Marx’s *Brussels Notebooks* in China

In June 2021, the original manuscript of the fourth notebook of Marx’s *Brussels Notebooks* was grandly exhibited at the Museum of the Communist Party of China. It is the only relatively complete notebook of Marx preserved in our country to date. Purchased in Europe by a Chinese entrepreneur and then donated to the state, it represents a new starting point and a new journey for Chinese academia’s exploration of Marx’s great thought. However, Marx’s *Brussels Notebooks* had in fact already been collated and published in Germany as early as 1998, and were first publicly displayed domestically in 2018, on the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth. Yet, to this day, Chinese academia has rarely taken any interest in them.

2021年6月,马克思《布鲁塞尔笔记》第四笔记本原始手稿在中国共产党历史展览馆隆重展出,这是我国迄今保存的唯一一份相对完整的马克思笔记。它由中国企业家在欧洲购买后捐赠给国家,代表着我国学术界对马克思伟大思想探索的新起点和新征程。然而,马克思《布鲁塞尔笔记》其实早于1998年就已在德国整理出版,并于2018年马克思诞辰200周年之际首次在国内公开展出。但是,我国学术界至今对之仍鲜有问津。

What are the *Brussels Notebooks*? According to the textual research of the editors of MEGA², the *Brussels Notebooks* are the notebooks of Marx’s economic studies left behind in Brussels in 1845, constituting the second systematic study of economics by Marx. In terms of textual form, the *Brussels Notebooks* were first collected and published in Volume IV/3 of the *Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe* (MEGA²). They consist of excerpts, summaries, and comments on a series of economic works, written by Marx in a mixture of French, German, and English. The original manuscripts are booklets Marx made himself from folded and interleaved sheets of paper, with a sheet size of 202 × 312 mm, folded to 202 × 156 mm. In terms of content, the economists excerpted by Marx in the *Brussels Notebooks* include both “old acquaintances” studied in the earlier *Paris Notebooks* and theorists whom Marx later re-examined in depth in his later economic studies. Among them are economists such as Louis Say, Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi, Henri Storch, Pellegrino Rossi, and John Ramsay MacCulloch, as well as theorists of technology represented by Auguste de Gasparin, Charles Babbage, and Andrew Ure. The manuscript of the *Brussels Notebooks* exhibited this time comprises 27 sheets, or 54 pages, of which 49 pages contain handwriting. The main objects of excerpting are Storch’s *Cours d’économie politique*, Nicolas François Dupré de Saint Maur’s *Essai sur les monnoies*, Isaac de Pinto’s *Traité de la circulation et du crédit*, Josias Child’s *Traité sur le commerce et sur les intérêts de l’argent*, and Benjamin Bell’s *Essai sur la disette*. The editions of the works Marx excerpted are all in French or French translation, interspersed with German summaries or comments.

《布鲁塞尔笔记》是什么?根据MEGA2编者考证,《布鲁塞尔笔记》是马克思1845年在布鲁塞尔留下的经济学研究笔记,是马克思第二次系统研究经济学的笔记群。从文本来看,《布鲁塞尔笔记》第一次收录出版于《马克思恩格斯全集》(历史考证版)(MEGA2)第Ⅳ部分第三卷,为马克思兼用法语、德语、英语对一系列经济学著作所作的摘录、概括和评论。其原始手稿是马克思用经过折叠和交错的纸张自制成的小册子,纸张格式为202×312毫米,折叠为202×156毫米。从内容来看,马克思在《布鲁塞尔笔记》中摘录的经济学家既有之前《巴黎笔记》中研究过的“熟人”,也有马克思在后期经济学研究中重新深耕的理论家。其中,包括萨伊(Louis Say)、西斯蒙第(Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi)、斯托奇(Henri Storch)、罗西(Pellegrino Rossi)、麦克库洛赫(John Ramsay MacCulloch)等经济学家,以及以加斯帕林(Auguste de Gasparin)、拜比吉(Charles Babbage)、尤尔(Andrew Ure)为代表的工艺学理论家。而此次展出的《布鲁塞尔笔记》手稿共27张纸、54页,其中49页写有字迹,主要摘录对象为斯托奇的《政治经济学课程》、圣·莫尔(Nicolas Franζois Dupré de Saint Maur)的《论货币》、平托(Isaac de Pinto)的《论流通与信用》、约西亚斯·柴尔德(Josias Child)的《论贸易与利益》、本雅明·贝尔(Benjamin Bell)的《论匮乏》。马克思摘录的著作版本皆为法文版或法译本,穿插德语概括或评论。

Why do the *Brussels Notebooks* possess important academic value? As is well known, Marx and Engels founded the scientific new world outlook—historical materialism—in *The German Ideology* of 1845. In the past, we have studied more the question of “what” historical materialism is, but have often neglected the question of “where” historical materialism came from. The *Brussels Notebooks* are precisely one of the two important groups of notebooks (the *Brussels Notebooks* and the *Manchester Notebooks*) that Marx left behind on the eve of founding historical materialism. They preserve for us the complete logic of the generation of the discourse of production within the economic context of historical materialism. First, in the *Brussels Notebooks*, the Russian economist Storch (who is also involved in the exhibited manuscript) provided Marx with the determinism of material production. In Storch’s view, material production is primary; it is the foundation and prerequisite for the operation of the entire human society. Each person’s life is not only based on material life but is also reproduced on the premise of the material production of the previous generation. People cannot create laws; they can only discover the laws of material production in the process of dealing with “things,” thereby promoting national wealth. This view prompted Marx to shift his theoretical focus from “individual labor” to “material production” and laid the foundation for Marx’s basic view of material production and reproduction. It is worth mentioning that Marx commented on Storch in German: “After grain, the two great needs of people are clothing and shelter.” This is already very similar to the description in *The German Ideology* of the premise of human beings making history. Second, the Italian economist Rossi (who succeeded Say after his death in his chair at the Collège de France) provided Marx with a cognitive method of viewing material production from the perspective of relationality. Past economists believed that what material production created was visible material wealth, but Rossi precisely denied this view. In the process of material production, people neither change the quality and attributes of the object nor create new matter; they merely shape the material object purposively according to the design in their minds, making it satisfy human needs for “usefulness.” Therefore, what material production actually creates is the invisible use-relation, and subsequently the supply-demand relation that enters the sphere of exchange. This constituted an important theoretical basis for Marx and Engels’ historical materialism to oppose the “intuitive” method of all old materialism, and also resonated with the classical philosophical method that lingered in Marx’s mind. It is the cognitive source for Marx’s insight into the relations of economic activity behind visible things. Finally, the technology of Babbage and Ure provided Marx with the real foundation for the new world outlook. Historical materialism is a new world outlook based on large-scale machine production. In the past, Marx’s view of machinery was, in a certain sense, purely negative. But the theorists of technology not only told Marx that the new order created by machine production could reduce workers’ labor and might become the hope for future human liberation, but also provided Marx with a micro-level analysis of production concerning “how to produce.” Therefore, right up to the *London Notebooks*, Marx continuously re-studied technology in order to perfect his theoretical creation concerning the mode of production.

《布鲁塞尔笔记》为什么具有重要的学术价值?众所周知,马克思和恩格斯在1845年《德意志意识形态》中创立了科学的新世界观——历史唯物主义。我们在过去更多研究的是历史唯物主义的内容“是什么”,却往往忽略了历史唯物主义“从哪来”的问题。《布鲁塞尔笔记》恰恰就是马克思在创立历史唯物主义的前夕,留下的两个重要笔记群(《布鲁塞尔笔记》和《曼彻斯特笔记》)之一,其中为我们留下了历史唯物主义生产话语在经济学语境中生成的完整逻辑。首先,在《布鲁塞尔笔记》中,俄国经济学家(也是此次展出所涉及的)斯托奇为马克思提供了物质生产决定论。在斯托奇看来,物质生产是第一性的,是整个人类社会运行的基础和前提,每个人的生活不仅是以物质生活为基础,而且是在上一代人物质生产的前提下进行再生产;人们并不能创造规律,而只能在与“物”打交道的过程中发现物质生产规律,从而促进国家富裕。这种观点促使马克思的理论兴趣点从“个体劳动”向“物质生产”转移,并奠定了马克思对物质生产与再生产的基本看法。值得一提的是,马克思用德语评论斯托奇道:“在粮食之后,人们的两大需求是衣服和居住。”这已经与《德意志意识形态》中对人类创造历史之前提的描述十分相似了。其次,意大利经济学家罗西(在萨伊去世后接替了其在法兰西学院的位置)为马克思提供了从关系性去透视物质生产的认识方法。过去的经济学家认为物质生产创造出来的就是肉眼可见的物质财富,而罗西恰恰否认了这一看法,因为在物质生产过程中,人们既没有改变对象物的质量和属性,也没有创造新的物质,而只是按照人们头脑中的设计对物质对象进行合目的地塑形,使其满足人类的“有用性”需要。因此,物质生产创造的实际是看不见的使用关系,以及之后进入交换领域的供需关系。这构成了马克思恩格斯历史唯物主义反对一切旧唯物主义“直观”方法的重要理论基础,也与马克思头脑中挥之不去的古典哲学方法产生共鸣,是马克思透视可见之物背后经济活动关系的认识来源。最后,拜比吉、尤尔的工艺学为马克思提供了新世界观的现实基础。历史唯物主义是建立在机器大生产基础之上的新世界观,马克思过去对机器的看法在一定意义上是单纯否定性的,但是工艺学理论家不仅告诉马克思,机器生产创造的新秩序能够减少工人的劳动,可能成为未来人类解放的希望,而且为马克思提供了“如何生产”的微观生产分析。所以,马克思直到《伦敦笔记》,都不断地去重新研究工艺学,以此完善其关于生产方式的理论创造。

Why have the *Brussels Notebooks* received so little attention in China? It must be acknowledged that although the *Brussels Notebooks* are the site where Marx’s real thought took shape, the notebook texts do not actively “open themselves” to the reader; their textual structure and content are extremely complex, and scholarly research on these notebooks requires breakthroughs in language, discipline, and research paradigms. First, the *Brussels Notebooks* were written by Marx primarily in French, German, and English; the materials he excerpted were mainly French and English texts, while Marx himself would summarize or comment in German, and often even used two different languages within a single sentence. In current domestic research on classical Marxist texts, most work is based on the Chinese translation of the *Collected Works of Marx and Engels*. Although the Chinese translation of the *Collected Works* is the painstaking achievement of many Chinese Marxist scholars and the authoritative edition of Marx and Engels’ texts in China, when we confront Marx and Engels’ texts that have not been translated into Chinese—in other words, when we face the original textual context of Marx and Engels—returning to the languages they themselves used may help us approach the original terrain where their thought emerged. Second, although the *Brussels Notebooks* are Marx’s notebooks on the study of political economy, Marx never intended to become an economist; his study of political economy was a real weapon used to create a new worldview, and it was permeated by his philosophical discourse. The study of Marx’s philosophical thought cannot remain only within the field of philosophy, nor only within the field of political economy, nor can philosophy and political economy be simply stitched together. What exactly did Marx gain from his study of political economy? How was Marx’s philosophical thought combined with political economy and then transformed by it? How do the two logics of philosophy and political economy in historical materialism manifest and conceal themselves within the framework of the new worldview? These are all very difficult questions to answer, and the *Brussels Notebooks* provide us with an entry point for exploration. Finally, our past research has often remained at the level of “what it is”—that is, taking only *The German Ideology* as the object to explain what historical materialism is, or taking only the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844* as the object to explain what the theory of alienated labor is. However, we also need to go further and study how historical materialism was generated; how the theory of alienated labor was generated; and what its theoretical sources were. That is to say, we need to promote a shift from the research paradigm of “what it is” to the paradigm of “why it is so.” In addition to combining the real lives of Marx and Engels to infer external sources, we also need to explore the intellectual sources and specific details of the generation of the new worldview theory. Theory is not a tree without roots; the notebook texts prove this to us very well.

《布鲁塞尔笔记》为什么在国内鲜有问津?必须承认的是,虽然《布鲁塞尔笔记》是马克思真实思想发生的地方,但是笔记文献并不主动向读者“打开”,其文本结构与内容都十分复杂,对该笔记的学术研究需要在语言、学科和研究范式方面有所突破。首先,《布鲁塞尔笔记》是马克思主要以法语、德语、英语写下的,其摘录对象主要是法语和英语文献,而马克思自己会用德语进行概括或者评论,甚至经常在同一句话中出现两种不同的语言。在国内当下的马克思主义经典文献研究中,大多是基于中译版《马克思恩格斯全集》。虽然中译版《马克思恩格斯全集》是我国众多马克思主义学者呕心沥血的成果,也是我国权威的马克思恩格斯文献版本,但是当我们面对未经中译的马克思恩格斯文献时,换言之,当我们面对马克思恩格斯的原初文本语境时,回到其本身使用的语言,可能会帮助我们走近其思想发生的原初之境。其次,虽然《布鲁塞尔笔记》是马克思研究经济学的笔记,但是马克思从来没有打算成为一名经济学家,他对经济学的研究是为了创造新世界观而使用的现实武器,其中渗透了他的哲学话语。对马克思哲学思想的研究不能只停留在哲学领域,也不能只停留在经济学领域,甚至不能将哲学与经济学简单拼接。马克思究竟在经济学研究中获得了什么?马克思的哲学思想是如何与经济学结合又被其改变的?历史唯物主义中的哲学与经济学两条逻辑又是如何显隐在新世界观构架之中的?这些都是非常难以回答的问题,而《布鲁塞尔笔记》为我们提供了一个探索的入口。最后,我们过去的研究往往停留在“是”的层面上,即仅以《德意志意识形态》为对象来解释历史唯物主义是什么,或者仅以《1844年经济学哲学手稿》为对象来解释异化劳动理论是什么。然而,我们还需要进一步去研究,历史唯物主义是如何生成的;异化劳动理论是如何生成的;其理论来源是什么。也就是说,要推动“然”的研究范式向“所以然”的研究范式转变。除了结合马克思恩格斯的现实生活来推测其外部来源,还需要探究新世界观理论生成的思想来源与具体细节。理论不是无根之木,笔记文本向我们很好地证明了这一点。

With the continuous development of Marxism in the 21st century, China’s research on Marxist texts also faces a series of new problems and new challenges. Faced with richer texts, including the original manuscripts, notebooks, and letters of Marx and Engels, as well as the detailed materials compiled and published in the *Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe* (historical-critical edition, MEGA²), we must adopt a higher research standpoint to confront and open up these new texts. In past research, the exploration of the sources of Marxist theory more often sought possible connections from the relevant works of classical political economy, classical philosophy, and utopian socialism, reading back into Marx and Engels’ thought. Now, the notebook texts we face not only provide the specific content of the theorists and their works that Marx and Engels excerpted, but also include how they rewrote and commented on these works. By comparing these with the original texts of the works, we can clearly see Marx and Engels’ views on each doctrine—this is a completely new theoretical horizon for the study of Marxist philosophy. The New Era calls for new intensive textual cultivation in the study of Marxist philosophy. The original manuscripts of Marx and Engels’ notebooks not only have historical significance; more importantly, they can help us accurately grasp the historical logic of the generation of Marxism.

随着21世纪马克思主义的不断发展,我国的马克思主义文献研究也面临一系列新问题和新挑战。面对更加丰富的文本,包括马克思恩格斯的手稿、笔记、书信等原始文本,以及《马克思恩格斯全集》(历史考证版)(MEGA2)整理出版的翔实资料,我们必须以更高的研究站位去面对和打开这些新文献。在过去的研究中,对马克思主义理论来源问题的探讨更多是从古典经济学、古典哲学、空想社会主义的相关著作中寻找可能关联之处,对马克思恩格斯思想进行反注。现在,我们面对的笔记文本不仅提供了马克思恩格斯摘抄的理论家及其著作的具体内容,还包括他们如何改写和评论这些著作的相关内容。对照这些著作的原文,我们可以清晰地看到马克思恩格斯对每一种学说的看法,这是马克思主义哲学研究的全新理论视野。新时代呼吁马克思主义哲学研究进行新的文本深耕,马克思恩格斯笔记的原始手稿,不仅具有历史性意义,更重要的是它们能帮助我们准确把握马克思主义生成的历史逻辑。

Web editor: Paul

网络编辑：保罗