Japanese Demographic Crisis in View of Marx’s Capitalist Law of Population

ABSTRACT

In more than four decades, Japanese society has rapidly intensified a tendency towards a very low fertility rate with a smaller number of children. It is generally confirmed that a society needs a total fertility rate of at least 2.1 in order to avoid a decline in its total population. The total fertility rate in Japan was still 2.14 in 1973, when the period of high economic growth in the post-World War II ended. It continued to decline to 1.26 in 2005. It then recovered somewhat in 2015, as the post-war “junior” baby-boom generation reacted to its last chance to have children. However, the recovery is temporary, and the Japanese total fertility rate is estimated to slide again in the 2020s. This article examines this transition through a re-examination of Marx’s capitalist law of population. This approach rejects the naturalist theory of population and directs attention to Japan’s demographic decline in the context of neo-liberal policies in contemporary capitalism.     

马克思劳动时间观的经济伦理透析

马克思劳动时间观从现实的人出发,凝聚经济伦理内核;面向生活世界,形成经济伦理向度;通过冷峻的现实揭露,对资本主义社会进行深刻的经济伦理批判;以辩证的逻辑演绎,体现出科学的经济伦理思维;通过时空交融的探索,对劳动时间予以经济伦理认知,实现了对以往劳动时间理论的经济伦理超越,因而能够从经济生活事实中揭示资本的伦理冲突和道德形态,具有丰富的经济伦理内涵。从经济伦理角度解析马克思劳动时间观,可以揭示马克思劳动时间观所固有的属人的价值禀赋和经济伦理特质,呈现马克思劳动时间观的真实性态。     

马克思劳动伦理思想是社会主义中国和谐劳动关系建设的重要指导

劳动伦理思想是马克思劳动思想的重要内容,和谐劳动关系是马克思劳动伦理思想关注的核心命题。马克思认为劳动关系和谐是劳动顺利进行的重要基础,和谐劳动关系的核心是劳资关系和谐。劳方与工会、资方及代其行使权力的管理者与政府在和谐劳动关系建设中承担不同责任。马克思劳动伦理思想是当代社会,特别是当代社会主义中国和谐劳动关系建设的重要理论指导。     

Climate Change and Marx in the 21st Century,Part I

This paper comes in two parts. Part I begins with an examination of the relationship between Marx’s characterization of the centrality of commodity production to capitalism as a system, its destructive results on Nature, and the global scale of the climate crisis confronting the 21st century. It then moves on to critically examine three models of political economy (Hayekism, Keynesianism and State Socialism). Part II takes the argument forward by critically examining a fourth model, Green Keynesianism, currently being manufactured in response to the crisis of climate change, in order to show the inability of all four models to resolve the existential threat posed to humanity in the 21st century and beyond. We then proceed to posit, as a thought experiment, a fifth model of political economy, Green Socialism, as something now needed in the 21st century and discuss the important building blocks of the future evolution of a coherent system. The paper concludes with a brief mention of both the ends and means that need deliberation if Green Socialism is to be realized.     

法律与社会理论的批判意识——略论马克思社会理论中的法律思想

马克思的法律思想是他的社会理论思想的重要组成部分。他继承黑格尔的辩证法思想 ,基于理性 ,对现实社会及其法律制度进行了深入批判和否定 ;他对黑格尔法哲学的批判 ,同样闪烁着辩证法的光辉。他把法律看成人类社会的一种暂时现象 ,这种观点根本上来源于他对工业化所开辟的人类社会历史前景的乐观态度。因此 ,马克思法律思想的深刻性与他对现代性问题的洞察是分不开的。换言之 ,资本主义法律制度的问题性 ,只是资本主义社会矛盾的反映     

解读马克思的三种模式——我国理论界对《1844年经济学哲学手稿》的探索及我们的新见解

我国理论界对马克思<1844年经济学哲学手稿>(简称<手稿>)进行了深入的探索,特别是改革开放新时期形成了三派主要观点.在此基础上笔者试图提出六点新见:<手稿>研究最有代表性的是顶点论、不成熟论、起点论三种基本观点;导致三种观点的是三种不同的解读模式:"以西解马"的解读模式、"以苏解马"的解读模式、"以马解马"的解读模式;在版本结构上应当区分出相对独立的"第四手稿"或"哲学手稿";<手稿>的深层哲学主线是从异化观走向实践观;<手稿>的哲学底蕴可以称之为新唯物主义实践观论纲;<手稿>是马克思新唯物主义创新的历史起点和逻辑起点.     

The theory of unequal ecological exchange: a Marx-Odum dialectic

A world-system analysis of the ecological rift generated by capitalism requires as one of its elements a developed theory of the unequal ecological exchange between center and periphery. After reviewing the literature on unequal exchange (both economic and ecological) from Ricardo and Marx to the present, a new approach is provided, based on a critical appropriation of systems ecologist Howard Odum's emergy (spelled with an m) analysis. Odum's contribution offers key elements of a wider dialectical synthesis, made possible in part by his intensive studies of Marx's political-economic critique of capitalism and by Marx's own theory of metabolic rift.     

The Agrarian question: the scholarship of David Mitrany revisited

This paper reassesses aspects of the scholarship of David Mitrany, who first in the 1920s and then in the late 1940s approached the ‘agrarian question’ – whether and if so how socialism is possible in a state where there is only a small manufacturing sector and therefore no significant industrial proletariat – from the perspective of countries in Central and Eastern Europe where, between the two World Wars, political parties representing small-scale agricultural producers won large numbers of votes in democratic elections. His 1951 book Marx against the peasant was his response to the failure of those parties to hold on to power, and their crushing by the Communist governments that took control from 1948 on. Mitrany showed that the populist tradition, the ideology of independent small farmers, came from similar roots to Marxism, and that Marx himself late in his life came close to endorsing it. Whether increased agricultural productivity is feasible without large-scale farming was the subject of intense debate among socialists in Europe from the 1850s onwards. It is on the agenda today in many underdeveloped countries where there are strong disagreements about the role of agriculture and rural development in development strategy.     

从马克思的市民社会观到当代社会观——市民社会理论视域下的中国"社会建设"

西方的市民社会理论经历了三个发展阶段,首先是市民社会与野蛮社会的分离,其次是市民社会与政治国家的分离,最后是市民社会与经济社会的分离。马克思的市民社会观处于第二个阶段,他剖析了现代市民社会的产生和内在矛盾,揭示了市民社会的本质和发展方向。中国的“社会”正处于西方市民社会发展的第二阶段。而其历史背景却处于西方第二和第三阶段交错的现代性背景中。根据历史的经验与中国的现实,中国目前的社会建设首先要健全市场经济体制,推进政治体制改革;其次要加强以改善民生为主的社会建设,培育公民社会;最后要促进社会与国家的良性互动,克服市民社会的内在矛盾。     

马克思《博士论文》思想内涵探析——对自我意识觉醒与宗教批判的实质评述

《博士论文》作为公认的马克思终生思想的历史开端,是其早期的重要思想理论成果。马克思在进行相关理论研究时,主要是对德谟克里特和伊壁鸠鲁的自然哲学进行一定的对比,从而能够分析出他们之间的差别。伊壁鸠鲁的自然哲学理论更加能够促进自我意识觉醒,同时也能够实现对宗教的批判,在继承德国古典哲学自我意识并赋予了其以现实性的同时,拿起“否定”武器对德意志基督教进行了深刻批判。