The Concept of Justice in Marx’s Theory

Abstract

AbstractMarx’s critique of capitalism evolved from philosophy and sociology to political economy. The lifelong research concerning Marx shows that the distributive justice is the main clue to Marx’s critique of capitalism and the exploration of socialism and communism. However, Marx’s critique was not limited to distributive justice. In his earlier years of research, unlike the Young Hegelians, radical critical theorists, and national economists, Marx did not confine his critique to an abstract philosophical reflection; instead, he shifted toward the economic relations in real society, exploring the history of problems from the perspective of political economy. In his later years of research, unlike Ferdinand Lassalle and others who envisaged a principle of distributive justice which advocated equal rights based on 100 percent remuneration for work done, Marx gained a clear understanding of the limitation of the principle “to each according to his work.” In the twentieth century, traditional socialism was implemented on a large scale worldwide. During this practice, problems that Marx saw but did not directly touch upon arose: differentiated distribution could be accumulated in individual hands and then shifted toward means of production and thus once again become the possible condition for the appearance of alienated labor. Objectively, this became the reason that limited the scope of each according to his work and encouraged some kind of absolute egalitarianism. Theory and reality, principles and circumstances, history and present, have all made it necessary to review the development of Marx’s critique of capitalism with distributive justice at the core.