, of the proletariat being able to overthrow the capitalist system only by replacing “the dispersion caused by competition” with “the revolutionary combination through association.” [19]19 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, *Manifesto of the Communist Party*, Chapter I, “Bourgeois and Proletarians,” in *Marx-Engels Collected Works*, vol. 6 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), p. 495. The second chapter then demonstrates that the fundamental distinction between the Communists and other proletarian parties lies in their vanguard character. The Communist Party does not represent the proletarians of only one nation or one group (such as white-collar workers or blue-collar workers), but spatially “emphasizes and upholds the common interests of the entire proletariat, independent of all nationality,” and temporally emphasizes that “in the various stages of development which the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always represent the interests of the movement as a whole.” [20]20 Ibid., Chapter II, “Proletarians and Communists,” p. 497.

在这一意义上，马克思主义的中国化时代化不仅是唯物史观和剩余价值理论的中国化时代化，更是科学社会主义理论的中国化时代化。《共产党宣言》第一章结尾一方面谈到资产阶级的生存“不再同社会相容了”,另一方面谈到无产阶级只有以“通过结社而达到的革命联合”代替“由于竞争而造成的分散状态”,才能推翻资本主义制度。第二章则论证了共产党同其他无产阶级政党的根本区别在于它的先锋队性质。共产党不是只代表某一个民族或某一个集团(如白领工人、蓝领工人)的无产者，而是在空间上“强调和坚持整个无产阶级共同的不分民族的利益”,在时间上强调“在无产阶级和资产阶级的斗争所经历的各个发展阶段上，共产党人始终代表整个运动的利益”。

In the 20th century, the main reason capitalism did not perish and socialism did not achieve final victory was precisely that the two subjective conditions of communism—the international unity of the proletariat and the scientific program of communism—were abandoned by the workers’ parties of the developed countries. During the lifetimes of Marx and Engels, the largest Marxist party in the world was the German Social Democratic Party. As soon as Engels died, the right wing of the German Social Democratic Party openly declared: the final goal is nothing, the movement is everything. [21]21 This is a reference to the revisionist slogan of Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932), a leading figure in the German Social Democratic Party, who argued that the movement (i.e., gradual reform) was more important than the final goal (i.e., the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism). Here, the “final goal” referred to revolutionary communism, while the “movement” referred to reformist socialism. This proposition effectively severed communism from socialism, thereby discarding the fundamental principle of communism. Having lost the direction of communism and being re-disintegrated into atomized individuals, the proletariat became a heap of loose sand. After the outbreak of the First World War, the right wing of the German Social Democratic Party openly called on German workers to “defend the fatherland,” thereby discarding the fundamental principle of internationalism. Bourgeois nationalism gained the upper hand, dividing the proletariat of the whole world into mutually hostile national camps, thus allowing the bourgeoisie to defeat them one by one. Lenin not only emphasized and upheld the principle of communism, renaming the left wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party—the Bolsheviks—as the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks); he also emphasized and upheld the principle of internationalism, on the one hand using the crisis created by the war to overthrow the Tsarist rule and the bourgeois government and establish a socialist system, and on the other hand founding the Communist International to unite, rally, and consolidate Marxists and Communists around the world. Marx and Engels found the path to communism for the developed countries. However, Russia before the October Revolution, due to its level of productive forces being still far behind that of the developed countries, could not mechanically copy this path. It had to integrate the basic principles of Marxism with the realities of Russia, exploring a path of transition to socialism through the worker-peasant democratic government and the New Economic Policy. Similarly, the path of adapting Marxism to the Chinese context can neither mechanically copy the theories of Marx and Engels nor mechanically copy the theories of Lenin and Stalin; it must integrate Marxism-Leninism with the realities of China.

20世纪，资本主义之所以没有灭亡，社会主义也没有取得最终的胜利，主要原因正在于共产主义的两个主观条件，即无产阶级的国际联合和共产主义的科学纲领，被发达国家的工人政党抛弃了。马克思、恩格斯在世的时候，全世界第一大马克思主义政党是德国社会民主党。恩格斯一逝世，德国社会民主党的右派就公开宣称：最终目标是微不足道的，运动就是一切。这里的“最终目标”指的是革命的共产主义，而“运动”则指改良的社会主义，这一主张实际上是把共产主义与社会主义切割开来，从而丢弃了共产主义的根本原则。失去了共产主义方向、被重新瓦解成原子式个人的无产者成为一盘散沙。第一次世界大战爆发后，德国社会民主党的右派又公开号召德国工人“保卫祖国”,从而丢弃了国际主义的根本原则。资产阶级民族主义占了上风，把全世界无产者分割成一个个相互敌对的民族阵营，从而被资产阶级各个击破。列宁不仅强调和坚持共产主义原则，把俄国社会民主工党的左翼——布尔什维克，改名为俄国共产党(布尔什维克);而且强调和坚持国际主义原则，一方面利用战争造成的危机推翻沙俄统治和资产阶级政府，建立社会主义制度，另一方面创立共产国际，把全世界马克思主义者和共产党人联合、团结、凝聚在一起。马克思、恩格斯为发达国家找到了通往共产主义的道路，而十月革命前的俄国，由于生产力水平离发达国家尚有较大差距，因此不能照搬照抄这条道路，必须把马克思主义基本原理同俄国实际相结合，通过工农民主政权和新经济政策，探寻一条向社会主义过渡的道路。同理，马克思主义中国化的道路既不能照搬照抄马克思、恩格斯的理论，也不能照搬照抄列宁和斯大林的理论，而必须把马克思列宁主义同中国实际相结合。

Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, Chinese Communists with Comrade Xi Jinping as their chief representative have adhered to integrating the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s specific realities and with the best of traditional Chinese culture, profoundly summarized and fully applied the historical experience since the founding of the Party, and proceeded from new realities to establish Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. This is the latest achievement in adapting Marxism to the Chinese context and the needs of the times, the Marxism of contemporary China and the Marxism of the 21st century, and it provides the action guide and theoretical weapon for solving new problems and new contradictions. In the New Era, the principal contradiction in society has changed; this new contradiction can only be resolved by applying the Marxist worldview and methodology. Xi Jinping pointed out: “The Communist Manifesto describes the new worldview, namely historical materialism, in thorough and clear language, providing people with a scientific ideological weapon for understanding nature and human society.” [22]22 Xi Jinping, “Speech at the 20th Collective Study Session of the Political Bureau of the 19th CPC Central Committee,” People’s Daily, November 17, 2017.

党的十八大以来，以习近平同志为主要代表的中国共产党人，坚持把马克思主义基本原理同中国具体实际相结合、同中华优秀传统文化相结合，深刻总结并充分运用党成立以来的历史经验，从新的实际出发，创立了习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想，这是马克思主义中国化时代化的最新成果，是当代中国马克思主义、21世纪马克思主义，为解决新问题、新矛盾提供了行动指南和理论武器。新时代，社会主要矛盾发生了变化，这一新矛盾只有运用马克思主义的世界观和方法论才能解决。习近平指出：“《共产党宣言》以透彻而鲜明的语言描述了新的世界观，即唯物史观，为人们提供了认识自然、认识人类社会的科学思想武器。”

The report of the 20th National Congress of the CPC demands “grasping the worldview and methodology of Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, and adhering to and applying the standpoints, viewpoints, and methods that run through it,” and states that “the CPC is a party that seeks happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation, and it is also a party that seeks progress for humanity and harmony for the world.” The minimum standard for building a moderately prosperous society in all respects is targeted poverty alleviation, which requires achieving the “two assurances” (assurance of adequate food and clothing) and the “three guarantees” (guarantees of basic housing, medical insurance, and compulsory education); this has already reached the level of orderly governance and flourishing eras in Chinese history. [23]23 “Two assurances” and “three guarantees” are specific poverty alleviation benchmarks: ensuring the rural poor do not worry about food or clothing, and have access to compulsory education, basic medical services, and safe housing. Since China no longer faces a shortage of daily necessities, and since the principal contradiction in Chinese society has changed, the three targets proposed at the end of the 20th century for the middle of the 21st century—namely, per capita GDP reaching 4,000 US dollars, building a relatively well-off moderately prosperous society, and basically achieving modernization—must be adjusted accordingly. In fact, the target of per capita GDP reaching 4,000 US dollars was achieved in 2010, 40 years ahead of schedule; the target of building a relatively well-off moderately prosperous society was achieved in 2020, 30 years ahead of schedule; and the target of basically achieving modernization is in the process of being realized, with the report of the 20th National Congress of the CPC advancing the timeline to 2035. To adapt to the new situation, the 20th National Congress of the CPC has changed the Party’s second centenary goal from “basically achieving modernization,” as proposed in the report of the 13th National Congress of the CPC, to “comprehensively building a great modern socialist country,” and “advancing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation through Chinese-path modernization.” [24]24 The 13th National Congress of the CPC (1987) outlined the “three-step” strategy for modernization; the second centenary goal originally aimed for basic modernization by 2050, but the 20th National Congress (2022) upgraded it to comprehensive modernization by 2050. If, at the beginning of reform and opening up, the “wealth” in allowing and encouraging some people to get rich first, and for the first rich to drive the later rich, mainly referred to material wealth, then in the New Era, the common prosperity to be achieved by the middle of the 21st century is common prosperity in both material life and spiritual life; this is the proper meaning of a better life. From “seeking happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation” to “seeking progress for humanity and harmony for the world,” this embodies the unity of the common ideal of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the lofty ideal of communism.

党的二十大报告要求“把握好新时代中国特色社会主义思想的世界观和方法论，坚持好、运用好贯穿其中的立场观点方法”,“中国共产党是为中国人民谋幸福、为中华民族谋复兴的党，也是为人类谋进步、为世界谋大同的党”。全面建成小康社会的最低标准是精准脱贫，要求实现“两不愁”(不愁吃、不愁穿)“三保障”(基本住房、医疗保险、义务教育有保障),这已经达到中国历史上的治世和盛世水准。既然当前中国面对的不再是生活必需品的短缺问题，既然中国社会的主要矛盾发生变化，那么20世纪末提出的21世纪中叶要达到的三个指标，即人均国内生产总值达到4000美元、建成比较富裕的小康社会、基本实现现代化，就必须随之调整。实际上，人均国内生产总值达到4000美元的目标已经在2010年提前40年实现，建成比较富裕的小康社会的目标已经在2020年提前30年实现，基本实现现代化的目标正在实现的过程中，党的二十大报告把实现时间提前到了2035年。为适应新的形势，党的二十大已经把党的第二个百年奋斗目标由党的十三大报告提出的“基本实现现代化”改为“全面建成社会主义现代化强国”,“以中国式现代化推进中华民族伟大复兴”。如果说，改革开放之初讲的允许和鼓励一部分人先富起来，先富带动后富的“富”主要指的是物质财富，那么新时代确定的21世纪中叶实现共同富裕则是物质生活和精神生活的共同富裕，这是美好生活的应有之义。从“为中国人民谋幸福、为中华民族谋复兴”到“为人类谋进步、为世界谋大同”,体现了中国特色社会主义共同理想和共产主义远大理想的统一。