The Historical Logic of Eastern European Neo-Marxism – Also on the Contemporary Significance of the Study of Eastern European Neo-Marxism

For a long time, Eastern European neo-Marxism has been designated as an appendage or one of the schools of Western Marxism, to the extent that its own specific theoretical significance has not yet been fully recognized and revealed by the academic community. From the mainstream perspective, this mainly stems from two facts. First, both Eastern European neo-Marxism and Western Marxism originate theoretically from the turn in Marxist theory initiated by Lukács, and therefore there is a certain similarity in their respective concerns. Second, due to specific historical reasons, Eastern European neo-Marxism has become a thing of the past; apart from the Budapest School, other theories have not been realistically inherited as schools of thought.

长期以来，东欧新马克思主义一直被指认为西方马克思主义的附属或流派之一，以至于其自身特殊的理论意义尚未被学界充分认识并揭示。从主流观点来看，这主要根源于两方面的事实。其一，东欧新马克思主义与西方马克思主义在理论渊源上均源自卢卡奇所开创的马克思主义理论转向，因此两者在旨趣上存在着一定的相似性。其二，东欧新马克思主义由于特定的历史原因而成为“过去”，除布达佩斯学派以外，其他理论并未能作为流派得到现实的传承。

However, the creativity of a theory is reflected not only in whether it can exist as a formal "school" but also in the actual unfolding of its historical logic. In fact, there are certain differences in historical logic between Eastern European neo-Marxism and Western Marxism. This also makes it impossible to equate the two absolutely, and this divergence still originates from Lukács. While opening up the turn in Marxist theory, Lukács formed a dual path of cultural critique and political-economic critique. Although in his view, for Marxism, there are ultimately no independent disciplines such as law, political economy, or historical science, but only a single, unified, historical, and dialectical science of the development of society (as a totality), the dichotomy between methodology and ontology nevertheless set the methodological centrality of totality in opposition to the primacy of the economy. Therefore, unlike Western Marxism, when facing the dilemmas of Lukács's theory, Eastern European neo-Marxism always attempted to unify cultural critique and political-economic critique based on the historical practice of socialism, and ultimately formed the theoretical conception of "humanist socialism." Karel Kosík's thought on concrete dialectics is one important manifestation of this historical logic.

但是，一种理论的创造性不仅体现在是否能够作为形式上的“流派”而存在，更体现在其历史逻辑的现实展开。事实上，东欧新马克思主义与西方马克思主义在历史逻辑上存在着一定的差异。这也使得两者无法被绝对等同起来，并且，这一分野依然来自卢卡奇。卢卡奇在开辟马克思主义理论转向的同时，形成了文化批判与政治经济批判的双重路径。尽管在他看来，对马克思主义来说，归根结底就没有什么独立的法学、政治经济学、历史科学等，而只有一门唯一的、统一的、历史的、辩证的关于社会（作为总体）发展的科学，但是方法论与本体论之间的二分，却造成了总体在方法论上的核心地位与经济的优先性对立起来。因此，与西方马克思主义不同，东欧新马克思主义在面对卢卡奇理论的困境时，始终基于社会主义的历史实践而尝试将文化批判与政治经济批判统一起来，并最终形成了“人道主义社会主义”的理论构想。科西克的具体的辩证法思想就是这一历史逻辑的重要体现之一。

Cultural Critique as Totality

作为总体性的文化批判

Among the main representatives of Eastern European neo-Marxism, Kosík has long enjoyed a very high theoretical status and international reputation. His representative work, *Dialectics of the Concrete: A Study on Problems of Man and World*, is even considered comparable to Lukács's *History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics*, and likewise demonstrates profound insight into cultural critique.

在东欧新马克思主义的主要代表人物中，科西克一直享有非常高的理论地位与国际声誉，其代表作《具体的辩证法——关于人与世界问题的研究》甚至被认为可以同卢卡奇的《历史与阶级意识——关于马克思主义辩证法的研究》相比肩，并且同样展现出对于文化批判的深刻洞察。

Although Lukács is recognized as the beginning of the turn toward cultural critique in Marxism, this logic was already inherent in Marx's later thought. In other words, how to correctly understand and deal with the problem of the priority of capitalism is an important theoretical proposition in Marx's later thought. In his later years, Marx further developed historical materialism. Through his investigation of the Asiatic mode of production [1]1 The Asiatic mode of production is a concept in Marx's thought referring to a form of society distinct from the ancient, feudal, and capitalist modes, characterized by communal land ownership and a centralized state, often associated with non-European societies.—the dual character of the rural commune, combining public and private ownership—he revealed the realistic path of generating world history mediated by public ownership, namely the conception of crossing the "Caudine Forks" [2]2 "Crossing the Caudine Forks" is a metaphor derived from a Roman military defeat in 321 BCE, used by Marx to suggest the possibility of a society bypassing the capitalist stage of development by building on pre-capitalist communal forms., thereby discovering, on the basis of *The German Ideology*, another possibility of historical development and exhibiting a theoretical dimension of de-Westernization. To this end, Marx severely criticized the "asses" (British colonists) for the privatization process they carried out in the Indian colonies. However, because the reality of the historical development of Western capitalism made its priority vulgarly equated with historical inevitability, historical paths differing from it necessarily needed first to clarify this point. In this sense, the turn toward cultural critique was a logical necessity of the development of Marx's thought, and ultimately constituted the common theme of both Eastern European neo-Marxism and Western Marxism, with Lukács as their starting point.

尽管卢卡奇是公认的马克思主义文化批判转向的开端，但这一逻辑已经内蕴于马克思的晚年思想，换言之，如何正确看待和处理资本主义的先在性问题是马克思晚年思想的重要理论命题。马克思在晚年进一步发展了唯物史观，通过对亚细亚生产方式的考察——农村公社兼具公有制和私有制的二重性特征，揭示了以公有制为中介向世界历史生成的现实路径，即跨越“卡夫丁峡谷”的设想，从而在《德意志意识形态》的基础上发现了另一种历史发展的可能性，并展现出去西方中心化的理论维度。为此，马克思严厉地批判了“蠢驴”（英国殖民者）在印度殖民地所进行的私有化进程。然而，由于西方资本主义历史发展的现实使其先在性被庸俗地等同于历史的必然性，因此，与之相异的历史路径必然需要首先澄清这一点。在此意义上，文化批判转向乃是马克思思想发展的逻辑使然，并最终构成了以卢卡奇为开端的东欧新马克思主义和西方马克思主义共同的主题。

Unlike Lukács, who was deeply influenced by Hegel, Kosík continued the tradition of phenomenology-existentialism, yet he agreed with Lukács in that, in his reinterpretation of Marx's dialectics, he pointed out the domination of a mystified or reified world and unfolded his critique of totality. In Kosík's view, identifying objectivity with objectness is the essential characteristic of the pseudo-concrete world. On the surface, this is merely a shift in perspective; in reality, it is a substitution of reality, that is, reality as objectness replaces reality as objectivity. Social reality is conceived according to nature in the physical sense, and economic science is conceived according to social physics. Therefore, objective reality becomes a reality of objectness, a world of objects. Fundamentally, this pseudo-concrete world arises from the loss of revolutionary, critical practice, thereby causing everyday utilitarian practice and the everyday thinking it produces to usurp practice with historical totality and the human being, replacing the relationship between humans and their own history—a relationship that exists in the world of concrete totality, ultimately in humans' revolutionary historical practice—with the relationship between humans and the world of objects external to them. The result is that the historical totality of humans dissolves into the world of things and the world of ideas. Therefore, Kosík points out that destroying this pseudo-concrete world and returning to the exploration of the "thing-in-itself"—the totality of the world discovered in history and the human being existing within this totality of the world—itself implies a critique of totality as cultural critique.

与深受黑格尔影响的卢卡奇不同，科西克延续了现象学—存在主义的理论传统，但是却又同卢卡奇相一致，即在对于马克思辩证法的重新阐释中，指明了神秘化或物化的世界的宰制，并展开他们的总体性批判。在科西克看来，将客体性指认为客观性，是伪具体的世界的本质特征。表面上仅仅是视角的转换，实际上则是对现实的替换，即客体性现实代替了客观性现实。根据物理意义上的自然来构想社会现实，根据社会物理学来构想经济科学。因此，客观现实变成了一个客体性现实，变成了一个客体的世界。从根本上说，这种伪具体的世界产生于革命性、批判性的实践的丧失，从而致使日常功利性实践及其所产生的日常思维对具有历史总体性的实践和人的僭越，使人与自身的历史关系——这种关系存在于具体的总体的世界，归根结底是人的革命性的历史实践之中——被人与外在于他的对象世界的关系所取代。其结果是人的历史总体性消解于实物的世界和观念的世界当中。因此，科西克指出，毁灭这种伪具体的世界回到对于“物自体”——在历史中发现的世界总体以及存在于这个世界总体中的人的探求，本身就意味着一种总体性的文化批判。

The Extension of Cultural Critique to Political-Economic Critique

文化批判向政治经济批判的延伸

As is well known, on the issue of the priority of capitalist reality, in his later years Marx, in his letter to Vera Zasulich [3]3 Vera Zasulich (1849–1919) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary. Marx's 1881 draft replies to her letter discussed the possibility of Russia's rural commune transitioning directly to socialism without passing through capitalism., proposed appropriating "all the positive achievements" of capitalist production. However, Marx also proposed that peoples still retaining the Asiatic mode of production must eliminate the destructive influences assailing them from all sides, and then ensure the normal conditions for their natural development. In other words, the investigation of history must proceed from the realistic conditions or objectivity of specific peoples. However, when Lukács equated "reification" with objectification, transforming what is essentially a social alienation into an eternal "human condition," the split between ontology and methodology, between cultural critique and political-economic critique, had already become inevitable. Therefore, the difference between Lukács's historical dialectics and Kosík's concrete dialectics, both committed to the critique of totality as cultural critique, manifests itself precisely here.

众所周知，在面对资本主义现实先在性的问题上，晚年马克思在给查苏利奇的复信中提出了占有资本主义生产的“一切积极的成果”。但是，马克思也提出了依然保留亚细亚生产方式的民族必须排除从各方面向它袭来的破坏性影响，然后保证它具备自然发展的正常条件。换言之，对于历史的考察必须从具体民族的现实条件或客观性出发。然而，当卢卡奇将“物化”等同为对象化，将本质上是一种社会的异化转变为一种永恒的“人类状况”时，本体论与方法论、文化批判与政治经济批判之间的分裂已然不可避免。因此，同样致力于总体性的文化批判，卢卡奇的历史辩证法与科西克的具体的辩证法之间的差异就在此显现出来。

In Lukács's view, only nature that has passed through "mediation" is real, that is, aesthetic nature—which is also why the subsequent Budapest School always explored the historical relationship between universality and particularity within the horizon of ethics. However, Kosík points out that, as a result of human practice, the ontological meaning of nature is merely obscured by the objectification and its ideas constructed by utilitarian practice. Kosík believes that the pseudo-concrete world is a derivative world; in essence, it is a world mystified and fetishized by utilitarian practice and everyday thinking. Although this world still emphasizes a certain totality—empty totality, abstract totality, and evil totality—the historical totality of the real world is completely forgotten in the process. Furthermore, Kosík extends his critique to the political-economic sphere, profoundly exposing the fact that within economics, humans are degraded to *homo economicus*. However, Kosík does not stop at an abstract critique of *homo economicus*; rather, within a historical horizon, he continuously inquires into the presuppositions that make economics possible, and reveals the self-splitting and degradation of humans in the relationship between economics and humans. Only under the capitalist system did economics develop into a science. Therefore, as a specialized discipline that provides a regular description of economic phenomena, economics can no longer be equated with economic reality itself; instead, it is the result of a systematic conception—mystification and fetishization—and constitutes the presupposition of *homo economicus*. That is, *homo economicus* can become possible only within the relationship between humans and this systematic regularity of economics. At this point, Kosík, like Marx, starting from another perspective, fundamentally and at the root subverts classical economics. That is to say, the assumption of *homo economicus*, which serves as the foundation of classical economics, is precisely the result of the emergence of economics; it is the emergence of economics that completes the transformation of humans' real existence into *homo economicus*.

在卢卡奇看来，只有经过“中介”的自然才是真实的，即审美的自然——这也是此后的布达佩斯学派始终在伦理学的视域内探讨普遍性与特殊性的历史关系。但是，科西克则指出，作为人的实践的结果，自然的本体论意义不过被功利性实践所建构的客体化及其观念所遮蔽了。科西克认为，伪具体的世界是一个派生性的世界，其本质上，乃是一个被功利性实践与日常思维神秘化和拜物教化了的世界。尽管这一世界依然强调某种总体性——空洞的总体、抽象的总体和恶的总体——但是，真实世界的历史的总体性却在此间被彻底地遗忘。进而，科西克将批判延伸到政治经济领域，深刻揭露了在经济学中人被贬损为经济人的事实。但是，科西克并没有止步于对经济人的抽象的批判，而是在历史的视域中不断追问经济学得以产生的前提，并在经济学与人的关系中揭示了人的自我分裂与降格。只有在资本主义制度下，经济学才发展为一门科学，因此，作为对经济现象进行规律性描述的专门学科，经济学已经无法被等同于经济现实本身，而是系统观念——神秘化和拜物教化——的结果，并构成了经济人的前提，即只有在人与经济学这一规律系统的关系中，经济人才能够成为可能。至此，科西克同马克思一样，从另一个视角出发，在根本和前提上颠覆了古典经济学。即是说，作为古典经济学基础的经济人假设恰恰是经济学产生的结果，正是经济学的产生完成了人的真实存在向经济人的转变。

A Critique Oriented Toward Open History

一种面向开放历史的批判

The “thing-in-itself” that Karel Kosík seeks is the totality of the world discovered in history and the human being existing within this totality of the world; revolutionary, critical praxis is the domain of human existence, and the creation of man’s true nature is an ontological reality. The dimension of praxis manifests itself as an openness, that is, the process of the formation of history and reality. Therefore, Kosík’s concrete dialectic is both the process of the self-manifestation of the “thing-in-itself” and the method of seeking the “thing-in-itself”—the ontology and methodology that were sundered by Lukács are unified in the concrete dialectic.

科西克所探求的“物自体”即是在历史中发现的世界总体以及存在于这个世界总体中的人，革命性、批判性的实践就是人类存在的领域，亦是人之真正本性的创造是一个本体论现实。实践的向度表现为一种开放性，即历史和现实的形成过程，因此，科西克的具体的辩证法既是“物自体”自我展现的过程，同时也是探求“物自体”的方法——被卢卡奇所割裂的本体论和方法论在具体的辩证法中得到了统一。

As one of the main representatives of Eastern European neo-Marxist theory, Kosík’s concrete dialectic reveals the unique historical logic of this theory, namely, that a total cultural critique necessarily contains the dimension of political-economic critique, and at the same time, the process of the historical total’s self-manifestation necessarily implies methodology—the theoretical form of the process—within itself (the humanist dialectic of the Yugoslav Praxis School is likewise the same in this regard). Although Lukács was also aware of this, the numerous ideological contradictions in his *History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics* ultimately hindered the realization of his original intention.

作为东欧新马克思主义理论的主要代表之一，科西克的具体的辩证法显示出了这一理论独特的历史逻辑，即一种总体性的文化批判必然包含政治经济批判的维度，同时历史性的总体自我展现的过程也必然内蕴方法论——过程的理论形式于其中（南斯拉夫实践派的人道主义辩证法亦与此同理）。尽管卢卡奇也意识到了这一点，但他在《历史与阶级意识——关于马克思主义辩证法的研究》中大量的思想矛盾却最终阻碍了其初衷的实现。

As Lukács himself stated, *History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics* was a theoretical expression he sought to formulate for a major, world-historical transformation. Therefore, the ideological contradictions in Lukács at this time were not purely a “subjective error.” The complex relationships within the context of Marx’s later thought—the relationships between socialism and capitalism, between national history and world history—were, for Western Marxism, a problem of theoretical critique, but for the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, they were first and foremost a practical problem serving as the theoretical foundation. In this regard, Eastern European neo-Marxism itself is a form of expression of historical practice. Thus, unlike Western Marxism, the critical theory of Eastern European neo-Marxism has always been grounded in a humanist national cultural heritage and remains open to the diverse developmental paths of history.

正如卢卡奇所言，《历史与阶级意识——关于马克思主义辩证法的研究》是其为一场重大的、世界历史性的转变所努力寻找的一种理论表述。因此，卢卡奇此时的思想矛盾并非是纯粹的“主观失误”。马克思晚年思想语境下的复杂关系——社会主义与资本主义、民族历史与世界历史之间的关系，对于西方马克思主义而言是理论批判的问题，而对于东欧的社会主义国家来说，则首要是作为理论基础的实践问题。就此而言，东欧新马克思主义本身就是历史实践的表达形式。因此，与西方马克思主义不同，东欧新马克思主义的批判理论始终在人道主义的民族文化底蕴上，面向历史的多样化发展路径开放。

The Continued Development of the Study of Eastern European Neo-Marxism in the Contemporary Era

东欧新马克思主义研究在当代的继续展开

As Engels noted in his annotation to the phrase “the history of all hitherto existing society” in the 1888 English edition of the *Communist Manifesto*, “That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organization existing previous to recorded history, was all but unknown.” In the years 1857–1859, Marx successively put forward the two concepts of the “Asiatic form of ownership” and the “Asiatic mode of production.” Marx not only recognized the differences existing between the Eastern world and the Western world but ultimately also advanced the important idea of crossing the “Caudine Forks.” [4]4 “Crossing the Caudine Forks” (跨越“卡夫丁峡谷”) is a metaphor Marx used in his later writings, drawn from an ancient Roman military defeat, to refer to the possibility of a society bypassing the capitalist stage of development and transitioning directly to socialism under certain conditions. In this regard, the logical thread of intellectual development existing between Marx’s later thought and works such as *The German Ideology*, *The Communist Manifesto*, *Capital*, and *Critique of the Gotha Programme* is crucial for understanding the development of Marxism—theory and practice—in the 20th century and the diversification of its forms. As a theoretical reflection on different historical circumstances, in a certain sense, the many forms of Marxism are precisely the result of the unfolding of this logic.

正如恩格斯在1888年英文版《共产党宣言》的“至今一切社会的历史”所加的注释那样，“这是指有文字记载的全部历史。在1847年，社会的史前史、成文史以前的社会组织，几乎还没有人知道”。马克思在1857—1859年间相继提出“亚细亚的所有制形式”和“亚细亚生产方式”两个概念，马克思不仅认识到了东方世界与西方世界之间存在的差异，而且最终提出了跨越“卡夫丁峡谷”的重要思想。就此而言，马克思晚年思想与《德意志意识形态》《共产党宣言》《资本论》《哥达纲领批判》等著作之间存在的思想发展的逻辑脉络，对于理解马克思主义——理论与实践——在20世纪的发展及其形态的多元化至关重要。作为对不同历史境遇的理论反思，在一定意义上，诸多形态的马克思主义正是这一逻辑展开的结果。

It is not difficult to see that the historical experience of adapting Marxism to the Chinese context and the needs of the times lies in successfully resolving and responding to the problems pointed out by Marx in his later years, within a historical horizon that unifies theory and practice, cultural critique and political-economic critique, and the national and the world. Furthermore, through the process of the Two Integrations, [5]5 The Two Integrations (两个结合) refers to the integration of the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s specific realities and with the best of China’s fine traditional culture. a new form of human civilization has been shaped. On this basis, the many forms of Marxism also possess the possibility of transcending a comparative study of mere specific viewpoints. Therefore, once the differences in historical logic between Eastern European neo-Marxism and Western Marxism are overlooked, it becomes very easy to obscure the unique historical value of its theory. In essence, compared with Soviet-era Marxism and Western Marxism, Eastern European neo-Marxism places greater emphasis on responding to the unresolved problems of Marx’s later years within a context that unifies the diverse generative process of world history and its inner unity, cultural critique and political-economic critique, or the self-sublation (reform) of socialism, and it creatively developed a localized form of Marxist theory.

不难发现，马克思主义中国化时代化的历史经验，即是在理论与实践、文化批判与政治经济批判、民族与世界相统一的历史视域里，成功地解决和回应了马克思晚年所指明的问题，进而在“两个结合”的过程中形成了人类文明新形态之维。同时，以此为基础，诸多形态的马克思主义也就存在着超越单纯具体观点的比较研究的可能性。因此，一旦忽视东欧新马克思主义同西方马克思主义历史逻辑之间的差异，也就极易遮蔽其理论的独特历史价值。质言之，相较于苏联时期的马克思主义和西方马克思主义，东欧新马克思主义更加侧重于在世界历史多样化生成过程及其内在统一性、文化批判与政治经济批判或社会主义的自我扬弃（改革）相统一的语境中回应马克思晚年的遗留问题，并创造性地发展了一种本土化的马克思主义理论形态。

In this sense, further exploring the experiences and problems of Eastern European neo-Marxism within the relationship between historical possibility and reality will be of great significance for deepening the understanding of the laws of the localization of Marxism on a world scale.

在此意义上，在历史的可能性与现实性的关系中，进一步探讨东欧新马克思主义的经验与问题，将会对于深化世界范围内马克思主义本土化规律的认识具有十分重要的意义。

Web Editor: Paul

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