Abstract
Translator's Introduction
This article was first published in the Economic Review（ July 1969, vol. 20, no. 3）,
issued by the Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, and reissued
in Kiyoaki Hirata, Civil Society and Socialism（ Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten Publishers,
1969）. The book was a bestseller at the time and ignited several controversies over
Marx’s interpretation, especially among Japanese Marxists.
In the article, Hirata emphasizes that Marx understood the distinction between
individual and private property as well as that between civil and bourgeois society.
Hirata’s originality lies in his definition of modern civil society as one in which individual
property is established under the appearance of private property. He asserts
that Marxian socialism should be a re-establishment of individual property. Thus,
John Keane in his book Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions（ Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1998, p. 12） named Hirata and his camp the “civil society school of Japanese
Marxism” and Andrew E. Barshay called them the “civil society Marxists” in The
Social Sciences in Modern Japan: The Marxian and Modernist Traditions（ Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2004, p. 175）.
Kiyoaki Hirata（ 1922-1995） was born in Tokyo and studied economics at Tokyo
University of Commerce （today known as Hitotsubashi University）. He taught
at Yokohama National University, Saitama University, Nagoya University, and Kyoto
University. After his retirement, he was invited to assume the president role at
Kagoshima University of Economics. For more information, see Toshio Yamada’s
“Hirata Kiyoaki and His Thoughts on Civil Society,” in The History of Economic
Thought（ July 2014, vol. 56, no. 1）, issued by The Japanese Society for the History
of Economic Thought.
