Bertell Ollman on Marx & "Ethics"

[LeoCasey at aol.com]

There is a small but vibrant literature within Marxian scholarship on Marx 
and ethics/morality, of which Bertell Ollman is a part. But this literature 
operates on the highest level of abstraction, focusing on the question of 
whether or not there are ethical or moral presuppositions within Marxian 
analysis, and might properly be called meta-ethical. What does not exist, as 
far as I know [I have not seen the Fisk book which Justin cited] is any 
systemic effort to develop a working philosophy of Marxian ethics, one which 
could be applied to all sorts of practical ethical issues. Wherever one looks 
in ethics -- I am most familiar with medical ethics, but it seems to be the 
case in legal ethics and scholarly research ethics, as far as I can tell -- 
the only two general systems which are applied to practical issues are 
Kantian and utilitarian philosophy.

What this gap has to say about all of the other philosophical alternatives to 
Kantian and utilitarian philosophy, which include but are not limited to 
Hegelian and Marxian philosophy, could be a matter of some debate. It may be 
that they have not been applied to ethics because those who work within them 
have other other interests -- or it may be that as systems of philosophical 
thought, they have major lacunae which keep them from being very useful in 
the field of applied ethics.

Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers
260 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who 
want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and 
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --

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