On Thu, 21 Oct 1999 10:08:52 -0400 "Charles Brown"
<CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes:
>
>>>> James Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> 10/21/99 06:21AM >>
>Interstingly enough other Marxist thinkers who were quite
>different from Kautsky have likewise been partial to
>utilitatarianism. Thus the Frankfurter, Herbert Marcuse
>took a favorable view of John Stuart Mill's brand of utilitarianism.
>And more redently the Marxist philosopher Derek Allen
>in his paper "The Utilitarianism of Marx and Engels,"
>*American Philosophical Quarterly 10 (1973) made the case
>that Marx & Engels were implicitly utilitarians in terms of
>the value judgements that they made in their work.
>
>(((((((((((((
>
>Charles: To the extent socialism shifts from production for exchange
>to production for use, "utility" seems to come to the fore.
>
>
>CB
>
Quite possibly. The branch of neoclassical economics known as "welfare economics" has historically been closely tied to the utilitarian tradition. The Polish Marxist economist, Oskar Lange was of the opinion that welfare economics as formulated by the neoclassical economists had much to teach Marxists concerning the proper management of a socialist economy.
On the other hand in the case of Marcuse, the kind of utilitarianism which he embraced was that of J.S. Mill which recognized qualitative as well as quantitative distinctions between different kinds of pleasures. Thus for Mill, intellectual pleasures were inherently superior to purely sensory pleasures. Mill contended that this was something that could be justified empirically by querying people who have had experience with both types of pleasure. In the case of Marcuse, this type of utilitarianism seemed to undergird the distinctions that he drew between "false needs" and "true needs" in such writings as *One Dimensional Man*. Marcuse seemed to be arguing that late capitalism in the First World was offering in place of the higher pleasures that could be experienced in a particpatory democracy, the qualitatively inferior pleasures associated with a consumer society.
Jim Farmelant
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