Politics: What is Marxist Political Philosophy?; Formation, Connotation and Characteristics of Marx and Engels’ Political Philosophy
January 2024
Author Jiang Chang, Ph.D. in Philosophy, is professor at the Center for Political Philosophy, Central China Normal University, honorary dean of the Institute of Advanced Humanities, in Hubei University, and a distinguished professor of the Changjiang Scholars Program of the Ministry of Education
Summary
The political philosophy of Marx and Engels is not the political philosophy of Marx alone, but a political philosophy system jointly created and perfected by Marx and Engels. The political philosophy of Marx and Engels critically inherited the Western utopian socialist thought, but it was mainly established on the basis of reflection and criticism of the reality of Western capitalist society and its theoretical basis, which is liberal thought.
The political philosophy of Marx and Engels is a political philosophical system with the materialist conception of history as the main ontological foundation, the complete liberation of all mankind as its realistic goal, the transition from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom as its social ideal, the comprehensive and free development of each person as the ultimate goal of social development, the proletarian revolution and the proletariat as the main means and main force to achieve the above realistic goal, and its basic way to achieve an ideal society is to make labor the first necessity of life and contributing to society to the best of one’s ability. The political philosophy of Marx and Engels has the main characteristics of the organic unity of idealism and practicality, humanity and class, revolution and construction, systematicity and profundity.
The emergence of Marx and Engels’ political philosophy was marked by the publication of the Communist Manifesto, but its argumentation was basically completed only when the draft of Capital was completed (1865). Therefore, the period before the completion of the draft of Capital can be regarded as the formation process of Marx and Engels’ political philosophy, and the period from that time to the death of Engels can be regarded as its perfection process.
Marx and Engels’ political philosophy was formed against the background of the Western modernization movement and it is the product of reflection and criticism of Western modernization. Although the fundamental position and basic propositions of Marx and Engels’ political philosophy come from utopian socialism, the essence of its thoughts comes from the Enlightenment thought, and the theoretical basis mainly comes from British classical political economy and German classical philosophy, it is a system of thought and theory formed on the basis of revolutionary changes in all these ideological theories, and it has uniqueness which is different from all previous political philosophies. Although Marx and Engels’ political philosophy belongs to the category of Western political philosophy, it has a wide and far-reaching impact on modern world political philosophy, especially modern Chinese political philosophy, and is the main theoretical basis for the construction of contemporary political philosophy with Chinese characteristics.
Please Download for Full Text