On Apr 9, 2014, at 1:17 PM, raghu <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 7:09 AM, Charles Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> I'd say there is morality or ethics of equality of all human beings
> implied in historical materialism or the theory underpinning _The
> Manifesto of the Communist Party_ .
>
>
> I am glad to hear a Marxist admit that there is any kind of morality or
> ethics in any of Marx's work, rather than just "objective science".
> -raghu.
>
================
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/#5
There are certainly reasons to believe that Marx did not want to make moral
assessments at all, for example, in the Communist Manifesto he writes that
“communism abolishes … all religion and all morality, rather than constituting
them on a new basis”. However, it may be that Marx here is taking morality in a
rather narrow sense. On a broad understanding, in which morality, or perhaps
better to say ethics, is concerning with the idea of living well, it seems that
communism can be assessed favourably in this light. One compelling argument is
that Marx's career simply makes no sense unless we can attribute such a belief
to him. But beyond this we can be brief in that the considerations adduced in
section 2 above apply again. Communism clearly advances human flourishing, in
Marx's view. The only reason for denying that, in Marx's vision, it would
amount to a good society is a theoretical antipathy to the word ‘good’. And
here the main point is that, in Marx's view, communism would not be brought
about by high-minded benefactors of humanity. Quite possibly his determination
to retain this point of difference between himself and the Utopian socialists
led him to disparage the importance of morality to a degree that goes beyond
the call of theoretical necessity.
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
