Postmodern Theory’s Misreading of Marx’s Conception of History

In Marx’s theoretical system, the concept of history occupies a crucially important position. It not only constitutes the theoretical foundation for Marx’s analysis of social change and human development, but is also the key to understanding his philosophical thought. In the latter half of the 20th century, with the rise of postmodernism, Marx’s conception of history faced unprecedented challenges. Only by deeply understanding Marx’s historical materialism and situating it within its specific historical context can we comprehensively evaluate the limitations of these criticisms and, on this basis, promote the further development of theory.

在马克思的理论体系中，历史概念占据一个至关重要的位置。它不仅构成马克思分析社会变迁和人类发展的理论基石，同时也是理解其哲学思想的关键。20世纪后半叶，随着后现代主义的兴起，马克思的历史观遭到前所未有的挑战。只有深入理解马克思的历史唯物主义，并将其置于具体历史语境中，我们才能全面地评价这些批评的局限性，并在此基础上推动理论的进一步发展。

In 1993, Derrida published *Specters of Marx*, in which he raised questions about Marx’s conception of history. Derrida may not be a typical postmodern theorist, but his skepticism toward history is clearly influenced by postmodern theory. He argues that the fundamental characteristic of the conception of history is the use of a grand narrative to explain everything, which is an ideology of modern society. This ideology attempts to unify everything with a universal principle of reason; it has influenced not only modern Western reason in general, but also the entirety of Marx’s theory. Derrida points out that “Marx’s historical analysis is based on a self-evident premise, namely that history has a natural, necessary reason.” Therefore, he asserts: “The conception of history is modern society’s self-understanding… it regards history as a natural, rational process of human liberation; it cooperates with modern science and politics to isolate people from their own complexity and diversity.” In this way, Derrida “deconstructs” the totalizing character of the conception of history, reducing it to a rationalized universal logic, and thereby questions the deep logical foundation of Marx’s theory.

德里达于1993年出版了《马克思的幽灵》一书，他在书中对马克思的历史观提出质疑。德里达或许不是一个典型的后现代理论家，但他对历史的怀疑显然受到后现代理论的影响。他认为历史观的基本特点是用一个宏大叙事解释一切，这是一种现代社会的意识形态。这种意识形态试图用一个普遍理性原则统摄一切，它不仅影响了现代西方的一般理性，也影响了马克思的全部理论。德里达指出，“马克思的历史分析是基于一个不言自明的前提，那就是历史有一个自然的、必然的理性”。因此，他断言：历史观是现代社会的自我认识……它把历史看作一个自然的、理性的、解放人类的过程，它与现代科学和政治合作，把人与他们自己的复杂性和多样性隔离开来。”德里达就这样“解构”了历史观的总体性特征，即把它还原为一种理性化的普遍逻辑，并以此质疑马克思理论深层的逻辑基础。

Derrida’s deconstruction of Marx’s conception of history shares similarities with that of another postmodernist thinker, Lyotard. Lyotard’s typical method of interpreting Marx’s theory is to carry out a deconstructive critique of its core categories. Among these, the most important case is his critique of Marx’s concept of history. Lyotard argues that Marx regards history as a single, necessary, progressive process, which is an inheritance of the myth of the Enlightenment; it ignores the plurality, uncertainty, and unpredictability of history. Lyotard advocates that we should accept postmodern little narratives—that is, local, specific, temporary narratives that do not aim at universal truth but are based on different language games and knowledge systems. Lyotard further points out that because Marx’s historical materialism inherited the key metaphysical concept of “history” without fundamentally reconstructing it, his theory still revolves within the boundaries of metaphysics. This interpretation of history, along with its conception of human nature and the structure of future society, in fact still follows the rationalism of the 18th-century Enlightenment and traditional Western metaphysical thought.

德里达对马克思历史观的解构与另一位后现代主义思想家利奥塔有着相似之处。利奥塔解读马克思理论的典型手法是对其学说的核心范畴进行解构性批判。其中，最重要的案例是对马克思历史概念的批判。利奥塔认为，马克思把历史看作一个单一的、必然的、进步的过程，这是对启蒙运动神话的继承，它忽视了历史的多元性、不确定性和不可预测性。利奥塔主张，我们应该接受后现代的小叙事，即那些不以普遍真理为目标而以不同语言游戏和知识体系为基础的局部、特殊、临时的叙事。利奥塔进一步指出，马克思的历史唯物主义因沿袭了形而上学中的关键概念“历史”而未对其进行根本性重构，导致其理论依旧在形而上学的边界内打转。这种对历史的诠释及其对人的本质和未来社会结构的设想，实际上仍旧遵循了18世纪启蒙时期的理性主义和西方传统形而上学思想。

Although Derrida and Lyotard have carried out a critical deconstruction of Marx’s conception of history, this does not mean that their theories are unassailable. First, from a methodological perspective, in their deconstruction of Marx’s conception of history, they merge the dialectical method of part and whole, borrowed from Marx, with their own philosophy of the event, leading to a logical contradiction. They attempt to redefine history as an unpredictable, uncontrollable, and un-attributable phenomenon. However, if history is a series of unpredictable events, then it cannot be regarded as a whole, nor can it be reduced to the sum of its parts. At the same time, the dialectic of part and whole implies an internal connection and contradiction between the two, which raises the question of how to maintain the dialectical relationship between part and whole within unpredictable events. In historical materialism, this question is answered because history is constructed as a causal relationship: the contradictions and crises of one historical stage give rise to the next historical stage. This historical necessity is ultimately revealed to be determined by human practical activity, which in turn is driven by the development of material productive forces and relations of production. However, because the objects of study for Derrida and Lyotard (the social structure of postmodernity) are fundamentally different from Marx’s, the dialectic of part and whole that is viable in historical materialism finds little support in their philosophy of the event. Furthermore, Derrida and Lyotard interpret Marx’s method of “rising from the abstract to the concrete,” but simplify it into a process of “rising from the part to the whole”; this interpretation ignores the complexity and diversity of Marx’s concept of history itself. They interpret Marx’s conception of reality as the totality of history, advocating a transcendence of the limitations of the empiricist direct perception of historical facts. However, the path they envision for transcending intuition and reaching a complete picture of the historical concept remains vague. This is not only because the two concepts of “deconstruction” and “event” used by Derrida and Lyotard, as “bridges” between social phenomena and the characteristics of the historical totality, in fact only reflect the external postulate of “breaking the whole,” thus lacking clear meaning and practical operability; it is even more because they fail to clearly explain why, when Marx analyzes the relationship between things in his critique of political economy, he always closely links it to the analysis of the relationship between people. This leads to the fact that the history understood by Derrida and Lyotard as totality does not, as they imagine, appear only in the final stage of Marx’s entire analysis.

尽管德里达和利奥塔对马克思的历史观进行了批判性解构，这并不表明他们的理论是无懈可击的。首先，从方法论来看，在他们对马克思历史观的解构中，将借鉴自马克思关于部分与整体的辩证方法与他们自己的事件哲学相融合，由此导致了逻辑上的矛盾。他们试图将历史重新定义为一个不可预测、不可控、无法归因的现象。然而，如果历史是一系列不可预测的事件，那么它就不能被视为一个整体，也不能被简化为部分的总和。同时，部分与整体的辩证法意味着两者之间存在内在联系和矛盾，这就引发了如何在不可预测的事件中维持部分与整体之间辩证关系的疑问。在历史唯物主义中，这个问题得到了解答，因为历史被构建为一种因果关系：一个历史阶段的矛盾和危机催生了下一个历史阶段。这种历史的必然性最终被揭示为由人的实践活动决定的，而人的实践活动又是由物质生产力和生产关系的发展驱动的。然而，由于德里达和利奥塔研究的对象（后现代社会结构）与马克思截然不同，在历史唯物主义中可行的部分与整体的辩证法在他们的事件哲学中难以找到支撑。另外，德里达和利奥塔对马克思“从抽象上升到具体”的方法进行了解读，却将其简化为“从部分上升到整体”的过程，这种解读忽略了马克思历史概念本身的复杂性和多样性。他们将马克思关于现实的观念解释为历史的总体性，主张超越经验主义对历史事实的直接感知的限制。然而，他们设想的超越直观、达到历史概念全貌的途径却显得模糊不清。这不仅是因为德里达和利奥塔使用的“解构”和“事件”两个概念，作为社会现象与历史全貌特征之间的“桥梁”，实际上只反映了“打破整体”的外在设定，从而缺乏明确含义和实际操作性；更是因为他们未能清晰地解释，当马克思在政治经济学批判中分析物与物的关系时，为何总是将其同人与人的关系分析紧密相连。这导致被德里达和利奥塔理解为总体性的历史，并非如他们所想的那样，只在马克思全部分析的最后阶段出现。

Second, according to the views of Derrida and Lyotard, Marx’s specific understanding of the concept of history is seen as a grand narrative with a certain character of determinacy. These two theorists keenly perceive that Marx’s conception of history is deeply influenced by the Western metaphysical tradition, meaning that the “history” Marx discusses revolves mainly around “the end of capitalism and the rise of communist society,” rather than an open historical process composed of diverse, complex, and unpredictable events. However, because Derrida and Lyotard do not deeply reflect on the limitations of deconstructionism itself, although they primarily examine the macro-questions of history within a postmodern context, their analysis may in fact push this examination, and history itself, toward a relativist logic that could itself be overturned. Moreover, after they discard the grand narrative of history, these deconstructionists do not propose an equally powerful framework for analyzing the trends and patterns of historical development. This critique may lead to a situation where, after negating the continuity and universality of history, we lack the appropriate tools to understand the deep structures and evolutionary logic of history. In other words, although deconstruction reveals the ruptures and plurality of history, it may thereby also overlook those enduring forces and structures that traverse different historical periods, such as the economic base, class struggle, etc., which play an important role in historical development.

其次，根据德里达和利奥塔的观点，马克思对历史概念的具体理解被看作一种具有不确定性的宏大叙事。这两位理论家敏锐地察觉到马克思的历史观受到西方形而上学传统的深刻影响，这意味着马克思讨论的“历史”，主要是围绕“资本主义的终结与共产主义社会的兴起”，而非一个由多样化、复杂性和不可预知性事件构成的历史开放性过程。然而，由于德里达和利奥塔没有深入反省解构主义自身的限制，尽管他们主要在后现代背景下审视历史的宏观问题，其分析实际上却可能将这种审视以及历史本身推向一种可能被推翻的相对性逻辑。而且，当他们摒弃了历史的宏观叙事之后，这些解构主义者并未提出同样有力的框架来分析历史的发展趋势和模式。这种批判可能导致一种局面，即在否定了历史的连续性和普遍性后，我们缺乏适当的工具来理解历史的深层结构和演变逻辑。换言之，解构主义虽然揭示了历史的断裂和多元性，但也可能因此忽视了那些穿越不同历史时期的持久力量和结构，如经济基础、阶级斗争等，这些因素在历史发展中扮演着重要角色。

Finally, their critique seems to overlook a core element: the historical relativity and epochal character of Marx’s theory. Delving deeply into the thread of Marx’s thought, one can find that the foundation of his theory lies in his keen insight and profound analysis of the social formations of nineteenth-century Western society. He revealed the logic of capital accumulation under the capitalist mode of production, the economic basis of class struggle, and the inherent contradictions of the commodity economy. This analysis took shape under specific historical conditions, taking into account such concrete factors as the industrialization process of the time, market expansion, and the living conditions of the working people. In contrast, the postmodern critiques of Derrida and Lyotard often fail to fully grasp the historical dimension of Marx’s theory; they tend to regard Marxism as a closed grand narrative, overlooking its openness concerning change, rupture, and historical development. Derrida’s deconstruction emphasizes the instability of texts and the possibility of deconstruction, while Lyotard advocates suspicion of grand narratives and champions the diversity of micro-narratives. Although these theories have an important influence on contemporary culture and society, in their dialogue with Marx’s historical materialism they do not fully penetrate the latter’s theoretical core. Furthermore, Marx’s historical materialism does not provide a static or ultimate picture of history; rather, it seeks the driving forces and laws of social change within the ever-changing flux of history. Marx himself also stated that his theory needed to be constantly updated and developed as history progressed. Therefore, any critique of his theory should be built upon a thorough understanding of its historical conditions.

最后，他们的批评似乎忽略了一个核心要素：马克思理论的历史相对性与时代特性。深入挖掘马克思的思想脉络，可以发现其理论根基在于对19世纪西方社会形态的敏锐洞见和深刻分析。他揭示了资本主义生产方式下资本积累的逻辑、阶级斗争的经济基础以及商品经济的内在矛盾。这种分析是在特定历史背景下形成的，它考虑了当时的工业化进程、市场扩张及劳动人民的生存状况等具体因素。相比之下，德里达和利奥塔的后现代批判往往未能充分把握马克思理论的历史维度，他们倾向于将马克思主义视作一种封闭的宏大叙事，忽视了其中关于变革、断裂和历史发展的开放性。德里达的解构主义强调文本的不稳定性和解构的可能性，利奥塔则倡导对宏大叙事的怀疑，推崇微小叙事的多样性。尽管这些理论对当代文化和社会有着重要影响，但在与马克思历史唯物主义的对话中，它们未完全穿透后者的理论内核。进一步来说，马克思的历史唯物主义不是在提供一个静态或终极的历史图景，而是在不断变化的历史流变中寻找社会变迁的动力与规律。马克思自己也曾声明，他的理论需要随着历史的发展而不断更新和发展。因此，任何针对其理论的批判都应当建立在对其历史条件的透彻理解之上。

Online editor: Paul

网络编辑：保罗