Rethinking on the Paradigm of “Capitalist Germination”

Abstract: In the social history debate from the late 1920s to the early 1930s, most of the scholars recognized the mixed pattern of various socio-economic levels in China’s feudal society, and the unity of opposites between commercial capital and feudal forces was also the consensus of all scholars. All factions of the debate tried to interpret Chinese history with the theory of social form in order to grasp the history as a whole. Historical materialism has been the significance of paradigm of history since then. In the discussion on the background of The Dream of Red Mansion, the scholars generally had a basic consensus that was the blocking effect of the feudal system on the germination of capitalism coexists with a certain degree of concession. The emerging civil groups representing the germination of capitalism had a certain resistance and independence, but they were more fragile and dependent. Later, Wu Chengming and Fu Yiling, who walked out of the theory of capitalist germination, still integrated the theory of mode of production into the new interpretation when they used the modernization theory and structuralism theory to explain the society of the Ming and Qing Dynasties with the times. In the theoretical framework of the Pluralistic interaction between tradition and modernity and the pluralistic structure of traditional society, this paper reinterprets the historical facts faced by the theory of capitalist germination. The historical materialism of starting from the social nature can completely get out of the barrier of Western centrism, based on Chinese history, make a historical dynamic explanation with the significance of mutual learning among the civilizations, and form exemplary research results, so as to highlight the paradigm significance of historical materialism and Marxist theory.