>>I don't see Marxian (labor) values as normative, except as representing "bourgeois right" (sale at value is treated as "equal exchange" in CAPITAL).<<
>How is the concept of exploitation, which seems to be the heart of the LTV, not normative? < As Cornel West's analysis of Marx's take on morality suggests, Marx applied the standards of "bourgeois right" (trading at price = value) to show that capitalist violates _its own standards_. Marx clearly had his own moral standards, but he never elaborated on them (he was never an ethicist): living in an era (not that different from our own) when people throw around moral slogans and then routinely turn around to violate them, he focused instead on the contrast between moral theory and practice. West argues that Marx gave up on the project of finding the fundamental basis for all morality. [partly because he saw efforts such as Kant's as so sterile.] ^^^^^^^^ CB: My take on Marx normative issues is that he asserts many injunctions ( such as "Workers of the world , unite", "the thing is to change the world") , so he has an ethical component to his theory. Ethics is what one does, and so Marx's emphasis on the unity of theory and practice is the general statement that there is an ethical dimension to Marxism. There is a famous letter to his father when he was young in which he claims to have found a way to unite the "is" and the "ought ". I get the impression he did not use explicit reference to "morals" and "ethics" because the philosophers and theologians had given those topics such a bad name. "Practice" of revolutionary theory is his ethics. On exploitation, my take is that he noticed that in FACT, throughout history, exploited and oppressed classes struggle against their exploitation and oppression. Opposition to exploitation is a human natural ethical project ; the "is" of history and the "ought" of what is to be done are united in the class struggle of exploited classes.
