The Historical Materialism Thought and Contemporary Implications in "The Poverty of Philosophy"

Abstract

In the surging socialist ideology of 19th century Europe, Proudhon once occupied the center of the ideological stage with his sharp criticism of capitalist private ownership and a series of seductive social transformation plans, and was regarded as a theoretical authority and spiritual leader by many working classes. However, when diagnosing the root causes of capitalism, Proudhon led a non scientific, petite bourgeois path of reformism. He proposed an anarchist social concept centered on "mutual aid" and hoped to peacefully "eliminate" the evils of capitalism through reform measures limited to the circulation field, such as establishing a "People's Bank" and implementing "interest free credit", in order to achieve a so-called "eternal fairness". This seemingly radical but actually conservative theoretical system, cleverly catering to the psychology of oppressed small producers and some workers who were afraid of violent revolution at that time, triggered a huge social response in Western European countries, quickly gathering an undeniable ideological force and a large number of loyal followers. However, the widespread spread of Proudhonism has caused extremely harmful consequences in practice, leading the workers' movement astray from fundamental political struggle in terms of economic reform. This has objectively caused serious confusion and internal division in the thinking of the working class, greatly hindering the awakening of the proletariat towards independent and unified political action. In view of the various harms brought by Proudhon's erroneous ideas, Marx realized that criticizing Proudhon's economic ideas alone could not fundamentally refute him. It was necessary to delve deeper into Proudhon's erroneous theory, that is, to start from a deeper level of philosophical thought. "The Poverty of Philosophy" was an "important battlefield" for Marx to awaken those who were addicted to Proudhon's erroneous ideas and criticize Proudhon's mistakes from a philosophical perspective. This article focuses on exploring the historical materialist ideas in "The Poverty of Philosophy" as its core text. This article first analyzes the historical background of the birth of "The Poverty of Philosophy" and clarifies its three major theoretical sources. Secondly, this article starts with the text and discusses the main body of historical materialism, the core propositions of historical materialism, and the theoretical destination of historical materialism from three levels. Establishing the dialectical movement principle of productive forces and production relations as the fundamental driving force of historical development, and demonstrating that class struggle and social revolution are the inevitable manifestations of the contradiction between productive forces and production relations in class society. Finally, based on the completion of the ideological interpretation, this article will summarize "The Poverty of Philosophy" and demonstrate how it not only publicly declares historical materialism through this criticism, but also provides a direct theoretical precursor for the birth of "The Communist Manifesto" and the creation of "Capital". At the same time, it explains its practical significance, providing theoretical support for us to strengthen our confidence in the Chinese path to modernization road today, distinguish the new contradictions in the era of globalization and digital capitalism, and criticize the illusion of new liberalism and reformism of all kinds.