Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.5, 2013

The Methodology of Historical Materialism and Its Academic Significance: Starting with the Criticism of Some Social Critical Theories in the West

(Abstract)

Tang Zhengdong

Founded on a criticism of cultural paradigms, social critical theories display a level of profundity in realizing that only the objective reality mediated through cultural paradigms can affect realistic individuals. However, due to a lack of enquiry after the origin of specific cultural paradigms, social critical theories have obvious limitations in theoretical logic. The empiricist tradition of thinking only sees the material existence of economic facts while ignoring other social forms of existence, thus being incomparable to historical materialism in theoretical height. The methodological self-consciousness of historical materialism is a precondition both for an accurate understanding of classic Marxists’ thoughts and the organic links among three component parts of Marxism, and for the construction of our own social critical theory.