Triple Critique: Formal Logical Audit, Generative Verification of Intellectual History, and Consistency Testing with Sinicised Marxism in the New Era——A Review of Liu Tongfang's Marx's Intellectual Measure

This study takes Liu Tongfang's article Marx's Intellectual Measure, published in Guangming Daily, as its sole subject of investigation. Its objective is to examine the theoretical validity and interpretative boundaries of the author's approach to synthesising Marx's thought through the concept of ‘measure’. This analysis is conducted across three dimensions: conceptual legitimacy, historical interpretative mechanisms, and consistency with the Sinicisation of Marxism in the new era. The research thereby addresses the core question: ‘Does this article possess an academic argumentative structure that is reviewable, reproducible, and testable?’ Methodologically, this paper constructs and implements a triple-algorithm review process comprising ‘formal logical audit—generative verification through intellectual history—contemporaneous consistency testing.’ Employing a Chinese clause-numbering system and rule-driven quantitative metrics, it conducts structured, reproducible evidence audits on: the semantic stability of core concepts; the sufficiency of boundaries in social stage delineation; the explicitness of contradiction mechanism chains; and the operationality of era mapping. Calculations yield the following indices: Boundary Adequacy Index (Boundary Adequacy Index ≈ 0.389), Normative Substitution Index for Mechanism Explanation (Normative Substitution Index ≈ 0.161), Mechanism Explicitness Score (Mechanism Explicitness ≈ 0.738), and Sentence Coverage Rate (Sentence Coverage Rate ≈ 0.421). These quantitative outcomes anchor the scope of argumentation and strength of reasoning. Findings indicate that ‘scale’ concurrently fulfils dual functions of empirical description and normative evaluation within the text. Its transdisciplinary migration from physical or existential spatial extension to the boundaries of consciousness, cognition, and value lacks requisite mediating rules and verifiable derivation chains, thereby generating auditable semantic slippage risks. The text exhibits strong macro-level coherence in its phased narrative of ‘prehistory and true human history’ alongside ‘human dependency, material dependency, and free individuality.’ However, insufficient articulation of boundary conditions concerning mutual exclusivity, exhaustiveness, and transitional forms renders the phasing closer to a value hierarchy than a falsifiable explanatory model. Though multiple passages simultaneously present the contradiction between productive forces and relations of production alongside the developmental goal of free individuality, key arguments exhibit a tendency to substitute normative objectives for mechanism-chain decomposition, thereby weakening the testability of historical materialist explanations. The integration of Marx's theoretical resources across different periods within the intellectual history lacks explicit annotation of generative differences and methodological shifts, while the world-historical narrative insufficiently bridges the stage structure of capitalism with the deepening of imperialism theory. Within the framework of Sinicised Marxism in the new era, the indicator-based mapping interface for ‘people-centred development, practical verification, and Chinese-style modernisation’ remains relatively weak, hindering its direct translation into an operational evaluation system. The research concludes that Marx's Measure of Thought demonstrates theoretical ambition in its comprehensive exposition and value synthesis, yet its pivotal arguments require enhanced reviewability and reproducibility through conceptual semantic constraints, explicit phase boundary conditions, and the explicitation of contradiction mechanism chains. The proposed ‘logical-historical-epochal’ triple-audit framework and quantitative indicator system can provide transferable, top-tier structural assessment tools and standardised rewriting pathways for similar comprehensive philosophical texts.