>Jim H's is onto something here: there a sort of productivist
>Prometheanism in classical Marxism that is tied to the idea of
>transcending justice by overcoming scarcity.
you mean transcending questions of distributive or commutative justice (and I wish I remembered my Aristotle)? At any rate, Justin, I had the impression that you agreed with the Marx of the Della Volpe school ( Reiman doesn't discuss the ethical theories of Della Volpe and Colletti in the Cambridge Companion piece):
So let me advance the argument as I remember it (though of course I could get the books of my shelf):
since natural inequalities cannot be eliminated among individuals--that is, it's a pious wish that as individuals we are now all equal or will all be equal in a socialist society--a just future society will have to actively disallow goods or priviliges from being unequally distributed as a result of the unfettered expression of natural inequalities. As we will be unequal as individuals, it then has to be the active work of socialist justice that this does not prevent us from being indifferently equal in the quality of our needs.
After all--say in the case of flowering plants--if most of variance is presently accounted for by environmental differences between groups (say some are placed in a valley, the others on the slope), then after the elimination of that environmental difference (say they are all put on the mountaintop), the remaining variance would not now be zero but 100% heritable--i.e. genes would account for the whole of total variability.
I don't mean much by this other than to underline that the questions about distributive justice which arise from natural inequalities among *individuals* may in fact not be so easily transcended. Indeed individual natural inequalities may ironically only come into their own in a socialist society which will then have to ensure that they do not become grounds for social privilige and power over others.
So I would object that classical Marxist holds that distributive justice will simply be transcended by overcoming scarcity, developing the productive forces or installing socialism. My sense is exactly the opposite: distributive justice may become even more important for classical Marxists after the elimination of exploitation and oppression?
Not sure of what I make of this argument, but it strikes me as provocatively politically incorrect for its refusal to theorize about distributive justice on basis of the pious wish that we are all equal as individuals.
Rakesh
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