对青年马克思 “利益难题”的法律透视 －以立法活动中的私人利益扩张为视角

When Marx was an editor-in-chief of Rheinische Zeitung, he realized the problem of material interests. This is an important theoretical event that Marx experienced. With the assistance of “the debate on the law of forest theft” and “the defense of the Mosel journalist”, this article, by adopting the perspective and method of dynamic and subject analysis, tries to understand the concept of “material interests problem” proposed by young Marx and the “material interests problem” he encountered. Through analysis, this article points out that the material interests (private interests) as recognized by young Marx were triggered by the limitation of the egoism of the interest-oriented people (the upper class of the society). This is a historical process of unrestrained and dynamic expansion. The gap between the rich and the poor was merely a realistic reflection of this dynamic historical process. The limitation of egoism is the reason of the unrestrained expansion of material interests at the conceptual level, whereas the unrestrained expansion of the interests of the upper class protected by “irrational legislation” is the reason of poverty and confrontation at the institutional level. Based on the insight into these two reasons, with the help of Hegel’s philosophy of law, Marx tries to restrain the excessive expansion of private interests by relying on concepts such as “rationality”, “law” and “state authority”, to protest against the extremely unfair system for the distribution of material interests and to solve the material interests problem of the society. However, with the ban of Rheinische Zeitung, Marx soon discovered the limitation of Hegel’s philosophy of law, that is, it deviated from reality and was abstract fantasy. He realized that it was necessary to study material interests systematically. This made him determined to turn from the critique of legal philosophy to the critique of political economics.