The Generating Logic and Theoretical Connotation of the New Form of Human Civilization Socialism | China | Logic
[In-depth study and implementation of Xi Jinping's thoughts on socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era]]
Author: Zhao Yiliang
The Chinese path to modernization road has created a new form of human civilization. Understanding Chinese path to modernization and the new form of human civilization from the perspective of Marxist social formation theory is of great theoretical and practical significance for us to build a powerful socialist modernization country in an all-round way.
The Historical Generation of Human Civilization from the Perspective of Materialist Historical View
The materialist view of history reveals the basic laws of the evolution of human social forms, highlighting the logic and development trends of human civilization forms. From the perspective of historical materialism, the form of human society is the form of human civilization, and its development and evolution are rooted in material production and determined by objective production methods. The production mode includes two aspects: productivity and production relations. At the beginning, productivity and production relations matched each other. When productivity developed to a certain stage, it would conflict with the original production relations, and at this point, production relations became a shackle for further development of productivity. The demand for the development of productive forces calls for the arrival of social revolution, making the transformed production relations adapt to productive forces again. As the dominant economic foundation changes, the political and cultural superstructure also undergoes rapid or slow changes. The inherent contradiction between productive forces and production relations is not only the fundamental driving force of human historical development, but also constitutes the essential law of the rise and fall of different forms of civilization. As Marx and Engels said, "No matter what social form, it will never perish until all the productive forces it can accommodate are fully exerted; and new and higher relations of production will never appear until their material existence conditions mature in the fetal cells of the old society."
Marxism divides human society into different stages of development and forms of civilization based on the level of productivity development. In primitive society, due to people living in a community with low productivity, social production and distribution could only take crude and simple forms, thus adapting to it was primitive public ownership. With the development of productive forces, surplus products emerged in primitive societies, followed by private ownership, which provided a material basis for owning slaves. Primitive communes gradually disintegrated, and the form of slave civilization emerged. The typical mode of production in slave society is that slaves use bulky stone tools to engage in agricultural and livestock labor. When productivity further develops to the point where metals such as bronze and iron can be used for production, the low enthusiasm of slave production in slave society may even intentionally damage metal tools, which becomes a shackle to further development of productivity. As a result, society undergoes transformation, and slave society develops into a feudal society, where feudal landlords replace slave owners as the ruling class, and laborers become tenant farmers or self cultivators. With the continued development of productive forces, social division of labor became more developed, and the scale of industry and commerce continued to expand. Feudal society gradually developed into capitalist society, with the bourgeoisie occupying ownership of the means of production. Workers, as hired workers, sold their own labor to the bourgeoisie in exchange for means of life. Under the influence of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, capitalist society will ultimately be replaced by a classless communist society.
The capitalist civilization form is a capital driven civilization form
From a materialist historical perspective, capitalism, as a typical form of modern production mode, has promoted the transformation of traditional agricultural civilization towards industrialization, democratization, and urbanization. It has established a world market, "created world history for the first time," and laid the overall framework for modern industrial civilization. In the process of capital expansion and economic globalization, the bourgeoisie "brought civilization to every corner of the world" and formed a civilization form centered on the West.
But capitalist civilization is not the highest form of human civilization. As a divisive civilization driven by capital as the core, this form of civilization has inherent antagonism. Marx and Engels pointed out that "the era of civilization moves in a 'vicious cycle', in contradictions that it constantly creates but cannot overcome. Therefore, the results it achieves are always opposite to what it hopes to achieve or pretends to hope to achieve." In capitalist society, capital dominates, and its sole purpose is to pursue value growth. Everything else is a tool for capital to pursue profit. The socialization of production and private ownership of means of production lead to numerous contradictions in capitalist society. These contradictions are prominently reflected in the relationships between people, people and things, people and nature, and people and the world.
The relationship between people manifests as class relations. Engels pointed out in his Critique of National Economics that "because private ownership isolates everyone in their own crude isolation, and because everyone has the same interests as those around them, landowners are hostile to landowners, capitalists are hostile to capitalists, workers are hostile to workers... The current state of human immorality has reached its extreme point.". In capitalist society, the contradiction between labor and capital is the root cause of all conflicts and confrontations, which is directly reflected in social relations as the contradiction between capitalists and workers: capitalists extract surplus value by extending labor hours, increasing labor intensity, and lowering labor income, while employing workers to resist actively or passively. This class confrontation ultimately leads to social division, division, and conflicts of human interests.
The relationship between people and things is reversed, and people lose their subject status. Human beings should have been the subject of production, but in the capitalist mode of production, live labor is subordinate to dead labor. In the large-scale machine industry, workers have to work completely according to the characteristics of the machine, and humans have become accessories of the machine. It is not humans who use the machine, but machines that use humans. In addition, although both commodities and currency are products of human labor, workers in the commodity economy do not feel their own power, and only see commodities, especially currency. Their minds are occupied by commodity fetishism and currency fetishism, leading to the rise of materialism and materialism.
The relationship between humans and nature is becoming increasingly tense, and human destruction of nature has exceeded that of previous eras. Marx pointed out that the capitalist mode of production makes the natural world truly the object of human beings, "making the natural world subject to human needs.". Modern capitalist civilization has greatly enhanced human ability to transform nature while promoting the development of productive forces and industrial progress. But capitalists, in order to reduce production costs and gain more profits, use this ability to destroy the natural environment and plunder natural resources, ultimately leading to tension in the relationship between humans and nature, mainly manifested in a sharp reduction in forest and farmland area, depletion of freshwater, increasingly serious environmental pollution problems, and an increasingly urgent climate crisis.
The global expansion of capital has led to an imbalance in the international political and economic structure. Initially, developed countries used underdeveloped areas as low-cost raw material production areas and product dumping areas for commodity exports; Afterwards, commodity exports transformed into capital exports, and developed capitalist countries utilized cheap labor in underdeveloped areas to create more surplus value; Finally, international monopolistic financial capital dominates, bypassing production and circulation, and directly plundering huge wealth from underdeveloped regions through the international financial market. Accompanied by economic imbalance is political inequality, and the hegemonism of a few countries is rampant, arbitrarily oppressing and invading other countries. These all lead to tension, conflict, war, and even world wars.
Chinese path to modernization is a new form of human civilization
The capitalist social form is a civilization form centered on capital. Capitalist society has problems such as class opposition, polarization, materialism inflation, and external expansion and plunder. Its overall root is the logic of capital and its proliferation and expansion. The new form of human civilization is a form of socialist civilization created by Chinese path to modernization. It transcends the logic of capital with the logic of the people and shows a new picture of the form of human civilization.
The novelty of the new form of human civilization lies first and foremost in the novelty of its creative subject. The new form of human civilization based on Chinese path to modernization is, in the final analysis, initiated by the Chinese people under the leadership of the CPC. The nature and purpose of the CPC, its original mission, beliefs, and policy propositions determine the socialist civilization attribute of Chinese path to modernization. The "Chinese style" of Chinese path to modernization is formed in the process of adhering to and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics. Adherence to socialism with Chinese characteristics determines the basic nature and development direction of the new form of human civilization. The CPC has always held high the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics and led the way of human civilization on the road and course.
Realizing the people's yearning for a better life represents the value pursuit of a new form of human civilization. The people are the main body of Chinese path to modernization. Only by closely relying on the people, respecting the people's creative spirit, and pooling the wisdom and strength of all the people can we push forward Chinese path to modernization. Our party regards the people's aspiration for a better life as its goal, and regards the realization of high-quality development, the development of people's democracy throughout the process, and the realization of common prosperity for all people as the essential requirements of Chinese path to modernization, so as to ensure that the majority of the people are enthusiastic about the construction of modernization with the spirit of ownership.
Enriching the spiritual world of the people reveals the spiritual and cultural connotations of a new form of human civilization.
Promoting harmonious coexistence between humans and nature reflects the new form of human civilization and the well-being of people's livelihoods. Chinese path to modernization regards a good ecological environment as the "most universally beneficial well-being of people's livelihood", emphasizes that people and nature are a community of life, advocates that ecology benefits people, benefits people and serves people, and emphasizes that green water and green mountains are golden mountains and silver mountains. For the long-term interests of mankind, we would rather sacrifice short-term economic interests, but also adhere to the principle of giving priority to conservation, protection and natural recovery. This is fundamentally different from the anti ecological approach of developed Western countries transferring polluting industries to developing countries, opening up a new path of civilization for harmonious coexistence between humans and nature.
Promoting the construction of a community with a shared future for mankind highlights the global significance of the new form of human civilization. China firmly stands on the right side of history and the progress of human civilization, holds high the banner of peace, development, cooperation and win-win results, seeks its own development in the firm maintenance of world peace and development, and better maintains world peace and development with its own development. China is committed to promoting the construction of a community with a shared future for mankind, and has put forward China's plans to jointly build the "the Belt and Road" initiative, the global development initiative, the global security initiative, the global civilization initiative and other initiatives to promote mankind towards a common world. China has always been a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development, and a defender of the international order.
Guangming Daily
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