马克思恩格斯“机器排挤工人”理论及其当代价值

Marx and Engels’ “Machines Crowding out Workers” Theory and its Contemporary Value

马克思恩格斯以当代最发达的英国为例,研究了资本主义经济制度、政治制度和资本主义生产关系的一系列规律,“机器排挤工人”“生产后备军形成”是他们最为关注的问题之一。他们论述了机器排挤工人的三个逻辑:追求超额剩余价值的内在冲动、资本家之间竞争的外在压力和工业周期性循环需要储备过剩人口。但他们同时还指出,大工业的建立、科技的迅猛发展,使社会生产力的发展呈加速性,因而资本家需要大量增加新的劳动力,机器排挤工人和机器吸纳工人并行不悖。读懂马克思恩格斯“机器排挤工人”理论的深刻意蕴,对于正确认识、稳妥处理当下和未来“机器人换人”这一愈演愈烈的社会问题,具有重要的理论意义和现实意义。

Marx and Engels spent 40 or 50 years,mainly taking the most developed Britain as an example,studying a series of laws of capitalist economic system,political system and capitalist production relations.“Machines crowding out workers”and“the formation of industrial reserve army”are one of their most concerned problems.They discussed three logics of machine crowding out workers:the internal impulse to pursue excess surplus value,the external pressure of competition among capitalists and the need to reserve excess population in industrial cycle.However,they also pointed out that the establishment of large industries and the rapid development of science and technology have accelerated the development of social productive forces.Therefore,capitalists need to increase a large number of new labor forces,and the two situations that machines exclude workers and machines absorb workers can exist at the same time.Understanding Marx and Engels“machines crowding out workers”theory has important theoretical and practical significance.In the future,the theory will help to provide theoretical guidance for correctly understanding the contemporary phenomenon of“robot replacement”and action guidance for properly solving the problem of“robot replacement”.