关键词: 恩格斯, 文明时代, 文明时代的悖论

Abstract: The era of civilization represents a state of social progress marked by civilizations as understood from the perspective of the general historical process of the human society development. In his work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels presents his understanding of “civilization”, the “era of civilization”, and the “civilized society”. He points out that the emergence and development of a civilized society is closely related to the development of labor division and commodity production, whose basic characteristic is the pursuit of wealth. As a result, the society is divided into the exploiting class and the exploited class, and produces three forms of slavery, i.e. the ancient slavery, the serfdom in the Middle Ages, and the modern wagelabor system. The transition from the simple commodity economy to the developed commodity economy means that the ancient civilization has developed into the modern civilization. The modern civilization has given rise to not only enormous fruits, but also some paradoxes, such as the formalization and superficialization of freedom and equality, commodity fetishism, consumption alienation and antagonism in the world system. The development model with Chinese characteristics provides new impetus to the historical process of the era of civilization, and promotes the development of the human civilization towards a more advanced historical form.

Key words: Engels, era of civilization, paradoxes of the era of civilization