A Political-Philosophical Interpretation of Common Prosperity

As a political project that transcends the predicament of capitalist modernization, common prosperity is a distinctive marker of socialist political civilization, containing the Marxist political-philosophical implications of a value pursuit centered on “people-centered” principles and “realizing the people’s aspiration for a better life.” At present, grounded in the comprehensive advancement of the practice of Chinese-path modernization and common prosperity in the New Era, further elucidating the political-philosophical connotations of common prosperity is an inherent requirement for deepening the theoretical self-awareness of research on common prosperity, discarding the capital-centered polarization, and innovating the historical practice of Chinese-path modernization and common prosperity.

作为超越资本主义现代化困境的一种政治筹划，共同富裕是社会主义政治文明的显著标识，包含着“以人民为中心”“实现人民对美好生活的向往”为价值追求的马克思主义政治哲学意蕴。当前，立足新时代中国式现代化共同富裕实践的全面推进，进一步阐明共同富裕的政治哲学内涵，是深化共同富裕研究理论自觉，摒弃以资本为中心的两极分化，创新中国式现代化共同富裕历史实践的内在要求。

The Foundational Prerequisite for the Free and Comprehensive Development of the Human Person

人自由全面发展的基础性前提

Accompanying the modern-era self-discovery of the human person, modern political philosophy outlines the basic logic of modern political life through a great emphasis on individual rights. The concern of modern society for human rights, when put into practice, is directly linked to the individual’s right to life, property, and various related interests. Similar to Locke’s comprehensive discourse, through the “social contract,” on the inalienable rights of the individual as a value-bearing subject—freedom, life, and property—the “freedom” thus extolled is primarily understood in terms of “advantageous” and “beneficial” relations between persons, between the person and society, and between the person and their circumstances; “advantage” and “benefit” are the true secret of the many value orientations of modern society. On this point, Charles Taylor points out that it was precisely by giving significant weight to sensory pleasure and pain that utilitarianism made it possible, for the first time, to place the alleviation of human suffering at the center of the social agenda. This had a truly revolutionary impact on modern society, not only transforming our legal systems but also revolutionizing the entire field of our practices and interests.

伴随人在近代意义上的自我发现，现代政治哲学以一种对于个人权利的极大重视，勾勒出现代政治生活的基本逻辑。现代社会对人的权利的关切，落到实处，其直接关联的乃是个体的生命权、财产权以及与之相关的各种利益。类似洛克借由“社会契约”对作为价值主体的个人的不可让渡的自由、生命、财产权的全面论说，所推崇的“自由”主要是就人与人、人与社会、人与其境遇的“有利”“有益”关系而言的，“利”“益”是现代社会诸多价值取向的真正谜底。对此，查尔斯·泰勒指出，正是通过赋予感官快乐和痛苦以重要意义，功利主义第一次使减轻人类社会的痛苦置于社会议事日程的中心成为可能。这在现代社会产生了真正革命性的影响，不仅改变了我们的法律体系，而且使得我们实践和利害关系的整个领域都发生了变革。

The affirmation of the legitimacy of individual happiness and the interests and wealth associated with it laid the human-nature foundation of modern political philosophy. However, the individual rights championed by the modern Western political-philosophical tradition are, in essence, an appeal to an abstract individual who is naturally driven by his own bodily desires—not truly separated from animals. The Western modernization process that originated from this thus became an arena where individuals compete for their own interests. On this, Marx pointed out: “Our age, the age of civilization, on the contrary, commits the error of tearing man away from his objective essence, which is something merely external, material; it does not regard the content of man as his true reality.” [1]1 Karl Marx, “Excerpts from James Mill’s *Éléments d’économie politique*,” in *Marx and Engels Collected Works*, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 218. [Translator’s note: The English translation of the Marx quote in the original Chinese text has been adapted to match the standard English edition.] In other words, it does not regard the “material” body as the reality of the “true human person,” ultimately leaving the human person in a state of “disembodiment.” The result is not only that the material civil society becomes abstracted, unworthy of the formal elements of the political state, but also that the political state becomes abstracted, unworthy of the material elements of civil society—it is the dissolution of the illusory form of the “true human person” within the selfish utilitarian reality.

对个人幸福生活以及与此相关的利益、财富的正当性肯认，奠定了现代政治哲学的人性论根基。然而，近代西方政治哲学传统所伸张的个人权利，其本质诉诸的乃是一种自然地为自己的肉体欲求所驱使——并非真正脱离动物的原子式的抽象个人。肇始于此的西方现代化进程，也因此成为个人奔竞自己利益的竞技场。对此，马克思指出：“我们的时代即文明时代，却犯了一个相反的错误，它使人的实物本质，即某种仅仅是外在的，物质的东西脱离了人，它不认为人的内容是人的真正现实。”换言之，它不把“物质的”身躯视为“真正的人”的现实，最终使得人处于“身首异致”的状态。其结果不仅使得物质的市民社会不配称于政治国家的形式因素而抽象化，也使得政治国家不配称于市民社会的物质因素而抽象化，是“真正的人”的虚幻形式在自私的功利现实中的消解。

According to Marx’s view, the political state must be grounded in the generation of the whole human person. The human person is a particular individual, existing in reality both as the intuition and actual enjoyment of social existence and as the totality of the expression of human life. The aspiration for a life of abundance and plenty is, on the one hand, linked to property and wealth as extensions of the human body—life needs to be preserved through one’s own property and wealth, which are essentially connected to the life of the real human person. On the other hand, property and wealth are created by human labor, and the growth of wealth accompanying labor is not merely a product as the result of labor but also a display of the essential power of the human person as the subject of labor. Thus, shared wealth and collective interests are not merely material enjoyment or legal rights of control; they are an important political need of modern people and simultaneously concern a state of mind, forming the foundation for a truly modern civic life. In this sense, common prosperity, from the perspective of Marxist political philosophy, is about making “things” once again an affirmation of the “human person,” thereby becoming the foundational prerequisite for realizing the free and comprehensive development of the human person.

按照马克思的观点，政治国家必须立足整全的人的生成。人是一个特殊的个体，在现实中既作为社会存在的直观和现实享受而存在，又作为人的生命表现的总体而存在。对富足丰裕生活的向往，一方面，因财产、财富是人的身体的延伸，生命需要靠自己的财产、财富来保存，财产、财富与现实的人的生命本质性地联系在一起。另一方面，财产、财富是人通过劳动创造的，而伴随劳动带来的财富增长，不只是作为劳动结果的产品，更是作为劳动主体的人的本质力量的展示。如此，共享财富和集体利益，不只是物质享受，也不只是法律上的支配权，它是现代人的一项重要政治需要，更同时关涉一种精神状态，是拥有真正现代公民生活的基础。就此而言，马克思主义政治哲学视域中的共同富裕，是使“物”重新成为对“人”的肯定，进而成为实现人真正自由全面发展的基础性前提。

A Value Narrative Highlighting Fairness and Sharing

彰显公平共享的价值叙事

The atomistic concept of the “individual” provided to the modern spirit by the Western political-philosophical tradition since Hobbes implies the opening of a concept of equality endowed with a “natural” connotation. This affirmation of individual rights and their equal status, with its characteristic radicalism and foresight, straightforwardly makes an unconditional natural right the foundation of all natural duties. These so-called innate, inborn rights that make a person a person eliminate inequality between persons in a “radical” manner.

自霍布斯以降的西方政治哲学传统为现代精神提供的原子式“个人”概念，意味着一种被赋予了“自然”意味的平等观念的开启。这种对个人权利及其平等状态的肯定，以其特有的激进和前瞻，直截了当地使一项无条件的自然权利成为一切自然义务的基础。这些所谓天赋的、与生俱来的使人成其为人的权利，以一种“激进的”方式消除了人与人之间的不平等。

In modern society, the value framework based on rights, fairness, and justice has increasingly gained popular acceptance; individual autonomy, social self-governance, and political democracy are regarded as value pursuits rooted in human instinct. However, behind the esteem for these recognized modern “good values,” modern political life often has places where “intellectual reach” cannot match “benevolent grasp.” The modern Western pursuit of contractual procedural justice, due to its assumption of the “rational economic man,” essentially focuses on how naturally self-preserving individuals can compete and cooperate without conflict. The problem is that procedural justice emphasizes the definition of “life” in a biological sense and the “rights” to one’s social due share; its core concern is adherence to contractual principles based on “interest calculation,” implying a possible weakening of active concern for concrete persons and the associated sense of community.

现代社会，以权利、公平、正义为基准的价值框架日渐深入人心，个人自主、社会自治、政治民主被认作根植于人之本能的价值追求。然而，在对这些公认的现代“好价值”的推崇背后，现代政治生活常有“智及”不能“仁守”的地方。西方近代以来对于契约性程序正义的追求，因其“理性经济人”的前提假设，本质上着力的乃是本性自保的人们如何相安无事地竞争与合作。问题在于，程序正义偏重生物学意义上的“生命”与社会应得份额的“权利”界定，核心关切的是基于“权益计算”的契约性的原则遵守，隐含着对具体人的积极关注以及与此相关的共同体感的可能削弱。

Indeed, the human need for the objects of one’s own existence directly manifests, in relations between persons and between the person and society, as each person’s pursuit of their own interests; interest is the social articulation of human need. And the mode of existence of relations between persons is most sensitively felt in people’s economic interests. However, just as the concept of right cannot be separated from the concepts of reality and existence, it always revolves, to some extent, around considerations of circumstances and specific situations. The same applies to equality; without a substantive definition of each person’s rights, there is no equality. According to Marx’s observation of Western European society in the mid-19th century, with the rapid development of capitalism, paradoxical poverty as an empirical fact always followed like a shadow: on the one hand, rapidly growing social wealth; on the other, the working class constantly on the verge of ruin. For the majority, although incomes rose, inequality remained highly cumulative. Accordingly, Marx confronted the accumulation of poverty and the polarization of social wealth under the capitalist mode of production, pointing out that in a society pursuing freedom and equality, a poor class is systematically produced by this society—this is, of course, the shame of that society. And further, in his conception of a future society, he constructed the standard for common prosperity, stating that the new society “will make the production of all people the goal of production.” [2]2 Karl Marx, “Economic Manuscripts of 1857–58,” in *Marx and Engels Collected Works*, vol. 28 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986), p. 495. [Translator’s note: The English translation of the Marx quote in the original Chinese text has been adapted to match the standard English edition.] In this sense, common prosperity is a positive sublation of Western procedural justice and the paradoxical poverty of capitalism, manifesting the value narrative of socialist fairness and justice characterized by “participation by all” and “enjoyment by all.”

诚然，人对自己的存在对象的需要，在人对人、人对社会的关系中直接表现为每个人对自身利益的求取，利益是人的需要的社会的提出。而人与人的关系的存在方式，最敏感的神经就是人们的经济利益。但是，正如权利的概念不能与实在和实存的概念相分离，它在某种程度上始终围绕对事态和特定情境的考量。平等依然，如果没有每个人权利的实质性界定，就不会有平等。按照马克思对于19世纪中叶西欧社会的观察，伴随资本主义的快速发展，作为一种经验性事实的悖论性贫困始终如影随形：一方面是快速增长的社会财富，另一方面是随时陷入绝境的工人阶级。对于多数人来说，尽管收入有所提高，不平等仍然是高度累积性的。据此，马克思直面资本主义生产方式下贫困的积累和社会财富的两极分化，指出在一个追求自由平等的社会，一个贫困的阶级被这个社会系统性地生产出来，这当然是这个社会的耻辱；并进一步在对未来社会的设想中建构起了共同富裕的衡量标准，指出新的社会“生产将以所有人的富裕为目的”。就此而言，共同富裕是对西方程序正义以及资本主义悖论性贫困的积极扬弃，彰显了“人人参与”“人人享有”的社会主义公平正义的价值叙事。

The Gradually Unfolding Vision of an Ideal Society

渐次展开的理想社会愿景

Inquiring into what constitutes an ideal society is an important task of Marxist political philosophy. Marx explicitly established common prosperity as a basic principle of the future society. In Marx’s description, the future society will provide “all members of society with abundant and ever more ample material life,” [3]3 Friedrich Engels, “Principles of Communism,” in *Marx and Engels Collected Works*, vol. 6 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), p. 341. [Translator’s note: The English translation of the Engels quote in the original Chinese text has been adapted to match the standard English edition.] and “our aim is to establish a socialist system.” [4]4 Ibid. Under this system, everyone will obtain useful work, ample material and spiritual life, and full freedom.

追问何为理想社会，是马克思主义政治哲学的重要任务。马克思明确将共同富裕作为未来社会的基本原则。在马克思的描述里，未来社会“一切社会成员有富足的和一天比一天充裕的物质生活”，“我们的目的是要建立社会主义制度”。在此制度之下，每个人都将获得有益的工作、充裕的物质与精神生活以及充分的自由。

In the perspective of Marxist political philosophy, human freedom is not a simple escape from the entanglement of interests. According to Marx’s view, any relationship of “things” that appears in history can be reduced to a corresponding relationship of “people”; so-called objects are for human beings, and at the same time they are the determinate being of humans for others, their relationship to others, the social relationship of humans to humans. In this regard, common prosperity, in its immediacy, is a rejection of the paradoxical poverty and polarization under the capitalist system; the value concern embedded within it points directly to the “absolute poverty of the human essence” under the rule of capital logic and fetishism, while its deeper value purport is tied to the creation of a new historical outlook and a new worldview in which “labor is transformed into autonomous activity.” In other words, the basic principle of common prosperity in the future society as defined by Marx does not simply reduce its creative value meaning to the “desire for equalization” triggered by the pursuit of material wealth; its profound political-philosophical implication, ultimately, lies in a genuine regard for the active individual who both “belongs to a definite social form” and possesses “individuality and independence.” Here, the situation of the activity of the real individual undergoes an incomparable leap that “preserves all the wealth of previous development” yet is unlike any past history.

马克思主义政治哲学视域中人的自由，并非对利益纠缠的简单摆脱。按照马克思的观点，出现在历史中的任何一种“物”的关系无不可以还原为相应的“人”的关系，所谓实物是为人的存在，同时也是人为他人的定在，是他对他人的关系，是人对人的社会关系。就此而言，共同富裕在其直接性上是对资本主义制度下悖论性贫困和两极分化的拒斥，涵淹其中的价值关切却直指资本逻辑和拜物教统治下“人的本质的绝对贫困”，其深层的价值旨趣则牵系于“劳动转化为自主活动”的新历史观、新世界观的创构。换言之，马克思所勘定的未来社会的共同富裕基本原则，其创造性的价值命意并不简单归落于物质财富的追求所引发的“平均化欲望”，它的政治哲学的深长意味说到底是对既“属于一定的社会形式”又拥有“个性和独立性”的活动着的个人的真正看重。在这里，现实个人的活动处境有了一次“保存了以往发展的全部财富”又不同于过往历史的无法比拟的跃迁。

Marx once quoted Morgan’s words, saying that the mere pursuit of wealth is not the ultimate destiny of humanity. From Marx’s realistic critique of polarization to his future hope for common prosperity, what is revealed to us is the tortuous path of social logic in which “humans enter into utility but ultimately do not fall into utility.” Just as the development of the real individual is a dimension without end in terms of value, common prosperity will also be realized through many actual links in the gradually unfolding historical practice, ultimately converging on the free and all-round development of each individual.

马克思曾引述摩尔根的话说，单纯追求财富不是人类的最终命运。从马克思对两极分化的现实批判到对共同富裕的未来企盼，为我们昭示的是社会逻辑曲折中“人的入功利而终于不归落于功利”。正如现实的个人的发展，是一种价值上没有止境的向度，共同富裕也将经由现实的诸多环节在渐次展开的历史实践中得以落实，最终辐辏于每个人的自由而全面的发展。

(The author is a professor at the Center for Values and Culture and the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Beijing Normal University.)

（作者系北京师范大学价值与文化研究中心、文理学院哲学系教授）

Online editor: Huihui

网络编辑：慧慧