Marx’s Ideas on “World History” and “World-historical Nationalities” and Their Significance to China’s Frontiers Research 

Song Peijun

In the sense of Hegel, the development of “world-historical nationalites” has two lines of the principal and the auxiliary, while a sequence of mode of production Marx showed in “Preface” of Critique of Political Economy is the principle line of “world-historical nationalities” that individual productivity acts as “historical agent” in the time-space dimension of temperate Eurasia. The shaping of “world-historical nationalities” should contain social existences in two significances: one is economic foundation, and the other is social foundation; it cannot be limited to social productivity equating to the former. By the establishment of “Asiatic mode of production” as the origin of history of civilization, Marx transcended Hegel’s presupposition of “Mediterranean-centrism” which took Persia as the origin of world history, while excluded India, Mongol, and even China out of the world history; meanwhile, he extended the duration that the West “accompanying history” to modern times of large capitalist industries when “the East subject to the West”, and then revealed the significance of “border” zone to history of superpowers and global history in the sense of world history. In world history, the “nomadic mode of production” constructs an “accompanying” relation to the “Asiatic mode of production”. It visualizes Marx’s historical view of “red/principle line and golden/ auxiliary line” on the land of China. Though differing from the principal sequence of world-historical nationalities present by the West European path, it does not go beyond the rationale of Historical Materialism and Marx’s sequence of mode of production.