小农“小”在哪里——《路易·波拿巴的雾月十八日》中的小农道德观及其方法论意义

What “Small” Means in “Small-holding Peasants”:Moral Values of Small-holding Peasants in Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte andIts Methodological Significance

马克思在《路易·波拿巴的雾月十八日》中将“小块土地”视为理解法国小农的出发点,以“耕种的小块土地→交往的狭小空间→利益的极小重叠”为基本思路,指出小农之“小”不仅在于其耕种的土地面积之“小”,更在于其生活世界、交往空间的窄小,眼光视野、社会关系的狭小,以及社会地位、政治地位的弱小,并由此阐释了小农道德观必然表现出的落后、保守、迷信和偏见。马克思对小农及其道德观的分析,既是唯物史观方法论的经典运用,又是这一方法论的鲜活呈现,为理解当代中国乡村社会发展中的农民道德观提供了理论和方法资源。

In his The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,taking“the allotment of land”as the starting point for understanding French peasantry,Marx follows the logical path from“the small allotment of land”to“the narrow space of social interaction”and to“the minimal overlap of interests”to make his reasoning about the characteristics of the small-holding peasants and argues that the word“small”in“small-holding peasants”means not only that the land they cultivate is small,but also that the space where they live and interact with each other is small,their vision and social relations are limited,and their social and political status is relatively low.On this basis,Marx points out that the moral values of the small-holding peasants show the characteristics of backwardness,conservatism,superstition,and bias.Such an analysis made by Marx is a classical application of the methodology of historical materialism,and has vividly demonstrated how to apply this methodology,thus providing rich theoretical and methodological resources for us to understand the moral values of the farmers in the development of contemporary Chinese rural society.