Marx and Justice

[James Farmelant]

I am not sure that I would agree with Allen Wood's contention that
Marx didn't regard capitalism as unjust even by the criteria of bourgeois
justice.  It seems to me that Marx argued just the opposite of Wood's
thesis in writings like The Communist Manifesto.  Marx IMO certainly
regarded notions of justice as being conditioned by the prevailing mode
of production but
one aspect of the contradictions of capitalism is that capitalism
violates
even bourgeois norms of justice when it exploits labor.  On the other
hand Wood is correct IMO in asserting that Marx regarded judicial
concepts like justice and rights as constituting an inadequate basis
for a full critique of capitalism, a position he made clear in his
Critique
of the Gotha Program where he criticized the Social Democrats for
relying too much on the language of justice and rights. Sam (and Wood)
are correct IMO in arguing that this inadequacy is rooted in the fact
that law and rights are a part of the superstructure.  Wood on the
other hand seems incorrect in asserting that communism will simply
have a new conception of justice that corresponds to its mode of
production.  I think Marx is rather clear that there is a sense in
which communism will be a society beyond justice as such because
the concept of justice presupposes scarcity whereas under communism
scarcity as such will be transcended.

		Jim Farmelant

On Mon, 08 Feb 1999 00:03:48 -0800 Sam Pawlett <epawlett at uniserve.com>
writes:
>All this discussion about liberal rights and justice has got me 
>thinking
>about the relation between Marxism and justice.Allen Wood developed 
>the
>interesting argument that Marx's critique of political economy had
>nothing to do with  justice and that capitalism does exploit the 
>working
>class but this exploitation is just. Wood explains;
>" He(Marx) equally scorned those who concerned themselves with
>formulating principles of distributive justice and condemning 
>capitalism
>in their name. Marx conceives that justice of economic transactions as
>their correspondance to or functionality for the prevailing mode of
>production. Given this conception of justice, Marx very consistently
>concluded that the inhuman exploitation practiced by capitalism 
>against
>the workers is not unjust, and does not violate the worker's rights;
>this conclusion constitutes no defense of capitalism, only an attack 
>on
>the use of moral conceptions within the proletarian movement. Marx saw
>the task of the proletarian movement in his time as one of
>self-definition, discipline and self-criticism based on scientific
>self-understanding. He left for later stages of the movement the task 
>of
>planning the future society which it is the historic mission of the
>movement to bring forth."
>  To summarize, law and justice are judicial concepts. Judicial 
>concepts
>belong to the superstructure which is determined by the mode of
>production. A society will thus have a conception of justice that fits
>and grows naturally out of its mode of production. Capitalist
>exploitation is just in a capitalist mode of production but unjust in 
>a
>communist mode of production. It is wrong therefore, to ascribe some
>universal form of justice applicable to all  modes of production. A
>future communist society will not be 'more just' than capitalism, it
>will simply have a conception of justice that fits its mode of
>production; a mode of production where capitalist exploitation doesn't
>exist.
>
>Wood fleshes out this argument in his book _Karl Marx_ and his article
>"Marx and the Critique of Justice" Philosophy and Public Affairs, V1 
>no.
>3 1972.
>
>Any thoughts on this argument?
>
>Sam Pawlett
>
>

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