{I ignore anything Raghu has to say on this because he hauls in a caricature
of "science" to describe Marxist thought. That eliminates the possibility of
an exchange of opinion.}I take it as axiomatic that ideas flow from practice: wherever and whenever we find ourselves, we are already always enmeshed in an ensemble of social relations, and our fundamental ideas flow from those relations rather than, in any way, determine that ensemble. NOW: Morality is a set of ideas, and thus ethical principles are subordinate to and flow from the practice which exists prior to any ethical ideas. Hence those ideas cannot be used to determine the practice from which they flow. Now, at the most abstract and fundamental 'level,' the social relations in which we find ourselves enmeshed flow from the antagonistic relationship of capital and labor: this is history, not ethics. And, for workers, that struggle generates the _idea_ of solidarity: that is _thed_ ethical principle which can be applied to workers involved in the struggle. But it cannot be applied to _capital_, _capitalists_, or_ capitalism_. Hence we (working class) can make moral judgments of our fellow workers but we _cannot_ (without turning in to objective class traitors) indulge in moral condemnation of capitalists. The anatomy of man is a key to the anatomy of the ape. Carrol -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Eubulides Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2014 5:34 PM To: Progressive Economics Network Subject: Re: [Pen-l] The struggle to be equal to the rich in history as a history of class struggles is a human natural and therefore natural moral law by inference from its empirical universality. 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
