Bertell Ollman on Marx & "Ethics"

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Thu Apr 5 08:20:00 PDT 2001


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. ...

There's a note about Marx's ethical ideas at http://www.panix.com/~squigle/vcs/marxethics.html which seems to have been copped from the Encyclopedia Britannica. It seems that Marx (and Engels) whiffed the issue, with a sort half-wave to Hegel; but that may be the writer's prejudice. Otherwise Marx's ethics seem to be emotional and intuitive, like most people's.

Searching on the Net for Hegel's ethics, I get the predictably depressing http://www.connect.net/ron/hegel.html:

...

Ethics and Politics

Hegel's social and political views emerge most clearly in his

discussion of morality (Moralitt) and social ethics (Sittlichkeit).

At the level of morality, right and wrong is a matter of

individual conscience. One must, however, move beyond this to

the level of social ethics, for duty, according to Hegel, is

not essentially the product of individual judgment. Individuals

are complete only in the midst of social relationships; thus,

the only context in which duty can truly exist is a social

one. Hegel considered membership in the state one of the

individual's highest duties. Ideally, the state is the

manifestation of the general will, which is the highest

expression of the ethical spirit. Obedience to this general

will is the act of a free and rational individual. Hegel

emerges as a conservative, but he should not be interpreted

as sanctioning totalitarianism, for he also argued that the

abridgment of freedom by any actual state is morally

unacceptable.

I am unable to read more than a page of Hegel at a time, and then I have to recover for a week or two; can someone tell me if he actually argued stone plain dumb contradictions like "[M]embership in the state one of the individual's highest duties. ... [T]he state is the manifestation of the general will, which is the highest expression of the ethical spirit. Obedience to this general will is the act of a free and rational individual.... [But] the abridgment of freedom by any actual state is morally unacceptable"? This kind of doubletalk seems like charlatanry, as Popper says; and I hate to agree with Popper.

Because I like the idea of deriving ethics from will. We all experience will; nobody experiences the greatest good for the greatest number (as such). This prejudices me a lot in favor of the former; it might be "real". Maybe the will escaped from Hegel's traps and can be found somewhere, breathing quickly, perhaps, but alive and well....



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