Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Luke Weiger wrote:
>
> >Marxism, like any other substantive set of political positions, relies in
> >large part on value judgments for whatever force it may be said to possess.
> >Slightly more succinctly: the Marxist eschewal of "rigorous moral positions"
> >is ultimately self-defeating.
>
> Or a self-delusion. I know that moral/ethical positions are
> unscientific, and Marx wanted heroically to be scientific, but really
> now - why care about exploitation, immiseration, polarization,
> alienation and the rest if you don't have some moral/ethical notion
> of what the good life should be like? Why not drop the pretense? It
> might have made sense at one time, but now it looks false and silly.
[Preliminary: I doubt that Marx ever wanted to be "heroically scientific." I would not myself even know what that would mean. I presume that Marx (and most people) would prefer to be as systematic _as possible_ in their thinking about the world. If Marxism is not based on moral principles, it has nothing to do with Marx's or anyone else's desire to be scientific.]
Are "moral positions" being confused with attitudes of approval or condemnation? And is it assumed (and if so on what basis) that any act of approval or disapproval is (tautologically) a moral judgment?
In fact, are moral judgments _possible_ for anyone? Has anyone ever made a moral judgment (except as a rationalization after the fact)? Ollman thinks not.
***
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 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.
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 the alternative he offers, 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 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.
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The argument is not that moral thinking is not scientific; the argument is that moral thinking cannot, willy-nilly, be practiced, except through self-deception.
That may well cause either explanatory or agitational problems. So do lots of other things. One can't will those problems away by making wild guesses about the motives of those who try to describe those problems.
Carrol