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The ethical basis for Marxism?
I've lately been reading political philosophy and I was wondering upon which ethical basis one could justify Marxism. To an extent Utilitarianism can justify state intervention, however Utilitarianism owes no allegiance to political left or right as the debate centres itself around the consequences of market intervention (or nationalization) instead of taking a principled approach to laissez faire or interventionism itself. Obviously Libertarianism with it's principle of people owning themselves, thus it is coercion to take the fruits of their labour, implying that you are entitled to their labour itself, thus forced labour = slavery, does not fit at all with left wing ideals. Which brings me on to 'Kantianism', Kantianism is often said to be the political philosophy on which Marxism is built (with a few tweaks here and there), however many on the right have also invoked Kantianism to support their posistions.
Or is there no ethical basis for Marxism as Marxism is free from judgements of value "The theory of Marxism, as well as its practice,’ he wrote in 1910,[3] ‘is free from judgments of value" (Hilferding).
I think you are operating under a false dichotomy. Many communists do not want state intervention or nationalization, they want workers to own the means of production through councils, communes, industrial unions, etc. Utilitarianism, if applied consistently, will lead one to support democracy, anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-communism for reasons I alluded to in a reply to one of your posts in another thread (accountable authorities are always preferable to unaccountable authorities).
Marxism has no ethical basis. Ethics is a question with relevance after our struggle for state conquest is over.
A proletarian morality, a communist morality is not devised, it is shaped through direct struggle, it becomes our own language, a weapon of which we use to bring to it's knees the forces of bourgeois ideology.
[FONT="Courier New"] “We stand for organized terror - this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Revolution and of the new order of life. ”
― Felix Dzerzhinsky [/FONT]
لا شيء يمكن وقف محاكم التفتيش للثورة
Where on earth did you hear that?
I ALMOST DIED OF A DRUG OVERDOSE BECAUSE OF ANARCHISM AND PUNK ROCK
Capitalism thrives on optimism and pride. Excessive pride and worshiping wealth are sins and any politician who does not at the very least try and combat it in some way is behaving unethically.
A democratically controlled economy is not more ethical than a social democracy with responsible capitalism which is why Marxists argue using science and reason , rather than just morality.
Fascism and libertarianism are wholly unethical and immoral because they explicity condone pride. Fascism with pride in the superior race, and free market libertarianism with pride in the Darwinist superior individual.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/rube...arx-ethics.htmOriginally Posted by Maximilien Rubel
"We have seen: a social revolution possesses a total point of view because – even if it is confined to only one factory district – it represents a protest by man against a dehumanized life" - Marx
"But to push ahead to the victory of socialism we need a strong, activist, educated proletariat, and masses whose power lies in intellectual culture as well as numbers." - Luxemburg
fka the greatest Czech player of all time, aka Pavel Nedved
You say "Excessive pride" initially and then you say "condone pride", so which is it. Are you in principle against pride (and optimism) or merely when its 'excessive', I mean everything is bad in excess is it not?
You're hardly selling Marxism to me, by telling me its completely devoid of ethics.
I was talking to my uncle (a member of the Scottish socialist party) who said that Hegel's interpretation of Kantianism was the ethical basis of Marxism.
Morality is based in the material relations of production and has a necessary class bias. "Morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the working people around the proletariat, which is building up a new, a communist society." (Lenin, 1920 Speech at 3rd Komsomol Congress)
The morality of the proletariat is destined to become the universal morality as the proletariat are the universal class of humanity and its class rule will universalise all human relations. In other words, the liquidation of bourgeois morality with the tumbling of bourgeois society will signal the ushering of a new code of morality, deviating from every morality that has come before it: namely the principle of exploitation.
So Marxism is immoral, is that your answer?
according to some peoples' ideas of morality, almost certainly :P I can't speak for others, but I generally don't employ moral arguments when it comes to advocating a communist society for precisely that reason - morality is not absolute and universal. It's possible to make convincing "moral" arguments for and against nearly anything and to debate it until the cows have come home, heard you talking about morality and fucked off again. It's not an avenue that I feel is particularly productive in that regard.
In regards to morality there is one aspect in which I think I can broadly speak for the revolutionary left - we all reject bourgeois/liberal morality since it is fundamentally based on exploitative, capitalist relations, so I suppose if you must you can generally define us (to whatever extent there is an "us") in terms of our opposition to that.
Is this not merely an ad hominem attack upon which you are founding your argument. You are attacking the proponents of the opposition and not the opposition arguments themselves.
Also can you clarify how, utilitarianism or kantianism is founded on 'exploitative capitalist principles'?
I'm not sure how you can repeatedly tell me that Marxism has no ethical grounding, whilst still espousing Marxist views, that is double think of the highest order!
It is not devoid of ethics, it simply has a different, i.e, revolutionary ethical basis. Meaning that Marxism realizes that different classes have different interests and it is the task of the oppressed to combat the oppressors.
"The people have proved that they can run it... They (the pigs) can call it what they want to, they can talk about it. They can call it communism, and think that that's gonna scare somebody, but it ain't gonna scare nobody" ― Fred Hampton
“Mao Zedong said that power grows from the barrel of a gun. He never said that power was a gun. This is why I don't need no gun to do my thing. What I need is some freedom and the power to determine my destiny” ― Huey P. Newton
eh, I suppose i could and should have been clearer, I was being lazy, sorry.
We oppose those forms of morality that are founded on exploitation and capitalist relations. Generally speaking, I would say that referring to moral or ethical arguments isn't particularly useful when advocating the overthrow of capitalism - sticking to material explainations is usually the way to go. The reason for this is that moral arguments are usually subjective to some degree, and it is as easy to argue that it is morally right to struggle for communism from one perspective as it is to argue that we should reinstate kings and queens from another point of view*. I suppose that as far as current systems of morality go utilitarianism and kantian ethics have a lot in common with many communist principles, so if for whatever reason I did want to go for a "moral basis of marxism" those would be sensible things to resort to.
However, like a lot of people in this thread have said, a proletarian, communist revolution is not rooted in the same kind of principles as capitalist society. It is a far-reaching revolutionary movement which will involve a lot of fundamental changes to the functions of society. As such, a moral code (or perhaps moral codes, I imagine people won't stop debating what is right and wrong regardless of their conditions) that will deal with the conditions of a revolutionary and post-revolutionary world will have to evolve in those kinds of situations so as to meet the needs of those conditions. To try and think of a concrete one now would be akin to someone a few hundred years ago thinking of a comprehensive moral code for the digital age - at best, literature will be produced :P
I suppose what i'm trying to say is that a moral code for a revolutionary, communist society will necessarily have to be born and grow up with that very same society.
*interestingly you actually deal with this issue in your opening post "Kantianism is often said to be the political philosophy on which Marxism is built (with a few tweaks here and there), however many on the right have also invoked Kantianism to support their posistions." Two fundamentally opposing groups can use the same (or at least very similar) moral arguments and formulas to back up their conflicting points of view.
eh, I suppose i could and should have been clearer, I was being lazy, sorry.
We oppose those forms of morality that are founded on exploitation and capitalist relations. Generally speaking, I would say that referring to moral or ethical arguments isn't particularly useful when advocating the overthrow of capitalism - sticking to material explainations is usually the way to go. The reason for this is that moral arguments are usually subjective to some degree, and it is as easy to argue that it is morally right to struggle for communism from one perspective as it is to argue that we should reinstate kings and queens from another point of view*. I suppose that as far as current systems of morality go utilitarianism and kantian ethics have a lot in common with many communist principles, so if for whatever reason I did want to go for a "moral basis of marxism" those would be sensible things to resort to.
However, like a lot of people in this thread have said, a proletarian, communist revolution is not rooted in the same kind of principles as capitalist society. It is a far-reaching revolutionary movement which will involve a lot of fundamental changes to the functions of society. As such, a moral code (or perhaps moral codes, I imagine people won't stop debating what is right and wrong regardless of their conditions
I suppose what i'm trying to say is that a moral code for a revolutionary, communist society will necessarily have to be born and grow up with that very same society.
*interestingly you actually deal with this issue in your opening post "Kantianism is often said to be the political philosophy on which Marxism is built (with a few tweaks here and there), however many on the right have also invoked Kantianism to support their posistions." Two fundamentally opposing groups can use the same (or at least very similar) moral arguments and formulas to back up their conflicting points of view.
Why can't it be brought up in a socialist society? If things will be so different go to Venezuela and whilst you que up for you bread ration philosophize the basis of your political philosophy there.
This seems like a massive red herring, you refuse to address the issue and seem content with merely shoehorning your revolution through, is what we are doing ethical? Ah we'll cross that bridge when we come to it! It seems like you cannot mount a defence of Marxism on an ethical basis and anyone who isn't already a Marxist is going to be severely put off your ideology as a result.
So how does that apply to Utilitarianism then? Just because someone is rich doesn't mean that they are not guided by the same human principles of pain and pleasure that form the bedrock of utilitarian logic. People are all people and we all have this basic commonality.
If you promote the notion that "everyone is entitled to the fruits of his or her labor", then you might be a Marxist: workers produce all value through the sweat of their brow, but capitalists, by virtue of ownership of the means of production, seize the lion's share of that value.
As others have said, I try to avoid moral arguments for socialism because they are never definitive; on the other hand, material arguments for the Marxist school of thought and socialism are rock solid. If you insist upon a moral principle, however, then I say "Everyone is entitled to the fruits of his or her brow" is a good one in support of socialism.
When you work for someone you sign a contract consenting the terms to your employer, individuals do not consent to taxation as they are merely one in a sea of hundreds of millions in some cases billions. Consent is key, as without consent force is initiated via coercion.
I'm not a libertarian however.
You can sign a contract "consenting" to something, but that doesn't mean your decision wasn't influenced by your desperate material conditions.
In the American South after the Civil War, blacks who had been slaves were legally free. Many of these freedmen, however, ended up working for their former masters as sharecroppers and severely underpaid and abused farmhands. They were legally free, it's true, but they were not actually free according to their material conditions.
Capitalism was very much at the root of the problem. Many blacks had hoped for land ownership after the end of the Civil War. Their reasoning: if we don't own the land, we can't truly be free because we cannot be self-sufficient. Ownership over land, or any productive resource, constitutes economic power, e.g., leverage.
So, while people might legally agree of their own volition to work as maids and garment factory workers getting paid 10 cents an hour, they are making that decision from desperation and employers know this and utilize this fully. Consent is only possible between two free and equal adults (that is, equal in that neither one wields economic power over the other).
