>Nietzsche thought that some socialism was just a clumsy
>inversion of christian nihilism, antiseptical to life. sin he was a very
>septic thinker, shit no, he didn't like that. an he didn't think that the
>maxim "to each according to his disability, from each according to
>his miserability" was a good one. but the original marxian equation
>reconizes an inequality too, right? if everything is equally valuable,
>it's valueless. Makin' copies: Herr Nietzsche, makin' values. The
>Nietzschianator. an what N was objecting to was the making a
>small existence smaller through resentments, reacting rather than
>acting. revolution (meet the new boss) not volition.
Marx's argument in "Critique of the Gotha Program" is _not_ that "if everything is equally valuable, it's valueless." His criticism of "equal right" is that "_equal_ right is an unequal right for unequal labour...._This right is thus in its content one of inequality, just like any other right_. A right can by its nature only consist in the application of an equal standard, but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) can only be measured by the same standard if they are looked at from the same aspect, if they are grasped from one _particular_ side, e.g., if in the present case they are regarded _only as workers_ and nothing else is seen in them, everything else is ignored. Further: one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, etc., etc. Thus with the same work performance and hence the same share of the social consumption fund, one will in fact be receiving more than another, one will be richer than another. If all these defects were to be avoided rights would have to be unequal rather than equal." Nietzsche, in contrast to Marx, did not have any problem with what Marx thought of as "defects": one receiving more than another, one being richer than another, etc. Nietzsche wrote: "One speaks of the 'profound injustice' of the social pact: as if the fact that this man is born in favourable circumstances, that in unfavourable ones, were in itself an injustice....Among the most honest of these opponents of society it is asserted: 'we ourselves, with all our bad, sick, criminal qualities, which we admit to, are only the inseparable _consequences_ of a long suppression of the weak by the strong'; they make the ruling class responsible for their characters. And they threaten, they rage, they curse; they become virtuous from indignation -- they do not want to have become bad men, _canaille_, for nothing" (_The Will to Power_). Here, one notices three mistakes made by Nietzsche. The ruling class triumph is _not_ the triumph of the strong over the weak, pace Social Darwinism; the ruling class have triumphed _despite their weakness_ over the strength of the masses, through the hegemony of liberalism with all its fine rights & liberties (the critique that Rousseau already made, before Marx got around to it). The ruling class would _never_ stand a chance if they relied on their collective strength, physical & intellectual, alone. Secondly, Nietzsche's contempt for moralism is itself a form of moralism; he could not escape being a moralist _because he was an individualist_. Thirdly, Nietzsche could not understand bourgeois revolutions, liberalism, the Enlightenment, and so forth as _progress_ (a mixed blessing as they necessarily have been) destroying the bad old feudalism & patriarchy of medieval Europe. He could _only_ see that bourgeois revolutions with their equal rights did _not_ emancipate humanity totally. He could not, however, understand at all _why_ they could not, much less the meanings of _new political possibilities_ opened up by the _socialization of labor_ through capitalism.
While both Nietzsche and Marx criticized equal rights of liberalism, they did so from different standpoints. I have read arguments of people who have sought to reconcile Marx & Nietzsche: Ishay Landa, "Nietzsche, the Chinese Worker's Friend," _New Left Review_ 236 (July/August 1999); Wendy Brown, _States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity_, Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1995; etc. However, in my opinion, they cannot bring Marx in line with Nietzsche without doing injustice to Marx's & Nietzsche's respective thoughts. Not all critics of liberalism think alike, and Nietzsche would have been the first to acknowledge this fact (though he was not interested in Marx or socialism enough to figure out differences among socialist thoughts [e.g., Marxism vs. Utopian Socialism]).
BTW, Nietzsche was trapped in an odd sort of physiological vitalism & reductionism: "The preponderance of an altruistic mode of valuation is the consequence of an instinct that one is ill-constituted. The value judgment here is at bottom: 'I am not worth much': a merely physiological value judgment" (_The Will to Power_). He adored health (and in this he is a twin of Whitman separated at birth, both fathered by Emerson) & despised sickness, despite the fact that he himself suffered from poor health (mentally & physically) throughout his life, finally collapsing on a street in Turin in 1889 (reportedly unable to bear the sight of a horse being flogged) & spending his remaining years as a clinically insane. A tragic irony, no? Nietzsche's glorification of health & contempt for sickness, I suppose, helped to foster the German cult of the body; worse yet, this aspect of Nietzsche's thought must have appealed to the National Socialists who wanted to restore _the health of the body politic_ by purging it of the sick, the insane, the homosexuals, the Jews, the Communists, etc.
Yoshie