Jim wrote:
> I think that Sabri goes much too far. All contracts -- including unsigned
ones -- are based on trust, not love. (...) One of the problems with a
capitalist society (or, more generally, a commodity-producing one) is that
market competition encourages rampant individualism and instrumentalism,
undermining the needed fellow-feeling and trust. This makes contracts harder
and encourages an over-use of monitoring (hierarchy) and the like, along
with constant law-suits. This keeps the lawyers in business.
I would basically agree with that, except that a contract might be based,
for better or worse, both on trust and on love, or on neither - i.e. it may
be precisely the lack of trust or love which forces the making of a
contract, which would not be necessary if love and trust really existed
(consider, for example, litigation disputes). In responding to Michael
Perelman on Frank Partnoy's conscience, I wrote "The question nowadays
regularly arises as to what compliance to the law [in respect to derivatives
securing the conservation and increase of value] would mean."
The problem here is, that all sorts of new creative ideas for contracts and
(as Sabri would say, "deals") are dreamt up which are not even captured by
legislation. This is the root of the dualistic "free trade/protectionism"
debate, because the bourgeois is in favour of trade which improves the
position of his own kind, but is against trade which harms his position.
Bourgeois accumulation may be viewed as legalised theft, but unequal
exchanges may not even be legalised.
The radical, class conscious working class typically inverts the bourgeois
position, thus, where the bourgeois calls for free trade, the working class
calls for protection, and vice versa. Since however both classes are human
beings living in the same society, there might be some degree of overlap
permitting of class compromise, in which case the question arises whether it
is a good compromise benefiting both classes or whether it is a rotten
compromise (a sell-out masking a a mutually beneficial deal). If the overlap
is too large, the compromise is so well understood it becomes tautological
and need not be discussed. If the overlap is very small, the compromise
becomes rhetorical nonsense generating indifference. This is forgotten in
Fukuyama's sociology of trust, because it abstracts from the fact the the
bourgeois classes seek to regulate the market in their own favour.
But this story has another implication. As I have said previously, the
perfect crime is "the crime which is not a crime" since then it considered a
crime, and can be prosecuted legally as such. This could be construed in two
ways: either negatively, the crime is not recognised in law as criminal, or
else positively, the crime is actually endorsed by the law, in which case,
it is not a crime at all legally speaking. This is what bourgeois
derivatives culture is all about, and it has its corollary in proletarian
culture wars, which are the only source of moral debate vital to a blooming
culture, since, for better or worse, they test out the limits of the status
quo. Parasitism leads to the disintegration of bourgeois culture, because it
is forced to derive a justifying morality from other social classes.
If the crime is actually endorsed by the law, then it can only be viewed as
a "crime" from a different moral perspective, in which case we are back with
the problematic of difference which bedevils postmodernist culture. As soon
as that moral perspective is admitted as valid, then the universalist
pretensions of bourgeois law are invalidated. The question then arises as to
what moral behaviour would be, and how we would know that. And moral
behaviour ultimately depends on the practical ability to secure the
conditions for survival and improve life, and so then we can discuss the
practical ability of individuals to survive and improve life... while the
social foundations of capitalist society remain unquestioned.
Here the difference between the liberal and the Marxian view of ethics
begins to show up. In answer to the question, "why should I be moral ?" the
liberal answer is essentially a stasis:
(1) all morality is based on a "no harm" policy ("do unto others...", "don't
do unto others...")
(2) moral rules intrinsically apply to all individuals under the same
circumstances
(3) Premiss (2) permits rational discussion of morality and moral rules
(4) being moral means adhering to moral rules
(5) adhering to moral rules guarantees the autonomy of persons, permitting
survival and improvement of life.
The Marxian critique of the liberal answer is essential dynamic. For a
start, ethics for Marx could not be discussed in abstraction from real
practical activity, and consequently could also not be discussed separately
from class interests and self-interests; an ethics abstracted from real
practical activity, he considered an ideological, not a scientific discourse
(NB the question then is how exactly this should be interpreted in
cyberculture). The only genuine ethics possible is an experientially based
ethics, an empirical ethics, i.e. a rational ethics based on exemplary and
experimental practice, a praxis.
Starting out from Rousseau's romantic insight that "man is born free, but is
everywhere in chains", Marx asks why and how that is the case, and
investigates it scientifically. The liberal moral ideology is essentially
viewed as an ideology of freedom from constraint, but the question then is,
who constrains whom, and why. Free trade might be constraining;
protectionism might also be constraining, such that we wind up in a Weberian
cage of the future.
Marx indicates his attitude in a letter written in 1867 to Sigfrid Meyer in
New York (MECW Volume 42, p. 366) written in Hanover on 30 April 1867 (Das
Kapital Volume 1 was to come out on September 14). Marx says, "Why then did
I not answer you? Because I was the whole time at deathâs door. I thus had
to make use of every moment when I was capable of work to complete my book
to which I have sacrificed my health, happiness, and family. I hope this
explanation suffices. I laugh at the so-called âpracticalâ men and their
wisdom. If one wanted to be an ox, one could, of course, turn oneâs back on
the sufferings of humanity and look after oneâs own hide. But I should
really have thought myself unpractical if I had pegged out without finally
completing my book, at least in manuscript." Here, love and passion are
counterposed to indifference.
The compulsion to adhere to moral rules evidently does not suffice to
guarantee either the autonomy of persons or moral behaviour, and then the
question arises, as to how an internal self-regulation of moral subjects
could be arrived at, so that morality is not viewed simply as a freedom from
constraint, but as an internally recognised imperative to really be moral,
to realise moral behaviour, not just in individual behaviour, but in social
behaviour. Camdessus claimed "the market is in our genes", but genetics
doesn't necessarily lead to moral behaviour, at most, to rational
perceptions of self-interest.
The first liberal premiss turns out to be ultimately ambiguous,
non-sequiturial and self-referential, since (1) it is ahistorical (abstracts
from origins and temporality - as in, gambling with the futures of the human
species or mystifying the past) and (2) fails to specify what humans have in
common. It says effectively I should be moral, so that I can pose the
question of why I should be moral, and thus able to enter into negotiations
about morality.
Probed to its roots, this ethical view is an apology for the market, as the
exemplification of what human relations should be, sourced in Adam Smith.
But it misunderstands exchange, because the principle "do unto others"
evades the question of value, and the terms of exchange, rather than answer
it, and it cannot do so, because it is not even based on a scientific
understanding of the development of human nature, never mind an objective
view of OEkonos in terms of the optimal allocation of human work and energy.
The basic emancipatory idea Marx and Engels advance, is that the freeing of
each is conditional on the freeing of all, and the freeing of all is
conditional on the freeing of each. That's the equation, if you like.
Liberty is thus not so much a principle, but a process of liberation, view
both as an individual and a social process of development, and to be moral
means to help create the conditions under which people could be moral.
Happiness and love as a normal, constant human condition, is ultimately
conditional on the freeing of all, from all conditions which makes human
beings enslaved, degraded, humiliated, oppressed and downtrodden beings.
If capitalist markets had been able to achieve that, we would all be
perfectly happy by now. We aren't, and consequently it must be admitted that
the emancipatory potential of capitalist markets is limited, and, at some
point, destroys more happiness than it creates.
Hence, rather than specify morality negatively, as freedom from constraint,
Marx specifies morality constructively, as a commitment (or Kantian
categorical imperative, as in his Critique of Hegel) to struggle against and
revolt against immorality, defined as all those human conditions which
degrade, enslave, alienate, humiliate and dehumanise people. In that case,
there is no doubt about "why I should be moral", a point not made fully
explicit by Ernst Bloch when he writes:
"And yet ethics as experiment must neither remain boundless nor merely be a
formal requirement for individual behaviour. It must draw its light from the
class struggle of those who suffer and are heavy laden, from the humiliated
and the insulted. In this way only, will enduring ethical postulates become
indestructible and imperishable, in spite of their betrayal in reality. This
means that the true face of humanity, however vague its features, and
despite the weariness and purely loquacious character of its too general
determinations... is at least present in its self-consciousness".
(Ernst Bloch, Experimentum Mundi. Frage, Kategorien des Herausbringens,
Praxis. Frankfurt: Surhrkamp Verlag, 1975, p. 184).
This commitment cannot be separated from the imperative of survival and
improving life. Thus, for Marx, as Hal Draper notes, we must revolutionise
the world as we revolutionise ourselves, in one unitary process. It would
however be immoral to moralise from this perspective, since the propagation
of a moral stance just reproduces the problems of ambiguity, non-sequitur
and self-referentiality. Instead, to be moral is to inquire into the
conditions in which people could be moral, and work to realise those
conditions.
'Though we might hate to admit it, there are always two sides to every
story...'
Find yourself in the gutter in a lonely part of town
where death waits in the darkness with a weapon to cut some stranger down
sleeping with an empty bottle, he's a sad and an empty hearted man
all he needs is a job, and a little respect, so he can get out while he can
We always need to hear both sides of the story
A neighbourhood peace is shattered it's the middle of the night
young faces hide in the shadows, while they watch their mother and father
fight
he says she's been unfaithful, she says her love for him has gone
and the brother shrugs to his sister and says "looks like it's just us from
now on"
We always need to hear both sides of the story
And the lights are all on, the world is watching now
people looking for truth, we must not fail them now
be sure, before we close our eyes
don't walk away from here
'til you hear both sides
Here we are all gathered in what seems to be the centre of the storm
neighbours once friendly now stand each side of the line that has been drawn
they've been fighting here for years, but now there's killing on the streets
while small coffins are lined up sadly, now united in defeat
We always need to hear both sides of the story
And the lights are all on, the world is watching now
people looking for truth, we must not fail them now
be sure, before we close our eyes
don't walk away from here
'til you see both sides
White man turns the corner, finds himself within a different world
ghetto kid grabs his shoulder, throws him up against the wall
he says "would you respect me if I didn't have this gun
'cos without it, I don't get it, and that's why I carry one"
We always need to hear both sides of the story
- Phil Collins, "Both sides of the story"
