[lbo-talk] Missing the Marx

[Todd Archer]

Michael D. said:

>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