Abstract

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Keywords:: political economics; economic category; rational abstraction; the mental concrete; transcedentalstructure

Abstract:: In order to expose the secret of“ people’s being subject to things” in a bourgeois society，Marxinvestigated the bourgeois society from the perspective of political economics. The key to his scientificinvestigation is how to describe the bourgeois society which had been an established fact historically.Therefore，Marx affirmed the importance of“ reasonable abstraction” when he reevaluated the method adoptedby the bourgeois economists. Meanwhile，he criticized the abstractness in the bourgeois economists’ methodand the illusion caused by Hegel’s idealism. In Marx’s opinion，the bourgeois society，which has been anestablished historical fact，is a“ concrete subject” which is independent of theoretical abstraction and formsthe precondition for any theoretical abstraction. This historical fact，when our mind wants to grasp it，cannotbe presented directly in the theory but can only be represented in our mind through“ the simplest stipulation” .Therefore，the method of“ ascending from the abstract to the concrete” is a special way in which our mindgrasps the concrete.