>IMHO, Cornel West makes the point Ollman tries to make far more directly
>and clearly, and draws >the right conclusion: Ethics are real, but history
>is the context, so there is always more to be >learned, and humility is
>required.
But does West distinguish Marx's analyses from what is commonly known as "ethics" (ie bourgeois ethics)? Seems to me, Ollman makes the point that Marx isn't laying out some ethics but rather making observations of what is rather than what "should be" and cues his "judgements" from there.
Michael quotes Fromm:
"[T]he very aim of Marx is to liberate man from the pressure of economic needs, so that he can be fully human..."
This I have trouble with. We're always going to be under pressure of economic needs, even under communism I'd imagine (and I think Marx says as much when he talks about the material bases of societies, and he'd probably know his Adam Smith well enough to know Smith's observation about changing wants and needs). This is only a small part of Marx's description of capitalism.
"Marx's aim, socialism, based on his theory of man, is essentially prophetic Messianism...."
This annoys me. If I had a dime for every time some right-winger sounds off on "Marx-the-prophet" . . . . We don't need it on the left.
"Marx's central criticism of capitalism is not the injustice in the distribution of wealth; it is the perversion of labor into forced, alienated, meaningless labor, hence the transformation of man into a 'crippled monstrosity.'"
What about meaningful labour under capitalism?
Michael quotes Marx (sort of):
>"Communism...is humanism." -- Karl Marx
You're leaving out naturalism.
"This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/epm/3rd.htm#s2
In his 1844 Critique of Hegel's Philosophy, Marx wrote: “... consistent naturalism or humanism is distinct from both idealism and materialism, and constitutes at the same time the unifying truth of both. We see also how only naturalism is capable of comprehending the action of world history.”
The key concept here, I suspect, is "fully developed" as in a proper Marxist critique of how something comes about in society rather than an ethical treatment of how something ought to be.
Todd