A Re-examination of the Relationship between "Estranged Labor" and "Private Property" in the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844*

The *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844* (hereinafter referred to as the *Manuscripts*) are the result of Marx's preliminary reflections on the study of political economy and philosophy, and occupy an important position in the history of Marx's intellectual development. Among the vast body of scholarly research on the *Manuscripts*, the problem of the "circular argument" concerning the origin of private property is one of the focal points of debate. Although more than half a century has passed since the problem of the "circular argument" was first publicly raised, the academic community has still not reached a consensus. The reason this problem is so difficult to resolve is, in the final analysis, that different viewpoints reflect the different stances of researchers in interpreting the thought of the young Marx.

《1844年经济学哲学手稿》（以下简称《手稿》）是马克思研究政治经济学和哲学的初步思考的结果，在马克思思想发展史上占有重要的地位。在学界关于《手稿》的浩若烟海的研究中，私有财产起源的“循环论证”问题是争论的焦点问题之一。虽然从“循环论证”问题的第一次公开提出至今已经超过半个世纪，但是学界依然没有公论。这一问题之所以如此难解，归根结底是由于不同观点折射着研究者解读青年马克思思想的不同立场。

I. The Content and Underlying Logic of the Debate over the "Circular Argument" in the *Manuscripts*

一、《手稿》“循环论证”争论的内容与底层逻辑

The so-called problem of the "circular argument" concerning the origin of private property refers to whether Marx's discussion of the relationship between estranged labor and private property in the *Manuscripts* involves the issues of "taking the effect for the cause" and "taking the cause for the effect." In the view of scholars who hold that the "circular argument" exists, Marx, starting from the economic facts of the time in the *Manuscripts*, arrives at the first determination of estranged labor, namely, that the worker is estranged from his own product of labor. But it is obvious that the real reason why the product produced by the worker does not belong to him, why the worker's labor belongs to another, and why another becomes an alien force ruling over the worker, is private property; therefore, private property leads to estranged labor. However, after discussing the four determinations of estranged labor, Marx's conclusion is that "private property is the product, result, and necessary consequence of externalized labor, that is, of the worker's external relation to nature and to himself." [1]1 Karl Marx, "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844," in *Marx-Engels Collected Works*, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 279. Translation modified. Simplifying this logical chain yields the argumentative process "private property → estranged labor → private property," so Marx falls into a "circular argument" in logic here. As to why Marx fell into a "circular argument" in writing the *Manuscripts*, scholars have proposed three different types of views: first, that it was due to Marx's relative lack of knowledge of political economy during this period; second, that the inherent defects of the theory of estrangement led to the problem of the "circular argument"; third, that it originated from Marx's presupposition of "the species-being of man," because the so-called "free, conscious activity" as the species-being of man is actually a humanist value presupposition, which forced Marx to rely on speculative logic when addressing the problem of the origin of private property, ultimately leading to the "circular argument." Of course, many scholars have also expressed an opposing stance on this issue, arguing that there is no problem of a "circular argument" in Marx's reasoning in the *Manuscripts*. Broadly speaking, there are also three paths of proof for demonstrating that the *Manuscripts* do not contain a "circular argument": first, deconstructing the concepts of "estranged labor" and "private property" that are the subjects of the "circular argument"; second, deconstructing the so-called "circular argument" process of "private property → estranged labor → private property" itself; third, analyzing the premise of the "circular argument" of "private property → estranged labor → private property," namely, the textual theme of the *Manuscripts*, pointing out that the "origin of private property" was never Marx's object of investigation, so the "circular argument" problem based on this premise naturally does not exist.

所谓私有财产起源的“循环论证”问题，指的是马克思在《手稿》当中对于异化劳动与私有财产之间的关系的论述是否存在“倒因为果”和“倒果为因”的问题。在持“循环论证”存在观点的学者看来，马克思在《手稿》中从当时的经济事实出发得出异化劳动的第一个规定，即工人和自己的劳动产品相异化。但显而易见，那个使得工人所生产的产品不属于他自己，使工人的劳动属于别人，使他人成为统治工人的异己力量的真正原因就是私有财产，因此私有财产导致了异化劳动。但马克思在论述完异化劳动的四重规定后得出的结论却是“私有财产是外化劳动即工人对自然界和对自身的外在关系的产物、结果和必然后果”。简化这一逻辑链，就会得出“私有财产→异化劳动→私有财产”的论证过程，所以马克思在这里陷入了逻辑学上的“循环论证”。对于为何马克思会在《手稿》写作中陷入“循环论证”，学者们提出了三类不同观点：一是认为这是因为这一时期的马克思在政治经济学知识上的相对匮乏；二是认为异化理论的内在缺陷导致了“循环论证”问题的产生；三是认为根源于马克思对于“人的类本质”的设定，因为所谓作为人的类本质的“自由自觉的活动”，实际上是一种人本主义的价值预设，这使得马克思在涉及私有财产起源问题时只能以思辨逻辑来论证，最终导致了“循环论证”。当然，也有很多学者对这一问题表达了反对的立场，认为《手稿》中马克思的论证不存在“循环论证”的问题。大体而言，论证《手稿》不存在“循环论证”问题的证明路径也有三种：一是对作为“循环论证”主体的“异化劳动”和“私有财产”概念进行拆解；二是对“私有财产→异化劳动→私有财产”的所谓“循环论证”过程本身进行拆解；三是对“私有财产→异化劳动→私有财产”的“循环论证”的前提即《手稿》的文本主题进行剖析，指出“私有财产起源”问题本来就不是马克思的考察对象，以此立论的“循环论证”问题当然不存在。

There is actually a fundamental difference in the paths of proof between the two sides of the debate over the "circular argument." Researchers who hold that the "circular argument" exists often do not limit their discussion to the text of the *Manuscripts* itself, but instead understand it as a problem of the continuity of Marx's thought; the existence of the "circular argument" is proof that the young Marx's thought was not yet mature, and this "immaturity" is precisely brought out in contrast with works after the *Manuscripts*. They either believe that the *Manuscripts* inherited the meaning-content of the concept of self-estrangement from Hegel or even the Hegelian Left, or they believe that the *Manuscripts* still bear the traces of the old philosophy from which it emerged, mainly the old terminology, old forms, and old viewpoints of Feuerbach's humanist philosophy. That is to say, before and after the *Manuscripts*, a certain kind of "rupture" occurred in Marx's thought; this is the most fundamental logic, either stated explicitly or implied implicitly, of researchers who hold that the "circular argument" exists. In contrast, the arguments of scholars who refute the "circular argument" thesis are mostly concentrated on interpreting the text of the *Manuscripts* itself, striving to make the seemingly contradictory "circular argument" logically coherent through a "re-interpretation" of the text, but they rarely directly respond to the underlying logic of the "circular argument" thesis. It is precisely this difference in the paths of proof that has caused the long-standing debate over the "circular argument" to always proceed on two separate levels, making it difficult to achieve a genuine clash of viewpoints.

“循环论证”问题争论的双方其实在证明路径上是存在本质差异的，持“循环论证”存在说的研究者论述时往往不限于《手稿》文本本身，而是将其理解为马克思思想连续性的问题，“循环论证”的存在是青年马克思的思想还不成熟的证明，这种“不成熟”恰恰是与《手稿》之后的作品对比出来的。他们或者是认为《手稿》承袭了黑格尔式的乃至黑格尔左派式的自我异化概念的意义内容，或者是认为《手稿》仍带有它所脱胎出来的那个旧哲学，主要是费尔巴哈的人本主义哲学的旧术语、旧形式、旧观点的遗迹。也就是说，在《手稿》前后，马克思的思想发生了某种程度的“断裂”，这是持“循环论证”存在说的研究者或是言明或是隐含的最底层的逻辑。但与之相对，反驳“循环论证”说的学者的论证大多集中在对《手稿》文本本身的解读，力求通过对文本的“再阐释”使看似矛盾的“循环论证”变得逻辑通畅，却很少对于“循环论证”存在说的底层逻辑作出直接回应。正是这种证明路径的差异，使得长期围绕“循环论证”的争论始终在两个层面各自发表意见，难以达成真正意义上的观点碰撞。

II. An Analysis of the Basic Propositions Concerning the Continuity or Discontinuity of Marx's Intellectual Development Before and After the *Manuscripts*

二、《手稿》前后马克思思想发展连续与否的基础命题辨析

In order to thoroughly clarify the problem of the "circular argument" in the *Manuscripts*, this article reduces the core arguments of the thesis of the "rupture" in Marx's thought before and after the *Manuscripts* to the following three basic propositions, and analyzes each of these propositions one by one.

为了彻底厘清《手稿》的“循环论证”问题，本文将《手稿》前后马克思思想“断裂”论的核心论点归结为以下三个基础命题，并对这三个命题逐一加以辨析。

1. An Analysis of the Research Method of the *Manuscripts*

1.《手稿》的研究方法辨析

The first argument of the thesis of the "rupture" in Marx's thought before and after the *Manuscripts* is that, although the Marx of the *Manuscripts* period attempted to "start from the current economic facts," his insufficient knowledge of political economy during this period forced him to fall back on the intellectual resources of Hegel (or Feuerbach) when analyzing economic facts, substituting philosophical critique for the critique of political economy. Answering this question must first examine the object of study of the *Manuscripts*, because the "form" of "exposition" "depends on the object of exposition." [2]2 This is a reference to Marx's methodological principle that the form of exposition must be adequate to its object, a view he later articulated in the "Preface" to *A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy* (1859). Before entering into the formal exposition of "estranged labor and private property," Marx uses the first three sections of "Notebook I" to introduce his object of study. In the first section, "Wages," Marx reveals the reality that, in all states of social development, whether social wealth is growing or contracting, workers who depend on wages for their livelihood are always in deep suffering. Here Marx points out the contradiction of national economy: "According to the economists, labor is the only thing by which man increases the value of natural products; labor is man's active property; and yet, according to the same economists, the landowner and the capitalist—who, as landowners and capitalists, are merely privileged, idle gods—are everywhere superior to the worker and give him orders." [3]3 Marx, "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844," p. 239. In the second section, "Capital," Marx reveals that, in all links of capital accumulation, whether the capitalist is in a state of competition or monopoly, it is still the worker who is ruled, dominated, and therefore suffers: "Man is nothing, the product is everything." [4]4 Ibid., p. 248. In the third section, "Rent of Land," Marx examines how, with the transition of European society from feudal society to capitalist society, land, as an asset that still bore the appearance of personal relations in the feudal era, is transformed into a purely material, physical wealth, into capital. Not only does capital itself rule the working class based on the wage-labor relationship, but landed property also necessarily manifests itself in the form of capital as the rule over the working class; "dead matter" completes its complete rule over "living man." [5]5 Ibid., p. 265. It is precisely on the basis of the above analysis that Marx begins his exposition of "estranged labor and private property." It can be seen that the core problem of the *Manuscripts* is the secret of the rule of private property. Why do things, as objects, in reality seem to acquire an independent appearance and, in their own movement, rule and dominate man? This problem is Marx's summary and generalization of the various social disorders of capitalism in his own era, and is the perceptual expression of the essential characteristics of capitalist society as a society of "dependence on things." [6]6 "Dependence on things" (sachliche Abhängigkeit) is a term Marx uses in the *Grundrisse* to characterize the form of social relations under capitalism, where individuals are mediated by things (commodities, money, capital) rather than by personal ties. By taking the rule of private property as a problem to be deeply explored in the *Manuscripts*, Marx is actually seeking to grasp the inherent essential laws of capitalist society through the phenomena of capitalist society.

《手稿》前后马克思思想“断裂”论的第一个论点是，《手稿》时期的马克思虽然试图“从当前的经济事实出发”，但由于这一时期马克思在政治经济学方面的知识不足，使得他在分析经济事实时不得不回头求助于黑格尔（或者费尔巴哈）的思想资源，用哲学批判替代了政治经济学批判。回答这一问题必须首先考察《手稿》的研究对象，因为“阐述”的形式“取决于阐述的对象”。在进入对“异化劳动和私有财产”的正式阐述之前，马克思用了“笔记本I”的前三节来引出他的研究对象。在第一节“工资”中，马克思揭示了在社会发展的所有状态下，不论社会财富是增长还是收缩，依赖工资谋生的工人始终处于深重的苦难之中的现实。在此马克思指出了国民经济学的矛盾，“按照国民经济学家的意见，劳动是人用来增加自然产品的价值的唯一东西，劳动是人的能动的财产；而根据同一国民经济学，土地所有者和资本家——他们作为土地所有者和资本家不过是享有特权的、闲散的神仙——处处高踞于工人之上，并对工人发号施令”。在第二节“资本”中，马克思则揭示了，在资本积累的各个环节，不论资本家处于竞争还是垄断状态，被统治的、被支配的并且也因此遭受苦难的，依然是工人，“人是微不足道的，而产品则是一切”。在第三节“地租”中，马克思考察了随着欧洲社会从封建社会向资本主义社会变迁，土地作为一种在封建时代还存在着人格关系外观的资产转变为纯实物的、物质的财富，变成资本。不仅资本本身基于雇佣关系统治工人阶级，而且地产也必然以资本的形式表现为对工人阶级的统治，“死的物质”完成了对“活着的人”的完全统治。正是在以上分析的基础上，马克思才开始展开“异化劳动和私有财产”的论述，可见《手稿》的核心问题是私有财产的统治的秘密。为什么作为物的东西现实中却仿佛取得了独立的外观并且在自身的运动中统治人、支配人？这个问题是马克思对自己所处时代的资本主义种种社会乱象的概括总结，是资本主义社会作为“物的依赖性”社会本质特点的感性表现。马克思在《手稿》中把私有财产的统治作为问题来深入挖掘，实际上是要透过资本主义社会的现象去把握资本主义社会内在的本质规律。

Once one understands the essence of the core problematic of the *Manuscripts* and Marx’s motivation, one will discover that the theoretical method actually employed by the *Manuscripts* in studying the problem of “the rule of private property” is the one later formalized, namely the method of “rising from the abstract to the concrete” mentioned in the *Grundrisse* (1857–1858). This is the only correct method for grasping the essence when we face a complex object of study such as capitalist society. When we proceed from the economic facts of capitalist society, what we directly confront is usually a chaotic representation of the whole. Through the research method of moving from the concrete to the abstract, we continuously abstract a series of increasingly simple concepts in the course of analysis, until we reach some of the simplest and at the same time most abstract determinations. This is the path historically traversed by the national economists. However, once the concrete representation is abstracted into a series of simple concepts, the social-historical character of the objects to which the concepts refer is also stripped away. Because capitalist society is “the most developed and the most manifold historical organization of production,” all structures and relations of production of defunct social forms retain fragments and elements within capitalist society. To obliterate all historical differences results in an inability to grasp the order and position of these abstract determinations “as determined by their mutual relations within modern bourgeois society.” One can only substitute for this the order of “the sequence in which the various economic relations have historically succeeded one another in different social formations” or the order “in their ‘idea’ …,” which makes it impossible to achieve an essential revelation of the phenomena. Therefore, Marx emphasizes that “one must always grasp that the subject—here modern bourgeois society—is given, both in reality and in the mind.” In the language of the *Manuscripts*, this means always proceeding from “the current economic fact” to present the internal structure of economic categories at this specific historical stage of modern bourgeois society, to realize the objective and authentic reproduction of the concrete in the mental process through abstract determinations, and to thoroughly grasp the essence of the concrete. In the *Manuscripts*, Marx actually already emphasized this method he adopted. For example: “Our starting point is the national economic fact, namely the worker and his production’s estrangement. We have expressed the concept of this fact: estranged, externalized labor. We have analyzed this concept, and thus we have merely analyzed a national economic fact.” And after deriving private property from estranged labor, Marx again emphasizes: “We have derived the concept of private property from the concept of externalized labor, i.e., from the concept of externalized man, estranged labor, estranged life, estranged man.” Marx’s repeated emphasis on the word “concept” (Begriff) is precisely to illustrate that the argumentation here aims to reveal the structural relationship between “estranged labor” and “private property” within modern capitalist society, i.e., at the level of essence. From this, one can also understand Marx’s earlier critique of the national economists. Although the national economists claim to proceed from national economic facts, they do not correctly describe “the current economic fact.” They merely judge from appearance that private property “appears as the ground and cause of externalized labor,” but they do not truly reveal the essence of private property as “the result of externalized labor.” Consequently, when Marx says that “private property is on the one hand the product of externalized labor, and on the other hand the means by which labor externalizes itself, the realization of this externalization,” this is precisely not, as some commentators claim, a “retreat” in Marx’s argumentative logic of “estranged labor → private property,” but rather a revelation of the different trajectories of private property at the level of essence and the level of appearance in capitalist society.

理解了《手稿》的核心问题的实质与马克思的动机，就会发现《手稿》在研究“私有财产的统治”问题时运用的其实是后来被公式化了的理论方法，即《1857—1858年经济学手稿》中提到的“从抽象上升到具体”的方法，这是当我们面对像资本主义社会这样复杂的研究对象时把握其本质的唯一正确的方法。当我们从资本主义社会的经济事实出发，我们直接面对的通常是一个关于整体的混沌的表象，通过从具体到抽象的研究方法，我们会在分析中不断抽象出一系列越来越简单的概念，直至达到一些最简单的同时也是最抽象的规定，这是国民经济学家们在历史上走过的道路。但是，当具体表象被抽象为一系列简单概念之后，概念所指代对象的社会历史性也被抽离了。由于资本主义社会是“最发达的和最多样性的历史的生产组织”，一切已经覆灭的社会形式的结构和生产关系都在资本主义社会中保留了残片和因素，抹杀一切历史差别的结果是无法把握这些抽象的规定“在现代资产阶级社会中的相互关系决定的”次序地位，只能代之以“各种经济关系在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”的顺序或是“它们在‘观念上’……的顺序”，这就无法达到对现象进行本质的揭示。因此马克思强调，“应当时刻把握住：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”。用《手稿》的话说就是要始终从“当前的国民经济的事实”出发，呈现经济范畴在现代资产阶级社会这一特定历史阶段上的内部的结构，实现抽象的规定在思维行程中对具体的客观真实的再现，彻底地把握具体的本质。马克思在《手稿》中其实已经对自己采用的这种方法进行了强调，比如，“我们的出发点是国民经济事实即工人及其生产的异化。我们表述了这一事实的概念：异化的、外化的劳动。我们分析了这一概念，因而我们只是分析了一个国民经济事实”；而在由异化劳动推导出私有财产之后，马克思再次强调，“我们通过分析，从外化劳动这一概念，即从外化的人、异化劳动、异化的生命、异化的人这一概念得出私有财产这一概念”。马克思对“概念”（Begriff）一词的反复强调就是为了说明他在此处的论证要揭示的是“异化劳动”和“私有财产”在现代资本主义社会内部也就是本质层面的结构关系。由此也可以理解马克思在前文中对国民经济学提出的质疑，国民经济学虽然声称自己从国民经济事实出发，但并没有正确地描述“当前的经济事实”，他们只是从外观上判断私有财产“表现为外化劳动的根据和原因”，却没有真正地揭示私有财产作为“外化劳动的结果”的本质。也因此，当马克思说“私有财产一方面是外化劳动的产物，另一方面又是劳动借以外化的手段，是这一外化的实现”时，恰恰不是某些论者所说的是马克思在“异化劳动→私有财产”的论证逻辑上的“退缩”，而是对私有财产在资本主义社会的本质层面和现象层面不同运动轨迹的揭示。

In summary, the argumentation in the *Manuscripts* is not a purely philosophical argumentation, but an “attempt” by Marx at the political economy research method of “rising from the abstract to the concrete.”

综上所述，《手稿》中的论证不是纯粹的哲学论证，而是马克思对“从抽象上升到具体”的政治经济学研究方法的一次“尝试”。

2. An Analysis of the Concept of “Man” in the *Manuscripts*

2.《手稿》的“人”的概念辨析

The second argument of the thesis of a “rupture” in Marx’s thought before and after the *Manuscripts* is that Marx’s determination of man’s species-being as “free, conscious life activity” in the *Manuscripts* only examines the labor of the isolated individual and its object. This indicates that the theoretical starting point of Marx in the *Manuscripts* period is still the “abstract, isolated individual”; “real, social man” has not yet entered Marx’s theoretical field of vision. This shows that Marx’s thought at this time had not yet reached the height of historical materialism. This view can be analyzed from the following three aspects.

《手稿》前后马克思思想“断裂”论的第二个论点是，马克思在《手稿》中对人的类本质的“自由的有意识的生命活动”的规定仅仅考察了单个人的劳动及其对象，说明《手稿》时期马克思的理论出发点还是“抽象的、孤立的个人”，“现实的、社会性的人”还没有进入马克思的理论视野，这表明马克思此时思想还达不到唯物史观的高度。对于这一观点，可以从以下三方面进行剖析。

First, from the textual theme of the *Manuscripts*, “man” in the *Manuscripts* is first and foremost presented as a real contradictory entity. On the one hand, not only do the national economists say so, but the intuition of national economic facts tells us: man, the laboring man, produces products, endows them with value, creates wealth, transforms this world with his own hands, making nature increasingly manifest human characteristics, subjugating nature to man through his labor, so that the miracles of the gods become superfluous due to the miracles of industry. But on the other hand, under the real conditions of private property, the worker not only suffers direct oppression but increasingly manifests as dehumanization: “man retreats into cave dwellings”; “light, air, etc., even the simplest animal cleanliness, are no longer human needs”; “any one of his senses not only ceases to exist in a human way, but also ceases to exist in a non-human way, and thus even ceases to exist in an animal way.” What is more, those capitalists and landowners who seemingly oppress the workers either go bankrupt in market competition and then face the same situation as the workers, or are ruled by wealth, a completely alien power that stands above them; the private owner is completely subordinated to private property. Thus, in national economic reality, a universal picture emerges of man being ruled by things. The secret of the rule of private property, which is the theme of the *Manuscripts*, corresponds precisely to the dehumanization and enslavement of man in reality. It is in the inquiry into “real man” that Marx’s relevant discussions on man’s species-being are derived.

第一，从《手稿》的文本主题看，“人”在《手稿》中首先是作为现实的矛盾体呈现的。一方面，不仅是国民经济学家这么说，而且是国民经济事实的直观告诉我们：人，劳动着的人，他们生产产品，为产品赋予价值，创造财富，用双手改造着这个世界，使自然界越来越表现出人的特性，通过人的劳动使自然界受人支配，神的奇迹由于工业的奇迹而变成多余；但另一方面，在现实的私有制的条件下，工人不仅遭受着直接的压迫，而且日益表现为非人化，“人又退回到洞穴中居住”，“光、空气等等，甚至动物的最简单的爱清洁习性，都不再是人的需要了”，“他的任何一种感觉不仅不再以人的方式存在，而且不再以非人的方式因而甚至不再以动物的方式存在”。更有甚者，那些看似压迫着工人的资本家和地产所有者，要么在市场竞争中破产然后面临和工人一样的境遇，要么被凌驾于自己之上的完全异己的力量的财富所统治，私有者完全服从于私有财产。于是在国民经济现实中呈现出普遍性的人被物统治的图景。作为《手稿》主题的私有财产的统治秘密对应的也就是人在现实中的非人化、奴隶化，在对“现实的人”的追问中引申出了马克思关于人的类本质的相关论述。

Second, from the perspective of the species-being of man, “man” in the *Manuscripts* is a natural being who, through real, sensuous, and objective activity, makes nature appear as his work and his reality, who intuits himself from the result of his own objectifying activity and from the world he creates, thereby confirming his essential powers. Here Marx’s understanding differs from both Hegel and Feuerbach. Although Hegel correctly understands the actualisation of man’s species-being as a process, the only form of human activity he recognises is abstract spiritual activity; therefore, for Hegel, man’s essence is self-consciousness, and the rich, living, sensuous, concrete objectifying activity of man is instead understood as the externalisation—that is, the estrangement—of self-consciousness, becoming the pure abstraction of this activity and absolute negativity. Hence Hegel’s man is an active but abstract man. For Feuerbach, by contrast, “species-being” is primarily used to demonstrate man’s absolute uniqueness relative to other animals, arising from his possession of consciousness, and to emphasise that reflective capacity which can cognise “its own species, its own essence” and take it as an object. From the standpoint of reflective capacity, Feuerbach posits in his determination of man’s species-being a perfected form of man, a “true existent”. Although Feuerbach stresses the sensuous priority of man, his understanding of man’s essential powers is idealist; man’s sensuous priority functions only as a precondition and a vehicle in relation to his species-being. Thus Feuerbach’s man is a dual man: his sensuous part does not embody his essence as man, while the part that embodies his essence as man is non-sensuous. Unlike both Hegel and Feuerbach, Marx’s understanding of man not only stresses man’s sensuous priority but also subjects man’s active, objectifying essential powers to a sensuous transformation, so that man’s existence and man’s essence are unified in a sensuous sense. For Marx, man is first of all a natural being, “endowed with natural powers, vital powers, and is an active natural being; these powers exist in him as tendencies and abilities, as drives.” But Marx does not take these latent powers directly and abstractly as man’s essence; rather, he carries the sensuous principle, or the materialist principle, through to the end. Precisely because man is a natural, corporeal, sensuous, objective being and not an abstract, thinking being, the tendencies and abilities that exist in him can manifest themselves only in real, sensuous, objective activity. Only through practice, by creating an objective world and transforming inorganic nature, can man “express his life” and manifest his essence “through real, sensuous objects.”

第二，从人的类本质看，“人”在《手稿》中是通过现实的、感性的、对象性的活动，使自然界表现为人的作品和他的现实，从自己对象化活动的结果中、从他创造的世界中直观自身，确认自己的本质力量的自然存在物。这里马克思的认识既不同于黑格尔，也不同于费尔巴哈。黑格尔虽然正确地把人的类本质的实现理解为一个过程，但黑格尔所理解的唯一的人的活动的形式就是抽象的精神活动，因此人的本质在黑格尔看来就是自我意识，而内容丰富的、活生生的、感性的、具体的人的对象化的活动在黑格尔那里反而被理解为自我意识的外化也就是异化，成了这种活动的纯粹抽象，成为绝对的否定性。因此黑格尔的人是能动但抽象的人。而在费尔巴哈那里，“类本质”主要是用于论证由于人拥有意识而导致的人相对于其他动物的绝对的独特性，强调那种能够认知“自己的类、自己的本质性”并且将其当作对象的反思能力。从反思能力的角度，费尔巴哈在人的类本质的规定中设定了人的完善形态，一个“真正的存在者”。费尔巴哈虽然强调人的感性先在性，但他对人的本质力量的认识却是唯心的，人的感性先在性相对于人的类本质而言仅仅起到了前提和载体的功能。因此，费尔巴哈的人是双重的人，他的感性部分不体现他作为人的本质，而体现作为人的本质的那部分是非感性的。与黑格尔和费尔巴哈都不同，马克思对于人的理解不仅强调人的感性先在性，而且对人的能动性、人的对象性的本质力量进行了感性的改造，使人的存在和人的本质在感性意义上得到了统一。在马克思这里，人首先是自然存在物，“具有自然力、生命力，是能动的自然存在物；这些力量作为天赋和才能、作为欲望存在于人身上”。但马克思并不把这些潜在的力量直接地同时也是抽象地作为人的本质，而是把感性原则或者说唯物主义的原则贯彻到底。正因为人是自然的、肉体的、感性的、对象性的而非抽象的、思维的存在物，因此这些存在于人身上的天赋和才能只有在现实的、感性的、对象性的活动中才能表现出来。人只有通过实践创造对象世界，改造无机界，“凭借现实的、感性的对象才能表现自己的生命”，展现自己的本质。

Third, from the perspective of the form of actualisation of man’s species-being, man in the *Manuscripts*, while engaging in real, sensuous, active objective activity, also enters into relations with others, and it is only in relations with others that he can actualise and express his relation to himself as a species-being, or a social being. The view that man’s species-being must be actualised through man’s relation to others is also Feuerbach’s view. Feuerbach holds that man’s self-consciousness is essentially linked to consciousness of others. But because Feuerbach understands man’s species-being as man’s consciousness, man’s reflection, and man’s feeling, the form of actualisation of man’s relation to others can only be cognised by him as the objectification of man’s feeling, that is, the relation of loving and being loved. Marx, on the basis of cognising that “man’s relation to nature is directly his relation to man, just as man’s relation to man is directly his relation to nature,” stresses that this relation must be expressed in a sensuous form; society itself produces man, and society is also produced by man; society expresses the extent to which man’s essence has become nature for man, or the extent to which nature has become the human essence of man. From this standpoint, Marx analyses in the *Manuscripts* the state of man’s relation to man and the state of man’s relation to nature reflected thereby under two different social conditions. Under the condition of private property, because each person observes and treats others according to his own class-consciousness as a worker who makes himself a tool, and because the relation between man and man presents itself as a relation between things, the concrete, sensuous relation between man and man appears as an abstract, contingent relation. In the society of private property, man not only does not feel himself to be a social being; on the contrary, because his individual interest stands in sharp contradiction to the universal interest of society, the universal consciousness that exists theoretically as a social being is hostile to his real life, and “society” as something abstract stands opposed and hostile to the individual. Under the condition of the supersession of private property, communism is the return of man from a non-social existence to a social existence; sociality is the necessary requirement and universal character of the entire communist movement. Under the condition of communism, society is no longer that abstract thing opposed to the individual, but rather “the accomplished unity of man with nature, the true resurrection of nature, the realised naturalism of man and the realised humanism of nature.”

第三，从人的类本质的实现形式看，《手稿》中的人在从事现实性、感性的、能动的对象性活动的同时还与他人发生着关系，并且只有在和他人的关系中才能实现和表现对自身关系的类存在物或者说社会存在物。人的类本质必须借由人与他人的关系才能够得到实现这一观点也是费尔巴哈的观点。费尔巴哈认为，人的自我意识，本质上是跟对别人的意识连在一起的。但由于费尔巴哈对人的类本质的理解是人的意识、人的反思、人的情感，因此费尔巴哈对于人与他人的关系实现形式就只能认知为人的情感的对象化，也就是爱与被爱的关系。马克思则在认知“人对自然的关系直接就是人对人的关系，正像人对人的关系直接就是人对自然的关系”的基础上，强调这种关系必须通过感性的形式表现出来，社会本身生产人，社会也是由人生产的，社会表现着人的本质在何种程度上对人来说成为自然，或者自然在何种程度上成为人具有的人的本质。从这一立场出发，马克思在《手稿》中分析了在两种不同的社会条件下的人与人的关系以及由此反映的人与自然的关系的状态。在私有财产的条件下，由于每个人都按照自己作为工人、自己把自己当作工具的类意识来观察和对待他人，由于人与人的关系以物与物的关系呈现出来，具体的、感性的人和人之间的关系表现为抽象的、偶然的关系。在私有制的社会中人不仅感觉不到自己是社会存在物，相反由于他们的个人利益与社会的普遍性利益处于尖锐矛盾之中，作为社会存在物的理论存在的普遍意识与他们的现实生活相敌对，作为抽象的东西的那种“社会”与个体相对立、相敌对。而在扬弃了私有财产的条件下，共产主义是人从非社会的存在向社会的存在复归，社会性是整个共产主义运动的必然要求和普遍性质。在共产主义的条件下，社会不再是那个与个人对立的抽象的东西，而是“人同自然界的完成了的本质的统一，是自然界的真正复活，是人的实现了的自然主义和自然界的实现了的人道主义”。

In the period of the *Manuscripts*, Marx had already made it clear that one must proceed from real man; hence the contradictory state manifested by man under the fact of national economy is precisely the reflection of the tension between man’s naturalness and his sociality in this period. On the one hand, man’s naturalness manifests itself as man’s free, conscious activity, that is, labour, an objective activity that transforms the world, through which man’s essential powers, that is, man’s relation to himself, are thereby displayed; on the other hand, the sociality of real man, which actualises and expresses his naturalness, manifests itself as man’s unnaturalness and unsociality, the separation and hostility of man from others and from society, and the loss of man’s own essential powers. Therefore, the improvement of this real existential predicament of man necessarily implies a change in society, the supersession of private property, and the unity of man’s naturalness and sociality.

《手稿》时期马克思已经明确必须从现实的人出发，由此国民经济事实下人所表现出的矛盾状态正是这一时期人的自然性与社会性之间的张力的反映。一方面，人的自然性表现为人的自由的有意识的活动，也就是劳动，是一种对象性的改造世界的活动，人的本质力量也就是人对自身的关系由此得以展现；另一方面，实现和表现着人的自然性的现实的人的社会性却表现为人的非自然性和非社会性，人和他人、和社会的分离与敌对，人自身的本质力量的丧失。因此，对人的这种现实的生存困境的改善必然意味着社会的改变，意味着私有财产的扬弃，意味着人的自然性和社会性的统一。

3. An Analysis of the Nature of Estranged Labour in the *Manuscripts*

3.《手稿》的异化劳动的性质辨析

The third argument of the thesis of a “break” in Marx’s thought before and after the *Manuscripts* is that the theory of estranged labour, starting from man’s species-being as a value postulate, fabricates a contradiction between the moral “ought” and the real “is,” or the result of estrangement, and is a variant of Feuerbach’s humanist theory of religious estrangement. It is true that terms such as “estrangement,” “externalisation,” “duplication,” and “de-realisation” are not Marx’s own invention but come from classical German philosophy, especially Hegel and Feuerbach. But can estranged labour be equated with this?

《手稿》前后马克思思想“断裂”论的第三个论点是，异化劳动理论是马克思从作为价值悬设的人的类本质出发，虚构了道德上的“应然”与现实的“实然”之间的矛盾或者说异化的结果，是费尔巴哈人本主义的宗教异化理论的变体。固然“异化”“外化”“二重化”“非现实化”等术语并非马克思的独创而是来自德国古典哲学特别是黑格尔和费尔巴哈，但异化劳动是否可以与之等同呢？

First, estranged labour originates from “the current economic fact” and is an objective description of the actual state of “real human beings”. Why did Marx propose estranged labour? Marx did not propose estranged labour purely on the basis of his own subjective value judgments, without any presuppositions. The *Manuscripts* have a clear object of critique, namely, national economy. When national economists understand labour, they see only its positive aspect. They praise labour as the sole essence of wealth, extol the energy and development of industry, acknowledge human beings, their independence, their self-activity, etc., and laud the “cosmopolitan, universal, energy which breaks every limit and every bond”. [13]13 Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844)”, in *Marx-Engels Collected Works*, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 248. Translation modified. Marx criticises national economy for seeing only the positive aspect of labour and not its negative aspect. This understanding is both one-sided and hypocritical. National economy ostensibly acknowledges human beings, but in reality it is a complete negation of them. What is labour in the economic fact of national economy? Labour does not manifest itself as human activity, but rather as the actual energy and actual movement of private property. The more the worker labours, the more he manifests himself as an object, and the more private property manifests itself as a subject, acting increasingly as a subject in and for itself. Therefore, national economy’s affirmation of labour is an affirmation of labour as the activity of private property, and at the same time a negation of labour as human activity. Labour itself thereby exhibits a dual character: alongside its positive aspect, there is also a negative aspect, and for human beings, for the worker, it manifests itself primarily in its negative aspect. The proposal of the concept of estranged labour is first and foremost a description of this objectively existing economic fact of national economy.

第一，异化劳动起源于“当前的国民经济事实”，是对“现实的人”的实然状态的客观描述。为什么马克思要提出异化劳动？马克思不是在毫无前提的情况下纯粹基于个人的主观价值判断提出异化劳动的。《手稿》有一个明确批判对象即国民经济学，国民经济学家在理解劳动的时候只看得到劳动的积极方面，他们赞颂劳动是财富的唯一本质，赞美工业的能量和发展，承认人、人的独立性、人的自主活动等，赞扬人的“世界主义的、普遍的、摧毁一切界限和束缚的能量”。马克思批评国民经济学只看到劳动的积极方面，没有看到它的消极的方面，这种认识既是片面的，又是伪善的，国民经济学表面上承认人，其实是对人的彻底否定。国民经济事实中的劳动是什么呢？劳动不是表现为人的活动，而是表现为作为私有财产的现实能量和现实运动，工人越是努力劳动，他就越表现为客体，私有财产就越表现为主体，越来越作为主体而自在自为地活动。因此，国民经济学对劳动的肯定是对作为私有财产的活动的劳动的肯定，与此同时是对作为人的活动的劳动的否定，而劳动本身也因为这样呈现出两面性，在积极的方面之外还有消极的方面，并且对于人、对于工人而言主要表现为它的消极的方面，异化劳动概念的提出首先是对这一客观存在的国民经济事实的描述。

Second, the estrangement of labour is not a “postulate” by Marx based on an abstract “ought”, but rather the abstraction of actual labour itself. It should first be pointed out that the “postulate” of estrangement based on a value presupposition is precisely the point on which Marx criticises Hegel in the *Manuscripts*. Because Hegel understands human beings from the standpoint of self-consciousness, estrangement or externalisation for Hegel is the process by which self-consciousness posits an object for itself, and the object posited by self-consciousness is no longer the actual, natural object itself, but rather the thinghood posited by the externalisation of self-consciousness—that is, merely an abstract thing, not an actual thing. Furthermore, even on the specific topic of the estrangement of labour, the estrangement of labour that Marx discusses in the *Manuscripts* is not the difference between actual labour and some “ought” value in his conception, but rather the theoretical expression of the abstraction of labour itself in reality. The actual production process is, on the one hand, the production of labour as human activity, i.e., “the production of activity as something completely alien to itself, to man and to nature, and therefore to consciousness and life-expression”; [14]14 Ibid., p. 275. on the other hand, it is the production of the object of human activity as capital, “where all natural and social determinations of the object are extinguished, where private property has lost its natural and social quality”. [15]15 Ibid., p. 276. Both aspects are abstract. Labour is the abstract existence of the human being as a mere labourer; capital, stripped of all political and social content, exists as pure abstraction. In feudal society, although labour was under the domination of landed property, it still retained a concrete, naturally determined form of existence. However, under capitalist conditions, labour “is abstracted from all other existence”, becoming “industry which has won its independence and is constituted for itself, and capital which has won its independence”, [16]16 Ibid., p. 248. and thereby acquires complete absoluteness, i.e., abstractness, becoming labour in general, or general labour, stripped of all specific determinations. Only then can “private property complete its domination over man and become, in its most universal form, a world-historical power”. [17]17 Ibid., p. 248. Therefore, the estrangement of labour “is nothing unfathomable or mysterious”; [18]18 Ibid., p. 280. it is merely the theoretical expression of the actual, historically occurring and still occurring economic fact of national economy.

第二，劳动的异化不是马克思基于抽象的“应然”的“设定”，而是现实的劳动本身的抽象化。首先要指出的是，基于价值悬设的异化的“设定”恰恰是马克思在《手稿》中批评黑格尔的地方。由于黑格尔从自我意识出发来理解人，因此异化或者说外化在黑格尔那里就是自我意识的自我设定对象的过程，而被自我意识设定的那个对象也不再是现实的、自然的对象本身，而是自我意识外化所设定的物性，即只是抽象的物，而不是现实的物。退一步说，仅就劳动的异化这一论题本身，马克思在《手稿》中所说的劳动异化并不是现实的劳动和他观念中的某种“应然”价值的差异，而是现实中劳动本身的抽象化的理论表达。现实的生产过程是人们一方面生产着作为劳动的人的活动，即“作为对自身、对人和自然界，因而也对意识和生命表现来说完全是异己的活动的生产”；另一方面生产着作为资本的人的活动对象，“在这里，对象的一切自然的和社会的规定性都消失了，在这里，私有财产丧失了自己的自然的和社会的特质”。这两个方面都是抽象的，劳动是人作为单纯的劳动人的抽象存在，资本则抽离了一切政治和社会的内容，作为纯粹的抽象而存在。在封建社会，劳动虽然处于地产的统治之下，但还保存着具体的、自然规定的存在形式，然而在资本主义条件下，劳动“从其他一切存在中抽象出来”，成为“获得自由的、本身自为地构成的工业和获得自由的资本”，并因此具有完全绝对性即抽象性，成为抽离了一切具体规定的劳动一般或者说一般劳动，只有在这个时候，“私有财产才能完成它对人的统治，并以最普遍的形式成为世界历史性的力量”。因此，劳动的异化“并没有什么不可捉摸的和神秘莫测的东西”，它只不过是对现实的、历史上已经发生并且正在发生着的国民经济事实的理论表达。

Third, the sublation of estranged labour is not a purely logical deduction based on human essence, but is grounded on the empirical basis of the economic movement of actual private property. Admittedly, Marx’s value standpoint is inherent in the theory of estranged labour. Marx sharply criticises the “dehumanisation” of the labourer under the rule of private property, criticises the total domination of things over human beings, and takes “making ‘man’ the object of sensuous consciousness and the need for ‘man as man’ to become a need”, [19]19 Ibid., p. 304. i.e., the free and all-round development of human beings, as the value orientation and the goal of historical development. However, Marx does not, like Feuerbach, regard existing things that differ from his own value standpoint as “unfortunate accidents, as anomalies that cannot be changed”. [20]20 Ibid., p. 280. On the contrary, he still acknowledges the reality of private property: “Private property is only the sensuous expression of the fact that man becomes objective for himself and, at the same time, becomes an alien and inhuman object for himself; that his life-expression is his life-externalisation, his actualisation is his deactualisation, an alien reality.” [21]21 Ibid., p. 300. And he emphasises the positive significance that private property once played in human history: “On the one hand, human life needed private property for its realisation; on the other hand, human life now needs the abolition of private property.” [22]22 Ibid., p. 294. On this basis, Marx’s determination of communism is not a logical deduction from a value standpoint, nor does he treat communism as some “state of affairs which is to be established” or “an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself”. [23]23 Ibid., p. 296. The communist movement is the result of the movement of the internal contradictions of the actual private property relation, i.e., the movement of the contradiction between capital and labour.

第三，异化劳动的扬弃不是以人的本质为立足点的纯逻辑推论，而是建立在现实的私有财产的经济运动的经验基础上。固然异化劳动理论中内含着马克思的价值立场，马克思尖锐地批判了私有财产统治下劳动者的“非人化”境遇，批判了物对人的全面宰制，把“使‘人’成为感性意识的对象和使‘人作为人’的需要成为需要”，也就是人的自由而全面的发展作为价值取向和历史发展的目标。但马克思并不像费尔巴哈那样，把同自己的价值立场相异的现存的东西看作“不幸的偶然事件，是不能改变的反常现象”，相反，他依然承认私有财产的现实性，“私有财产不过是下述情况的感性表现：人变成对自己来说是对象性的，同时，确切地说，变成异己的和非人的对象；他的生命表现就是他的生命的外化，他的现实化就是他的非现实化，就是异己的现实”，并且强调私有财产在人类历史上曾经发挥的积极意义，“一方面人的生命为了本身的实现曾经需要私有财产；另一方面人的生命现在需要消灭私有财产”。在此基础上，马克思对于共产主义的规定并不是出于价值立场的逻辑推论，不是把共产主义当作某种“应当确立的状况”，或者是“现实应当与之相适应的理想”，共产主义运动是现实的私有财产关系内在矛盾运动也就是资本与劳动的矛盾运动的结果。

In summary, in the *Manuscripts*, Marx does not take estranged labour as the starting point of theory, nor does he take estrangement as a worldview and methodology to observe reality through the prism of estrangement. On the contrary, he proceeds from the economic fact of national economy, using estranged labour to explain actual estrangement, to explain those problems that national economy either fails to explain or explains only as “accidental and therefore explicable only by external causes”, [24]24 Ibid., p. 280. and to reveal the economic essence behind the phenomenon of “the rule of the inhuman power over everything”, [25]25 Ibid., p. 306. thereby proposing a feasible plan for actually changing the existential situation of human beings.

综上所述，马克思在《手稿》中并不是把异化劳动作为理论的出发点，不是把异化当作世界观和方法论，用异化的棱镜去观测现实，而是倒过来，是从国民经济事实出发，从异化劳动去解释现实的异化，去解释那些国民经济学没有说明或者当作“偶然的因而只应用外部原因来说明”的问题，去揭示“非人的力量统治一切”现象背后的经济本质，从而为现实地改变人的生存境遇提出可行方案。

III. The Relationship between “Estranged Labour” and “Private Property” from the Perspective of the Continuity of Marx’s Intellectual Development

三、马克思思想发展连续性视角下“异化劳动”与“私有财产”之关系

Through the analysis of the three fundamental propositions of the *Manuscripts*—its research method, the concept of “man”, and the theory of estranged labour—it is not only demonstrated that there is no “rupture” in Marx’s intellectual development before and after the *Manuscripts*, but, on the contrary, it is precisely these “evidences” identified as proving a “rupture” in Marx’s intellectual development that reveal the continuity of that development. And from the perspective of the continuity of Marx’s intellectual development, it is possible not only to provide a scientific answer to the problem of the “circular argument” in the *Manuscripts*, i.e., the relationship between “estranged labour” and “private property”, but also to reassess, from the perspective of the process of Marx’s intellectual development, the theoretical value and historical significance of the discussion of the relationship between “estranged labour” and “private property” in the *Manuscripts*.

通过对《手稿》的研究方法、“人”的概念和异化劳动理论这三个基础命题的分析，不仅证明了《手稿》前后马克思的思想发展不存在“断裂”，而且恰恰是这些被指认为证明马克思思想发展存在“断裂”的“证据”揭示了马克思思想发展的连续性。而从马克思思想发展的连续性的角度，不仅可以对《手稿》的“循环论证”问题也即“异化劳动”与“私有财产”的关系问题作出科学的回答，更能够从马克思思想发展过程的角度重新评估《手稿》中对“异化劳动”与“私有财产”关系的论述的理论价值和历史意义。

The essence of the relationship between “estranged labour” and “private property” is the result of Marx’s initial reflection on and answer to the “material interest problem.” As is well known, during the *Rheinische Zeitung* period, Marx for the first time encountered the difficulty of having to express his views on the so-called “material interest problem.” Although during this period Marx still regarded private property as a selfish and narrow interest, he witnessed with his own eyes how the “lofty” rational state and law wavered in accordance with private interests and private property. In the subsequent *Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right*, Marx examined “primogeniture” and the landed property behind it in the section on “legislative power.” The legislation of “primogeniture” reflected the inner nature of landed property as private property: “The political constitution in its highest form is the constitution of private property. The highest political conviction is the conviction of private property.” [26]26 Karl Marx, *Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right*, in *Marx and Engels Collected Works*, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 72. Moreover, private property even turned ethical ideas into a religion of private property in reality. At this point, Marx had already begun to propose—though still based solely on an examination of the property system of feudal society—the “inversion” of the rule of private property (i.e., landed property) over man: landed property “in the matter we are investigating is the eternal thing, i.e., the substance. The bearer of the right of primogeniture, the possessor, is actually the accident.” “The subject is the thing, but the predicate is the person. The will has become the property of property.” [27]27 Ibid., p. 94. *On the Jewish Question* was a concentrated examination of private property by Marx prior to the *Manuscripts*. Marx pointed out the limitations of the modern capitalist political system—although it was undoubtedly a progress compared with feudal autocracy—which, though not founded on religious superstition, was founded on private property: “In this society, man acts as a private individual, treats others as tools, reduces himself to a tool, and becomes a plaything of alien forces.” [28]28 Karl Marx, *On the Jewish Question*, in *Marx and Engels Collected Works*, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 155. Marx again raised the question of “the rule of private property” and reduced the contemporary “Jewish question” to this, pointing out that the true emancipation of the Jews lay not in religious emancipation, but in how to make society emancipate itself from “the Jewish spirit”—the reflection of private property in the human spirit. Otherwise, even if the Jews were emancipated from Judaism, this society would continue to produce “Jews.” [29]29 “Jewish spirit” (*Judentum*) is a term Marx uses critically to denote the spirit of huckstering and money-worship he associates with bourgeois society, not a religious category. Before writing the *Manuscripts*, Marx had gradually condensed his “material interest problem” into the basic proposition of “the rule of private property over man,” profoundly recognizing that the comprehensive rule of private property over man was an “inversion,” a phenomenon in which what man had created in turn dominated and oppressed man. He further pointed out that the rule of private property over man, compared with the rule of religion over man and the rule of feudal monarchy over man, was a deeper and, in the present era, increasingly prominent form of rule. Therefore, relative to the religious and political emancipations that had already been completed or were underway, human emancipation, as a higher form of emancipation, was directed at emancipation from the rule of private property over man. The relationship between “estranged labour” and “private property” in the text of the *Manuscripts* emerges in the context of the young Marx’s continuously deepening thought and research on the phenomenon of private property; it does not exist in Marx’s mind in isolation as an abstract academic problem.

“异化劳动”和“私有财产”的关系问题的实质，是马克思对“物质利益难题”的初步思考和回答的成果。众所周知，在《莱茵报》时期，马克思第一次遇到要对所谓“物质利益难题”发表意见的难事。虽然这一时期马克思依然视私有财产是自私自利的狭隘利益，但他亲眼目睹了“高高在上”的理性国家和法是如何随私人利益、私有财产摇摆。在随后的《黑格尔法哲学批判》中，马克思在“立法权”部分考察了“长子继承制”以及背后的地产财产，“长子继承制”的立法反映了作为私有财产的地产的内在本性，“政治制度就其最高阶段来说，是私有财产的制度。最高的政治信念就是私有财产的信念”。不仅如此，私有财产还让伦理观念在现实中成了私有财产的宗教。此时马克思已经开始提出了——虽然还只是基于对封建社会地产制度的考察——私有财产（即地产）对人的统治的“颠倒”，地产“在我们所研究的问题中是永恒的东西，即实体。长子继承权享有者、占有者实际上是偶性”，“主体是物，谓语却是人。意志成了财产的财产”。《论犹太人问题》是《手稿》之前马克思对私有财产的一次集中审视，马克思指出现代资本主义政治制度——尽管相对于封建君主专制无疑是一种进步——的局限性，它虽然不是建立在宗教迷信的基础上，却建立在私有财产的基础上，“在这个社会中，人作为私人进行活动，把他人看做工具，把自己也降为工具，并成为异己力量的玩物”。马克思再次提出了“私有财产的统治”的问题，并且把当代的“犹太人问题”归结于此，指出犹太人真正的解放不在于宗教解放，而在于如何让社会从“犹太精神”——私有财产在人精神上的反映——解放出来，否则即使犹太人从犹太教中解放出来，这个社会依然会不断生产出“犹太人”。在写作《手稿》以前，马克思已经逐渐将自己的“物质利益难题”凝结为关于“私有财产对人的统治”的基本命题，深刻地认识到私有财产对人的全面统治是一种“颠倒”，是人创造出来的东西反过来支配人、压迫人的现象。并且进一步指出，私有财产对人的统治相对于宗教对人的统治和封建君主对人的统治而言是一种更深层次的同时也是现时代越来越显著的统治，因此相对于已经完成或者正在进行的宗教解放和政治解放而言，人类解放作为一种更高层次的解放指向的就是从私有财产对人的统治中解放出来。《手稿》文本中的“异化劳动”和“私有财产”的关系问题是在青年马克思对于私有财产现象的不断深化的思考和研究的语境下出场的，它不是作为抽象的学术问题孤立地存在于马克思的脑海当中的。

Following the above line of thought, Marx’s basic view of “estranged labour” and “private property” in the *Manuscripts* is obvious: private property is the result of labour, the result of man’s practical activity. Even if, at the level of social phenomena, private property appears as an “inversion” of this relationship, as something independent, external to man, and ruling over him, such private property is, in the final analysis, still the result of man’s labour, the result of estranged labour. Further, since the source is labour, is the man engaged in labour, Marx thus made a logical determination concerning man’s emancipation: “The emancipation of society from private property, etc., from servitude, is expressed in the political form of the emancipation of the workers.” [30]30 Karl Marx, *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844*, in *Marx and Engels Collected Works*, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 280. In the *Manuscripts*, Marx systematically organized his previously scattered thoughts, not only providing answers to earlier questions but also establishing for subsequent research the methodological principle of examining human society and human history from the economic level, especially from man’s labour and man’s productive practical activity.

沿着上述思路，马克思在《手稿》中对“异化劳动”和“私有财产”的基本观点是显而易见的，那就是私有财产是劳动的结果，是人的实践活动的结果，即使在社会现象层面私有财产表现为这种关系的“颠倒”，表现为独立的、外在于人并且统治人的东西，这样的私有财产归根结底也依然是人的劳动的结果，是异化劳动的结果。进一步地，既然源头是劳动，是从事着劳动的人，马克思由此对人的解放作出了合乎逻辑的规定，“社会从私有财产等等解放出来、从奴役制解放出来，是通过工人解放这种政治形式来表现的”。马克思在《手稿》中对之前零散的思想进行了系统化整理，不仅对于先前的问题作出了解答，而且也为之后的研究确立了从经济层面特别是人的劳动、人的生产实践活动出发考察人类社会和人类历史的方法论原则。

So how should we understand the logical chain of “private property → estranged labor → private property”? On the one hand, when interpreting the *Manuscripts*, it is necessary to distinguish between private property as the real point of departure and estranged labor (more precisely, the person engaged in estranged labor) as the theoretical point of departure. Real private property is the real point of departure that provokes thought and raises questions, but from the perspective of theoretical demonstration, it is the goal of theoretical demonstration, a conclusive thing that needs to be proven and revealed through demonstration. The theoretical point of departure is the human being, the real human being engaged in real, concrete, and objective activity. In Marx’s era, the real human being was the person engaged in estranged labor. Through their estranged labor, private property as the result of estranged labor is continuously produced. Representing this process in abstract categories yields “estranged labor → private property.” We cannot, because real private property appears to be the premise of the entire problem, assume that it must also be prior in Marx’s logical chain of demonstration. On this basis, what Marx says in the *Manuscripts* — “later, this relationship becomes one of reciprocal interaction” — corresponds precisely to the interactive process in which the human being produces private property through estranged labor, and the social relations corresponding to private property, as the environment in which the human being lives, react back upon the human being. But from the perspective of conceptually grasping the essential laws of capitalist society, private property can only be the result of estranged labor, a product of human activity. As Marx says, “both the material of labor and the human being as subject are at once the result and the point of departure of the movement (and both must be this point of departure — therein lies the historical necessity of private property).” On the other hand, interpreting the *Manuscripts* also requires attention to distinguishing between the order of economic categories determined by their interrelations within modern bourgeois society and their natural order or the order conforming to historical development. As mentioned earlier, in the *Manuscripts* Marx employed the political economy research method of “rising from the abstract to the concrete” to investigate the essence of capitalist society and its laws of motion. Therefore, when Marx says that “estranged labor” determines “private property,” Marx is revealing the interrelation between the two within modern capitalist society, and this relation is not equivalent to the order of their appearance in history. In fact, when discussing the method of “rising from the abstract to the concrete,” Marx specifically emphasizes that “it would be unfeasible and wrong to arrange the economic categories in the order in which they were historically decisive.” [31]31 Karl Marx, *Grundrisse*, “Introduction,” section 3, “The Method of Political Economy.” This is because both private property and labor, as social facts, emerged before capitalist society, but under capitalist conditions, both have undergone an essential qualitative change from their pre-capitalist forms. As Marx points out in the *Grundrisse*: “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 colors and modifies their particularity. It is a particular ether which determines the specific gravity of every being which has materialized within it.” [32]32 Karl Marx, *Grundrisse*, “Chapter on Capital,” section on “Production, Consumption, Distribution, Exchange (Circulation).” Precisely because of this, the actual order determined by the interrelations of economic categories within modern bourgeois society is often “the reverse of what seems to be their natural order or of the order of their historical development.” [33]33 Karl Marx, *Grundrisse*, “Introduction,” section 3, “The Method of Political Economy.” The relationship between “estranged labor” and “private property” is precisely one of these reversed cases. If we examine the historical order, “estranged labor” in the *Manuscripts* approximates wage labor and abstract labor, which are products of capitalist social conditions, whereas the origin of “private property” long predates capitalist society. In the *Manuscripts*, Marx also specifically discusses landed property as the “root” (Wurzel) of private property under pre-capitalist conditions. Of course, because the *Manuscripts* are unfinished and contain many fragmentary losses, we cannot rule out that in undiscovered texts or in Marx’s originally planned exposition, he had or intended to investigate the historical roots of “estranged labor” and “private property,” just as Marx posed the question: “How does it happen that the worker alienates his labor, estranges it? How is this estrangement rooted in the essence of human development?” [34]34 Karl Marx, *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844*, “Estranged Labor.” However, in the extant text of the *Manuscripts*, Marx does not address this question; instead, he consistently discusses the relationship between capitalist estranged labor and capitalist private property under capitalist conditions.

那么该怎样理解“私有财产→异化劳动→私有财产”的逻辑链呢？一方面，在解读《手稿》的时候必须要区分作为现实出发点的私有财产和作为理论出发点的异化劳动（准确地说，是从事异化劳动的人）。现实的私有财产是引发思考、提出问题的现实的出发点，但从理论论证的角度而言，它是理论论证的目标，是需要通过论证来证明、来揭示的结论性的东西。理论的出发点是人，是从事着现实的、具体的、对象性活动的现实的人，在马克思的时代，现实的人就是从事着异化劳动的人，由于他们的异化劳动，作为异化劳动结果的私有财产被不断地生产出来，以抽象范畴来表示这一过程就是“异化劳动→私有财产”。我们不能因为作为现实出发点的私有财产看似是全部问题的前提，就认为它在马克思的逻辑论证链条中也必然在先。在此基础上，马克思在《手稿》中提出的“后来，这种关系就变成相互作用的关系”，对应的其实是人通过异化劳动生产出私有财产，私有财产对应的社会关系作为人生活于其中的环境反作用于人的互动过程。但从观念上把握资本主义社会本质规律的角度说，私有财产只能是异化劳动的结果，是人的活动的产物，正如马克思所说，“无论是劳动的材料还是作为主体的人，都既是运动的结果，又是运动的出发点（并且二者必须是这个出发点，私有财产的历史必然性就在于此）”。另一方面，解读《手稿》还要注意区分经济范畴基于现代资产阶级社会中的相互关系所决定的次序和它们的自然次序或者符合历史发展的次序。前文提到，马克思在《手稿》中运用了“从抽象上升到具体”的政治经济学研究方法对资本主义社会的本质及其运动规律进行考察，因此当马克思说“异化劳动”决定“私有财产”时，马克思揭示的是二者在现代资本主义社会内部的相互关系，而这种关系并不等同于它们在历史上出现的先后次序。事实上，马克思在论述“从抽象上升到具体”的方法时特意强调“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”。因为私有财产也好、劳动也好，作为社会事实这两者都产生于资本主义社会以前，但在资本主义条件下，这二者都与前资本主义条件下的自己产生了本质上的区别。正如马克思在《1857—1858年经济学手稿》中指出的，“在一切社会形式中都有一种一定的生产决定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，改变着它们的特点。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”。正因如此，由经济范畴在现代资产阶级社会中的相互关系决定的实际的次序往往“同表现出来的它们的自然次序或者符合历史发展的次序恰好相反”。“异化劳动”与“私有财产”的关系正属于这种恰好相反的情况。如果考察历史次序的话，《手稿》中的“异化劳动”接近于雇佣劳动、抽象劳动，是资本主义社会条件的产物，而“私有财产”的起源远早于资本主义社会，马克思在《手稿》当中还专门论述了前资本主义条件下作为私有财产的“根源”（Wurzel）的地产问题。当然，由于《手稿》是未完成的手稿，并且存在诸多的片段遗失，我们不能排除在未发现的文本或者马克思原本撰写的计划中他曾经或打算对“异化劳动”和“私有财产”的历史根源进行考察，正如马克思所设问的那样：“人是怎样使自己的劳动外化、异化的？这种异化又是怎样由人的发展的本质引起的？”只是现存的《手稿》文本中，马克思并没有涉及这个问题，而是始终在资本主义条件下讨论资本主义异化劳动与资本主义私有财产的关系问题。

The relational framework of “estranged labor” and “private property” is not only a comprehensive response by Marx to the questions he had previously pondered but also became an important theoretical foundation for Marx’s continued deepening of his research and the creation of Marxism after the *Manuscripts*.

“异化劳动”和“私有财产”的关系框架不仅是马克思对自己先前思考的问题的一次总体性回答，而且也成为《手稿》之后马克思持续深化自己的研究，创立马克思主义的重要的理论基点。

First, the demonstration of “estranged labor → private property” marks Marx’s establishment of a scientific theoretical point of departure for studying the history of human society, thereby laying a scientific theoretical precondition for the creation of historical materialism. The main reason Marx went to great lengths in the *Manuscripts* to deduce private property from estranged labor was to break down various superstitions — including those of national economy and Hegelian speculative philosophy — that led the study of human society toward “entities” external to the human being. As Marx says: “By reducing the question of the origin of private property to the question of the relation of alienated labor to the course of humanity’s development, we have already achieved much for the solution of this problem. For when one speaks of private property, one thinks of something external to the human being. When one speaks of labor, one is directly concerned with the human being himself. This new formulation of the question already contains its solution.” [35]35 Karl Marx, *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844*, “Estranged Labor.” Furthermore, Marx not only achieved this “inversion” from “thing” to “human being” but also established that the human being as the point of departure must be the real human being engaged in sensuous activity — a “human being” fundamentally different in essence from Feuerbach’s “human being” based on abstract species-essence. Although Marx’s elaboration of this theoretical precondition at this stage was still principled, and his research on “real human beings” was not yet deep enough, this was precisely the direction of Marx’s deepening research after the *Manuscripts*. In the *Comments on James Mill*, when discussing commodity exchange, Marx understands the social connection of human beings in the form of exchange from its alienated, i.e., negative, aspect, but at the same time, through the category of exchange, he positively discusses the sensuous form of human social relations and creatively proposes that the essence of the human being is the human being’s true social connection: “as individuals are, so is this social connection itself.” [36]36 Karl Marx, *Comments on James Mill, Éléments d’économie politique*. In *The Holy Family*, on the basis of emphasizing that the essence of the human being is the human being’s species-consciousness and species-behavior, i.e., the social relation of human being to human being, or human relations, Marx specifies the content of human social relations: “natural necessity, human essential characteristics (however alienated they may appear), and interest hold the members of civil society together.” [37]37 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, *The Holy Family*, Chapter 6, “Critical Battle against French Materialism.” In the *Theses on Feuerbach*, Marx, on the one hand, reaffirms his earlier view that “all social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice,” [38]38 Karl Marx, *Theses on Feuerbach*, Thesis VIII. and on the other hand, gives a scientific expression to the question of the essence of the human being: “the essence of the human being is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its actuality it is the ensemble of social relations.” [39]39 Karl Marx, *Theses on Feuerbach*, Thesis VI. Subsequently, in *The German Ideology*, Marx and Engels comprehensively and systematically expound why “real human beings” become the theoretical point of departure: “the first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals.” [40]40 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, *The German Ideology*, Volume I, Chapter 1, “Feuerbach.” Therefore, it is precisely from the theoretical point of departure established in the *Manuscripts* that Marx created the scientific method for examining “real human beings” and their activity — namely, the method of historical materialism.

首先，“异化劳动→私有财产”的论证标志着马克思已经确立起科学的研究人类社会历史的理论出发点，为唯物史观的创立确立了科学的理论前提。马克思在《手稿》中之所以要花大功夫从异化劳动推导出私有财产，主要就是为了破除包括国民经济学和黑格尔思辨哲学在内的各种把对人类社会的研究引向人之外的“实体”的迷信。正如马克思所说：“我们把私有财产的起源问题变为外化劳动对人类发展进程的关系问题，就已经为解决这一任务得到了许多东西。因为人们谈到私有财产时，总以为是涉及人之外的东西。而人们谈到劳动时，则认为是直接关系到人本身。问题的这种新的提法本身就已包含问题的解决。”进一步的，马克思不仅实现了从“物”到“人”的“颠倒”，而且还确立了这个作为研究出发点的人必须是现实的从事着感性活动的人，是与建立在抽象类本质基础上的费尔巴哈的“人”在本质上完全不同的“人”。虽然这一时期马克思对于这一理论前提的阐释还是原则性的，对于“现实的人”的研究还不够深入，但这正是《手稿》之后马克思研究深化的方向。在《穆勒评注》中马克思在论述商品交换时在异化的也就是否定性的方面理解以交换形式出现的人的社会联系，但同时又借助交换范畴正面论述了人的社会关系的感性形式，并且创造性地提出人的本质是人的真正的社会联系，“这些个人是怎样的，这种社会联系本身就是怎样的”。在《神圣家族》中，马克思在强调人的本质也就是人的类意识和类行为，是人同人的社会关系或人的关系的基础上，对人的社会关系的内容进行了规定，“自然必然性、人的本质特性（不管它们是以怎样的异化形式表现出来）、利益把市民社会的成员联合起来”。在《提纲》中，马克思一方面重申了之前的观点，即“全部社会生活在本质上是实践的。凡是把理论引向神秘主义的神秘东西，都能在人的实践中以及对这种实践的理解中得到合理的解决”，另一方面对人的本质问题作出科学表达，“人的本质不是单个人所固有的抽象物，在其现实性上，它是一切社会关系的总和”。随后在《德意志意识形态》中，马克思恩格斯全面系统地阐述了“现实的人”何以成为理论前提，“全部人类历史的第一个前提无疑是有生命的个人的存在”。因此，马克思正是从《手稿》所确立的理论出发点出发，创立了考察“现实的人”及其活动的科学方法，即历史唯物主义的方法。

Secondly, the argument “estranged labour → private property” represents Marx’s first attempt to reveal the essential laws of capitalist society. By continuously deepening the direction established in the *Manuscripts*, Marx ultimately founded Marxist political economy. The theme of the *Manuscripts* is first and foremost to reveal “the secret of the rule of private property,” but Marx was not satisfied with merely uncovering the “human” relations behind the relations of “things.” On the basis of the argument “estranged labour → private property,” Marx also intended to answer, from the perspective of the historical development of human beings, a series of questions concerning the historicity, laws of motion, and future destiny of capitalist society. At this point, the analytical approach he adopted was to start from private property—which, as the externalisation and result of estranged labour, had thereby become the subject—and its inherent contradictory movement. Using the self-movement of private property as a thread, he examined the historical transition from feudal society to capitalist society, listing the dialectical movement process of labour and capital, which are potentially contained within the relations of private property, from “direct or indirect unity” to “the opposition of the two” and then to “the opposition of each to itself.” As the first achievement of Marx’s study of political economy, Marx was still using the economic categories and concepts of national economy at this time, and these concepts were insufficient for the realisation of Marx’s theoretical objectives. Later, in the *Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863*, Marx took “labour” as an example to illustrate the defects of the national-economic concept of “labour” in analysing the laws of capitalism: “In all economists up to now, the analysis that reduces commodities to ‘labour’ has been ambiguous and incomplete.” “It is not enough to reduce commodities to ‘labour’; rather, they must be reduced to labour in a twofold form: on the one hand, as concrete labour, it is manifested in the use-value of the commodity; on the other hand, as socially necessary labour, it is calculated in terms of exchange value.” However, it is clearly neither realistic nor fair to demand that Marx, in the *Manuscripts*, reach the level of political economy of the period of *Capital* and its manuscripts. Although the *Manuscripts*, as an early achievement of Marx’s study of political economy, are immature, the argument “estranged labour → private property” already contains the basic principles and methods of Marxist political economy. For example, the initial application of the method of “rising from the abstract to the concrete”; the principled adherence to the premise of a scientific labour theory of value, i.e., understanding commodities as the product of labour; the abstraction of labour implied in the concept of estranged labour, which laid the foundation for distinguishing abstract labour from concrete labour; the ideological connection between the subjectivisation of private property and the personification of capital; the scientific explanation of the problem of “the rule of private property” in capitalist society through the theory of “fetishism”; and the theory of surplus value, which could only be discovered on the basis of a prior reflection on private ownership. Although most of these ideas are scattered fragmentarily throughout the text, it was precisely by continuously deepening the path opened up by the *Manuscripts* that Marx was ultimately able to integrate these intellectual fragments with his own study of political economy and found Marxist political economy.

其次，“异化劳动→私有财产”的论证是马克思揭示资本主义社会本质规律的首次尝试，沿着《手稿》确立的方向不断深挖使马克思最终创立了马克思主义政治经济学。《手稿》的主题首先是揭示“私有财产的统治的秘密”，但马克思并没有满足于只是揭示“物”的关系背后 是“人”的关系，在“异化劳动→私有财产”的论证基础上，马克思还要从人的发展的历史的角度回答资本主义社会的历史性、运动规律以及前途命运等一系列问题，而此时他采取的分析思路是从作为异化劳动的外化和结果并因此成为主体的私有财产及其内在矛盾运动关系入手，以私有财产的自我运动为线索考察了从封建社会向资本主义社会过渡的历史，表列了潜在地包含在私有财产关系内部的劳动和资本从“直接的或间接的统一”到“二者的对立”再到“二者各自同自身对立”的辩证运动过程。作为马克思政治经济学研究的第一份成果，马克思此时还在使用国民经济学的经济范畴和概念，而这些概念对于马克思的理论目标的实现是不够的。后来在《1861—1863年经济学手稿》中马克思就以“劳动”为例说明国民经济学的“劳动”概念在分析资本主义规律上的缺陷，“在迄今为止的所有经济学家那里，把商品归结为‘劳动’的分析，都是模棱两可的、不完全的”，“把商品归结为‘劳动’是不够的，而是应当归结为具有二重形式的劳动：它一方面作为具体劳动表现在商品的使用价值中，另一方面作为社会必要劳动以交换价值进行计算”。但是，要求马克思在《手稿》中就达到《资本论》及其手稿时期的政治经济学的水平显然既不现实，也不公平。虽然《手稿》作为马克思政治经济学研究的早期成果，是稚嫩的，但“异化劳动→私有财产”的论证中已经包含了马克思主义政治经济学的基本原则与方法，比如对“从抽象上升到具体”方法的初次运用，比如对科学的劳动价值论的前提即把商品理解为劳动成果的原则性坚持，比如异化劳动概念中蕴含的劳动的抽象化为区分抽象劳动和具体劳动奠定了基础，比如私有财产的主体化与资本的人格化的思想关联，比如“拜物教”理论对资本主义社会中“私有财产的统治”问题的科学阐释，还比如从对私有制的前提性反思出发才有可能被发现的剩余价值理论，等等。虽然这些思想大多是以碎片的形式零散地分布在文本中，但马克思正是沿着从《手稿》开启的道路不断深入，最终才能够将这些思想碎片与自己的政治经济学研究结合起来，创立马克思主义政治经济学。

Finally, through the argument “estranged labour → private property,” Marx for the first time systematically expounded his basic views on communism, containing the embryonic ideas of scientific socialism. Although Marx had already demonstrated a people’s standpoint of seeking liberation for humanity before the *Manuscripts*, the *Manuscripts*, on the basis of grasping the relationship between “estranged labour” and “private property,” proceeded from the perspective of the inherent contradictory movement of the private property relations of capitalist society and the general laws of human history as a process of human development, and made the following stipulations regarding communism as the positive supersession of private property: First, the foundation of communism is the empirically existing real world; “the entire movement of history” is the real generative activity of communism, “i.e., the birth-activity of its empirical existence.” Second, communism is essentially “the process of the birth of man through his own labour, the process of the generation of nature for man”; it is the result of man’s real, sensuous, and active objective activity. Third, communism is the positive supersession of private property and can only be established on the basis of fully absorbing the highly developed fruits of civilisation created by human practice; crude communism is “the abstract negation of the entire culture and civilised world.” Fourth, the goal of communism is, in the final analysis, to make “man as man”; at the individual level, this goal requires the liberation of all human senses and characteristics, so that “objective reality becomes everywhere for man in society the reality of man’s essential powers”; at the social level, this goal points to the formation of a “society” in which relations between people are freed from the mediation of things, and individual interests are reconciled with the universal interests of society. Fifth, the realisation of communism can only be achieved through the real practice of transforming the world; communism “advocates the real objectification of man, the real appropriation of his objective essence through the annihilation of the alienated determination of the objective world, through the supersession of the objective world in its alienated existence.” Sixth, communism must adhere to thorough dialectics; “communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future,” but it is not the ultimate goal or completed form of human development. During the period of the *Manuscripts*, Marx had already formed a series of principled stipulations concerning communism, constituting an important intellectual source for the theory of scientific socialism.

最后，通过“异化劳动→私有财产”的论证，马克思第一次比较系统地论述他对于共产主义的基本观点，蕴含了科学社会主义的思想萌芽。尽管《手稿》之前马克思就已经表现出为人类求解放的人民立场，但《手稿》在把握“异化劳动”和“私有财产”关系的基础上，从资本主义社会的私有财产关系内在矛盾运动和作为人的发展过程的人类历史的一般规律的角度，对作为私有财产积极扬弃的共产主义作出了以下规定：一是共产主义的基础是经验存在的现实世界，“历史的全部运动”是共产主义的现实的产生活动，“即它的经验存在的诞生活动”；二是共产主义本质上是“人通过人的劳动而诞生的过程，是自然界对人来说的生成过程”，是人的现实的、感性的、能动的对象性活动的结果；三是共产主义是对私有制的积极的扬弃，只可能建立在充分吸收人类实践所创造的高度发达的文明成果的基础上，粗陋的共产主义是“对整个文化和文明的世界的抽象否定”；四是共产主义的目标归根结底是使“人作为人”，从个体而言这一目标要求解放人的一切感觉和特性，“对象性的现实在社会中对人来说到处成为人的本质力量的现实”，从社会而言这一目标指向人与人之间的关系摆脱物的中介而组成“社会”，个人利益与社会普遍性的利益之间达成一致；五是共产主义的实现只能通过现实的改造世界的实践，共产主义“主张人的现实的对象化，主张人通过消灭对象世界的异化的规定、通过在对象世界的异化存在中扬弃对象世界而现实地占有自己的对象性本质”；六是共产主义必须坚持彻底的辩证法，“共产主义是最近将来的必然的形态和有效的原则”，但不是人类发展的终极目标和完成形态。《手稿》时期马克思已经形成了对于共产主义的一系列原则规定，构成了科学社会主义理论的重要的思想源头。

Online editor: Paul

网络编辑：保罗