The question goes a long way back: is there, even implicitly, a theory about justice, a moral theory, in Marxian work[i]? The question keeps popping up not only due to external factors (e.g. questions raised by contemporary moral theories)[ii] but also to the ambiguities of Marxian work. The following (alleged) paradox has by now become classic: whereas Marx expressly mentions that the distribution between capitalists and workers in the capitalistic mode of production (hereafter CMP) is the only fair distribution based on this mode of production[iii], yet anyone who has read Marx’s work – particularly the Capital – will be wondering that a system based on exploitation, unpaid labour, enormous – and constantly growing – inequalities can be considered fair[iv]. Several theorists identifying with Marxism (or having done so in the past) have tried to solve this paradox in various ways. Most attempts try either to infer a categorical imperative from Marx’s references to the communist mode of production[v] or to build a moral theory of the good on observations about human nature coming mainly from Marx’s earliest works[vi]. In this article, I will argue that these ambiguities, although partly justified in view of certain assertions in Marx’s earliest works (mainly the Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law [vii]and the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844[viii]), exist mostly in the minds of said theorists. Whatever the case may be, the importance of this paradox is not only theoretical: according to its critics Marxian work underestimates the demand for justice, freedom and personal autonomy and, by doing so, it is unable to truly mobilize the masses[ix]. It is argued[x] thus that when communist parties and organizations are forced to invoke these demands to motivate the masses they run counter to Marx’s ideas and “fill” the content of these concepts with arbitrary and contradictory constructions deprived of solid moral arguments. As a result, a second paradox emerges: if it is true that Marxian work cannot be relied on to build a moral theory, is it legitimate to use these demands? Ultimately, the question boils down to this: can we convincingly argue (as a requisite for building the hegemony of workers at that) that one of the objectives of a revolutionary process is the transformation of formal equality and freedom into real (social) equality and freedom?
The importance of the question is evident, especially at the present juncture: in a period when social and political freedoms are increasingly attacked and disintegrated should the Left lend its support and, if yes, to what extent and why?
The criticism of religion becomes criticism of law
On many occasions, Marx not only refuses to qualify the CMP as unjust but bitterly criticizes liberal and petty bourgeois socialists for attempting to criticize political economy on grounds of the injustices generated by the CMP[xi]. Judgments on justice and morality are expressly considered by Marx as integral part of the ideology generated by the very same mode of production[xii]. Thus, Marx – unlike those who consider the distribution of social product between capitalists and workers as unfair because based on an unequal exchange[xiii] – expressly qualifies such distribution as just according to the CMP, precisely for its being an exchange between equals[xiv]. For Marx, the notion of just in this case means that which corresponds to the mode of production[xv]. This leads directly to the conclusion: there are no criteria external to the mode of production that can be used to qualify this distribution as unjust[xvi]. Any other attempt would be not only unscientific but would lead to mystification, deceitful social relationships, and ultimately would increase confusion and multiply attempts to interpret the mode of production by means of the superstructure[xvii]. In this sense, the use of the term “just” by Marx is much more edifying with regard to his intentions (as compared with “corresponding”) for illustrating that there is no other way to conceptualize justice than in terms of correspondence.
Still, the use of the term inspired doubts as to whether Marx might accept a relativist theory of justice: namely, that every mode of production generates a corresponding valid principle of justice. But this concept of moral relativism in Marx (long prevalent)[xviii] reintroduces the same mistake Marx passionately fought against: the attempt to extrapolate criteria of validity of moral judgments to judge the very same mode of production. The problem, then, is not that ideological elements generated within the CMP may put the latter in question (which makes a single valid theory of justice impossible within a mode of production since the realm of morality is inherently conflictual) but lies in the attempt to extrapolate elements either from the dominant ideology or from efforts to construct a proletarian ideology to develop a moral theory in order to evaluate the justice or injustice of the mode of production[xix]. So, Marx is not a moral relativist in any sense whatsoever: he does not acknowledge a theory of justice corresponding to each mode of production, and he does not acknowledge a theory of justice corresponding to each class[xx]. Furthermore, he is against any effort to draw moral arguments from the future in order to judge the present time, or indeed the future itself[xxi]. Justice, freedom, equality, personal autonomy are not useful tools to judge a mode of production; useful instead is the analysis of the mode of production which helps us to understand why a particular mode of production gives rise to particular perceptions of justice, freedom, equality, etc. and how these perceptions become weapons at the hands of the dominant class to clad their own class interest as the general interest of society: thus, the demand for personal autonomy reflects the selfish person who, in pursuing individual interests, effects the general good (the reproduction of the CMP); the demands for freedom and equality reflect and correspond to the realities of an exchange where capitalist and worker appear as equal parties who exchange their equivalent commodities on their free will; finally, the right to private property is the right of the capitalist to appropriate alien labour[xxii]. The political significance of the Marxian argument is crystal-clear: every effort to correct the injustices of the CMP through changes in the legal system or in our moral perceptions of it is doomed to fail[xxiii].
Having said that, by taking it upon itself to be a merciless critic of all that is, the Marxian work[xxiv] is absolutely relevant to justice and morality. The question moral theorists are constantly confronted with is the conflict between social reality and the Enlightenment demands for freedom, equality, brotherhood, justice, and autonomy[xxv]. Marx proved that this question cannot be answered in terms of moral philosophy for not only does the CMP generate inequality, exploitation, and heteronomy but, on top of that, it moulds the terms in which the questions of moral philosophy are cast. By moving criticism from moral theory (either in the form of religion or in the form of moral philosophy) to the criticism of political economy, he reverses and transforms not only the answer to the question but the scope of the question itself.
Marxian work clearly provides the solution to the puzzlements of Enlightenment[xxvi]: these demands cannot be satisfied within the CMP – only by overturning the CMP is it possible to configure social terms in a way that relative judgments about justice/injustice, autonomy and social cooperation, etc., become meaningful and can take us from human prehistory into history[xxvii].
In particular:
In this way, however, the demands for freedom, equality, autonomy and justice are not merely imbued with social content but by acquiring such content they are transcended[xxxviii]. Marxian work is not content with answering the puzzlements of Enlightenment by shifting the scope from moral philosophy to political economy. This dislocation challenges and transforms the questions themselves. A mere reversal would not do, if the questions remained the same. Thus, for instance, the normative nature of moral philosophy evaporates: the question is no longer what one ought to do to be free, autonomous, just (get rid of capitalism, for example). Marxian work challenges all the constituent parts of this question: i) the subject of the question is not the abstract person but the individual as determined by class and social parameters, ii) the predicate “free” has no criteria to be measured against (the reality of the CMP provides no such grounds nor can a future utopia provide grounds for a moral theory – Marx expressly refuses to reference the kitchen of the future). Only the liberation of dominated classes from the bounds strung by the CMP is meaningful according to historical materialism, iii) the ought is no longer founded on duty or on good. The transition to historical materialism is at the same time a transition to the analysis and materialization of existing conflicting social interests. In this way, all claims to universality become void; on the other hand, the transition does not even imply a return to moral realism, (extrapolation of the ought based on particular class interests). The moral foundations of what is ethical are themselves abolished. The materialization of class interests (be they endorsed or opposed to) fully translates the field from ethics to politics: the ethical ought becomes a political ought (a political with an ethical bearing, according to the above): it is in the workers’ interest to overturn capitalism – the only other alternative is to live in conditions increasingly verging on barbarism. Workers do not need a moral theory to realize the exploitation, the oppression and the social inequalities that undermine the imperatives of Enlightenment: they experience them in their flesh. It is their daily experience that generates the class instinct of exploitation, the moral practice of indignation[xxxix]. But they do need the political and ideological class struggle to organize their efforts to overturn the CMP and give a practical solution to the Enlightenment puzzlements. Their weapon in this struggle is the scientific theory of historical materialism.
What all this means in practical terms is that Marxian work provides us with the tools to analyze the moral phenomenon as an ideological phenomenon with its corresponding practices, its legitimizing function, the limits placed by the mode of production itself on the formulation of relevant moral questions and demands, and the limits it places on the formulation of moral theories themselves.
Therefore, Marx’s work is an immanent critique of morality, of any moral theory, as ideology. Those who try instead to use his work as a foundation for a moral theory not only fail to do it justice (or to do justice themselves since they attempt the impossible) but they distort the very nature of criticism. Even if it were possible to use aspects of Marx’s earliest works to construct a Marxian theory of humanity (a project closer to revivals of Feuerbach’s philosophy[xl] than to Marxist dialectics), it would be entirely futile to try to infer a moral argument from such an anthropology: since for Marx human nature is always determined historically[xli], any moral principle based on it would be relative, and also partial[xlii].
But, on the other hand, could the potential liberated by the very development of production forces in the CMP, namely the possibility of its destruction and of the establishment of the communist society in which the creative inclinations of people unfold completely and humans fully dominate the forces of nature as they also do human powers (abilities, needs)[xliii], is an end that can lead to a moral theory? Trotsky, for instance[xliv], in his response to the familiar critique that the end justifies the means in Marxism, though virulently opposing any moralizing inclination to build moral theories on general and abstract principles (which he calls petty bourgeois, Philistine, etc.), ends up arguing that, from the Marxian viewpoint which expresses the historical interests of the proletariat, the end is justified if it increases the domination of man on nature and the abolition of the domination of man by man. If this is a moral (and not a political) justification[xlv], it would reintroduce moralism from the window (anything that increases the domination of man on nature and the abolition of the domination of man by man is moral): in this case, history would provide the grounds for the foundation of non-historical moral judgments (!) which should again be justified either in terms of anthropology (human nature) or, deterministically, in terms of history itself (history is directed to a specific end which is the domination of man on nature and the abolition of the domination of man by man). But the major problem with these ideas is that they reintroduce the need for a futurology expressly denied by Marx. The Marxian choice was no accident: any attempted insight on how social needs, or human nature itself, are to be shaped in the communist society will either be visionary and unscientific (will solve problems that have not arisen) or lead to overgeneralized abstractions (no more enriching than the Kantian categorical imperative)[xlvi] which are always at risk of being filled with the desired content of intellectuals (or the party’s leadership). When converted to normative imperatives, ideals have an unfortunate tendency to indoctrination. This, of course, does not mean that ideals and demands (social liberty and equality) going beyond the CMP[xlvii] cannot be put forward in the context of ideological class struggle. Such ideals, however, cannot provide grounds for the foundation of a moral theory.
Based on the above, the terms of the debate are redefined. The critique of moral theories is a criticism with a foundation, though not a moral one. It is a critique founded on historical materialism, the analysis of specific modes of production, objective class interests, ideological constructs (inter alia, legal and moral constructs) as developed within the CMP and class struggle in each social formation[xlviii]. It is a morally relevant critique for not only does it provide answers to the puzzlements of moral theory but it is also, and quintessentially so, a critique about social needs[xlix], moral practices, moral ideals and demands. It transforms the field of morality by making the overturn of the CMP and the establishment of the communist society a requisite for raising moral questions (or, to put it more correctly, for moral questions to be meaningful)[l]. The moral question then takes the form: “if my quest for the notion of freedom is to be meaningful, the CMP must be overturned”[li]. What constitutes a class interest to the workers, is a choice of sides to intellectuals (to endorse the class standpoint of proletarian interest) if they are to transcend their moral puzzlements. The moral philosopher will either be another cog in the Ideological Apparatuses of the State (even against their own wishes) or engage as a wider organic intellectual of labour forces.
Accordingly, the judgment about the fairness of a legal rule (and of problems with its interpretation) cannot rely on some overarching moral rule. What can be illustrated, however, is the relation of this specific rule with the advancement of class interests, on the one hand, and the contradictions and puzzlements created by this rule in regard to the dominant moral ideologies, on the other hand.
The criticism of theology becomes criticism of politics
Let us now come to the second paradox. If this is the place of morality in historical materialism how can the forces of labour use the moral demands for freedom, equality, and justice to become the leading social force?[lii]
Morality as ideological field is quintessentially conflictual. It is based on different practices generated by the particular social conditions of distinct social classes. In the past, this gave rise to arguments in favour of the belief that different practices generate (or must generate) distinct moral world-views. At moments when the organization of social division of labour and models of accumulation or the degree of development of working class organization resulted in unifying ideological practices (typical examples are solidarity, mutual assistance, altruism), it was argued that these practices represent a new morality, the proletarian morality, which is better than bourgeois morality (either because it contains fewer contradictions compared with the moral systems of bourgeois philosophers – particularly in terms of implementation –or because it is the morality of the future[liii] – in the context of a deterministic analysis). In actual fact, these arguments are deprived of moral foundations (neither History nor Power can offer adequate grounds for a moral theory – all the more so for a Marxist). Besides, the dismantlement of the social and political institutions which underpinned these solid moral practices and the accelerating historical deconstruction of a deterministic reading of Marxism have torn away the arguments of supremacy of proletarian morality[liv]. These perceptions were more or less useful as elements of dominant moral ideology in real socialism regimes[lv] where they played a specific role: to normalize the behaviour of workers through norms based on the dominant ideology of the new bourgeois classes (production managers and bureaucrats).
Besides, moral outlooks (see ideologies) do not generally grow one-directionally from moral practices. They are mediated by state mechanisms (courts, universities, the church, family) and constitute elements of the dominant ideology (which of course mediates in particular ways and incorporates elements of the ideological practices of the dominated classes). In the historical process of consolidation of its hegemony, in the attempt to clad its own class interest as the interest of society at large, the bourgeois class has put forward moral demands (or rather, has reconceptualized such demands) reflecting the social aspirations and wants of broader social strata. Albeit concealing real social relationships, albeit not amenable to rational moral justification, these demands were by no means fake: they signaled a real process of liberation from the social and political yoke imposed by the feudal mode of production[lvi]. By the same token, contemporary demands for freedom, equality and solidarity put forward by the working class – or rather, the new meaning ascribed to their content (and form) to imbue them with social substance so that they do not remain legal formality – is not just a contrivance aiming to picture its class interest as the interest of the whole society: these demands encapsulate the appeal for social liberation from the bounds strung by the CMP to prevent the creative potential of social production and reproduction from fully unfolding. Hence, they are political demands (with a moral meaning, of course). What would be misleading, on the other hand, is to try to morally justify these demands either in terms of an archaeology of human nature or in terms of futurology.
It is in this way that a number of traditional objections against the Marxian view of morality can be overcome. The objective of the communist society is not a moral good, an end for which all means are permitted[lvii]. The means, like the end, are to be judged by the criticism of political economy and politics (namely, the science of historical materialism). If the working class is to gain and maintain hegemony in the context of a wider class alliance and become the leading social force, it ought to do more than just picturing the overturning of capitalism and the building of communism as the interest of the whole society (elimination of exploitation, developing the full potential of social production, imbuing the demands of freedom, equality and solidarity with social content which also means to transcend these demands); it ought to safeguard, also during the time of transition, genuine political rights and the social interests of currently dominated strata. So, to fulfill its political goals, it must be measured against them even in the process of meeting them: and this, of course, is primarily a political rather than a moral stake. Furthermore, it brings to the fore the need for political accountability to specific mass segments.
Although going beyond the scope of this article, certain additional thoughts are useful:
But let us return to the present time: Today, the authoritarian fortification of the state of accumulation against popular struggles appears as structural element of the State. An authoritarian fortification combining the construction of a huge mesh of oppressive powers with corresponding ideological shifts: the dismantling of those statutorily enshrined arrangements that used to effect a certain redistribution of the social product (trade unions, welfare, social organizations). The elimination of a series of democratic rights (collective rights of action and organization, individual safeguards for critical thinking) which used to ensure the possibility of political presence of lower strata in the political foreground. The ideological shift from the elimination of rights in the name of defending other overarching rights (elimination of liberties in the name of freedom) to the elimination of freedoms in the name of security. And this combined not merely with improved methods of police repression but primarily with the consolidation of disciplinary practices in the public and the private sphere (street cameras-cameras at the workplace), and the use of new technologies allowing an intensification of record-keeping and surveillance (biometrics records, transnational transmission of personal data). This trend creates highly significant and material contradictions with the traditional liberal ideological model according to which the bourgeois class and the State guarantee the rights of all citizens. The way to safeguard rights (individual, social or political) is by fierce class struggles bearing the mark of hegemony of the bourgeois or popular classes, depending on the historical juncture. Anyway, the concept of rights has been and still is one of the fundamental institutions through which the bourgeois class presents itself as guardian of satisfaction of popular interests as well. Obviously, the way these rights are entrenched (primarily by making their – socially unequal – holders appear equal before the law, and also by subjecting them to government regulation) has a number of ideological results that consecrate bourgeois hegemony. At the same time, however, to defend these rights (and not only when they are encroached upon or, worse still, disintegrated) is to acutely exacerbate the contradictions of bourgeois hegemony. Therefore, to defend the social and political freedoms under attack is a fundamental political requisite if the working class is to be able to make its claims in a hegemonic way.
[i] The title and individual section headings follow the Introduction to the Critique of Hegels’ Philosophy of Right by Marx. The subtitle shares the need identified by George Maniates (“Marx and morality-a reappraisal” in Marxism-A reappraisal, a Scientific Symposium organized by the Society for Studies in Modern Greek Civilization and General Education 1997, p. 131) albeit in a different direction. The article discusses the concept of justice not from the viewpoint of positive law, of legal rules, but in the broader context of morality. That is, we discuss the possibility of formulating judgments to question the justice of any law (and, by extension, to raise issues of redefinition of legal interpretation and implementation). The construction of a moral theory can proceed either from a number of general rules which are binding for all (imperatives emanating from religion or reason) or from commonly accepted perceptions about the good/s whose pursuit is seen as binding by the members of a given community – see, on this point, G. Maniates, “Issues of Marxist personal ethics”, Utopia, vol. 32, 1998, pp. 39 sqq.
[ii] Although, typically, the two major contributions in the relevant contemporary debate – neo-Aristotelianism and the neo-Kantian-derived discourse ethics – were developed by left-wing theorists (Alasdair MacIntyre and Jürgen Habermas).
[iii] Critique of the Gotha Programme, Syghroni Epochi eds., 1983, p. 11, adding that “Are economic relations regulated by legal concepts or the other way round, is it legal concepts that emanate from economic ones?”
[iv] Eugene Kamenka, Τhe ethical foundations of Marxism, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1972, pp. 1-2, Allen W. Wood, «The Marxian Critique of Justice», A Philosophy & Public Affairs Reader 1972 p. 3, Ζiyad I. Husami, «Marx on Distributive Justice», A Philosophy & Public Affairs Reader 1978, pp. 43-4, Richard W. Miller, Analyzing Marx: Morality, Power and History, Princeton University Press 1987, p. 12. According to
[v] From the neo-Kantians of the
[vi] Typically, according to Lawrence Wilde, Ethical Marxism and its Radical Critics, MacMillan Press 1998, Marx starts from a conception of human nature as creative social activity, goes on to discuss how it is alienated in the CMP, and strives for the realisation of this potential in the communist society. He points out that Marx does not perceive human nature as historically changing but his work contains a theory about human essence in general, about the essence of the human species (which he assimilates with social creativity). Naturally, every moral philosopher holds a different view about the notion of good which Marx’s moral theory hinges on (just as every philosopher holds a different view about the content of justice and morality). For Michael DeGolyer, «The Greek Accent of the Marxian Matrix» in Georg E. McCarthy (ed), Marx and Aristotle, Rowman and Littlefield 1992, p. 140, the notion of good permeating Marxian work which Marxian moral theory tends to is the fulfilled human community (the “just” community). For Steven Lukes, Μarxism and Morality, Oxford Clarendon Press 1985, the work of Marx constructs a morality of emancipation which subordinates the individual to the pursuit of the common goal (p. 164). This concept, however, reflects the ideas of Georg Lukazs in History and Class Conscience, Odysseus 2001, pp. 95, 118, and not the ideas of Marx. For Β. Ricardo Brown, “Marx and the Foundations of the Critical Theory of Morality and Ethics”, Cultural Logic Spring 1999, clogic.eserver.org/2-2/brown.html, the grounds for Marx’s theory of emancipation are to be found in pleasure and the lived experiences of everyday life: in love and work. For George G. Brenkert, Μarx’s ethics of freedom, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983, pp. 85 sqq. (see also, by the same author, “Freedom and private property in Marx”, A Philosophy & Public Affairs Reader, 1979, pp. 82-84) Marx’s work develops a theory of freedom. See, in part, also Allen W. Wood, “Μarx on right and justice. A reply to Husami”, A Philosophy & Public Affairs Reader 1979 p. 122; also by the same author, Karl Marx, Routledge 2004 pp. 127 sqq.; despite his criticism against attempts for a neo-Aristotelian reading of Marx the author believes that according to Marx, freedom, community and self-fulfilment are innate in human nature and constitute goods, though not moral goods! To give credibility to this distinction, Wood restricts morality to the rules of overriding moral law and not our own perceptions of what is good for us. The problem, of course, is that if we consider these perceptions as binding for us (since they are innate in our nature) we are obviously adopting a moral theory about good/s (singular or plural, it does not matter here). And the big problem with that is, of course, that in contemporary capitalism common ideas about good can arise only within communities with common characteristics (especially intellectual). Even within the working class which is primarily held together by common ideological practices like the class instinct of exploitation, common perceptions about good develop only through the mediation of mechanisms (parties, trade-unions) and constitute aspects of proletarian moral ideology in constant confrontation and interaction with the dominant moral ideology. The field of morality is inherently conflictual, as will be argued below.
[vii] “The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for man – hence, with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable being” (Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of State and Right – written in 1843 and published in the German-French annals in 1844, Papazisi 1978, p.25). The influence of Feuerbach’s critique of religion is obvious (the non-emancipated individual is not a real human being, does not belong to the human species) although, of course, the division of people in classes already illustrates the Marxian breakthrough. Anyway, for young Marx, political emancipation means nothing else than making people members of the community of private individuals, selfish independent persons, on the one hand, and citizens, moral persons, on the other hand. Only when real individual persons re-integrate the abstract citizen into their individual existence, their everyday empirical life, work, and relationships, do human beings become species-beings (again a loan from Feuerbach); only then is human emancipation accomplished (The Jewish question – written in 1843 and published in the German-French annals in 1844, Odysseus 1978, p. 101). Engels, respectively, in a juvenile work (Outlines of a Critique of political economy, also published in the same issue of the German-French annals) unremittingly condemns capitalism and Malthus’ theory of overpopulation as immoral www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/outlines.htm.
[viii] Where communism is understood in Feuerbachian terms as the real reappropriation of human essence and a complete return of man to himself as a social being (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts – Private Property and Communism www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm).
[ix] Already from the times of Bernstein (“Τhe core issue of the dispute: A final reply to the question How is Scientific Socialism possible?” in Μ.Steger (ed.) op. cit. p. 117) and the Austro-Marxists: Οtto Bauer, “Marxism and Ethics” in Tom Bottomore-Patrick Goode (eds.), op. cit. p. 81. See also Alasdair MacIntyre, A short history of ethics, Routledge&Kegan Paul 1967 (2nd ed. Routledge 1998 p. 206); by the same author, «The theses on Feuerbach: A road not taken» in Κ.Knight (ed), The MacIntyre Reader, Cambridge University Press 1998 p. 232; Allen E. Buchanan, Marx and Justice: The radical critique of liberalism, Rowman and Littlefield 1982. pp. 87 sqq.
[x] See Hugh Collins, Marxism and law, Paratiritis 1991, pp. 224 sqq., especially p. 229.
[xi] For a critique of Proundon and the ideal of eternal justice which draws from the legal relations corresponding to commodity production see, Capital vol.I, Syghroni Epochi 1978, p. 98, fn. 38. On Lassallists and the concept of fair distribution (incorporated in the Gotha Programme), see Critique of the Gotha Programme, pp. 10 sqq. (vulgar, petty bourgeois and Philistines are the terms usually reserved by Marx to “moralists”). In a letter to Sorge dated 19/10/1877, Marx mentions the rotten atmosphere imbuing the party after the compromises with Lassalle, Dühring and the handful of half-ignorant students and super-wise professors wishing to give socialism a “higher, idealistic” orientation, that is, to replace its materialist basis (calling for serious impartial study) by modern mythology and its goddesses of Justice, Freedom, Equality and Fraternity (www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/archive/marx/works/1877/letters/77_10_19.htm).
[xii] It is not the consciousness of individuals that determines their existence but their social existence that determines their consciousness (“Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence (…) men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life”,German Ideology vol. Ι, Gutenberg p.68). Marx himself characterizes this conclusion of his as the leading thread of his work (Preface to the Critique of Political Economy 1859/www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm) and goes on to say: “The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness”.
[xiii] See also Wood, “The Marxian Critique of Justice”, op. cit. pp. 19-20.
[xiv] “The owner of the money has paid the value of a day’s labour-power; his, therefore, is the use of it for a day; a day’s labour belongs to him. The circumstance, that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour-power costs only half a day’s labour, while on the other hand the very same labour-power can work during a whole day, that consequently the value which its use during one day creates, is double what he pays for that use, this circumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an injury to the seller. (…) Every condition of the problem is satisfied, while the laws that regulate the exchange of commodities, have been in no way violated. Equivalent has been exchanged for equivalent. For the capitalist as buyer paid for each commodity, for the cotton, the spindle and the labour-power, its full value. He then did what is done by every purchaser of commodities; he consumed their use-value. The consumption of the labour-power, which was also the process of producing commodities, resulted in
[xv] Examples abound: “To speak here of natural justice, as Gilbart does (on loan interest), is nonsense. The justice of the transactions between agents of production rests on the fact that these arise as natural consequences out of the production relationships. The juristic forms in which these economic transactions appear as wilful acts of the parties concerned, as expressions of their common will and as contracts that may be enforced by law against some individual party, cannot, being mere forms, determine this content. They merely express it. This content is just whenever it corresponds, is appropriate, to the mode of production. It is unjust whenever it contradicts that mode. Slavery on the basis of capitalist production is unjust; likewise fraud in the quality of commodities”, Marx, Capital vol.ΙΙΙ, Syghroni Epochi, 1978 p. 429 (on the argument that contemporary civilization would not have existed without slavery in Antiquity – which alllowed the development of the then production forces, see also F. Engels, Anti-Düring, Anagnostides, 1963, p. 267; Wood, «A reply to Husami» op. cit. pp. 109-110). “I depict the capitalist as the necessary functionary of capitalist production an
[xvi] See also Wood, “The Marxian Critique of Justice”, op. cit. pp. 15-16.
[xvii] Hence it would revert to a juridico-political reading of society Marx was fighting against already from the time of the Preface to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of the State and Right (op. cit. p. 27), the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of State and Right (Papazisi 1978 pp.36, 64-65,142) and the Jewish question (op. cit., especially pp. 74 sqq.). See also Wood, “The Marxian Critique of Justice”, op. cit. p. 5.
[xviii] On the historical relativism of Marx see, among others, Karl Popper, The poverty of historicism, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1974, pp. 50 sqq.; Francis Fukuyama, “The end of history?”, Νational Interest, Summer 1989; J.W.Harris, Legal Philosophies, Butterworths 1980 pp. 254-5. For Wilde, op. cit., according to Marx (and Hegel) morality is relativist insofar as essence evolves by (historical) stages; and it is absolute insofar as each stage realizes human essence (even if imperfectly).
[xix] In this sense, Marx’s anti-relativism does not consist in that, thanks to the science of materialism, we are able to make judgments about the justice or injustice of social institutions in a given mode of production, as Wood seems to suggest, “The Marxian Critique of Justice”, op. cit. p. 18. Such a view would presume that each mode of production creates its own valid criterion of justice and, in this sense, would clearly lead to historical relativism. As we argue, the transformation brought by historical materialism runs much deeper than what is accepted by Wood and extends not only to the notion of justice and equality but to the conceptions of autonomy and freedom as well.
[xx] As Husami believes, op. cit. pp. 48 sqq. For the opposite, see G. Stamates, op. cit. pp. 60-1.
[xxi] As early as in 1843 (Letter to Ruge www.Marxians.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/ 43_09.htm), Marx points out that we have no business constructing the future and settling everything once and for all. He will remain faithful to this position to the end. Respectively, Engels in Anti-Düring, op. cit. pp. 143-5, expressly denies that proletarian morality is truer as compared to its predecessors: “Morality has always been class morality; it has either justified the domination and the interests of the ruling class, or ever since the oppressed class became powerful enough, it has represented its indignation against this domination and the future interests of the oppressed (…) A really human morality which stands above class antagonisms and above any recollection of them becomes possible only at a stage of society which has not only overcome class antagonisms but has even forgotten them in practical life”. Engels held a similar view on family and sexual relationships (The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Syghroni Epochi 1984 p.84): “What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up (…).When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual – and that will be the end of it”. Let us note also that according to a stricken passage from the manuscript of German Ideology the issue of which “wishes” will simply change and which will disappear in a communist society can only be settled by practical means through a modification of real actual “wishes” (German Ideology, vol. I., p. 356, footnote – the term wish is used as a criticism to Stirner instead of “need”, for example, and is surely very unsuitable, as the above passage proclaims). See also Wood, “The Marxian Critique of Justice”, op. cit. p. 29.
[xxii] See, by way of indication, Grundrisse (Outline of the critique of political economy) vol. B, Stochastis 1990, pp. 176 sqq, where it is pointed out that equality and freedom to this extent are the exact opposite of equality and freedom in Antiquity where they were not based on a developed exchange value but were destroyed with its development. As typically mentioned in Capital vol. I., op. cit. pp. 188-9, “the sphere of circulation, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very
[xxiii] Needles to say, these attempts are not politically neutral: they mystify production relations and subjugate the labour movement to reformist strategies – see also Wood, “The Marxian Critique of Justice”, op. cit. pp. 27, 30. As Wood correctly points out, op. cit. p.
[xxiv] Letter to Ruge (1843). op. cit.
[xxv] Typically, despite the intensity and extent of the relevant contemporary debate (which also reflects a remission of class struggle in the realm of moral philosophy) these questions remain without answers. On the questions arisen in the contemporary debate between neo-Artistotelians and Habermasseans, see, among others, Golpho Maggines, Habermans and the neo-Artistotelians, Patakis eds. 2006, pp. 133-148, 271-329, and the Postscript by Stelios Virvidakes in the same, pp. 343 sqq.
[xxvi] Brilliantly illustrating that the world must be changed – not explained (XI Thesis on Feuerbach).
[xxvii] Introduction to the critique of political economy 1859, op. cit. For Wilde, op. cit., human history begins at the moment when what characterizes us as humans (our social creativity) is placed under voluntary cooperative control. In actual fact, however, only then (when all the social barriers placed by class society have been lifted) will a rational discussion on human essence become possible.
[xxviii] On the fact that material scarcity is one of the pillars of modern moral philosophy see MacIntyre, A short history of ethics op. cit. p.74. Marx Horkheimer in his highly significant article “Materialismus und Moral”, Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung 1933, pp. 161 sqq., as reproduced and translated in English with the title “Materialism and Morality” in M.Horkheimer, Between Philosophy and Social Science (Selected Early Writings), MIT Press 1995, pp. 15 sqq., especially pp. 25 sqq., 36 sqq., precisely makes the point that this is how Marx transcends and answers the Enlightenment imperatives. Only for Horkheimer, the proletariat is the heir of Enlightenment values. Consequently, he sees the criticism of morality as morally binding (see op. cit. pp. 43-44 even if he finds that the communist society heralds the death of morality). But such moral commitment cannot be based on a mere critique of moral theories. It presumes the acceptance of the moral imperatives of Enlightenment based on some pre-existent moral theory (if not transcendental, at least communitarianist or relativistic). Horkheimer is perhaps the most intriguing, and at the same time edifying example, of the effects of taking a moral stance: he is forced to move the subject from the working class and class struggle to all “thinking men” (already in
[xxix] Natural wants, such as food, clothing, heating, housing, etc. vary according to the climatic and other material conditions of every country. On the other hand, the scope of the so-called necessary wants and of the modalities of their satisfaction, are themselves a product of historical development – Capital vol.I, op. cit. 184, pp. 528 sqq. The value of labour force can be a bowl of rice in
[xxx] Grundrisse vol. Β’, op. cit. pp. 226 sqq., 342 sqq. Wood, «The Marxian Critique of Justice», op. cit. pp. 36-37. This, of course, undermines all retributive theories of punishment (punishment as the right of the offender – acting in free will) – on this, see Marx, “Capital punishment”, New-York Daily Tribune, February 17-18 1853 www.Marxians.org/archive/marx/works/1853/02/18.htm.
[xxxi] On this point, see Capital vol. Ι op. cit. pp.120, 283 «Free competition brings out the inherent laws of capitalist production, in the shape of external coercive laws having power over every individual capitalist». Respectively, Anti-Düring, op. cit. p.435, Grundrisse vol. B op. cit. p. 499.
[xxxii] Besides, any system of social production – by requiring a degree of social cooperation – presupposes the Other as element of construction of the identity of the Subject (see also Capital vol. I, op. cit. p.66 fn. 18). The identity thus constructed (members of a community, a guild, a class, etc., even the allegedly free individual) and the degree of self-consciousness vary depending on the conditions created by the mode of production and the social division of labour.
[xxxiii] The free development of every individual becomes the precondition for the free development of all (Marx-Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Themelio p. 73).
[xxxiv] Capital vol. III op. cit. p.1007. In fact, given that the development of production multiplies the needs, the realm of freedom is also a rational confrontation of cooperating producers against their needs.
[xxxv] Critique of the
[xxxvi] There is, perhaps, no other demand that realistically universalizes the particular Other – see also Wood, “A reply to Husami”, op. cit. p. 131.
[xxxvii] In Anti-Düring, op. cit. p. 161.
[xxxviii] Insofar as social content is materialized (that is, in the communist mode of production), it eliminates not only the formal content of legal-political equality and freedom but their very technical form as political rights. Thus, for Marxism, moral commitments cannot be inferred from proposals which maintain their technical formality (and require corresponding state regulation) even if they correctly stress that there is greater internal cohesion between equality and freedom despite the usual inclination to confront them: “…there is not a single example of restriction or abolition of freedoms that is not accompanied by social inequalities nor of inequalities without restriction or abolition of freedoms – something done, if for no other purpose, to curb resistance”, Etienne Balibar, “The proposal of equaliberty”, Theseis, vol. 42, pp. 92 sqq., Dimitris Demoules “Citizenship and political rights. Function and transcending of a differentiating construct”, Theseis, vol. 56, pp. 45 sqq.
[xxxix] This practice, however, provides no solid grounds for a theory of justice. Besides, let us recall what Engels said on this question in Anti-Düring, op. cit. p.223 (admittedly, with a fair dose of deterministic terminology): “Only when the mode of production in question has already described a good part of its descending curve (…) it is only at this stage that the constantly increasing inequality of distribution appears as unjust, it is only then that appeal is made from the facts which have had their day to so-called eternal justice. From a scientific standpoint, this appeal to morality and justice does not help us an inch further; moral indignation, however justifiable, cannot serve economic science as an argument, but only as a symptom. The task of economic science is rather to show that the social abuses which have recently been developing are necessary consequences of the existing mode of production, but at the same time also indications of its approaching dissolution”. So, contrary to the contentions of Kosmas Psychopaedes (“The materialist theory of “fair” appropriation” in
[xl] Louis Altousser, “The “philosophical manifestos” of Feuerbach”, About Marx, Letters, 1978, pp. 39 sqq.
[xli] At least after the VI Position on Feuerbach, which expressly rejects the conception of species-being, of humanity solely as genus, and brings out the historicity of social relationships which is what actually constitutes human “essence”. See also German Ideology vol. I, pp. 70 sqq., especially p. 73. Even the capacity of the human being to produce takes different forms through history and leads to a transformation of human nature itself (needs, ways of life, production methods). “The generation of new needs is the first act of history”, German Ideology, op. cit. vol. I, p.
[xlii] According to a, widespread by now, criticism Marx adopts a view of human nature which is limited to production (the appropriation of nature by humans) and underestimates other aspects like communication, intersubjectivity, or even that peculiar aspect of “production” of human beings by woman verging more on the “natural” rather than distinctly human side, etc., see Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interest, Beacon Press 1971 pp. 25 sqq; Wilde, οp. cit., Benhabib, op. cit. pp. 11, 60 sqq., 167, 214-215; Alison Μ.Jaggar, Feminist politics and human nature, Rowman and Littlefield 1983 pp. 69 sqq., especially pp. 76-78, etc.
[xliii] Grundrisse vol. B, op. cit., p. 368. For Benhabib, op. cit. p. 112, here lies the core of Marx’s normative ideal. For Eftichis Bitsakes, respectively, “Can communist ethics be philosophically legitimate and practically operative?”, Utopia, vol. 32, 1998, p. 108, there is a moral normativity in Marxism based on the value of the human person, but in the form of the particular person of the communist society.
[xliv] “Their Morals and Ours”, The New International Vol IV no6 1938.
[xlv] As the title seems to suggest and as Maniates appears to understand it, “Questions of Marxian personal ethics”, op. cit. pp. 44 sqq., especially p. 46.
[xlvi] On this see also Miller, op. cit. pp. 52 sqq.
[xlvii] Even in this sense, Kaoutsky has it wrong, Ethics and the materialistic conception of history (www.Marxians.org/archive/kautsky/1906/ethics/ch05b.htm), when he says that the projection of ideals can only take a negative content arising from the indignation at the conditions of exploitation and the contradictions of dominant ideology. These ideals may not constitute a moral theory but they can suggest ways to settle the puzzlements of the Enlightenment imperative.
[xlviii] That is also why we cannot even compare Marx’s critique of morality to that of Nietzsche’s as Wood attempts in “A reply to Husami”, op. cit. pp. 124-5. Nietzsche uses the means of moral philosophy to rise above moral rules based on a new anthropology (therefore, without foundations) whereas in Marx the critique of morality proceeds through the means of historical materialism (on this, see also Horkheimer, “Materialism and Morality”, op. cit. p. 31). The truth is, of course, that a return to anthropologies undermines the scientific foundations of the critique of morality.
[xlix] The historically determined development of social wants (epitomized by and reflected in the general state of civilization in each country) is a moral barrier affecting the very development of the mode of production and class struggle (in this sense interacting with the mode of production) – see Marx, Capital vol. I, op. cit. 84, 243: “The labourer needs time for satisfying his intellectual and social wants, the extent and number of which are conditioned by the general state of social advancement. The variation of the working-day fluctuates, therefore, within physical and social bounds”. Hence, the realm of ideology is neither purely imaginary since it stems from absolutely real social wants, interests and practices nor linked to the realm of economy in a relation of linear external causality, as Kautsky seems to hold op. cit. (in whose view, moral rules affect social life by facilitating social cohabitation when they correspond well to the mode of production).
[l] On this, see also Philip J.Kain, Marx and Ethics, Oxford University Press 1988 pp. 176 sqq.
[li] See also Horkheimer, “Μaterialism and Morality” pp.19 sqq., who goes on to explain why the practice of self-reflection itself cannot be materialized in a competitive society based on private property and profit-making (respectively, Benhabib, op. cit. p. 195).
[lii] Naturally, not in the sense of converting proletarian ideology into dominant ideology before the taking over of political power and the effecting of important social transformations but in the sense of ideological organization against the dominant ideology.
[liii] This view still represents the prevailing ideology of the communist left in
[liv] Thus, any working hypotheses invoking the third version of the 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Needs, Production and Labour Division) to argue for a moral theory based on the notion of the moral community of revolutionaries and solidarity as the good reproduced within it, are inherently doomed to fail (see on this, Paul Blackledge, «Alasdair MacIntyre’s contribution to Marxism: A road not taken», Analyse & Kritik 2008 p.215; by the same author, , «Μarxism and ethics», International Socialism iss. 120 Oct. 2008 www.isj.org.uk/?id=486#120blackledge_91). On the one hand, the CMP disrupts identities or communitarian traditions based on pre-capitalistic modes of production (thus illustrating the inherent puzzlements of communitarianism). On the other hand, in the context of ideological class struggle, the dominant ideology tries to break down any institutions or practices of the dominated classes that have the potential to challenge its dominance. Besides, the dominant ideology and its mechanisms are present in the forming of aspects of proletarian ideology and try to reduce the latter’s influence either by incorporating certain aspects of it or by disrupting the terms for building mechanisms of ideological anti-hegemony. This, of course, does not reduce (on the contrary, confirms) the importance for the construction of a working-class hegemony of the development of moral practices through working class mechanisms (trade unions, parties, etc.) that will counter-propose the practices of solidarity, mutual assistance, altruism to the dominant bourgeois practices (selfishness, competition, etc.). It does mean, however, that one cannot seek a moral foundation of supremacy or, even more, universal effect in these practices.
[lv] On that, see also Κamenka op. cit. pp. 182 sqq; Bitsakis, op. cit. p. 98.
[lvi] Signaling, of course, an equally real process of subjugating labour to capital – see on this, Marx, Capital vol.Ι p.740. In addition, see D Gravares, “Politics and Economy. The genealogy of a relationship” in M. Aggelides, St. Demetriou, A. Lavranos (editor), Theory Values and Critique. A dedication to K. Psychopaides, Polis 2008 pp. 140 sqq.
[lvii] As argued by Lukacs, “Tactics and Morality” (see G. Lukacs, Political Writings 1919-1929 New Left Books 1972 pp. 6 sqq.) who, of course, illustrates the unresolved tragicity of the moral choice such a view entails (see on this, K. Kavoulakou, “Between the dualism of morality and the holism of the philosophy of history – The turn of Lukacs to revolutionary Marxism”, in M. Aggelides, etc., Dedication to K. Psychopaedes, Polis 2008, op. cit. pp. 264 sqq.).