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

摘要： 文明时代主要是从人类社会发展的一般历史进程上理解文明所标志的社会进步状态。恩格斯在《家庭、私有制和国家的起源》一本书中阐释了他对“文明”“文明时代”和“文明社会”的基本理解，指出文明社会的产生和发展是与分工和商品生产的发展密切相关的，其基本特征就是对财富的追求，使社会分裂出剥削阶级和被剥削阶级，并经历了古代奴隶制、中世纪的农奴制和近代的雇佣劳动制三大奴役形式。从简单商品经济过渡到发达商品经济意味着古代文明发展为现代文明，它创造了巨大的文明成果，但同时也衍生出一系列文明的悖论，如自由平等的形式化和表面化、商品拜物教、消费异化和世界体系的对抗性等等。中国特色社会主义发展道路为文明时代的历史进程注入了新的发展因素，推动着人类文明向更高的历史形态发展。

关键词: 恩格斯, 文明时代, 文明时代的悖论