>Jon Johanning wrote:
>>Oh, I certainly would never blame Moore (as for Hollywood, that's hardly
>>a target with enough stature to bother roughing up). And I fully agree
>>with those who argue that the Left needs to be more vigorous in stating
>>its moral positions. One of the big mistakes of left radicals for a long
>>time, IMHO, has been the quasi-Marxist (faux-Marxist) idea that political
>>agitation has to eschew all moral language, and just talk about "material
>>issues." Every progressive movement that has accomplished anything in
>>U.S. history has been based on moral convictions, from anti-slavery
>>agitation to early 20th century progressivism and populism, the union
>>movement, the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, etc., etc.
>>[end]
>Furthermore, an economic self-interest pitch can conform to right-wing
>caricatures of the left as a pack of crass materialists. Chip's slide
>show reminded me of this pitfall.
>
>I don't know how to do this. However, I am convinced that we have to do
>better at getting inside their heads.
>
>-- Shane
A year or two ago I got this really great chapter from a work of Bertell Olman from Carrol:
[Apologies for length, Doug, but I couldn't think of a way to precis it, and I'm in a bit of a rush.]
Bertell Ollman, Alienation. Chapter 4, "Is There a Marxian Ethic?"
He argues that Marx refuses to play the "morality game" by the same rules as his opponents:
" . . . 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. Marx would not have denied that the statements "this is what exists" and "what exists is good" or "this is what should exist," mark some distinction, but he would not have called it one of fact and value. If we define "fact" as a statement of something known to have happened or knowable, and "value" as that property in anything for which we esteem or condemn it, then he would maintain that in knowing something, certainly in knowing it well, we already either esteem or condemn it. As man is a creature of needs and purposes, however much they may vary for different people, it could not be otherwise. Because everything we know (whether in its immediacy or in some degree of extension through conditions and results) bears some relation to our needs and purposes, there is nothing we know toward which we do not have attitudes, either for, against or indifferent. Likewise, our "values" are all attached to what we take to be the "facts," and could not be what they are apart from them. It is not simply that the "facts" affect our "values," and our "values" affect what we take to be the "facts" -- both respectable commonsense positions -- but that, in any case, each includes the other and is part of what is meant by the other's concept. In the circumstances, to try to split their union into logically distinct halves is to distort their real character. Followers of Marx have always known that what people approve or condemn can only be understood through a deep-going social analysis, particularly of their needs and interest as members of a class. What emerges from the foregoing is that the forms in which approval and condemnation appear -- like setting up absolute principles or values -- must be understood through the same kind of analysis."
A broad example of the latter:
"The attempt to establish values which apply equally to everyone results, to a large extent, from the need to diffuse growing class conflict arising from incompatible interests in a class-ridden society. To apply values equally is <p. 47> to abstract from the unequal conditions in which people live and the incompatible interests that result. The main effort of capitalist ideology has always been directed to dismissing or playing down this incompatibility. The abstractions with which such ideology abounds are so many attempts to sever the class-affected "facts" from the judgements and actions that ordinarily follow upon their comprehension. 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."
. . . .
"For any attempt to universalize a moral code, whatever its content, by undercutting the reality of class conflict only succeeds in serving capitalist ends. As far as Marx's own work is concerned, those remarks which strike us as being an evaluative nature are internally related facets of all he says and knows, which in turn are internally tied to his life and all surrounding circumstances -- not as an exception, but because everything in the world is related in this way. However, being conscious of this, Marx integrated his remarks of approval and disapproval more closely into his system than have most other thinkers, making any surgical division into facts and values so much more destructive of his meaning. For example, Marx claims that when a Communist stands in front of "a crowd of scrofulous, overworked and consumptive starvelings," he sees "the necessity, <p. 48> and at the same time the condition, of the transformation both of industry and of the social structure." Marx is asserting that for those who share his outlook these "facts" contain their own condemnation and a call to do something about them. If an individual chooses otherwise, it is not because he had made a contrary moral judgment, but because the particular relations in which he stands (the class to which he belongs, his personal history, etc.) have led him to a different appreciation of the facts. Such internal relations between what others take to be factual and evaluative elements are also apparent in an early comment Marx makes on the import of religious criticism: "The criticism of religion ends," he says, "with the doctrine that man is the supreme being for man. It ends, therefore, with the categorical imperative to overthrow all those conditions in which man is an abased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being." Marx's analysis of what religion is does not prepare us for an evaluation but includes it. And he believes that to fully accept one is necessarily to accept the other -- because the latter, the judgment, is internally related to the whole set of information which makes it both possible and necessary. Though it is not always so obvious, all Marx's descriptions may be treated in a similar manner. There are no "morally neutral" statements in Marxism (which is no more than he would claim for the statements of any other thinker). What then is the best way to characterize what are taken to be evaluative elements in Marx's works? On the basis of the preceding analysis, I would say they are straightforward descriptions of the factor or factors before him which he makes on the basis of its function in the problem under consideration, set in the larger context of what he knows to be true of the world. Such knowledge, as indicated earlier, includes where things are tending as well as where they have come from."
. . . .
"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."
. . . .
"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."