Bertell Ollman on Marx & "Ethics"

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Wed Apr 4 12:05:10 PDT 2001


Bertell Ollman, Alienation. Chapter 4, "Is There a Marxian Ethic?"

***** <p. 41>The question Marx set out to answer in Capital is "Why is labor represented by the value of its product and labor-time by the magnitude of that value?" If Marx had succeeded in writing the work he planned to do on ethics, I believe the question which would have occupied most of his attention is "Why are approval and condemnation represented in our society as value judgements?" Marx's critique of the capitalist economy is essentially an explanation of how existing forms of production, distribution, exchange and consumption arose, and how they are dependent on one another and on the character of human activity and achievement in areas far removed from the economy proper. Any critique of ethics would likewise have concentrated on showing how the distinctive forms of our ethical life, such as treating approval and disapproval as value judgments, are internally related to the whole social fabric out of which they arose. Why is this aspect of reality organized in this manner, into these forms?

Such an approach is already apparent in some of Marx's brief comments on this subject. He says, for example, that in bourgeois ethics speaking and loving lose their characteristic significance and "are interpreted as expressions and manifestations of a third artificially introduced Relation, the Relation of utility." According to Marx, "something is demanded of the individual's power or capacity to do anything which is a foreign product, a Relation determined by social conditions -- and this is the utility Relation." In short, a social relation has become a thing in the form of a principle, and moreover a thing which exerts important influence over people's thinking and action.

Unfortunately, this approach to the problem of ethics has received little attention from Marxist scholars. Instead, they have generally been content to elaborate on the following claims: "(1) moral values change; (2) they change in accordance with society's productive forces and its economic relations; and (3) the dominant moral values at any given time are those of the dominant economic class." As part of this case, concepts such as "good," "right" <p. 42> and "justice" are shown to derive their very meaning from the conditions of life and corresponding interests of the men who use them.

One result of avoiding the larger question of why acts of approval and condemnation in capitalist society appear as value judgments, as deductions from absolute principles, is that Marx's own acts of approval and condemnation defy easy classification. Without wishing to probe to deeply into what is a vast and growing subject, the unorthodox position taken in the last two chapters require some clarification of what have been called "value judgments" in Marx's own works. Is there a Marxian ethic, no doubt different from other ethical systems in what it is based on and in what it advocates but constructed like them and performing the same general function?[ [Large clip]

There is still another objection to ascribing an ethic to Marx on the basis of his commitment to human fulfillment or any of the other goals listed. This as that it is easily mistaken for a description of what Marx actually and daily does, rather than a way of viewing his work. Neither Taylor nor Maxmilien Rubel, who takes a similar position, sees Marx measuring each new question as it comes up alongside an absolute standard and deciding which position to take accordingly. Yet, both men have been misunderstood in this way. <p. 44> This misunderstanding arises because what is called "ethics" is generally taken to involve a conscious choice; to act of the basis of a principle, under any guise, is to decide to do so. An ethic assumes that for each question studied there was a period before the standard was applied when one's attitude was neutral, or at least less certain than afterwards; and also that there is a possibility that one could have chosen otherwise.

Robert Tucker rightly remarks that ethical inquiry (and hence ethics) is only possible on the basis of a suspended commitment. But Marx never suspends his commitments; nor does he ever consciously choose to approve or disapprove; nor does it make any sense to say of the matters he studied that he might have judged otherwise. Tucker's conclusion is that Marx is not an ethical, but a religious thinker with a "vision of the world as an arena of conflict between good and evil forces." However, if expressing approval and serving certain goals are insufficient grounds for ascribing an ethics to Marx, his conception of class struggle coupled with his vision of the future society are hardly enough to burden him with a religion. But if Tucker is unlucky in an alternative he often used, his criticism of attempts to treat Marxism as an ethical theory or as a product of an ethical theory remains valid.

The foregoing remarks may be summarized as follows: all ethical systems, that is all those ways of thinking which are generally accepted as such, have a basis for judgment which lies outside that which is to be judged. This results in a suspended commitment until the "facts" have been gathered and their relation to the standard for judgment clarified. The evaluation, when it comes, is a matter of conscious choice. Our problem then reduces itself to this: do we want to say of Marxism, where none of these things apply, that it either is or contains an ethical theory? One might, but then the limited sense in which claim is meant would have to be made explicit.

II

I prefer to say that Marx did not have been ethical theory. But how then to explain the approval and disapproval which he expresses in his works, the fact that he sided with the proletariat and incited them to overthrow the system? How, too, it may be asked, do <p. 45>I account for his attachment to the cause of humanity and to the ideas of communism and human fulfillment? In asking such questions, however, one must be careful not to assume at the outset the form the answer must take. For this is what happens if one is saying, "Here are two worlds, facts and values; how do you link them?" But to accept that reality is halved in this way is to admit failure from the start. On the contrary, the relational conception which was discussed in the last two chapters required that Marx consider what was known, advocated, condemned or done by everyone, himself included, has internally related. Every facet of the real world, and people's actions and thoughts as elements in it, are mutually dependent on each other for what they are, and must be understood accordingly.

The logical distinction which is said to exist between facts and values is founded on the belief that it is possible to conceive of one without the other. Given a particular fact, the argument runs, one may without contradiction attach any value to it. The fact itself does not entail a specific value. Historically the view that moral beliefs are contingent has tended to go along with the view that they are also arbitrary. On this model, all judgment depends in the last instance on the independent set of values which each individual, for reasons best known to himself, brings to the situation. The ethical premiss is not only a final arbiter but a mysterious one, defying sociological and even psychological analysis. Though some recent defenders of orthodoxy have sought to muddle the distinction between fact and value with talk of its "context," "function," "real reference," "predisposition," etc., the logical line drawn in conception remains. Yet, if one cannot conceive of anything one chooses to call a fact (because it is an open ended relation) without bringing in evaluative elements (and vice versa), the very problem Orthodox thinkers have set out to answer cannot be posed.

Moreover on Marx's views, the real judgments which are made in any situation are a function of that situation and the particular individuals active and it. Thus, the very notion that it is logically permissible to take an attitude toward a given "fact" is itself a judgment inherent in the circumstances out of which it emerges. Rather than being logically independent of what is, any choice -- as well as the idea that one has a choice -- is linked by innumerable threads to the real world, including the life, class interests, and character of <p. 46> the person acting. Judgments can never be severed, neither practically no logically, from their contexts and the number of real alternatives which they offer. In this prospective, what is called the fact -- value distinction appears as a form of self-deception, and that cannot already been done by claiming that it could not have been done are still remains to do.

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Bertell Ollman, _Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in Capiutalist Society_, Cambridge UP, 2d ed., pp. 41-42; 44-46.



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