The Discourse and Logic of the Concretisation Turn: A Critical Assessment of Professor Min Chao's Article 'Marx's Study of the French Revolution of 1848 and the Concretisation Turn in the Materialist Conception of History

Professor Min Chao of Zhejiang University, in his paper ‘Marx's Study of the French Revolution of 1848 and the Concrete Turn of the Materialist Conception of History’ published in the January 2025 issue of Marxism Studies, reinterprets Marx's texts on the French Revolution before and after 1848, centring on the core proposition of ‘the concrete turn of the materialist conception of history’ and its ‘triple dimensions’ (Min Chao, 2025). This article conducts a systematic review and critical assessment of the aforementioned paper within the framework of the four axiomatic laws of formal logic (the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction, the law of the excluded middle, and the law of sufficient reason), alongside the fundamental facts of Marxism's development and world historical realities. The article identifies three principal issues: Firstly, the core proposition of the ‘concrete turn of the materialist conception of history’ exhibits evident circular reasoning within its argumentative structure, lacking sufficient justification. Secondly, key concepts such as ‘historical concreteness’ versus ‘living history’ and ‘social formation’ versus ‘state formation’ are defined inconsistently throughout, constituting self-negation in terms of the law of identity and the law of non-contradiction. Thirdly, the absolute elevation of the study of the 1848 French Revolution as a watershed moment for the ‘concretisation of the materialist conception of history’ contradicts the temporal logic and textual context of works such as The German Ideology, The Communist Manifesto, and the Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy (Marx & Engels, 1845/1968; Marx & Engels, 1848/1969; Marx, 1857/1976); Fourthly, while methodologically professing opposition to abstract dogmatism, the paper in practice repackages established historical facts through abstract discourses such as the ‘triple dimension,’ presenting a self-irony of ‘naming the concrete with the abstract.’ Taken together, the paper exhibits fatal flaws in logical rigour, historical accuracy, and Marxist theoretical coherence that cannot be overlooked. Its narrative of a ‘concretisation turn’ is untenable.