“The Logic of *Capital*”’s Critique and Transcendence of Hegel’s Speculative Logic

“The unity of logic and history” is an important theoretical principle of Marx’s dialectics, a negation of Hegel’s speculative-logical principle that “history is unified in logic.” Through his study, understanding, and critique of Hegel’s speculative logic, Marx profoundly grasped the theoretical significance of this principle of thought, while also discovering that its inversion of the relationship between reality and thought necessarily leads to an inversion of the relationship between logic and history, thereby ultimately achieving in his own theoretical system a transcendence of Hegel’s idealist conception of history. Lenin pointed out: “Although Marx did not leave behind a ‘Logic’ (with a capital letter), he did leave behind the logic of *Capital*, and we should make full use of this logic to solve this problem. In *Capital*, materialist logic, dialectics, and the theory of knowledge (three words are not needed: they are one and the same thing) are all applied to a single science, a materialism that took everything valuable from Hegel and developed these valuable things.” It is precisely in “the logic of *Capital*” that Marx achieved a critical renovation of Hegel’s pure speculative logic, starting from the correct relationship between “thought and being,” scientifically demonstrating and implementing the principle of “the unity of logic and history” in the process of analyzing and generalizing the conceptual movement of the contradictions of the real capitalist economic system and critiquing the history of political economy.

“逻辑与历史相统一”是马克思辩证法的重要理论原则，是对黑格尔“历史统一于逻辑”的思辨逻辑原则的否定。马克思通过对黑格尔思辨逻辑的学习、理解和批判，深刻地把握了这一思维原则的理论意义，同时也发现了其对现实与思维关系的颠倒必然导致逻辑与历史关系的颠倒，从而最终在自己的理论体系中实现了对黑格尔唯心主义历史观的超越。列宁指出：“虽说马克思没有遗留下‘逻辑’（大写字母的），但他遗留下《资本论》的逻辑，应当充分地利用这种逻辑来解决这一问题。在《资本论》中，唯物主义的逻辑、辩证法和认识论（不必要三个词：它们是同一个东西）都应用于一门科学，这种唯物主义从黑格尔那里吸取了全部有价值的东西并发展了这些有价值的东西。”正是在“《资本论》的逻辑”中，马克思实现了对黑格尔纯粹思辨逻辑的批判性革新，从正确的“思维与存在”关系出发，在分析概括现实资本主义经济制度矛盾的概念运动与批判政治经济学历史的过程中，科学地论证并贯彻了“逻辑与历史相统一”原则。

I. “History Unified in Logic”: Hegel’s Principle of Speculative Logic

一、“历史统一于逻辑”：黑格尔的思辨逻辑原则

Based on idealist *Idee*, Hegel proposed the principle that “history is unified in logic,” asserting the determining and leading role of spirit in the development of human history, defining history (“philosophical history” and “world history”) as the self-manifestation of absolute spirit, a process in which the logical form of spirit is gradually realized in the world and in human self-consciousness. This typical “idealist conception of history” is embodied in the unique position of Hegel’s “logic” within the “system of the philosophical encyclopedia”: logic is the science that determines pure thought, the core and soul of Hegel’s philosophical system, while other branches of philosophy, such as the philosophy of nature, the philosophy of spirit, and the philosophy of history, are all “applied logic.” In this sense, the philosophy of history is a special expression of logic as the determination of pure thought, a speculative content centered on the “concept” (rather than empirical historical facts), in which any concrete historical process appears as a moment of logical deduction, while “logic cannot presuppose these forms of reflection or the rules and laws of thought, for these things themselves constitute part of the content of logic and must be proven within logic itself.”

黑格尔基于唯心主义理念提出“历史统一于逻辑”原则，主张精神在人类历史发展中的决定性和主导作用，将历史（“哲学的历史”与“世界历史”）界定为绝对精神的自我显现，是精神的逻辑形式在世界及人类自我意识之中逐步实现的过程。这一典型的“唯心史观”体现于黑格尔的“逻辑学”在“哲学百科全书体系”内的独特地位，逻辑学是规定纯粹思维的科学，是黑格尔哲学体系的核心和灵魂，其他哲学分支如自然哲学、精神哲学以及历史哲学，都是“应用的逻辑学”。在这个意义上，历史哲学就是作为纯粹思维规定的逻辑学的特殊表现，是以“概念”（而非经验中的历史事实）为中心的思辨性内容，其中任何具体的历史进程都显现为逻辑演绎的一个环节，而“逻辑却不能预先假定这些反思形式或思维的规则与法则，因为这些东西就构成逻辑内容本身的一部分，并且必须在逻辑之内才得到证明”。

Hegel took the unity of history and logic as his principle of speculative logic and, on this basis, carried out a rational reflection on the “history of philosophy” and a speculative investigation of actual “world history,” constituting two important aspects of the historical exposition of his “absolute spirit,” and also presenting, from two different dimensions, the “historical” limitations of Hegel’s “logic.”

黑格尔以历史与逻辑的统一关系作为其思辨逻辑原则，并据此进行对“哲学史”的理性反思和对现实的“世界历史”的思辨考察，构成其“绝对精神”之历史化论述的两个重要方面，也从两个不同的维度呈现了黑格尔“逻辑”思想的“历史”局限性。

1. The “History of Philosophy” as a Progressive Moment of Speculative Logic

1.作为思辨逻辑进程性环节的“哲学史”

In his system of “logic,” Hegel correlated every important level and moment of conceptual movement with the doctrines of a particular philosopher or school of thought in the history of philosophy; conversely, when discussing schools or figures of each period of thought in his *Lectures on the History of Philosophy*, he always took a certain level or moment of conceptual movement in “logic” as his basis. In Hegel’s view, the ultimate reality is the “*Idee*,” and “in the history of philosophy, the different stages of the logical *Idee* appear in the form of a succession of different philosophical systems.” In the sense of “system,” “first, every philosophy worthy of the name of philosophy has the *Idee* as its content; second, every philosophical system can be regarded as representing a particular stage or particular moment in the development of the *Idee*.” Corresponding to the course of the history of philosophy from ancient Greece onward, Hegel believed that, just as the logical system unfolds from the abstract to the concrete, the earliest systems of thought in the history of philosophy must also be the most impoverished and abstract, only later becoming enriched and developed. Therefore, “the relationship of earlier philosophical systems to later ones is roughly equivalent to the relationship of the earlier stages of the logical *Idee* to the later stages; that is, earlier systems are sublated by later systems and are included within them.”

黑格尔在其“逻辑学”体系中，将概念运动的每一个重要层次和环节都与哲学史上的某一个哲学家或思想派别的论点作了对应论证，而在《哲学史讲演录》中论及每一个思想时期的学派或人物的时候，又都以“逻辑学”的某一个概念运动的层次或环节作为依据。在黑格尔看来，终极意义上的实在是“理念”，而“哲学史上，逻辑理念的不同阶段是以前后相继的不同的哲学体系的姿态而出现”。在“体系”的意义上，“第一，每一值得享受哲学的名义的哲学，一般都以理念为内容；第二，每一哲学体系均可看作是表示理念发展的一个特殊阶段或特殊环节”。对应于自古希腊以降的哲学史历程，黑格尔认为，就如同逻辑系统依循从抽象到具体的展开方式，哲学史上那些最早的思想体系也必然是最为贫乏和抽象的，此后才不断得到充实和发展。因此，“早期的哲学体系与后来的哲学体系的关系，大体上相当于前阶段的逻辑理念与后阶段的逻辑理念的关系，这就是说，早期的体系被后来的体系所扬弃，并被包括在自身之内”。

This systematic understanding of Hegel’s began in the “Jena period” when he wrote the *Phenomenology of Spirit*. In that work, the developmental course from “consciousness” to “self-consciousness” to “reason” and then to “spirit” is both the process of the collection of phenomena of spirit into the concept and the progression of human thought as manifested in the various stages of the history of Western philosophy, thereby logically “grasping the differences between philosophical systems as a progressive development of truth.” In a famous passage, Hegel uses the analogy of the “negation of the negation” among bud, blossom, and fruit to illustrate the evolution of the concept, and thereby explains the succession of various systems of thought in the history of philosophy. Hegel points out that, contrary to the common-sense view that “the blossom negates the bud, and the fruit negates the blossom” as a judgment of exclusion, the history of philosophy, as an ever-evolving spiritual process, “has a fluid nature such that they are simultaneously different moments of an organic unity, in which the moments not only do not contradict each other, but each is equally necessary, and it is this same necessity that constitutes the life of the whole.” And this is precisely the essential characteristic of the history of philosophy.

黑格尔的这一系统性认识，始于写作《精神现象学》的“耶拿时期”。在该书中，从“意识”到“自我意识”到“理性”再到“精神”的发展历程，既是精神现象集合于概念的演进过程，也是人类的思想进展体现于西方哲学史的各阶段，从而逻辑性地“把各个哲学体系的差别理解为真理的一种进步发展”。在一个著名的文段中，黑格尔以花蕾、花朵和果实之间“否定之否定”关系来类比概念的演化，并由此说明哲学史上各个思想体系之间的更替。黑格尔指出，与通常人们基于常识论点认为“花朵是对花蕾的否定，果实又是对花朵的否定”的排斥性判断相反，哲学史作为一个不断演进的精神性进程，“它们的流动本性使得它们同时成为一个有机统一体的不同环节，在这个统一体里面，各个环节不仅彼此不矛盾，而且每一个都是同样必然的，正是这个相同的必然性方才构成了整体的生命”。而这也就是哲学史的本质特征所在。

Hegel’s theoretical investigation of “necessity” in the sense of “logical normativity” became more complete and refined in his writing of the *Science of Logic* and the “philosophical encyclopedia.” Hegel believed that every moment of conceptual movement corresponds to a certain system of thought in history. In Hegel’s speculative logic, the movement of the concept unfolds through a series of “negations of the negation”; the later theoretical system in the history of philosophy overthrows the earlier system by revealing and overcoming its contradictions, while at the same time, the later system also has its own contradictions, and therefore will in turn be revealed and overthrown by an even later system. In this sense, the philosophical systems of Aristotle, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, and others are all situated within the logical chain of the “negation of the negation,” ultimately leading to the necessary “logical” destination of absolute idealism.

黑格尔对于“逻辑规范性”意义下的“必然性”的理论考察，在写作《逻辑学》和“哲学百科全书”时更为充实和完善。黑格尔认为，概念运动的每一个环节都与历史上的某个思想体系相对应。在黑格尔的思辨逻辑中，概念之运动是以一系列的“否定之否定”展开的，哲学史上在后的理论体系推翻在前的体系，就是揭示和克服在前的体系的矛盾之处，而与此同时，在后的体系也有其矛盾，因此也就会被后来的体系再次揭示并推翻。在这个意义上，亚里士多德、洛克、斯宾诺莎、莱布尼茨和康德等的哲学体系都是处于“否定之否定”的逻辑链条中，最终导向绝对唯心论指向的必然“逻辑”归属。

In the “Science of Logic,” the existing systems in the history of philosophy are exemplifications of the movement of the concept, while in the investigation of the history of philosophy, logic is the ground and principle. Hegel holds that philosophy is the science of knowing the development of concrete things; as a concrete, self-developing Idea, it is an organic system containing different stages and moments. The different stages and moments of the philosophical process are the unfolding of the whole of a single “Idea” and all its parts, just as in a living individual the pulse of life runs through all the limbs. Philosophy’s cognition of this development is entirely expressed through the concept: “Because this determinateness of the concept, or its content and form, returns to the Idea, the Idea is presented as a systematic whole, which is the one and only Idea. Each of the particular moments of this one Idea is in itself the same Idea, and through the dialectic of the concept it deduces the simple being-for-itself of the Idea. In this way, the [logical] science ends with the grasping of its own concept, as the concept of the pure Idea that is the ground of the Idea as Idea.” Philosophy is the revelation of the deduction of the forms of the Idea and the necessity of the categories as cognized in thought, but what philosophy is concerned with here is only the pure Idea. “From this point of view, I maintain that the order of the philosophical systems in history is the same as the order of the logical deduction of the conceptual determinations in the Idea.” Hegel carries through the principle of “history unified with logic” in the entire process of the development of philosophy: “If we can completely strip away the external forms and particular applications of the basic concepts that appear at each stage in the history of philosophy, we can obtain the logical concepts of the different stages of the Idea’s own development. Conversely, if we have grasped the logical progression, we can from its main moments obtain the course of historical phenomena.” By investigating the historical evolution of the history of philosophy on the basis of the evolutionary course of logical concepts, Hegel for the first time made a dialectical and systematic investigation of the history of philosophy.

在“逻辑学”中，哲学史上的既有体系是概念运动的例示，而在哲学史的考察中，逻辑则是根据和原则。黑格尔认为，哲学是认识具体事物发展的科学，作为具体的、自身发展的理念，是一个有机系统，包含不同的阶段和环节。哲学进程的不同阶段和环节，是一个“理念”的全体和它的一切部分的发挥，就像在一个有生命的个体里生命的脉动贯穿所有的肢体一样。哲学对这种发展的认识，就完全是以概念表现的，“由于概念的这种规定性或内容自身和形式要返回到理念，所以理念便被表述为系统的全体，这系统的全体就是唯一的理念。这唯一理念的各特殊环节中的每一环节既自在地是同一理念，复通过概念的辩证法而推演出理念的简单的自为存在。在这种方式下，〔逻辑〕科学便以把握住它自身的概念，作为理念之所以为理念的纯理念的概念而告结束”。哲学是揭示理念各形态的推演和各范畴在思想中被认识了的必然性，但哲学在此所涉及的仅仅是纯粹理念。“根据这种观点，我认为：历史上的那些哲学系统的次序，与理念里的那些概念规定的逻辑推演的次序是相同的。”黑格尔将“历史统一于逻辑”的原则贯彻于哲学发展的全过程，“如果我们能够对哲学史里面出现的各个阶段的基本概念，完全剥掉它们的外在形态和特殊应用，我们就可以得到理念自身发展的各个不同的阶段的逻辑概念了。反之，如果掌握了逻辑的进展，我们亦可从它里面的各主要环节得到历史现象的进程”。以逻辑概念的演进历程为依据探讨哲学史的历史演进，使黑格尔第一次对哲学史作出了辩证的系统探讨。

Hegel holds: “The study of the history of philosophy is the study of philosophy itself.” The “history of philosophy” is the process of the Idea’s continuous evolution in time, presented in different spatial regions: “In this process of development, each form or stage of the Idea attains self-consciousness in a particular people; and this people, at this time, expresses only this form, and in this form it constitutes its world, it constitutes its situation. Conversely, the higher stage is found many centuries later in another people.” Therefore, the history of philosophy is a teleological process determined by the Idea, excluding any element of contingency. For “the development of the concept is necessary in philosophy, and equally the development of the concept in history is necessary. The dominant force of this development is the immanent dialectical law within the manifold forms.”

黑格尔认为：“哲学史的研究就是哲学本身的研究。”“哲学史”就是理念在时间中不断演进的过程，并呈现于不同的空间区域，“在这种发展的过程里，理念的每一种形式或某一阶段在某一民族里得到自觉；而这一民族在这一时间内，只表现这一形式，即在这一形式内它造成它的世界，它造成它的情况。反之，那较高的阶段，在许多世纪以后，又发现在另一民族里”。因此，哲学史就是一个由理念所规定的、排斥了任何偶然性因素的目的论进程。因为“概念的发展的哲学里面是必然的，同样概念发展的历史也是必然的。这种发展的主导力量是各种多样性的形态之内在的辩证法则”。

In the history of philosophy itself, this dialectical process “immanent” in the Idea “is a priori necessary. This is what the history of philosophy can prove as an example.” Past forms of philosophical systems do not perish but are preserved as “moments of the whole,” only they themselves are transformed into “particular principles” of philosophy distinct from the universality of absolute spirit. “The principles of the various schools of philosophy are preserved; the latest philosophy is the result of all preceding principles, so no philosophy is completely overthrown. What is overthrown is not the principle of this philosophy, but only its absoluteness, its ultimate supremacy.” Just as in the growth of a tree, the negation of the seed by the bud, of the leaf by the flower, and of the flower by the fruit are all necessary stages of its development. At each stage of the history of philosophy, the theoretical principles of each philosophical system were once dominant and universally significant principles, and they are likewise things that cannot be “eliminated.” “The achievement of labor in the realm of philosophy is truth, and truth is eternal.” The history of philosophy, founded on rational “speculation,” is itself a history of humanity’s continuous protest, continuous argument, continuous dispute, and continuous awakening. It takes the speculative character of “reason” as the basis of its discourse on “identity,” and appeals to the “concept” to unfold the absolute spirit at its different stages. Therefore, “every philosophy is the philosophy of its time; it is a link in the entire chain of the development of spirit.”

在哲学本身的历史中，“内在”于理念的这种辩证进程“先验地是有必然性的。这点就是哲学史可作为范例予以证明的”。过去形态的哲学体系并不会消亡，而是作为“全体的诸环节”而被保留下来，只是其本身转变成为区别于绝对精神之普遍性的哲学“特殊原则”。“各派哲学的原则是被保持着的，那最新的哲学就是所有各先行原则的结果，所以没有任何哲学是完全被推翻了的。那被推翻了的并不是这个哲学的原则，而只不过是这个原则的绝对性、究竟至上性。”正如在一棵树的生长过程中，芽对种子的否定、花对叶的否定、果实对花的否定，都是其发展的必然阶段。哲学史的每一阶段，各哲学体系的理论原则也都曾经是主导性的、具普遍意义的原则，也同样是不可能被“消灭”的东西。“在哲学领域内劳作所得的成就乃是真理，而真理是永恒的。”奠基于理性“思辨”的哲学史，本身就是一个人类不断抗辩、不断论说、不断争执、不断觉醒的历史，以“理性”的思辨品格为其“同一性”论述的基础，诉诸“概念”以展开其自身不同阶段的绝对精神，因此，“每一哲学都是它的时代的哲学，它是精神发展的全部锁链里面的一环”。

2. “Absolute Spirit” and World History

2.“绝对精神”与世界历史

Hegel holds that “logic” is not only the ground and principle of the history of philosophy, but also the ground and principle of world history. This idea of Hegel’s is fully embodied in the architectonic relationship among the three parts of his *Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences*: “Logic – Philosophy of Nature – Philosophy of Spirit.” Taking “absolute spirit” as the highest principle of his doctrine, logic is the result and embodiment of spirit’s development into absolute knowledge; the philosophy of nature is the externalization of absolute spirit; and the philosophy of spirit is the return of absolute spirit to itself through human subjective spirit and objective spirit. Within this framework, the history of philosophy is the content of “philosophy,” the final moment of absolute spirit, while world history is the concluding moment of the third part of “objective spirit,” namely “ethical life,” which unfolds in his concrete exposition as the “philosophy of history.” That is to say, whether world history or the history of philosophy, both are the logical unfolding and embodiment of absolute spirit.

黑格尔认为，“逻辑”不仅仅是哲学史的依据和原则，也是世界历史的依据和原则。黑格尔的这一理念充分体现在他的《哲学百科全书》三个部分“逻辑学-自然哲学-精神哲学”的架构性关系之中。以“绝对精神”为其学说的最高原则，逻辑学是精神发展到绝对知识的结果与体现，自然哲学是绝对精神的外化，精神哲学则是绝对精神通过人类的主观精神和客观精神回归其自身。在这个框架下， 哲学史是“绝对精神”的最后环节“哲学”的内容，而世界历史则是“客观精神”第三部分“伦理”的结束环节，在其具体论述中展开为“历史哲学”。也就是说，不论世界史还是哲学史，都是绝对精神的逻辑展开与体现。

Unlike the history of philosophy, which focuses on the conceptual movement of speculative logic, in the philosophy of history Hegel places greater emphasis on the evolution of spirit as manifested in conceptual movement. Hegel holds that the world history of humanity is essentially spiritual; world history is the process of the principle of spirit’s freedom evolving in representative national spirits at different times. Hegel completely grounds human “ethical life” on an “abstract” foundation. “Among the forms of the spiritual, one form should be particularly highlighted: how it expresses itself in the factor of human freedom and the factor of human will, so that the human will becomes the abstract foundation of freedom, and the product becomes the entire ethical life of a people. This is the more immediate soil; but we must not only examine the ethical world abstractly, but also examine how this world arises in time. However, freedom is only one way; it shows how the ethical world produces what it is, and thereby makes itself what it is according to the concept. Such a process of production presents itself in a series of ethical forms, and its result constitutes the course of history.” This passage can be said to be a concentrated summary of Hegel’s principle of “history unified with logic,” and also a full embodiment of his view of society and history: free spirit, as the result of the evolution of absolute spirit, manifests itself in human existence and social relations, concretized into abstract right, morality, and ethical life, forming a dominant logic that runs through all aspects of human life. The “ethical world” necessarily and must be subsumed under the conceptual movement of logic. Right, morality, and ethical life, as the overall logic of free spirit, condition the will and purpose of every rational individual, thereby making the scattered activities of individual life constitute the overall historical development. The domination of humanity by free spirit is the process of the realization of free spirit in and for itself; it unfolds in stages in different national spirits and is an important marker of the stages of world history.

与哲学史集中考察思辨逻辑的概念运动不同，在历史哲学中黑格尔更为重视概念运动所展现的精神的演进。黑格尔认为人类的世界历史实质是精神性的，世界历史就是精神的自由原则在不同时代具有代表性的民族精神中演化的过程。黑格尔将人的“伦理生活”完全奠基于“抽象”的基础之上。“在精神东西的形式中间，应特别突出一个形式，看它如何在人的自由因素和人的意志因素中表现自己，以致人的意志成为自由的抽象基础，而产物则成为一个民族的整个伦理生活。这是较为贴近的土壤；但我们不仅必须抽象地考察伦理世界，而且必须考察这个世界在时间中是如何产生的。然而，自由只是一种方式，它表明伦理世界怎样产生自己所是的东西，从而才使自己成为依照概念所是的东西。这样的产生过程呈现于一系列伦理形态中，其结果构成历史的进程。”这段话可以说是黑格尔“历史统一于逻辑”原则的集中概述，也是他的社会历史观的充分体现：自由精神作为绝对精神演化的结果而展现于人的生存和社会关系中，具体化为抽象法权、道德、伦理，形成主导性逻辑，贯彻于人类生活的各个环节，“伦理世界”必然，也必须统合于逻辑的概念运动。法、道德、伦理作为自由精神的总体逻辑，制约着每个理性个体的意志和目的，从而使得散漫的个体生命活动构成总体的历史发展。自由精神对人类的主导，就是自为的自由精神的实现过程，它分阶段展现于不同的民族精神中，是世界历史阶段性的重要标志。

Hegel held that world history is the logical process of the spirit of freedom moving from being-in-itself to being-for-itself, from potentiality to actuality. “World history represents the stages in the development of the principle whose content is the consciousness of freedom.” In Hegel’s system, the nation and the state are unified; the determinative principle of the national spirit is embodied in the state, and the state is the definition of the nation, the totality of law, government, religion, morality, etc., that constrains each individual. Hegel further pointed out that only in the form of the “state” does freedom finally attain “objectivity.” The national spirit is the content of the state, and the state is the form of the national spirit. In the sense of “what ought to be,” the state carries through the spirit of freedom embodied in the national spirit. But the evolution of the spirit of freedom has its stages, so that the national spirit and the state representing each stage each have their own limitations and defects. The principled demand of the spirit of freedom requires that the national spirit of the next stage overcome the various limitations of the national spirit of the previous stage. This breakthrough and overcoming, constantly realized under the regulation of the “universal principle,” constitutes the development of world history. According to the form of government, Hegel divided world history into several stages: the Oriental world, the Greek world, the Roman world, the Germanic world, etc.

黑格尔认为，世界历史就是自由精神从自在向自为，从潜能到现实的逻辑进程。“世界历史表现原则的发展的阶程，那个原则的内容就是‘自由’的意识。”在黑格尔的体系中，民族与国家是统一的，民族精神的规定性原则体现于国家，国家是民族的界定，是集合法律、政府、宗教、道德等总体上对每个个体的制约。黑格尔进一步指出，在“国家”形态上，自由才最终获得了“客观性”民族精神是国家的内容，国家是民族精神的形式，国家在“应然”的意义上是对民族精神中体现的自由精神的贯彻，但自由精神的演进有其阶段性，从而使得各个阶段性代表的民族精神及国家都各有其局限和缺陷。自由精神的原则性要求下一阶段的民族精神克服前一阶段的民族精神的种种局限，这种在“普遍原则”的规约下不断实现的突破与克服就构成了世界历史的发展。根据政体形态，黑格尔将世界历史分期为东方世界、希腊世界、罗马世界、日耳曼世界等几个阶段。

Hegel attempted to use “logic” as the basis for demonstrating the evolutionary process of the history of philosophy and world history. This was a quite creative attempt, but relative to the level of scientific development of his era, the materials at his disposal, and the limitations of his own thought, his research had major problems. Rather than demonstrating the objective development of the history of philosophy and world history, it is more accurate to say that he used the available materials of the history of philosophy and world history to enrich and advance the unfolding of his own personal philosophical theory. Therefore, just as the philosophical systems of all ages have their defects, Hegel’s idea of “history unified in logic” also has its defects, mainly manifested in the following three aspects: First, although Hegel built his system on the basis of “sense-certainty,” when unfolding the transitions among the various links of his “logic-nature-spirit” system, it is in fact suspended within a speculative, logical system of operation. The relationships among its links also cannot be factually “verified”; they are entirely the result of the conceptual “deduction” of his philosophical narratology. “History unified in logic” ultimately evolves into the one-dimensional model of “logic is history.” Second, the Spinozistic “all-in-one” system of thought that Hegel sought to establish has obvious defects in the breadth and depth of its thinking materials. This is prominently reflected in his research on China. Hegel not only failed to effectively absorb the information and materials he might have received, including the discussions of earlier thinkers such as Voltaire and Leibniz, but also excessively used speculative fantasy to compensate for the inadequacy of his actual knowledge, ultimately making his discussion empty and powerless, denying historical facts, and one-sidedly catering to and promoting the then-rising “Eurocentrism.” Third, because he overemphasized the dominance of spirit and logic, Hegel was almost entirely unable to examine the role of economic factors in human history, or, from a deeper level, Hegel believed that the influence of economic factors on social development could not be grasped at the level of “logic” at all. Correspondingly, so-called politics is merely an illustration of “objective spirit.” The evolution of world history and the history of philosophy is defined by a “necessary” but “invisible,” non-real normativity, and all of this can only be perfectly presented within the consciousness of this finite individual, Hegel. In this sense, the sole (one) philosopher who understands creation and the sole (one) God who creates the world produce the same grace, that is, the same arrogance. Only by breaking through the deformed “shadow of monotheism” with a scientific methodology, and criticizing and overcoming the inherent defects of Hegel’s principle of “history unified in logic,” can the true revelation of the process of social development and the laws of social history be achieved.

黑格尔试图以“逻辑”为依据论证哲学史和世界历史的演进过程，这是一个相当有创造性的尝试，但是相对其所处时代的科学发展程度、其所掌握的材料以及其本身思想所受的局限而言，他的研究都存在着很大的问题。与其说他在论证哲学史和世界历史的客观发展，不如说他在用当时可以取得的哲学史与世界史素材来充实和推动他个人的哲学理论的展开。因此，正如历代的哲学体系都有其缺陷一样，黑格尔的“历史统一于逻辑”的思想也同样有其缺陷，主要表现在以下三个方面：第一，虽然黑格尔将其思想体系建基在“感知确定性”的基础上，但是在展开其“逻辑-自然-精神”体系的诸环节的过渡时，实际上则是孤悬于思辨的、逻辑的运作系统之中，其诸环节之间的关系也无法得到事实性“验证”，而完全是其哲学叙事学的概念性“演绎”结果，“历史统一于逻辑”最终演化为“逻辑即历史”的单维度模型。第二，黑格尔所希图建立的斯宾诺莎式“大全一体”的思想体系，在思维素材的广度和深度上存在明显的缺陷。这突出地体现在他对中国的研究之中，黑格尔不仅没能有效地吸收其本可能接收到的信息和资料，包括前辈思想家伏尔泰、莱布尼茨等作出的论述，反而过度地使用思辨式玄想来弥补其实际认识的不足，最终使得其论述空泛无力，否定历史事实，片面地迎合、推进了当时正在兴起的“欧洲中心论”。第三，由于过于重视精神和逻辑的主导性，黑格尔几乎没有能够考察经济因素在人类历史上所起的作用，或者从更深的层面来说，黑格尔认为经济因素对社会发展的影响是完全无法上升到“逻辑”的高度来把握的。与此相对应，所谓的政治也仅仅是“客观精神”的一项例示，世界历史与哲学史的演进都由一种“必然的”但又是“不可见”的、非现实的规范性来定义，而这一切居然只有在黑格尔这个有限个体的意识之中才能完满呈现出来。在这个意义上，理解创世的唯一“一个”（哲学家）与创造世界的唯一“一个”（上帝）制造了同样的恩典，也即是同样的妄言。而只有以科学的方法论突破变形了的“一神论的阴影”，批判并克服黑格尔“历史统一于逻辑”原则的内在缺陷，才可以实现对社会发展历程与社会历史规律的真实揭示。

II. “The Unity of Logic and History”: Marx’s Scientific Methodological Principle

二、“逻辑与历史相统一”：马克思的科学方法论原则

In direct opposition to Hegel’s principle of “history unified in logic,” which one-sidedly deduces world history as the “self-realization of absolute spirit,” Marx’s principle of “the unity of logic and history” establishes the consistency of history and logic on a materialist foundation. It holds that the logical method is a scientific method used to reflect the historical process, that the starting point of history is also the starting point of logic, and that the unfolding of logic essentially conforms to the real process of historical development, so that the historical process can be presented in the unfolding of logic. As Engels said: “Where history begins, the course of thought must also begin, and its further development is nothing but the reflection of the historical process in an abstract and theoretically consistent form; this reflection is corrected, but corrected according to the laws that the real historical process itself provides, so that each element can be examined at the point of its development where it has fully matured and attained its typical form.” History and logic are neither simply identical nor necessarily unified in essence, i.e., the “dialectical unity” of logic and history. Thus, “logical development is not only an abstract logic in theory, but also the inner logic of historical development.”

与黑格尔将世界历史片面地演绎为“绝对精神的自我实现”的“历史统一于逻辑”原则针锋相对，马克思的“逻辑与历史相统一”原则将历史与逻辑的一致性建立在唯物主义的基础上，认为逻辑的方法是用来反映历史进程的科学方法，历史的起点也就是逻辑的起点，逻辑的展开在本质上符合历史发展的真实过程，这样历史的过程才能在逻辑的展开中呈现出来。正如恩格斯所说：“历史从哪里开始，思想进程也应当从哪里开始，而思想进程的进一步发展不过是历史过程在抽象的、理论上前后一贯的形式上的反映；这种反映是经过修正的，然而是按照现实的历史过程本身的规律修正的，这时，每一个要素可以在它完全成熟而具有典型性的发展点上加以考察。”历史与逻辑既不是简单的等同，又必然在本质上相统一，即逻辑与历史的“辩证统一”，由此，“逻辑发展不仅仅是理论上的抽象逻辑，更是历史发展的内在逻辑”。

In *Capital*, Marx implemented and applied the principle of “the unity of logic and history,” establishing logic on the basis of reality and historical facts, theoretically demonstrating the logic of capitalist development, and scientifically revealing its concrete historical process. Compared with Hegel’s mystifying “Phenomenology of Spirit,” the scientific method Marx used in *Capital* is not a purely abstract deduction, but rather makes theoretical thinking “constantly contact reality,” collecting and summarizing a large amount of factual material for demonstration while carrying out logical deduction. It has both a reality that can be verified through experience and a theory that can be continuously expanded and applied with the progress of social practice. Thus, the principle of “the unity of logic and history” in Marx’s *Capital* fundamentally overcomes the mystical color of Hegel’s speculative logic. It is not an empty discussion moving from concept to concept, but rather “proves the necessity of a definite order of social relations through exact scientific investigation, and at the same time points out as completely as possible the facts that serve as his starting point and basis,” thereby setting right the dialectic that was “standing on its head” in Hegel.

马克思在《资本论》中贯彻运用“逻辑与历史相统一”原则，将逻辑建立在现实和历史事实的基础上，从理论上证成了资本主义发展的逻辑，并科学揭示其具体的历史过程。与黑格尔神秘主义式的“精神现象学”相比，马克思在《资本论》中运用的科学方法不是纯粹抽象的演绎，而是使理论思维“不断接触现实”，在进行逻辑推演的同时收集、概括大量事实材料进行论证，既有能通过经验来验证的现实性，也可以随着社会实践的进展而不断拓展和运用其理论。因而，马克思《资本论》的“逻辑与历史相统一”原则从根本上克服了黑格尔思辨逻辑的神秘色彩，不是从概念到概念的空洞论述，而是“通过准确的科学研究来证明社会关系的一定秩序的必然性，同时尽可能完善地指出那些作为他的出发点和根据的事实”，从而将在黑格尔那里“头足颠倒”的辩证法，重新正立过来。

On the premise of facing and criticizing the limitations and defects of Hegel’s speculative logic, Marx negated the principle of “history unified in logic.” In *Capital* and its manuscripts, which reveal the contradictions of the capitalist economic system and demonstrate its necessary laws of development, he formed his own unique dialectic and implemented it in the principle of “the unity of logic and history” within “the logic of *Capital*.”

马克思在正视并批判黑格尔思辨逻辑的局限与缺陷的前提下，否定了“历史统一于逻辑”原则，在揭示资本主义经济制度矛盾、论证其发展的必然规律的《资本论》及其手稿中，形成了自己独特的辩证法，并贯彻于“《资本论》的逻辑”的“逻辑与历史相统一”原则中。

“The logic of *Capital*” is a process of dialectically examining fully possessed materials, starting from real contradictions rather than speculative reason. Here, real contradictions are the embodiment of the collection and evolution of historical contradictions. It is also in this sense that *Capital*, when revealing the essence of the capitalist economic system and demonstrating its laws of contradiction, must unify the study of the history of the capitalist economic system with the history of the understanding of the contradictions of the capitalist system.

“《资本论》的逻辑”是从现实矛盾而非思辨理性出发，对充分占有的材料进行辩证考察的过程。在此，现实矛盾即历史矛盾的集合和演化的体现，也是在这个意义上，《资本论》在揭示资本主义经济制度本质，论证其矛盾规律时，必须统一研究资本主义经济制度的历史以及历史上对资本主义制度矛盾的认识。

The principle of “the unity of logic and history” in the dialectics followed by *Capital* and its manuscripts was formed by Marx in the course of his research into the actual economic system of capitalism. It is a process of empirical research in which logical thinking, starting from the problem domain of reality, fully appropriates materials, and it is also a manifestation of the principle of conceptual movement from the concrete to the abstract and then from the abstract to the concrete. In the *Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858*, Marx points out: “It would be inexpedient and wrong to arrange the economic categories in the order in which they were the determining factors in the course of history. Their order of succession is rather determined by the relation which they have to one another in modern bourgeois society, and this relation is the exact opposite of what appears to be their natural order or the order of their historical development. The question is not about the historical position which the various economic relations occupy in the succession of different social forms, still less about their order of succession ‘in the idea’ (in a nebulous representation of the movement of history). It is about their organic connection within modern bourgeois society.” Starting from the perspective of “organic connection,” Marx holds that the capitalist economic system is immanent within the historical context, and that the unity of logic and history in its determination and demonstration must take reality as the crucial point of convergence.

《资本论》及其手稿所遵循的辩证法“逻辑与历史相统一”原则，是马克思在对现实资本主义经济制度的研究中形成的，是逻辑思维从现实问题域出发，充分占有材料的实证性研究过程，也是从具体到抽象再从抽象上升到具体的概念运动原则的体现。马克思在《1857—1858年经济学手稿》中指出：“把经济范畴按它们在历史上起决定作用的先后次序来排列是不行的，错误的。它们的次序倒是由它们在现代资产阶级社会中的相互关系决定的，这种关系同表现出来的它们的自然次序或符合历史发展的次序恰好相反。问题不在于各种经济关系中不同社会形式的相继更替的序列中在历史上占有什么地位。更不在于它们在‘观念上’（在关于历史运动的一个模糊的表象中）的顺序。而在于它们在现代资产阶级社会内部的结构。”从“内在结构”的视阈出发，马克思认为，资本主义经济制度是内在于历史脉络之中的，对它的规定和论证的逻辑与历史相统一，就是要以现实为关键性的集合点。

What Marx calls “the organic connection within bourgeois society” is the result of the evolution and generation of the capitalist economic system in the course of history. This evolution is concentratedly manifested in the actual economic contradictions determined by “the relations which [the economic categories] have to one another in modern bourgeois society.” Here, actual economic contradictions are both the result of the evolution of historical economic contradictions and a stage in the development of historical economic contradictions. Therefore, studying actual economic contradictions means analyzing the contradictory structure formed by historical evolution, and then, on the basis of this contradictory structure, investigating historical evolution to clarify its actual rationality and historical necessity.

马克思所说的“资产阶级社会内部的结构”，是资本主义经济制度在历史的进程中演化生成的结果，这种演化集中体现于“现代资产阶级社会中的相互关系”所决定的现实的经济矛盾。在此，现实的经济矛盾既是历史经济矛盾演化的结果，又是历史经济矛盾发展的一个阶段。因而，研究现实经济矛盾，就是要分析历史演化所形成的矛盾结构，然后再根据这个矛盾结构对历史的演化进行探究，明确其现实的合理性与历史的必然性。

It is precisely in the empirical analysis and generalization of the contradictions of the actual capitalist economic system that Marx discovers that some simple categories or relations have their “antediluvian existence” before the capitalist economic system established its dominant position. The investigation of their historical forms and evolution is a necessary component for determining actual contradictions. Specifically, “money can exist, and has existed in history, before capital, banks, wage-labour, etc., existed. From this aspect, it can be said that the simpler category can express the dominant relations of a less developed whole, or the subordinate relations of a more developed whole, which historically existed before the whole developed in the direction of a more concrete category.” Thus, “to this extent, the course of abstract thinking, which ascends from the simplest to the more complex, corresponds to the actual historical process.” From this, Marx further puts forward a judgment on the complexity of the relationship between “logic and history”: “Although the simpler category may have existed historically before the more concrete one, its full development, in depth and breadth, can only belong to a complex social form, while the more concrete category had a more complete development in a less developed social form.”

正是在对现实资本主义经济制度矛盾的实证分析和概括中，马克思发现其中的一些简单范畴或关系具有其在资本主义经济制度确立其统治地位的“洪水期前的存在”，对它们的历史形态和演化的考察，是规定现实矛盾的必要内容。具体而言，“在资本存在之前，银行存在之前，雇佣劳动等等存在之前，货币能够存在，而且在历史上存在过。因此，从这一方面看来，可以说，比较简单的范畴可以表现一个比较不发展的整体的处于支配地位的关系或者一个比较发展的整体的从属关系，这些关系在整体向着以一个比较具体的范畴表现出来的方向发展之前，在历史上已经存在”。 从而，“在这个限度内，从最简单上升到复杂这个抽象思维的进程符合现实的历史过程”。由此，马克思进一步提出了对于“逻辑与历史”之间关系复杂性的论断：“比较简单的范畴，虽然在历史上可以在比较具体的范畴之前存在，但是，它在深度和广度上的充分发展恰恰只能属于一个复杂的社会形式，而比较具体的范畴在一个比较不发展的社会形式中有过比较充分的发展。” 

On this basis, Marx further demonstrates this using “labour,” this “very simple category,” and the historical and intellectual-historical facts related to it, as an example. Although the understanding of the generality of labour, or “labour in general,” can be traced back to very ancient times, its determination as a concept or category in economics is entirely a product of “modernity.” Moreover, during the transitional period of “early modernity,” the mercantilists were still unable to connect labour with the proposition of “creating wealth.” It was not until the physiocrats, represented by Quesnay, that “the object is no longer regarded as wrapped in the cloak of money, but as product in general, as the general result of labour.” Adam Smith “strips away all the specific determinations of the activity of creating wealth—it is simply labour, neither industrial labour, nor commercial labour, nor agricultural labour, but both this labour and that.” The reason why various kinds of “labour” can bear the name of “labour” and carry out the substance of “labour” is precisely because of the generality of labour commonly contained within them. “With the abstract generality of the activity of creating wealth, there is also the generality of the object determined as wealth, that is, product in general, or again labour in general.” And “this abstract ‘labour in general’ becomes the logical starting point for classical political economists to construct their theories.”

在此基础上，马克思以“劳动”这个“十分简单的范畴”及其所关涉的历史与思想史事实为例证进一步进行论证。对于劳动的一般性，或者说“劳动一般”的认识，虽然可以追溯到非常古老的年代，但是在经济学上将之规定为概念或范畴，却完全是“现代”的产物。而且，在“早期现代”的转折时期，重商主义者仍旧不能把劳动与“创造财富”这一命题联系起来，直到以魁奈为代表的重农主义才“不再把对象本身看作裹在货币的外衣之中，而是看作产品一般，看作劳动的一般成果了”。亚当·斯密“抛开了创造财富的活动的一切规定性，——干脆就是劳动，既不是工业劳动，又不是商业劳动，也不是农业劳动，而既是这种劳动，又是那种劳动”。诸种“劳动”之所以可以秉有“劳动”之名并贯彻“劳动”之实，恰恰就是因为其中所共同蕴含着的劳动的一般性。“有了创造财富的活动的抽象一般性，也就有了被规定为财富的对象的一般性，这就是产品一般，或者说又是劳动一般。”而“这个抽象的‘劳动一般’成为古典政治经济学家建构其理论的逻辑起点”。

Marx believes that capitalist society, as the most diverse and developed organization of production in existing history, “the categories that express its relations, and the understanding of its structure, also enable us to gain insight into the structure and relations of production of all the forms of society that have been superseded. Bourgeois society is built up from the fragments and elements of these social forms, some of which remain as unconquered relics, continuing to exist here, while some, which were originally mere portents, have developed to their full significance, etc. The anatomy of man is a key to the anatomy of the ape.” With a vision of thorough “transparency” to “see through” the development and transformation of all social forms, Marx initiates a “potentiality-actuality” argument in the sense of the history of social development. The dialectics immanent within the capitalist social form of “continuing to exist here” and “developing to their full significance” implies both that the completion of its own form is a necessary historical process and that the “fragments” of past social forms not only continue to exist but also undergo a crucial transformation in the “completion” they have attained. All this is clearly presented in the richness and diversity of bourgeois society, and “by no means as the economists understand it, who obliterate all historical differences and see bourgeois society in all forms of society.”

马克思认为，资本主义社会作为既有历史上最具多样性的、发达的生产组织，“那些表现它的各种关系的范畴以及对它的结构的理解，同时也能使我们透视一切已经覆灭的社会形式的结构和生产关系。资产阶级社会借这些社会形式的残片和因素建立起来，其中一部分还未克服的遗物，继续在这里存留着，一部分原来只是征兆的东西，发展到具有充分意义，等等。人体解剖对于猴体解剖是一把钥匙”。以彻底“透明性”的视野“透视一切”社会形态的发展变革，马克思开启一种社会发展史意义上的“潜能-现实”论证，资本主义社会形态中内蕴的“继续在这里存留”与“发展到具有充分意义”的辩证法，既意指其自身形态的完成是必然的历史进程，也意味着过往社会形态的“残片”不仅继续存在着，而且在其所达致的“完成”中也发生了关键性的转化。这一切都清晰地呈现在资产阶级社会的丰富性与多样性之中，而“决不是像那些抹杀一切历史差别、把一切社会形式都看成资产阶级社会形式的经济学家所理解的那样”。

Marx engages in dialectical thinking on an empirical basis. Under the premise of fully analyzing and generalizing materials, he determines the essence of the capitalist economic system from the dialectical unity of particularity and generality, and thereby correctly handles the relationship between reality and history. He believes that although certain specific economic relations prior to the capitalist economic system could correspond to the institutional reality of that time, they appeared in distorted, atrophied, and differentiated forms. Moreover, “if it is true that the categories of bourgeois economics are applicable to all other social forms, this can only be understood in a certain sense. These categories contain these social forms in developed, atrophied, caricatured forms, always in essentially different forms. The historical development spoken of is always based on this: the final form always regards the past forms as stages leading towards itself.” Marx holds that “the final form always regards the past forms as stages leading towards itself” is almost an economic transcription of Hegel’s “teleology of the Idea” type of judgment, “so it always understands the past forms one-sidedly.” From this it can be seen that “the bourgeois economists’ disguise of the relations of production in the historical time of the bourgeoisie as natural, eternal, and immutable laws of nature is an essential obscuring of the historicity of the bourgeois mode of production by bourgeois ideology,” which itself inevitably exhibits a significant “ideational” error isomorphic with Hegelian thought.

马克思以实证为基础进行辩证思维，在充分分析、概括材料的前提下，从特殊性与一般性的辩证统一规定资本主义经济制度的本质，并由此正确处理现实与历史的关系问题。他认为，虽然资本主义经济制度之前的某些具体的经济关系可以与当时的制度性现实相对应，但还是以歪曲的、萎缩的、差异性的形式出现的。而且，“如果说资产阶级经济的范畴适用于一切其他社会形式这种说法是对的，那么，这也只能在一定意义上来理解。这些范畴可以在发展了的、萎缩了的、漫画式的各种形式上，总是在有本质区别的形式上，包含着这些社会形式。所说的历史发展总是建立在这样的基础上的：最后的形式总是把过去的形式看成是向着自己发展的各个阶段”。马克思认为，“最后的形式总是把过去的形式看成是向着自己发展的各个阶段”，几乎就是黑格尔“理念目的论”式论断的经济学转写，“所以总是对过去的形式作片面的理解”。由此可见，“资产阶级经济学家将资产阶级的历史时间中的生产关系伪饰成天然的、永恒不变的自然规律，是资产阶级意识形态对资产阶级生产方式历史性的一种本质遮蔽”，本身也必然呈现出与黑格尔思想同构的、显著的“观念性”错误。

Through meticulous and in-depth analysis, Marx recognized the real essence of bourgeois society: “The principle of capital has become the universal governing principle of modern society, and humanity is deeply mired in a state of universal alienation from which it cannot extricate itself.” Based on this judgment, Marx emphasized that the critical study of political economy “is always the subject – here modern bourgeois society – which is given, in reality as well as in the head; hence the categories express forms of being, determinations of existence, and often only individual aspects, of this definite society, this subject; and therefore this definite society, even from the standpoint of science, by no means begins only at the point where one speaks of it as such.” [1]1 Karl Marx, *Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy*, trans. Martin Nicolaus (London: Penguin Books, 1973), 106. Translation modified. This is most evident in the categories of ground-rent and landed property; although they undoubtedly still “exist” and function within the capitalist system, they are clearly no longer the decisive economic relations: “In all forms of society there is one specific kind of production which predominates over the rest, whose relations thus assign rank and influence to the others. It is a general illumination which bathes all the other colours and modifies their particularity. It is a particular ether which determines the specific gravity of every being which has materialized within it.” [2]2 Marx, *Grundrisse*, 106–107. The cognitive metaphor of the universal light with “enlightening” significance, combined with the “ether” as the foundational constitution of “being,” becomes a dialectical definition of the role of “capital” in real economic relations across the dimensions of universality and particularity. This thereby focuses Marx’s overall exposition of the relationship between conceptual logic and historical reality on the crucial “real contradiction”: capital’s irresistible and unavoidable dominance over production and economic relations, and the extreme situation this must inevitably lead to: it constructs its own “gravediggers” for its own end. [3]3 “Gravediggers” alludes to Marx’s statement in the *Manifesto of the Communist Party* that the bourgeoisie produces its own gravediggers.

通过细致而深入的分析，马克思认清了资产阶级社会的现实本质：“资本原则已经成为现代社会普遍的支配原则，人类深深地陷入到普遍异化的社会状况当中而无法解脱。”基于这一判断，马克思强调，政治经济学的批判性研究“无论在现实中或在头脑中，主体——这里是现代资产阶级社会——都是既定的；因而范畴表现这个一定社会及这个主体的存在形式、存在规定、常常只是个别的侧面；因此，这个一定社会在科学上也决不是在把它当作这样一个社会来谈论的时候才开始存在的”。这一点在地租和土地所有制范畴上表现得最为明显，虽然它们无疑在资本主义制度中还是“存在”并发挥着作用的，但显然已经不再是具有决定性的经济关系了，“在一切社会形式中都有一种一定的生产决定着其他一切生产的地位和影响，因而它的关系也决定其他一切关系的地位和影响。这是一种普照的光，它掩盖了一切其他色彩，改变着他们的特点。这是一种特殊的以太，它决定着它里面显露出来的一切存在的比重”。具有“启蒙”意义的普世之光的认知性隐喻，与作为“存在”之基础性构成的“以太”相结合，成为在普遍性与特殊性不同维度对“资本”在现实经济关系中的作用的辩证界定，也由此将马克思概念逻辑与历史现实之间关系的整体论述聚焦于关键性的“现实矛盾”，即资本对生产和经济关系无以抵制、无可抗拒的支配性，及其所必将导致的极端境遇：自己为自己的终结构造“掘墓人”。

History is the history of the generation and evolution of human beings and social relations. Every era is both contemporary and real, yet it will also become a historical existence. Real history and historical reality are both the results of humanity’s continuous cognition and transformation in its relationship with nature and with other people. The important factor in this process is consciousness, and the normative collection of the development of consciousness lies in logic. Logic is the presentation of historical consciousness and, at the same time, a necessary aspect of historical development. It is in this sense that Marx establishes his principle of the unity of logic and history. After correctly handling the relationship between reality and history, Marx, in the conceptual movement that reveals and demonstrates the contradictions of the real capitalist economic system, reflects on the history of bourgeois political economy, and then concentrates on demonstrating the history of the formation and evolution of the capitalist economic system.

历史是人和社会关系的生成与演变的历史，任何一个时代都是当下的、现实的，但也都会成为历史性存在。现实的历史和历史的现实，都是人在与自然、与人的关系中不断进行认识与改造的成果，这个过程中的重要因素是意识，而意识发展的规范性集合于逻辑。逻辑是对历史意识的呈现，同时也是历史发展的一个必要方面。马克思正是在这个意义上证成其逻辑与历史相统一原则的。在正确处理了现实与历史的关系之后，马克思在揭示和论证现实的资本主义经济制度矛盾的概念运动中，反思了资产阶级政治经济学的发展史，进而集中论证资本主义经济制度形成和演化的历史。

III. Marx’s Historical Reflection on Bourgeois Political Economic Doctrines

三、马克思对资产阶级政治经济学说的历史反思

Marx’s historical reflection on bourgeois political economic doctrines is mainly embodied in the stage of conceptual movement from the concrete to the abstract within “the logic of *Capital*”; this is an important link in his dialectical principle of “the unity of logic and history.” “Political economy” is a form of intellectual history that emerged with the formation of capitalist economic relations and evolved along with the institutionalization of these relations. In Marx’s view, the history of political economic doctrines is the history of bourgeois economists continuously elevating the universal logic of capital’s domination over people into an “ideology.” It begins with mercantilism, passes through the bourgeois “classical political economy” of Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, to the “vulgar political economy” of Mill, McCulloch, and others, and also includes the early socialist economic thought that emerged during the dissolution of the Ricardian school. Marx’s study of political economy is precisely the use of “‘positive science’ factual discourse to objectively describe the various phenomena of servitude in bourgeois society,” and on this basis, to unfold his scientific exposition of the inevitable demise of bourgeois society.

马克思对于资产阶级政治经济学说的历史性反思，主要体现于“《资本论》的逻辑”从具体到抽象的概念运动阶段，这是其辩证法的“逻辑与历史相统一”原则的重要环节。“政治经济学”是随着资本主义经济关系的形成而出现的思想史形态，并伴随资本主义经济关系的制度化而不断演化。在马克思看来，政治经济学说的历史就是资产阶级经济学家将资本对人的普遍宰制逻辑不断上升为“意识形态”的历史，是从重商主义开始，经由亚当·斯密、李嘉图、萨伊的资产阶级“古典政治经济学”到穆勒、麦克库洛赫等的“庸俗政治经济学”，并兼及李嘉图学派解体过程中出现的早期社会主义经济思想，而马克思的政治经济学研究也就是用“‘实证科学’的事实话语，来客观描述资产阶级社会中的各种奴役现象”，并在此基础上展开其资产阶级社会必然走向消亡的科学论述。

Marx placed great importance on the critical study of the history of political economic doctrines. Before determining *Capital* as the title for his systematic research results on political economy, the *Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858* and the *Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863* were both titled *A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy*, and *Capital* also bears the subtitle *A Critique of Political Economy*. Marx disagreed with Hegel’s establishment of the logic of free spirit as the basis for human real life and history, but he also fully attended to the reflection and generalization that the real life and historical process of humanity must inevitably receive in human conscious activity. Capitalist economic relations and their institutionalization have profoundly influenced the real life of the Western world for centuries and are the dominant force in history. Correspondingly, political economy, as the concentrated generalization of bourgeois interests and consciousness, developed synchronously with bourgeois rule and the institutionalization of capitalist economic relations, and internally acted upon the entire process of the institutionalization of capital’s enslavement. It is, moreover, an important component of the ruling class’s ideology after the establishment of the capitalist system. Under its theoretical obscuration, human economic activity “is no longer a creative process of human self-realization, but can only be a process of alienated labor and the realization of surplus value under the control of the power of capital.” Marx believed that critiquing the history of bourgeois political economic doctrines was a necessary component of revealing and demonstrating the real contradictions of the capitalist economic system and its laws of historical development. From the initial stage of his political economy research, he unified the historical critique of bourgeois political economy with the analysis and generalization of real materials. The critical reflection on the history of political economic doctrines is an organic part of his political economy system.

马克思非常重视对政治经济学说史的批判性研究。在确定以《资本论》为政治经济学系统研究成果的书名之前，《1857—1858年经济学手稿》和《1861—1863年经济学手稿》都以《政治经济学批判》为题，而《资本论》也以《政治经济学批判》为副标题。马克思不同意黑格尔将自由精神的逻辑确立为人类现实生活和历史的依据，但是他也充分地关注人类现实生活和历史进程必然在人的意识活动中所得到的反映和概括。资本主义经济关系及其制度化，深刻地影响着西方世界数百年的现实生活，是历史的主导力量。与之相对应，政治经济学作为资产阶级利益和意识的集中概括，它与资产阶级统治及资本主义经济关系的制度化同步发展，并内在地作用于资本奴役制度化的全过程，更是资本主义制度确立后统治阶级意识形态的重要内容。在其理论遮蔽之下，人类的经济活动“已不再是人的自我实现的创造性的过程了，而只能是资本力量驾驭下的异化劳动和剩余价值的实现过程”。马克思认为，批判资产阶级政治经济学说史是揭示和论证资本主义经济制度现实矛盾及其历史发展规律的必要组成部分。他从政治经济学研究的起步阶段，就将对资产阶级政治经济学的历史性批判与对现实材料的分析和概括相统一。对政治经济学说史的批判性反思，是他的政治经济学体系的有机组成部分。

Marx believed that bourgeois political economy is both a concentrated generalization of the economic interests and class consciousness of the bourgeoisie and a theoretical expression of the capitalist economic system. The writings of bourgeois economists from different historical periods accurately record the historical trajectory of the formation, development, and evolution of bourgeois ideology and the capitalist economic system. Therefore, critiquing the history of bourgeois political economic doctrines means analyzing the bourgeois economic interests and class consciousness they generalize, refuting their theoretical justification of the legitimacy of the capitalist economic system, and at the same time, it is an investigation of the formation, development, and evolution of the capitalist economic system, from which the laws of the formation, development, and evolution of political economy are summarized.

马克思认为，资产阶级政治经济学既是对资产阶级的经济利益和阶级意识的集中概括，又是资本主义经济制度的理论表现。不同历史时期的资产阶级经济学家的著述恰切地记录了资产阶级意识形态与资本主义经济制度形成、发展、演变的历史轨迹。从而，批判资产阶级的政治经济学说史，就是要剖析其所概括的资产阶级经济利益和阶级意识，驳难其理论论证中资本主义经济制度的合法性证明，同时又是对资本主义经济制度形成、发展、演变的考察，并由以概括政治经济学形成、发展、演化的规律。

The critique of the history of political economy is a necessary content of the conceptual movement from the concrete to the abstract within the overall logic of *Capital*. Establishing the concept of “surplus value” as the determination of the essence of the capitalist economic system is the collective achievement of the conceptual movement from the concrete to the abstract, and this is also the core conclusion Marx reached through his critical investigation of the history of political economic doctrines. As the concluding part of the conceptual movement from the concrete to the abstract within the overall “logic of *Capital*,” *Theories of Surplus Value*, presented in the form of intellectual history, aims to enrich and demonstrate the theoretical system he had already basically established, with the concept of surplus value at its core, through a critique of the intellectual history of political economic doctrines. It thereby reveals the laws of the development of political economy and demonstrates that the theory of surplus value is the logical and historical inevitable result of the evolution of political economy.

对政治经济学历史的批判，是《资本论》逻辑总体的从具体到抽象的概念运动的必要内容。将“剩余价值”概念确立为对资本主义经济制度本质的规定，是从具体到抽象的概念运动的集合性成果，而这也是马克思对政治经济学说史进行批判性考察所取得的核心性结论。作为“《资本论》逻辑”总体的从具体到抽象概念运动的结束部分，以思想史形态呈现的《剩余价值理论》，就是要通过对政治经济学说的思想史批判，充实和论证他已经基本确立的以剩余价值概念为核心的理论体系，并由此揭示政治经济学发展的规律，论证剩余价值理论是政治经济学演进的逻辑与历史的必然结果。

As a generalization and demonstration of the historical laws of political economy, in the opening “General Comment” of the first volume of *Theories of Surplus Value*, Marx states unequivocally: “All economists share the error of examining surplus-value not as such, in its pure form, but in the particular forms of profit and rent.” [4]4 Karl Marx, *Theories of Surplus Value*, Part I (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1963), 40. By this time, Marx had already completed the determination of the concept of “surplus value” and had a mature understanding of the contradictory essence of the capitalist economic system. He points out that although “all economists” failed to truly recognize the pure form of “surplus value,” they were in fact all cognizing “surplus value,” albeit by studying its particular forms such as profit and ground-rent. Therefore, their studies of political economy did not deviate from the domain of “surplus value”; they constitute the historical process of cognizing “surplus value.”

作为对政治经济学历史规律的概括与论证，在《剩余价值理论》第一册开篇“总的评论”中，马克思开宗明义地指出：“所有经济学家都犯了一个错误：他们不是纯粹地就剩余价值本身，而是在利润和地租这些特殊形式上来考察剩余价值。”马克思此时已经完成了对“剩余价值”概念的规定，对资本主义经济制度的矛盾本质已有了成熟的认识。他指出，虽然“所有经济学家”都没能真正认识到“剩余价值”的纯粹形式，但他们事实上又都是在认识“剩余价值”，不过是就剩余价值的特殊形式如利润、地租等进行研究，因此，他们的政治经济学研究又都没有背离“剩余价值”这一论域，是对“剩余价值”进行认识的历史过程。

After the “General Comments,” the first volume of *Theories of Surplus Value* successively discusses the theories of Steuart, the Physiocrats, Smith, Necker, Quesnay, Linguet, and Bray. This logic of exposition follows, on the one hand, the order of history, and on the other hand, based on the specific discussions of these economists, explores the particular forms of surplus value they address. Through his research, Marx discovered that these economists’ definitions of concrete economic phenomena—such as the Physiocrats’ determination of wages based on their analysis of *avances primitives* and *avances annuelles*—had already come very close to an understanding of surplus value. And Smith, while extending the labor that creates value to all spheres of production, often mistakenly posited profit as the pure form of surplus value to demonstrate its relationship with wages and rent. The reason Marx focused his investigation on economists of lesser influence, such as Necker, Linguet, and Bray, is that they possessed historically valuable insights into the pure form of surplus value.

在“总的评论”之后，《剩余价值理论》第一册依次论述了斯图亚特、重农学派、斯密、内克、魁奈、兰盖、布雷的理论。这样的论述逻辑，一方面是依循历史的次序，另一方面也是根据这些经济学家的具体论述，探讨其所涉及的剩余价值的特殊形式。马克思经过研究发现，这些经济学家对具体经济现象的界说，如重农学派从原预付和年预付的分析出发对工资所进行的规定，已经非常接近对剩余价值的认识。而斯密在把创造价值的劳动扩展到所有生产领域的前提下，往往将利润错置为剩余价值的纯粹形式来论证其与工资、地租的关系。马克思之所以对内克、兰盖和布雷等影响力较小的经济学家进行重点考察，是因为他们对于剩余价值的纯粹形式有历史价值的认识。

The second volume of *Theories of Surplus Value* primarily critiques Ricardo’s economic thought, defining its position and significance in the history of the theory of surplus value. Marx begins with a critique of Rodbertus, who believed his new discovery of “absolute rent” had solved the difficulties in Ricardo’s theory of rent. Marx points out that Rodbertus did not, as he claimed, arrive at a solution, but rather further highlighted the defects in Ricardo’s theory. In his critique of Rodbertus, Marx, proceeding from the logic of the transformation of surplus value into profit, clarifies the line of thought for determining absolute rent through the equalization of industrial profits and average prices. He then examines “Ricardo’s explanation of profit, the rate of profit, average prices, etc.,” covering average prices or cost prices and market prices, Ricardo’s and Smith’s theories of rent, Ricardo’s theory of surplus value, and his theory of accumulation. Marx explicitly regards Ricardo as the main representative of the development of political economy after Smith. “Ricardo starts from the determination of the value of commodities by labor-time, and then examines whether other economic relations contradict this determination of value, or to what extent they modify it. One can see at a glance the historical justification of this method, its scientific necessity in the history of economics, and also its scientific inadequacy, which is manifested not only in the mode of presentation (the formal aspect) but also leads to erroneous conclusions, because it skips over necessary intermediate links and attempts to directly prove the congruence of various economic categories.” Although Ricardo embodies the progressive attributes of the rising bourgeoisie, which allows his theory to retain some scientific elements, due to the limitations of his class standpoint and defects in his method, he could only directly compare and analyze contradictions in economic relations based on the relationship of value magnitudes. Consequently, he could neither recognize surplus value in its pure form nor explain the relationships among the various particular forms of surplus value, especially the tendency toward the equalization of profit across different industries, sectors, and enterprises.

《剩余价值理论》第二册主要批判李嘉图的经济思想，界定其在剩余价值理论史上的地位和意义。马克思从对洛贝尔图斯的批判开始，洛贝尔图斯自认为他对“绝对地租”的新发现解决了李嘉图地租理论的难题。马克思指出，洛贝尔图斯并没有如他自己所说的那样得出了解决方案，而是进一步突出了李嘉图理论中的缺陷。在对洛贝尔图斯的批判中，马克思从剩余价值转化为利润的逻辑，明确了从工业利润的平均化和平均价格规定绝对地租的思路。进而考察“李嘉图对利润、利润率和平均价格等的解释”，涉及平均价格或费用价格和市场价格、李嘉图和斯密的地租理论、李嘉图的剩余价值理论、积累理论等。马克思明确将李嘉图视为斯密之后政治经济学发展的主要代表。“李嘉图从商品的价值量决定于劳动时间这个规定出发，然后研究其他经济关系是否同这个价值规定相矛盾，或者说，它们在多大的程度上使这个价值规定发生变形。人们一眼就可以看出这种方法的历史合理性，它在经济学历史上的科学必然性，同时也可以看出它在科学上的不完备性，这种不完备性不仅表现在叙述的方式上（形式方面），而且导致错误的结论，因为这种方法跳过必要的中介环节，企图直接证明各种经济范畴相互一致。”虽然李嘉图体现着上升时期资产阶级的进步属性，使其学说仍保有一定的科学成分，但是由于其阶级立场的局限性和方法上的缺陷，他只能从价值量的关系来直接对比分析经济关系中的矛盾，因此既不能认识纯粹形式的剩余价值，也不能说明剩余价值的各个特殊形式之间的关系，尤其是利润在不同产业、行业、企业间的平均化趋势。

Ricardo’s theoretical system represents the peak of classical bourgeois political economy. After reaching this peak, as the bourgeoisie had established its comprehensive rule and lost the social progressive significance of its “ascending period,” and due to the defects in its understanding and method, it could not and would not confront the reality of contradictions. This led to the stagnation and even regression of the development of bourgeois political economy theory, which entered a phase of “vulgarization” aimed at providing legitimacy for the capitalist economic system. Its prominent manifestation is the “dissolution of the Ricardian school.” The third volume of *Theories of Surplus Value* begins its argument with Malthus, the representative of the aristocracy and landed proprietors who first discovered and criticized the contradictions in Ricardo’s theoretical system. Marx points out that Malthus’s refutation of Ricardo’s theory has two aspects: “on the one hand, the problem of the generation of surplus value; on the other hand, the way in which Ricardo treats the equalization of cost prices in different spheres of investment as a modification of the law of value itself, and his constant confusion of profit with surplus value (his direct identification of the two).” However, it is evident that Malthus could not solve the fundamental problems of his own theory, and could only “accept them from Ricardo in order to use this confusion to overthrow Ricardo’s basic law of value, etc., and to draw conclusions that would greatly delight his patrons.”

李嘉图的学说体系是资产阶级古典政治经济学的高峰，在达到这个高峰之后，由于资产阶级已经确立其全面的统治而丧失其“上升期”的社会进步意义，并因其认识和方法上的缺陷而不能也不愿正视矛盾的现实性，导致资产阶级政治经济学理论发展的停滞乃至倒退，步入为资本主义经济制度进行合法性辩护的“庸俗化”阶段，其突出表现就是“李嘉图学派的解体”。《剩余价值理论》第三册从首先发现并批评李嘉图学说体系矛盾的贵族和地主阶级的代表马尔萨斯开始其论证，马克思指出，马尔萨斯对于李嘉图理论的反驳有两方面内容，“一方面是剩余价值的产生问题，另一方面是李嘉图把不同投资领域中费用价格的平均化看做价值规律本身的变形的方式，以及他始终把利润和剩余价值混淆起来（把两者直接等同起来）的做法”。但是，很显然，因为马尔萨斯无法解决其理论上的根本问题，而仅仅能够“从李嘉图那里把它们接受过来，以便依靠这种混乱去推翻李嘉图关于价值的基本规律等等，并作出使他的保护人大为愉悦的结论”。

In the history of political economy, Malthus’s exposure and attack on the contradictions of Ricardo’s theory accelerated the pace of the dissolution of the Ricardian school and gave rise to an economic school represented by James Mill and McCulloch. This school abandoned the labor theory of value, obliterated the opposition between wages and profit, and between rent and profit, and, in the name of defending Ricardo’s thought, actually eliminated its scientific components. As the initiator of the “dissolution” of the Ricardian school, James Mill, on the one hand, conceived the capitalist economic system as an absolute existence whose contradictions were merely formal, and on the other hand, strove to argue that Ricardo’s theory was the complete theoretical expression of this economic system, while simultaneously “trying to prove that certain theoretical contradictions, which had been pointed out by others and which he himself could not help feeling, were untenable.” This “dislocation of logic and history” in James Mill was even more strongly expressed in McCulloch. Marx points out that McCulloch “is not only a vulgarizer of Ricardo, but also a vulgarizer of James Mill.” He not only borrowed from Say’s theory of factor value but also sought arguments from Malthus to defend the internal contradictions in Ricardo’s theory. The core of his theory was to argue in various ways that labor determining value was “only a principle,” and that this “principle” did not apply when capital was exchanged for labor, thereby proving that the worker’s income from selling labor was consistent with the value created by his living labor. The contradictions between profit and wages, the contradiction of profit equalization, and the contradiction between profit and rent, which originally existed in the theory, all completely disappeared. Thus, the Ricardian school moved toward complete vulgarization, becoming the hired “apologists” for the capitalist economic system.

在政治经济学说史上，马尔萨斯对李嘉图学说矛盾的揭露和攻击，加速了李嘉图学派的解体步伐，并催生了以詹姆斯·穆勒和麦克库洛赫为代表的抛弃劳动价值论，抹杀工资与利润、地租与利润的对立，以捍卫李嘉图的思想为名，但事实上消除其科学成分的经济学派别。作为李嘉图学派“解体”的肇始者，詹姆斯·穆勒一方面把资本主义经济制度设想为绝对的存在，其中的矛盾只不过是形式上的矛盾，另一方面极力将李嘉图的学说论证成这一经济制度的完备的理论表达，并且同时“力图证明一些已为别人所指出、一些他自己心里不禁会感觉到的理论上的矛盾是站不住脚的”。詹姆斯·穆勒的这种“逻辑与历史相错位”在麦克库洛赫那里更为强烈地表现出来。马克思指出，麦克库洛赫“不仅是李嘉图的庸俗化者，而且是詹姆斯·穆勒的庸俗化者”。他不仅借助萨伊的要素价值论，更从马尔萨斯那里寻找论据来为李嘉图学说中的内在矛盾辩护。其理论要点就是以各种方法将劳动决定价值论证为“只是原则”，而在资本和劳动相交换的时候这一“原则”并不起作用，从而证明工人出卖劳动的所得与他的活劳动所创造的价值是一致的。原本在理论中存在的利润与工资的矛盾、利润平均化的矛盾、利润与地租的矛盾都完全不存在了。由此，李嘉图学派走向彻底的庸俗化，变成了资本主义经济制度的御用“辩护士”。

While critically examining Ricardo’s theory and the process of the dissolution of the Ricardian school, Marx also investigated “the opposition that bases itself on Ricardo’s theory and opposes the economists.” This included a series of influential works written from the standpoint of the industrial proletariat, criticizing bourgeois vulgar political economy, such as Hodgskin’s *Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital; or, the Unproductiveness of Capital Proved. With Reference to the Present Combinations amongst Journeymen* and *Popular Political Economy. Four Lectures Delivered at the London Mechanics’ Institution*, and Ravenstone’s *Thoughts on the Funding System, and Its Effects*. These works further demonstrated the contradictions in Ricardo’s theory and revealed the necessary path for recognizing and resolving these theoretical contradictions from the standpoint of the industrial proletariat, thereby developing a scientific political economy theory. It was precisely through this dialectical investigation combining “opposition and unity” that Marx verified and enriched his theory of surplus value. On the one hand, by transforming the concept of profit through the movement from the abstract to the concrete, he clarified that the logical process of explaining the various particular forms of surplus value, including rent, requires a necessary intermediate link, namely, the “equalization of profit.” On the other hand, through a retrospective examination of the vulgarization and collapse of the Smith-Ricardo theory, he scientifically elucidated that only by conducting research in political economy from the standpoint of the laboring proletariat can one truly confront the various contradictions and predicaments brought about by capital’s enslavement. This is precisely the embodiment of the principle of “the unity of logic and history” at the level of the history of political economy.

马克思在对李嘉图的学说和李嘉图学派的解体过程进行批判性审理的同时，也考察了“以李嘉图理论为依据反对经济学家的反对派”，以霍吉斯金的《保护劳动反对资本的要求，或资本非生产性的证明。关于当前雇佣工人的团结》《通俗政治经济学。在伦敦技术学校的四次演讲》，莱文斯顿《论公债制度及其影响》为代表的一系列有影响的从工业无产阶级立场出发，批判资产阶级庸俗政治经济学的著作，进一步论证了李嘉图学说的矛盾，发现了从工业无产阶级立场出发，认识和解决这些理论矛盾，进而发展科学的政治经济学理论的必然理路。也正是在这一辩证性的“对立与统一”相结合的考察中，马克思验证并充实了他的剩余价值理论，一方面通过从抽象到具体的概念运动改造利润概念，进而说明包括地租在内的剩余价值的各特殊形式的逻辑过程，应有一个必要的中介环节，即“利润的平均化”；另一方面则通过对斯密-李嘉图学说的庸俗化及其破产过程的回溯，科学阐明了只有从劳动无产阶级立场开展政治经济学研究，才能够真正直面资本奴役所招致的种种矛盾与困境，而这正是在政治经济学说史层面“逻辑与历史相统一”原则的体现。

IV. Marx’s Definition and Historical Critique of the Contradictions of the Capitalist Economic System

四、马克思对资本主义经济制度矛盾的界定和历史批判

Marx’s concentrated demonstration of the contradictions of the capitalist economic system is mainly embodied in the stage of conceptual movement from the abstract to the concrete in “the logic of *Capital*”, that is, in the exposition of *Capital*. Marx believed that the historical concentration of capitalist economic relations and their institutionalization is presented in the actual movement of their contradictions; therefore, the revelation and demonstration of actual contradictions is also the determination of their historical results. In the conceptual movement from the abstract to the concrete, it is necessary not only to analyze horizontally the essence and structure of its actual economic contradictions, but also to summarize vertically its historical facts, historical processes, and historical tendencies.

马克思对资本主义经济制度矛盾的集中论证，主要体现于“《资本论》的逻辑”从抽象到具体的概念运动阶段，亦即《资本论》的论述之中。马克思认为，资本主义经济关系及其制度化的历史集中呈现在其现实的矛盾运动中，因此，对现实矛盾的揭示与论证也就是对其历史结果的断定。在从抽象到具体的概念运动中，不仅要横向分析其现实经济矛盾的本质与结构，更要对其历史事实、历史过程与历史趋向进行纵向的概括。

In the introduction to the *Grundrisse* (1857–1858), Marx explicitly proposed that the system of exposition should not be arranged according to the order in which economic categories appear in history, but rather that historical laws should be grasped and summarized through the dialectical movement of concepts. The systematic arrangement of Volume I of *Capital* fully embodies a theoretical summary of the institutional configuration of capitalist economic relations and the history of their development. From the perspective of the systematicity of conceptual movement, the “commodity” and “money” discussed in Part I, “Commodities and Money,” are both antecedent concepts to the concept of “surplus value,” which defines the essence of the contradictions of the capitalist economic system. By “antecedent,” on the one hand, this refers to their logically basic and general attributes. “Capital,” as the object of study of *Capital*, is itself constituted by these two basic and general attributes of commodity and money. If one examines only the material form without considering economic relations, then only commodities and money exist in the capitalist economy; vulgar bourgeois political economists often deny the specificity of capital from this dimension, denying the contradiction between capitalists and wage laborers that it embodies. On the other hand, from the perspective of historical genesis, commodities precede money, and money precedes capital; this is also the theoretical understanding Marx arrived at after summarizing the results of existing research in economic history and political economy. Through the determination and demonstration of the concepts of commodity and money, not only can the basic and general attributes of “capital” be clarified, but its historical preconditions can also be summarized.

在《1857—1858年经济学手稿》导言中，马克思明确提出了不能够按照经济范畴在历史上出现的次序来安排论述的体系，而是应当以概念的辩证运动来把握和概括历史规律。《资本论》第一卷的体系性安排充分体现了对资本主义经济关系的制度化构型及其发展历史的理论概括。从概念运动的系统性来说，第一篇“商品和货币”所讨论的“商品”“货币”都是规定资本主义经济制度矛盾本质的“剩余价值”概念的前导性概念。所谓“前导性”，一方面是指逻辑上基本的、一般的属性而言，“资本”作为《资本论》的研究对象，本身就是由商品和货币这两个基本的、一般的属性所构成。如果不考虑经济关系而只从物质形态来考察，资本主义经济中便只存在商品和货币，资产阶级庸俗政治经济学家往往就是从这个维度来否认资本的特殊性，否认其所体现的资本家与雇佣工人之间的矛盾。另一方面，从历史的发生形态论，商品先于货币，货币先于资本，这也是马克思在概括已有的经济史和政治经济学的研究成果之后得出的理论认识。通过商品和货币概念的规定和论证，不仅可以明确“资本”的基本的、一般的属性，更可以概括其历史性的前提。

With the demonstration of commodity and money as a prelude, in Part II of Volume I of *Capital*, “The Transformation of Money into Capital,” Marx defines the formation and specificity of the capitalist economic system, namely, the relationship of buying and selling between “capital” and “labor-power” as a commodity. Part III, “The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value,” begins with the abstract, historically prior labor process and then analyzes the process of valorization of capital. The transition from Part III to Part IV, “The Production of Relative Surplus-Value,” is also a summary of the historical development of the capitalist economic system in the process of conceptual movement from the abstract to the concrete. This exposition is manifested in the evolutionary process from cooperation to the division of labor and manufacture, and from manufacture to machinery and large-scale industry. After the dialectical determination of the relationship between absolute and relative surplus-value in Part V, Part VI, “Wages,” analyzes the two forms of wages—time wages and piece wages—elucidating the historical evolution of wages. Part VII, “The Process of Accumulation of Capital,” although it does not entirely follow the historical order of occurrence by starting with “primitive accumulation,” instead takes up the concepts of “surplus-value” and “wages” to further discuss “simple reproduction” and “the transformation of surplus-value into capital,” and then expounds “the general law of capitalist accumulation.” This sequence also follows the conceptual logic from the abstract to the concrete in summarizing the historical process of capital accumulation. And after fully elucidating the general law of capitalist accumulation, the discussion of “so-called primitive accumulation” serves, while refuting various lies of bourgeois economists about the primitive accumulation of capital with the transformed concept of capital accumulation, to examine the formation of capitalist economic relations and the history of their institutionalization, elucidating that “capital comes into the world dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt,” thereby echoing the demonstration in Part II, “The Transformation of Money into Capital.”

以对商品和货币的论证为前导，在《资本论》第一卷第二篇“货币转化为资本”中，马克思规定了资本主义经济制度的形成及其特殊性，即“资本”与作为商品的“劳动力”的买卖关系。第三篇“绝对剩余价值的生产”先从抽象的、历史上在先的劳动过程论起，再分析资本的价值增殖过程。而从第三篇向第四篇“相对剩余价值的生产”的转化，也是从抽象到具体概念运动的进程中对资本主义经济制度历史发展的概括，这一论述在对协作到分工和工场手工业到机器和大工业的演进历程中体现出来。经过第五篇对绝对剩余价值和相对剩余价值关系的辩证规定，在第六篇“工资”中，对于计时工资和计件工资这两种工资形式的分析，阐发了工资的历史沿革。第七篇“资本的积累过程”虽然没有完全按照历史的发生次序以“原始积累”为起点进行论述，而是承接“剩余价值”和“工资”两个概念进一步讨论“简单再生产”和“剩余价值转化为资本”，再论述“资本主义积累的一般规律”，这一顺序也是依循从抽象到具体的概念逻辑对资本积累历史进程的概括。而在充分阐明资本主义积累的一般规律之后，再论“所谓原始积累”，则是在以改造了的资本积累概念对资产阶级经济学家关于资本原始积累的种种谎言进行批驳的同时，考察资本主义经济关系的形成及其制度化的历史，阐明“资本来到世间，从头到脚，每个毛孔都滴着血和肮脏的东西”，以之呼应此前第二篇“货币转化为资本”中的论证。

The logical structure of Volume I of *Capital* concludes with “The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation,” a typical unity of the logical and the historical. In this section, Marx provides a scientific summary of the formation, development, and demise of the capitalist economic system: primitive accumulation of capital “signifies nothing other than the expropriation of the immediate producers, i.e., the dissolution of private property based on the labor of its owner.” The capitalist private property that arises from the capitalist mode of production is the negation of individual private property based on one’s own labor. Due to the contradictory laws of the capitalist production process, the intensification of capital monopoly and the deepening of the degree of exploitation, along with the growing unity and organized resistance of the working class, will inevitably lead to a further negation of capitalist private property. This negation does not reverse the trajectory of historical development to restore the former private property based on one’s own labor, but rather achieves an institutional “negation of the negation” on the basis of the existing achievements of capitalist private property, that is, “to re-establish individual property on the basis of the co-operative and the common possession of the land and the means of production produced by labor itself.”

《资本论》第一卷的逻辑结构以“资本主义积累的历史趋势”为收束，是典型的逻辑与历史相统一。在这一篇中，马克思对资本主义经济制度的形成、发展和灭亡进行了科学概括：资本的原始积累“只是意味着直接生产者的被剥夺，即以自己劳动为基础的私有制的解体”。从资本主义生产方式中产生的资本主义私有制，是对个人以自己劳动为基础的私有制的否定，由于资本主义生产过程的矛盾规律，资本垄断的加剧和剥削程度的不断加深，工人阶级的联合和有组织的反抗也不断增长，必将造成对资本主义私有制的进一步否定。这种否定不是逆转历史的发展轨迹恢复曾经的以自己劳动为基础的私有制，而是要在资本主义私有制的既有成就基础上实现制度性的“否定之否定”，即要“在协作和对土地及靠劳动本身生产的生产资料的共同占有的基础上，重新建立个人所有制”。

In the system of conceptual movement from the abstract to the concrete that summarizes the capitalist economic system and the historical process of its institutionalization, Volume II of *Capital* serves as a necessary mediating link between Volumes I and III, primarily demonstrating the forms of capitalist reproduction. In the historical demonstration of “the circuit of capital,” “the turnover of capital,” and “the reproduction and circulation of the aggregate social capital,” it also reproduces logically the history of their emergence and development. Specifically, Marx’s analysis of the circuit of capital begins with the circuit of money-capital, then proceeds to the exposition of the circuits of productive capital and commodity-capital. This sequence reflects both the temporal order of the circuit of each individual capital in reality and the actual historical process of the transformation of money into capital. In the concluding part of the exposition on the turnover of capital, “The Circulation of Surplus-Value,” just as in the discussion of capital accumulation in Volume I, it begins with simple reproduction and then discusses accumulation and expanded reproduction. This is both the historical order of the circulation process of surplus-value within the capitalist economic system and fully conforms to the logical order of concepts rising from the abstract to the concrete. In the section on “the reproduction and circulation of the aggregate social capital,” it likewise begins with the basic, simple, and general attributes as a starting point in logic, first discussing simple reproduction and then accumulation and expanded reproduction, thereby unifying the conceptual movement from the abstract to the concrete with the history of the reproduction and circulation process of the aggregate social capital. And in the analysis of “previous presentations of the subject” from the perspective of the history of doctrines, it likewise follows the principle of “the unity of the logical and the historical,” first discussing the Physiocrats and then unfolding the analysis of Adam Smith’s relevant expositions. This also takes history as the basis of logic, rather than making a “Hegelian distortion” of history by overemphasizing logical order.

在从抽象到具体的概念运动概括资本主义经济制度及其制度化的历史进程体系中，《资本论》第二卷是第一卷和第三卷之间必要的中介环节，主要论证资本主义再生产的形式，而在对“资本循环”“资本周转”和“社会总资本的再生产和流通”的历史性论证中，也从逻辑上再现了其中发生发展的历史。具体而言，马克思对资本循环的分析，是从货币资本的循环开始，再进入对生产资本和商品资本的循环的论述。这一顺序既是现实中每个个体资本循环的时间顺序的体现，也是历史上货币转化为资本的实际过程。在论述资本周转的总结部分“剩余价值的流通”时，和第一卷中论资本积累时一样，先从简单再生产开始，再论积累和扩大再生产，这既是剩余价值流通过程在资本主义经济制度内的历史次序，又完全符合概念的从抽象上升到具体的逻辑次序。在“社会总资本的再生产和流通”这一部分，也同样以基本的、简单的、一般的属性为起点的逻辑，先从简单再生产论起，再论积累和扩大再生产，使得从抽象到具体的概念运动与社会总资本的再生产和流通过程的历史相统一。而在从学说史角度分析“前人对这个问题的阐述”时，同样按照“逻辑与历史相统一”的原则，先讨论重农学派，再展开对亚当·斯密相关论述的分析。这也是将历史作为逻辑的基础，而不是因为过度强调逻辑的次序对历史作出“黑格尔式的歪曲”。

Volume III of *Capital*, in the overall framework of “the logic of *Capital*,” is the “concrete” part. However, the content of this volume is also expounded according to the conceptual logic from the abstract to the concrete, and it demonstrates and “retrospectively” summarizes the history of specific capital forms and landed property according to their position in “the total process of capitalist production.” Commodity-dealing capital and commercial profit, money-dealing capital and interest historically appeared before productive capital and industrial profit, while landed property and ground-rent were the main forms of the economic system even before the emergence of capitalist economic relations. Correspondingly, in the actual capitalist economic relations, commodity-dealing capital, money-dealing capital, and landed property have all become necessary components of the total process of capitalist production centered on productive capital. Commercial profit, interest, and ground-rent have also become transformed forms of profit. In this sense, they become concrete concepts that define the specific forms of profit, enriching and developing the relatively “abstract” concept of “profit.”

《资本论》第三卷在“《资本论》的逻辑”的总体上，是“具体”部分，但是这一卷的内容，也是按照从抽象到具体的概念逻辑展开论述，并按照特殊的资本形态和土地所有制在“资本主义生产的总过程”中的地位进行论证，进而对其历史进行“回溯”式概括。商品经营资本和商业利润、货币经营资本和利息在历史上都是先于生产资本和产业利润出现的，而土地所有制和地租更是在资本主义经济关系出现之前经济制度的主要形式。与之对应，在现实的资本主义经济关系中，商品经营资本、货币经营资本、土地所有制则都已经变成以生产资本为主的资本主义生产总过程的必要组成部分，商业利润、利息和地租也都成为利润的转化形式，在这个意义上，它们也就成为规定利润之特殊形式的具体概念，是对相对“抽象”的“利润”概念的充实和发展。

In accordance with the principle of conceptual movement from the abstract to the concrete, Volume III of *Capital* begins its argument from “the transformation of surplus value into profit and of the rate of surplus value into the rate of profit,” then proceeds to discuss “the transformation of profit into average profit” and “the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall,” before concretely unfolding the argument on commodity-dealing capital and commercial profit, money-dealing capital and interest, and finally arriving at “the transformation of surplus profit into ground rent.” Commodity-dealing capital, money-dealing capital, and landed property are all specific forms of total social capital, and their commercial profit, interest, and ground rent are likewise concrete forms of profit transformed from surplus value after “equalization.” This means that Marx studies them not as independent conceptual categories, but on the basis of their specific position and function in the real total process of capitalist production. After conducting a real argument concerning them, Marx also carries out a theoretical investigation, in the form of a historical “retrospect,” of their forms prior to the capitalist economic system and their evolution into that system, thereby clarifying their position and significance in the formation of capitalist economic relations and their institutionalization.

按照从抽象到具体的概念运动原则，《资本论》第三卷从“剩余价值转化为利润和剩余价值率转化为利润率”开启论证，进而论述“利润转化为平均利润”和“利润率趋向下降的规律”，再具体展开论证商品经营资本和商业利润、货币经营资本和利息，最后达致“超额利润转化为地租”。商品经营资本、货币经营资本、土地所有制都是社会总资本的特殊形式，其商业利润、利息和地租也都是剩余价值转化的利润经过“平均化”之后的具体形式。这也就意味着，马克思是从它们在现实的资本主义生产总过程的特殊地位和作用，而不是将它们作为各自独立的概念范畴来进行研究。在对它们进行了现实的论证之后，马克思又以历史性“回顾”的方式，对它们在资本主义经济制度之前的形态，以及它们向资本主义经济制度的演变进行了理论考察，明确它们在资本主义经济关系形成及其制度化进程中的地位和意义。

In Chapter Twenty of Part IV of Volume III of *Capital*, “Historical Observations on Merchant’s Capital,” Marx points out: “Not only commerce, but also merchant’s capital is older than the capitalist mode of production; it is in fact the oldest free mode of existence of capital in history.” [16]16 Karl Marx, *Capital*, Vol. III, Chapter 20. Products that enter circulation as commodities, regardless of the mode of production by which they are produced—whether by primitive communities or slaves, by serfs or petty burghers, or by capitalists employing wage laborers—possess the general attributes of commodities, and merchant’s capital serves as the intermediary between the two poles of commodity exchange. At this level, regardless of the mode of production of the various branches of production whose commodity exchange is mediated by merchants, the merchant’s property itself exists as money property, and the money possessed by the merchant must always function as capital. Here, “the form of this capital is always M-C-M’; money, the independent form of exchange value, is the starting point, and the increase of exchange value is the independent goal.” [17]17 Ibid. Historically, commerce and merchant’s capital long occupied a subordinate or auxiliary position, but by the end of the feudal period, they gradually evolved from intermediaries of commodity exchange into “putting-out merchants,” and then merchants themselves established handicraft workshops, thereby transforming merchant’s capital into productive capital. “Commerce is the precondition for the transformation of guild handicrafts, rural domestic industry, and feudal agriculture into capitalist enterprises.” [18]18 Ibid. It is through the continuous expansion of commercial society that it becomes possible “to develop products into commodities, sometimes because it creates a market for products, sometimes because it provides new commodity equivalents, supplying new raw materials and auxiliary materials for production, and thereby inaugurates branches of production that are from the outset based on commerce.” [19]19 Ibid. After a period of “the domination of commercial capital over industrial capital,” with the rapid development of industrial capital, commercial capital “becomes the servant of industrial production.” [20]20 Ibid.

在《资本论》第三卷第四篇第二十章“关于商人资本的历史考察”中，马克思指出：“不仅商业，而且商业资本也比资本主义生产方式古老，实际上它是资本在历史上最古老的自由的存在方式。”作为商品进入流通的产品，不论是什么样的生产方式生产出来的，是原始共同体或奴隶的生产，或是农奴和小市民的生产，还是资本家雇佣劳动者进行的生产，都具有商品的一般属性，商人资本是商品交换两极的中介。在这个层面上，无论以商人为中介而推动商品交换的诸生产部门以什么样的方式进行，商人的财产本身也是作为货币财产而存在的，商人所有的货币也总是需要作为资本来执行相应的职能。在此，“这个资本的形式总是G-W-G’；货币，交换价值的独立形式，是出发点，而增加交换价值是独立的目的”。在历史上，商业和商人资本曾长期处于从属或者辅助性的位置，但是到了封建社会的末期，则逐渐从商品交换的中介，演变成“包买商”，进而商人自己开办手工业工场，商人资本由此转化为生产资本。“商业是行会手工业、农村家庭手工业和封建农业转化为资本主义企业的前提。”正是通过商业社会的不断扩张，才有可能“使产品发展成为商品，这有时是因为它为产品创造了市场，有时是因为它提供了新的商品等价物，为生产提供了新的原料和辅助材料，并由此开创了一些一开始就以商业为基础的生产部门”。在经历了一定时期“商业资本对产业资本的统治”之后，随着产业资本的迅猛发展，商业资本“就成了工业生产的奴仆”。

In Chapter Thirty-Six of Part V of Volume III of *Capital*, “The Pre-Capitalist State of Affairs,” Marx examines the historical form of interest-bearing capital by comparing it with merchant’s capital: “Interest-bearing capital, or usurer’s capital (we may call the ancient form of interest-bearing capital usurer’s capital), like its twin brother merchant’s capital, is a pre-diluvian form of capital, which long precedes the capitalist mode of production and appears in the most diverse socio-economic formations.” [21]21 Karl Marx, *Capital*, Vol. III, Chapter 36. The development of usurer’s capital is closely linked with merchant’s capital and money-dealing capital: “In ancient Rome, from the end of the Republic onward, although manufacturing was still far below the average level of antiquity, merchant’s capital, money-dealing capital, and usurer’s capital had already—within the framework of ancient forms—developed to their highest point.” [22]22 Ibid. Usurer’s capital arises from the function of money as a means of payment and expands this function, thereby forming interest-bearing capital; at this level, it is also a historical factor in the formation of industrial capital. Under the modern credit system, interest-bearing capital continuously adapts to the various conditions of capitalist production and ultimately becomes “an important element of the capitalist mode of production.” [23]23 Ibid. The distinction between interest-bearing capital and usurer’s capital lies in the changed conditions under which it functions; interest-bearing capital is the expression of the role of the modern credit system within total social capital.

在《资本论》第三卷第五篇第三十六章“资本主义之前的状态”中，马克思通过与商人资本进行比较的方式考察生息资本的历史形态：“生息资本或高利贷资本（我们可以把古老形式的生息资本叫作高利贷资本），和它的孪生兄弟商人资本一样，是资本的洪水期前的形式，它在资本主义生产方式以前很早已经产生，并且出现在极不相同的经济社会形态中。”高利贷资本的发展是和商人资本、货币经营资本紧密联结在一起的，“在古代罗马，从共和国末期开始，虽然手工制造业还远远低于古代的平均发展水平，但商人资本、货币经营资本和高利贷资本，却已经——在古代形式范围内——发展到了最高点”。高利贷资本产生于货币支付手段职能，并扩大了这种职能，由此形成生息资本，在这个层面，它也是产业资本形成的一个历史性因素。而生息资本在现代的信用体系之下，不断地适应资本主义生产的各种条件，最终成为“资本主义生产方式的一个重要要素”。生息资本与高利贷资本的区别，在于它执行职能的条件已经发生了变化，生息资本是现代信用制度在社会总资本中的作用的体现。

In Part VI, “The Transformation of Surplus Profit into Ground Rent,” in the investigation of “the origin of capitalist ground rent,” Marx analyzes the historical forms of labor rent, rent in kind, money rent, the sharecropping system, and peasant small-scale landed property, demonstrating the evolution of landed property and the different modes of appropriation of agricultural surplus products. He explains the formation of the tenant farmer economy—i.e., agricultural capital—and its contradiction with traditional landed property, as well as the corresponding changes in the forms of rent and land prices, and further demonstrates the inevitability of the replacement of the small-scale landed property economy by the capitalist economy of the tenant farmer. The direct expropriation of the direct producer’s private ownership of land is the foundation of the capitalist mode of production, and the capitalist mode of production in turn gives rise to broader socio-economic contradictions and hinders the development of productive forces, which implies the waste of “soil fertility.” [24]24 “Soil fertility” (地力) refers to the natural productive capacity of the land; Marx argues that capitalist agriculture wastes this fertility by failing to maintain sustainable cultivation practices. This echoes the analysis in Volume I of *Capital* of the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation: from the evolution of rent and landed property, Marx demonstrates the historical inevitability of the negation of “private property based on the labor of its owner” by the capitalist economic system, and its subsequent re-negation by a “new economic system” due to internal contradictions. It is in this sense that the logic of *Capital*, which defines and demonstrates the essence of the capitalist economic system and the laws of its contradictory development, is unified with the history of the capitalist economic system.

在第六篇“超额利润转化为地租”中对“资本主义地租的起源”的考察，马克思通过对历史上出现的劳动地租、产品地租、货币地租、分成制和农民的小块土地所有制的分析，论证了土地所有制的演变和农业剩余产品的不同占有方式，说明了租地农场主经济即农业资本的形成及其与传统土地所有制的矛盾，以及相应的地租形式和地价的变化，进而论证小土地所有制经济被租地农场主的资本主义经济取代的必然性。对直接生产者土地私有权的直接剥夺，是资本主义生产方式的基础，而资本主义生产方式又导致更大范围的社会经济矛盾，并阻碍生产力的发展，这也就意味着“地力”的浪费。这是与《资本论》第一卷对资本主义积累的历史趋势的分析相呼应的，从地租和土地所有制的演变，马克思说明了资本主义经济制度对“以自己劳动为基础的私有制”的否定，并因为内在矛盾而被“新的经济制度”再否定的历史必然性。正是在这个意义上，《资本论》规定和论证的资本主义经济制度本质及其矛盾发展规律的逻辑，与资本主义经济制度的历史统一起来了。

The overall conceptual movement from the abstract to the concrete in the “logic of *Capital*,” which concentrates on demonstrating capitalist economic relations and the history of their institutionalization, and the conceptual movement from the concrete to the abstract, which critically summarizes the history of political economy, are mutually complementary, mutually reinforcing, and mutually verifying. While defining the essence of the real capitalist economic system and demonstrating its contradictory composition, Marx analyzes and expounds the inevitability of the formation, evolution, and extinction of capitalism in the process of human social development. Marx’s principle of “the unity of the logical and the historical” is thereby established and systematically implemented in *Capital* and its manuscripts. Through dialectical research and exposition, it negates and transcends Hegel’s speculative logic, elevating dialectics to a new height and laying a scientific methodological foundation for social transformation and theoretical innovation in the contemporary world.

“《资本论》的逻辑”总体的从抽象到具体的概念运动对资本主义经济关系及其制度化历史的集中论证，与从具体到抽象的概念运动对政治经济学说史的批判性概括，是相辅相成、相互促进和互为验证的。在规定现实的资本主义经济制度本质、论证其矛盾构成的同时，马克思剖析和阐述了资本主义在人类社会发展进程中的形成、演化和灭亡的必然性。马克思的“逻辑与历史相统一”原则由此确立，并在《资本论》及其手稿中系统贯彻，以辩证的研究和论述否定并超越了黑格尔的思辨逻辑，将辩证法提升到一个新的高度，为当代世界的社会变革与理论创新奠立了科学的方法论基础。

Online editor: Paul

网络编辑：保罗