(I have the whole of this chapter in a file, and will send it to anyone who requests it off list.)
Carrol
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. [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. [CLIP] . <p. 44> This misunderstanding arises because what is called "ethics" is generally taken to involve a conscious choice; to act on 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.
[CLIP]
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 judgement 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 an 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, as 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 [CLIP]
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 in 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 nor logically, from their contexts and the number of real alternatives which they offer. In this perspective, what is called the fact-value distinction appears as a form of self-deception, an attempt to deny what has already been done by claiming that it could not have been done or still remains to do.
[CLIP]
Marx goes so far is to suggest that the fact-value distinction is itself a symptom of man's alienation in modern capitalist society: "It stands for the very nature of estrangement that each sphere applies to men a different and opposite yardstick -- ethics one and political economy another." A chief characteristic of alienation, as we shall learn, is a separation of what does not allow separation without distortion. [CLIP] For any attempt to universalize a moral code, whatever its content, by undercutting the reality of class conflict only succeeds in serving capitalist ends.
[CLIP]
Thus, in asserting that the workers are degraded, Marx is not making an evaluation on the basis of what he sees but describing <p. 49> what the workers are; but what they are is a Relation which includes, among other things, the ties to other classes who are suffering less, the state of poor people before capitalism, and the achievements which everyone will be capable of under communism. Viewed in this perspective, that is conceiving what we would consider external objects of comparison as parts of the workers themselves, the assertion that the workers are degraded is a fair description of their condition.
[CLIP]
It should now be possible to understand Marx's otherwise confusing admission in The Communist Manifesto that "the theoretical conclusions of the Communist are no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered by this or that would-be universal reformer. They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from an historical movement going on under our very eyes." Marx is concerned to explain why capitalist economic, political and <p. 50> ideological forms appear when they do and what general attitudes result from people's interest as members of a particular class. He never, however, goes beyond stating the relations involved when he himself approves or condemns anything, or when he concludes from a situation what must be done. It is no coincidence that other thinkers who possess a philosophy of internal relations -- Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Dietzgen, etc. -- have likewise foresworn the fact- value distinction; for partaking of this philosophical tradition any value judgment would have to be understood as internally related to what they know, and hence as an expression of all that makes it both possible and necessary. In the circumstances, "Marxian ethics" is clearly a misnomer insofar as it refers to Marx as opposed to certain "Marxists" who came afterwards.
As with any misnomer in the human sciences, "Marxists Ethics" is not without its ideological consequences. For to accept that Marxism either is or contains an ethic, to admit that Marx operated from fixed principles (whatever content one gives them), is to put Marx on the same logical plane as his opponents. It is to suggest that Marx, for all his effort at historical explanation and despite his explicit denial, criticized them because he favored different principles. In which case, the capitalist ideologist easily removes the noose Marx has placed around his neck by the simple device of rejecting what passes for the latter's principles. Either he declines the honor of serving the goals of communism or of human fulfillment as understood by Marx because he doesn't consider this state of affairs possible, or he refuses to serve the interest at the proletariat or of humanity because -- for reasons best known to himself -- he prefers other ends, whether of this or the next world. To berate such refusals as irrational only begs the question, as it uses the very ends put aside as guides to what is rational. The crucial fault comes earlier in accepting that Marx's position, and the criticism evolved from it, is based on any principles whatsoever.
It is in this manner, by permitting Marx's opponents to free themselves from the untenable position in which his criticism places them, that attributing an ethic to Marxism inevitably serves the ends of the bourgeoisie. This is the real danger, for example, in espousing "Marxist humanism" (quite apart from its dubious standing as a "scientific concept"), whatever the short-term political benefits in Eastern Europe of this reformulation. [CLIP]
=========
Recently on lbo I had occasion to point out that refraining from shitting on one's neighbor's lawn or doing one's share of the household tasks brought no moral credit. (This was in the context of answering a poster who claimed that personal consumption raised moral issues.) There is also no moral credit for opposing capitalism or for supporting communism. Marxists who make moral judgments of non-marxists, liberals, etc. are betraying marxism.
Carrol