Based on section I of the introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, this paper deems that two opposing theoretical pathways can be presented by studying the two propositions: real individuals and material production. On the one hand, both classical political economy and bourgeois Enlightenment thoughts, based on an abstract view of human nature, presuppose humans as isolated individuals, which directly equates material production with capitalist production. This view tends to confuse the generality and particularity of material production, thus isolating individuals' formal independence from their essential sociality. On the other hand, the concept of real individuals proposed by Marx is, in fact, a dialectical unity of individual independence and social dependence in specific historical contexts. The fundamental error of bourgeois economics lies in treating capitalist production as an eternal, natural form and completely confusing key categories such as technical relations and power relations, production relations and distribution relations, and the economic base and the superstructure.Moreover, material production in any era encompasses two inseparable dimensions: one is the historical generality that runs through all stages of production, and the other is the era-specific characteristics determined by particular relations of production.In addition, under conditions where the means of production are increasingly digitalized, the discussion on the concept of real individuals tends to provide a theoretical and methodological foundation for clarifying the actual situation of labor subjects in the digital age and critiquing new forms of alienation and exploitation.