Ten Ways for the Sublation of Private Property: Shall We Eliminate Private Property or Sublate Private Property?

Yang Zaiping is Professor of Economics in Wuhan Central University

 June 2023

Introduction:

In the days of Revolution in April 1917, Lenin wrote: Theory, my friend, is grey, but green is the eternal tree of life.”  In 2002, my doctoral supervisor Prof. Dong Fureng published an article entitled “Are We Eliminating Private Property or Sublating Private Property” (published in Economic Guide, Issue 2, 2002). It was like a “stone that caused a thousand waves”, and the ripples are still visible today. Based on Dong Fureng’s research and discussion, I recently went to the National Library to read relevant literature and materials and felt that there were major new discoveries and cognitions. So I wrote an extended study on the breakthrough topic of “sublating private Property” proposed by Dong Fureng more than 20 years ago, which is increasingly of great practical significance. It can also be regarded as a disciple’s inheritance of Dong Fureng’s important academic thoughts.

Prof. Dong Fureng’s Textual Research and Discussion on Private Property

The above article published by Dong Fureng in 2002 was examined and discussed in this way: Regarding private property, let’s see what our ancestors said. The Communist Manifesto says that the Communists can summarize their theory in one sentence: “Abolish private property.”

I went to university in 1946 to study economics. My first foreign language in university was English, and my second foreign language was German. I haven’t completely forgotten it. If there are some things I don’t understand, I will look up the dictionary to see what it is. I have the German version of the Communist Manifesto. I compared the German version with the Chinese version. The Chinese version has many words like “abolish”, “abolish this, abolish that”. I checked and found that there are five different German words for the Chinese translation of “abolish”. The word “abolish” translated as “abolish private property” is “Aufheben” in German, which is a verb, and the gerund is “Aufhebung”. This word is Hegel’s term. Marx studied Hegel in his early years, and his doctoral thesis was on Hegel, so he used Hegel’s words in his book.

Let’s see what Hegel said. What does Aufhebung mean? In “Logic”, Hegel said that the word Aufhebung has a dual meaning in language. It means to maintain, but also means to stop and end. It is both overcome and preserved. We can also translate this meaning as preserving and retaining private property, or as stopping private property. Without dialectical thinking, it is impossible to understand Hegel’s thoughts. Hegel was a master of logic and dialectics. Germans are born masters of dialectics. Because of this word, there is no corresponding word in Russian or English. What does this German word mean? Hegel talked about the affirmation and negation of things, and there is affirmation in the negation, that is, there is both reservation and negation. This means: this thing negates that thing, not a simple negation, but both reservation and negation.

Some books in China have translated this word correctly. In the third volume of Capital, Marx talked about joint-stock companies, and translated it correctly. Joint-stock companies appeared, social capital appeared, capital was socialized, and capitalists hired many workers to do labor. After the joint-stock system, capital became public capital. This was in fact partial sublation of private aspect of capital towards socialization of capital.

This socialization of capital was the sublation of the original private capital. At this time, there was the word Aufhebung, which we translated into sublation in English, which means abandonment and development, which has a double meaning. After Marx saw the emergence of joint-stock companies, capital was socialized. The socialization of capital was the sublation of private capital, which was negation and retention. With such a meaning, theoretically you can translate Marx’s words as sublation.

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