Rise of Financial Capitalism and End of Western Marxism:On Methodological Problems of Western Marxism Studies
In the study of the development of Western Marxism in Chinese academia,there was a debate on whether Western Marxism came to its logical end in the 1970s.The reality of capitalism which Western Marxism takes for study is the capitalism in the period of its formation and com-pletion of state monopoly capitalism,and this reality,as well as the corresponding bourgeois theory,has a hold on the philosophical methodology of Western Marxism.Along with the eco-nomic-social crisis of state monopoly capitalism,capitalist countries in the West began to gradu-ally turn towards financialization and neoliberalism,and Western Marxism failed to provide an effective theoretical response to the form of capitalism after its transformation in the 1970s.The onset of the financialization of capitalism led to a reorganization of class relations and cultural change,and to a more comprehensive penetration of bureaucracy into every corner of daily life,resulting in a financialized bureaucracy.The critique of reification and ideology based on the dialectics of identity of subject and object,which Lukács founded,fails to integrate the theory of money and the theory of capital.When the financialized bureaucracy developed,the classi-cal Western Marxist critique lost its object and was lost in translation.Faced with the reality of financial capitalism,the contemporary Western left-wing theories have launched new critical ex-plorations with different methods and in different perspectives.The new forms of domination brought about by financial monopoly capitalism have compelled Western left-wing social theory to look for theoretical tools outside the traditional Marxist analytical discourse,which is cen-tered on the theory of credit and money.The question of money began to become the focus of increasing attention in Western left-wing theory,driving a discursive shift in Western left-wing theory.The theory of credit money became activated in left-wing theory,replacing the theory of commodity money.The introduction of the theory of credit money placed the origin of money on objects with such rich social and cultural contents as credit and debt,which opened up a space for explaining the social content underpinning the monetary system.The specific historical con-text of Western Marxism and the latest development of contemporary left-wing theory inspire us to adhere to a clear historical vision and Chinese position,so as to carry out the study of the history of ideas with the overarching approach of Marxist theory.
万方数据
