The Concept of Class in *A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction*

The concept of class is dissolving, retreating, and falling silent in our era. In political science, sociology, and even philosophy, the concept of “class” has been replaced by the concept of “stratum.” That the concept of class has been so marginalized may originate in the breeding of a reified consciousness in modern society, but to reduce it merely to an empirical existence of economic wealth and social status hierarchy is the greatest misunderstanding of Marx’s concept of class. To break free from a stratum-based understanding of class and to grasp Marx’s concept of class in a complete, dialectical, and scientific manner, it is still necessary to return to Marx’s early classic texts and to examine in detail their mode of narration, problem orientation, and logical progression concerning the concept of class, so as to lay a foundation for grasping Marx’s concept of class. The classic text *A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction* (hereinafter referred to as the *Introduction*) is a milestone work in Marx’s transition from idealist philosophy to materialist philosophy. The concept of the proletariat makes its first appearance in the *Introduction*, marking Marx’s completion of the shift from borrowing and intellectual understanding of the concept of class to a real grasp of it, and thereby sketching the basic contours for the evolution and development of Marx’s theory of class. Although in his later period Marx used the concepts of the proletariat and the working class interchangeably and presented deeper, more concrete expositions, their philosophical determination and overall logic were already grounded in the text of Marx’s *Introduction*.

阶级概念正在时代中消解、隐退与失语，无论是政治学、社会学，甚至哲学领域都已经用“阶层”概念置换了“阶级”概念。阶级概念如此被边缘化，或许肇因于现代社会物化意识的滋生，但仅仅被能指为经济财富、社会地位差序的经验性存在，这是对马克思阶级概念最大的误解。为了摆脱阶级的阶层化理解，完整、辩证且科学把握马克思阶级概念，尚需回归马克思早期经典文本中去，详细勘察其对阶级概念的叙事方式、问题导向与逻辑进路，以期为把握马克思阶级概念奠定基础。《〈黑格尔法哲学批判〉导言》（以下简称《导言》）这一经典文本，是马克思从唯心主义哲学向唯物主义哲学转变的里程碑式作品。无产阶级概念在《导言》中首次出场，标志着马克思完成了从阶级概念的借用、知性理解到阶级概念的现实把握，继而为马克思阶级理论的演进、发展描绘了基本轮廓。尽管马克思在后期交互使用无产阶级和工人阶级概念并呈现出更为深刻、现实的阐述，但是其哲学规定和总体逻辑早已奠基于马克思《导言》文本之中。

First, the textual logic of the emergence of Marx’s concept of class. According to a word-frequency search of Marx’s early works in Volume 1 of the second edition of the *Collected Works of Marx and Engels*, the concept of class first appears in Marx’s article “Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction,” written in early February 1842: “For example, the censorship instruction forbids the author to doubt the thinking of individuals or of an entire class. But at the same time it allows the censor to divide all citizens into the suspicious and the unsuspicious, into the well-intentioned and the ill-intentioned. The press is deprived of the right to criticize, yet criticism becomes the daily duty of government critics,” and “class” appears a total of seven times in the full text. Subsequently, the concept of class appears once in “Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood” [1]1 This refers to Marx’s article series “Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood,” published in the *Rheinische Zeitung* in 1842, which addressed the criminalization of the poor gathering fallen wood by the Prussian state.; once in “Communism and the *Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung*”; only once in *Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right*; and as many as 41 times in the *Introduction*, of which the concept of the “proletariat” appears as many as 13 times. Synthesizing the above word-frequency statistics, the *Introduction* is the inflection point for the concept of class. Compared with previously written texts, it has the following distinctive features: First, the number and frequency of the concept of class in the *Introduction* increase markedly, meaning that the weight of class narrative in the *Introduction* is significantly enhanced. Second, the *Introduction* mentions the “proletariat” for the first time and places it at the end of the text as the core term of the article’s conclusion. Third, in all texts prior to the *Introduction*, Marx’s expression of class either appears alone or is used together with qualifiers (such as “bureaucratic” or “poor”), and exhibits a certain semantic-logical regularity. For example, taking the “vexing question” [2]2 “Vexing question” (苦恼的疑问) is Marx’s own term for the theoretical difficulty he faced when his rationalist conception of the state collided with the reality of material interests, as documented in his 1859 Preface to *A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy*. of encountering material interests as the temporal boundary, in the earlier texts the concept of class mainly refers to the “bureaucratic class” as the feudal ruling force, while in the later texts the concept of class is often associated with “poverty,” mainly pointing to economically disadvantaged groups in modern society. This already grasps the proletariat at the empirical level, laying an empirical foundation for Marx’s philosophical turn and logical deduction in the *Introduction*.

其一，马克思阶级概念出场的文本逻辑。根据对《马克思恩格斯全集》第2版第1卷中马克思早期作品的词频搜索发现，马克思阶级概念首次出现在其1842年2月初撰写的《评普鲁士最近的书报检查令》一文中：“譬如，检查令禁止作者怀疑个别人或整个阶级的思想。但是同时它又允许书报检察官把全体公民分成可疑的和不可疑的两种，分成善意的和恶意的两种。新闻出版被剥夺了批评的权利，可是批评却成了政府批评家的日常责任”，并且“阶级”在全文出现共7次。随后，阶级概念在《第六届莱茵省议会的辩论（第一篇论文）》中出现1次；在《第六届莱茵省议会的辩论（第三篇论文）》即著名的《关于林木盗窃法的辩论》中出现11次；在《共产主义和奥格斯堡（总汇报）》中出现1次；在《黑格尔法哲学批判》中却只出现1次，而在《〈黑格尔法哲学批判〉导言》中出现了41次，其中“无产阶级”概念出现多达13次。综合以上词频统计，《导言》是阶级概念的词频拐点，与之前所撰文本相比有以下不同特点：第一，《导言》中的阶级概念次数、频率明显增多，意味着马克思在《导言》中的阶级叙事比重明显增强；第二，《导言》首次提及“无产阶级”，并将其置于文末作为全文结论部分的核心词汇；第三，在《导言》之前的所有文本中，马克思对阶级的表述，要么单独表述，要么与有限定指向的关联词（如“官僚”“贫苦”等）一并使用，并呈现出一定（的）语义逻辑规律。例如，以遭遇物质利益的“苦恼疑问”为时间界限，前期文本表述中的阶级概念主要指代作为封建统治势力的“官僚阶级”，而后期文本表述中的阶级概念常常与“贫苦”相关联，主要指向现代社会中的经济弱势群体，这已经在经验层面上把握到了无产阶级，为马克思在《导言》中的哲学转向与逻辑推演奠定了经验基础。

Second, the practical logic of the emergence of Marx’s concept of class. Indeed, one cannot rely solely on word frequency and the shift in the referent of the concept to investigate the logic of the emergence of Marx’s concept of class, because the fundamental driving force of its emergence comes from the practical orientation of Marx’s textual narration. In the era when Marx wrote the *Introduction*, thinkers were constantly striving for human freedom, social equality, and the advancement of civilization. Marx was no exception; he actively participated in social practice, confronted the real problems of human emancipation, and pondered how to break free from the historical predicament of the time to achieve human equality, freedom, and liberation. In 1841, after completing his studies and obtaining his doctorate in philosophy, Marx began to engage extensively with social reality and actively participated in political discussion as a theorist. During his time at the *Rheinische Zeitung*, Marx’s political practice mainly consisted of using modern political theory to carry out theoretical critiques of political and social events. A comprehensive review of the series of political articles Marx published in the *Rheinische Zeitung* reveals that, faced with the backward state of German society, the fundamental purpose of Marx’s political practice was how to accomplish a modern social revolution in Germany—which lacked both a political revolution and an industrial revolution—and achieve genuine human liberation. To realize this goal, Marx, following the philosophical logic and methodological guidance of Feuerbach’s humanism, undertook a theoretical critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right or philosophy of the state, seeking to find the true answer to real problems. In Marx’s era, Germany under traditional Christianity remained mired in a privileged, autocratic traditional political system. Marx attempted to solve the problems of Germany’s modern development and the predicament of human liberation ideologically through the critique of religion and the critique of politics. Thus, Marx first demanded the critique of the Christian state to make it conform to the rational stipulations of the modern state. However, in subsequent political practice, Hegel’s rationalist conception of the state was not empirically confirmed, forcing Marx to confront the “vexing question” of material interests: reality could not be determined by reason, and a large number of real problems could not be resolved within the rationalist state system. This question first appeared in Marx’s first published editorial, “Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood” (the first article of the debates of the Sixth Rhine Province Assembly). In “Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood” (the third article of the debates of the Sixth Rhine Province Assembly), this difficulty was directly articulated by Marx. Here, Marx saw how the owners of timber used the legislature and other state institutions to serve their private interests, and how the state became a tool of private property, full of “hypocrisy.” Thus, Marx could not find an answer to real problems from the state system or Hegel’s philosophy of right. Consequently, in March 1843, Marx formally withdrew from the *Rheinische Zeitung* and immediately began a critical analysis of Hegel’s philosophy of right, attempting to break out of the Hegelian paradigm of the philosophy of right and find a real force to answer his “vexing question.” This is precisely the practical logic of the emergence of the concept of class in the *Introduction*.

其二，马克思阶级概念出场的实践逻辑。诚然，不能单单凭借词频及其概念指认对象转换来勘察马克思阶级概念的出场逻辑，因为其出场的根本动力来自马克思文本叙述的实践旨向。在马克思写作《导言》的时代，思想家们一直在为追求人类自由、实现社会平等与推动文明进步而努力。马克思也不例外，他积极参与社会实践，直面人类解放的现实问题，思考如何从时前的历史困境解放出来而实现人的平等、自由与解放。1841年，马克思在完成学业拿到哲学博士学位后，便开始广泛接触社会现实，积极以理论家的姿态参与政治讨论。在《莱茵报》时期，马克思的政治实践主要是运用现代政治理论展开对政治事件、社会事件的理论批判。综观马克思在《莱茵报》上发表的一系列政论文章，可以发现，面对德国社会落后现状，如何在缺乏政治革命、工业革命的德国完成现代社会革命，实现人真正的解放，是马克思政治实践的根本宗旨。为了实现这一目标，马克思沿着费尔巴哈人本主义的哲学逻辑、方法论指引对黑格尔法哲学或国家哲学进行了理论批判，试图寻找到现实问题的真正答案。在马克思所处的时代，传统的基督教下的德国仍然沉陷在特权的、专制的传统政治体制之中，马克思试图通过对宗教批判、政治批判从思想上破解德国现代化发展的难题与人类解放的困境。因而，马克思首先要求完成对基督教国家的批判，使其符合现代国家之理性规定。然而，在后续的政治实践中，黑格尔的理性主义国家观并没有得到现实的确证，让马克思不得不直面作为 “苦恼的疑问”的物质利益难题：现实难以被理性所规定，大量的现实问题不能在理性主义国家体系中得到解决。这一疑问一开始呈现在马克思首次发表的社论即《第六届莱茵省议会的辩论（第一篇论文）》（《关于新闻出版自由和公布省等级会议辩论情况的辩论》）之中。而在《第六届莱茵省议会的辩论（第三篇论文）》（《关于林木盗窃法的辩论》）中，这一难题则被马克思直接阐述了出来。在这里，马克思看到林木所有者是如何利用立法机关和其他国家机构为自己的私人利益服务的，国家是如何沦为私有财产的工具而充满“虚伪性”的。因而，马克思并不能从国家体系或黑格尔法哲学中找到破解现实难题的答案。于是，在1843年3月，马克思正式退出《莱茵报》，并于同月旋即开始了对黑格尔法哲学的批判性分析，试图从黑格尔法哲学范式中突围，寻找一种现实的力量来解答他的“苦恼的疑问”，这正是《导言》阶级概念出场的实践逻辑。

Third, the theoretical logic of the emergence of Marx’s concept of class. Although oriented by practical problems, Marx did not provide empirical descriptions or formalistic grasp of these practical problems. Instead, standing on the existing theoretical foundation of Hegel’s philosophy, he carried out a logical refinement and theoretical transformation of these practical problems, and then unfolded a deeper examination of their essence. Therefore, in order to grasp the essence and logic of the emergence of the concept of the proletariat, it is necessary to “restore” it to the theoretical logic on which Marx was then basing himself for investigation. Hegel’s philosophy profoundly revealed the inherent predicament of modern civil society, namely that “civil society is a battlefield of individual private interests, a war of all against all” [3]3 This is a paraphrase of Hegel’s description of civil society in his *Philosophy of Right* (1820), §289 Addition, where he writes that civil society is “the battlefield where everyone’s individual private interest meets everyone else’s.” — that is, if the particularity of civil society is allowed to expand unchecked, it will inevitably lead to the collapse of civil society itself. But the solution Hegel provided was to contain, educate, and regulate the particularity of civil society through the state as the highest ethical entity, thereby realizing true human freedom. In essence, Hegel diagnosed the inherent contradiction of modernity as the tension between the universality of the political state and the particularity of civil society, and Hegel attempted to achieve their unity through the “state system” [Staatseinrichtung], overcoming the contradiction between them. This is the theoretical connotation of Hegel’s “state determines civil society.” According to this logical approach of Hegel, the realization of concrete freedom or the resolution of the above contradiction must rely on the political system constructed by the monarch (monarchical power), the bureaucracy (executive power), and the estates element of civil society (legislative power). Through his *Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right*, Marx analyzed one by one the “falsity” in reality of the “monarch,” “bureaucracy,” and “estates element of civil society” that Hegel had set up for this purpose, and then for a time advocated overcoming the predicament of Hegel’s “state system” through “true democracy.” It can be seen that at this time Marx was still a “bourgeois radical,” intending to passively overcome the contradiction between the political state and civil society by abolishing the monarchy and estate-based representation and implementing universal suffrage. But by the period of the *Introduction*, the emergence of the concept of the proletariat marked Marx’s turn toward the goal of communism and a methodological turn toward materialism. In the *Introduction*, Marx no longer hoped to realize human political emancipation within the political sphere, but instead turned toward a reality, turning to the interior of civil society to seek a way to resolve it, thereby realizing human emancipation rather than political emancipation. Based on this theoretical-logical turn, Marx stated at the beginning of the *Introduction* that the critique of religion is complete, and that it is necessary to turn from political critique to the critique of reality, to turn to the interior of civil society. But this theoretical turn of Marx did not completely abandon Hegel’s philosophy, especially Hegel’s dialectics; on the contrary, Hegel’s philosophy constituted the starting point of Marx’s intellectual development. In other words, Marx transformed and developed Hegel’s philosophy, and, carrying the transformed dialectics with him, proceeded to dissect the internal structure of civil society — relations of material interests. Marx grasped the internal contradictions or antagonisms of civil society from a theoretical-logical perspective, that is, the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and thereby transformed the separation or contradiction between the political state and civil society as Hegel had spoken of it into the antagonism or contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Thus, the emergence of the concept of the proletariat in the *Introduction* is both Marx’s theoretical grasp of historical practice and his historical consciousness of theoretical logic.

其三，马克思阶级概念出场的理论逻辑。尽管以现实问题为导向，但马克思并没有对现实问题进行经验性描述与形式化把握，而是站在黑格尔哲学已有的理论基础上，对这些现实问题进行逻辑提炼、理论转化，进而展开更为深层次的本质审视。因而，为把握无产阶级概念的出场实质和出场逻辑，必须“还原”到马克思此时所立基的理论逻辑中去考察。黑格尔哲学深刻揭示了现代市民社会的内在困境即“市民社会是个人私利的战场，是一切人反对一切人的战场”，即任由市民社会的特殊性扩展，势必会导致市民社会本身的崩塌。但黑格尔提供的方案，是通过作为最高伦理实体的国家来包容、教化与规范市民社会的特殊性，进而实现人的真正自由。实质上，黑格尔诊断出了现代性的内在矛盾就是政治国家普遍性与市民社会特殊性之间的紧张关系，而黑格尔试图通过“国家制度”来实现它们的统一，克服两者间的矛盾，这就是黑格尔“国家决定市民社会”的理论内涵。按照黑格尔这一逻辑进路，具体自由的实现或上述矛盾的解决必须希冀由君主（君主权）、官僚（行政权）与市民社会的等级要素（立法权）所构建的政治体系。马克思通过《黑格尔法哲学批判》逐一分析了黑格尔为此设置的“君主”“官僚”“市民社会等级要素”在现实中的“虚假性”，进而一度主张通过“真正的民主制”来化解黑格尔“国家制度”的困局。可以看出，此时的马克思还是一个“资产阶级激进主义者”，意图通过消灭君主制和等级代议制，实行普选制，来消极克服政治国家与市民社会之间的矛盾。但到《导言》时期，无产阶级概念的出场标志着马克思实现了共产主义的目标转向、唯物主义的方法论转向。在《导言》中，马克思不再希冀在政治范畴内去实现人的政治解放，而是朝向一种现实，转向市民社会内部去寻求破解之道，继而实现人的解放而非政治解放。基于这一理论逻辑转向，马克思在《导言》开篇表示，对宗教的批判已经结束，要从政治批判转向现实批判，转到市民社会内部。但马克思的这种理论转向，并非完全抛弃了黑格尔哲学尤其是黑格尔辩证法，恰恰相反，黑格尔哲学构成了马克思思想发展的起点。换句话说，马克思改造、发展了黑格尔哲学，并带着被改造过的辩证法对市民社会的内部结构——物质利益关系展开剖析。马克思从理论逻辑上把握市民社会的内部矛盾或对抗，即无产阶级与资产阶级的矛盾，进而把黑格尔所言的政治国家与市民社会之间的分离或矛盾转化为无产阶级与资产阶级间的对抗或矛盾。因而，无产阶级概念在《导言》中的出场，既是马克思对历史实践的理论把握，也是对理论逻辑的历史自觉。

It is generally believed in academic circles that Marx in the period of the *Introduction* had not yet truly mastered the theory of political economy, and that his historical materialism had not yet taken shape. In the *Introduction*, Marx only narrated the concept of the proletariat from the philosophical level, which easily leads researchers to regard this dimension of “philosophical determination” as Marx’s immature thought. In fact, this greatly neglects the logic of the emergence of Marx’s concept of class and its theoretical axis in the entire evolution of Marx’s thought and theory. Marx’s philosophical determination and logical approach to the concept of the proletariat at this time ran through the entire subsequent course of Marx’s thought, and the concept of class thus became “the essence of Marx’s philosophy.” If one forgets Marx’s basic determination of class in the *Introduction*, the later Marx’s concept of the proletariat will lose its overall logical character, leading to the positivization and empiricization of Marx’s concept of class, and falling into the rut of reified consciousness identified by Lukács. Based on the above account of the logic of the emergence of Marx’s concept of class, we should more deeply appreciate that the concept of class by no means points only to economic impoverishment or the system of ownership of the means of production in the general sense, but directly concerns the “species-being” [Gattungswesen] of humanity or true freedom. The emergence of Marx’s concept of the proletariat, on the one hand, reveals the loss of universality of human beings in modern society; on the other hand, it seeks from within this modern historical situation the historical force that can realize the universal emancipation of humanity. If one understands and grasps Marx’s concept of class merely from the economic result of poverty, then one cannot explain Marx’s discussion of the lumpenproletariat in the *Communist Manifesto*, still less can one understand the phenomenon of the opposition of material interests between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in contemporary capitalist society. The philosophical determination of the concept of class in the *Introduction* also laid the overall framework for the subsequent emergence of the Marxist concept of the “working class.” Without this, the working class, as a link in the production structure of modern society, could easily be embedded in the total logic of capital, simply pursuing its own infinite economic aims and losing the historical consciousness of bearing the task of self-emancipation. In short, based on the account of the concept of class in the *Introduction*, we can make the following initial summary and basic understanding of Marx’s concept of class. First, the proletariat is a product of history, a product of human artifice, a product of industrialization and modernization; a true proletariat exists only in modern capitalist society. Second, class points to the “species-being” of humanity; the emergence of the proletariat is the sign of humanity’s loss of universality, and therefore the proletariat is by no means merely the workers and the poor as empirically intuited. Third, the proletariat is a special class, possessing self-negation and transcendence; the proletariat must not only abolish the bourgeoisie, but must also achieve its own abolition through abolishing the bourgeoisie — this is a historical quality that no other class possesses.

学界一般认为，《导言》时期的马克思还没有真正掌握政治经济学理论，其唯物史观尚未形成。马克思在《导言》中只是从哲学层面来叙述无产阶级的概念，容易使研究者们把这一维度的“哲学规定”视为马克思不成熟的思想。事实上，这极大忽略了马克思阶级概念的出场逻辑及其在整个马克思思想理论演进中的理论基轴。马克思此时对无产阶级概念的哲学规定和致思逻辑，贯穿了马克思后续整个思想历程，阶级概念因而成为“马克思哲学的本质”。如果忘却马克思在《导言》中对阶级的基本规定，后期马克思的无产阶级概念将会丧失其总体性逻辑特征，从而导致马克思阶级概念的实证化、经验化，而陷入卢卡奇所指认的物化意识的窠臼之中。基于以上有关马克思阶级概念的出场逻辑叙述，我们应更深刻地体会到，阶级概念绝非仅指向一般意义上的经济致贫或生产资料的所有制问题，而是直接关乎人的“类”存在或真正自由问题。马克思无产阶级概念的出场，一方面要揭示现代社会中人的普遍性丧失，另一方面要从这现代历史境况中找到实现人类普遍性解放的历史力量。如果仅仅从经济结果的穷困来理解、把握马克思的阶级概念，那么就无法解释马克思在《共产党宣言》中有关流氓无产阶级的论述，更无法理解当代资本主义社会中无产阶级与资产阶级的物质利益对立现象。《导言》中有关阶级概念的哲学规定同时也为后续马克思主义“工人阶级”概念的出场奠定了总体性框架。若非如此，工人阶级作为现代社会生产结构中的一个环节，极易被嵌入资本总逻辑之中，单纯追寻自己无限的经济目的而丧失担当自我解放重任的历史意识。总之，根据《导言》中对阶级概念的叙述，我们可以对马克思阶级概念作以下初始概括与基本理解。第一，无产阶级是历史的产物，是人为的产物，是工业化、现代化的产物，真正的无产阶级只存在现代资本主义社会之中；第二，阶级指向人的“类存在”，无产阶级的出现就是人丧失普遍性的标志，因而无产阶级绝非仅仅是经验直观到的工人、贫民；第三，无产阶级是一个特殊的阶级，具有自我否定性、超越性，无产阶级不仅仅要消灭资产阶级，更要通过消灭资产阶级达到自我的消亡，这是任何其他阶级不具备的历史品质。

Online editor: Paul

网络编辑：保罗