>So this is a debate that is still going on in Marxist
>circles even though the Allen Wood vs. Ziyad Husami
>documents I have on, it in book form, from the 1970s,
>are at least 30 years old? (And Husami seems to "win,"
>if you ask me, in refuting Wood.)
As Wolff makes clear, Ziyad Husami can't explain why Marx does not explicitly and frequently condemn capitalist as positively unjust; he does not square his reading with Marx's critique of utopian socialism; and ( I would add) Husami's strongest evidence comes from Capital I chapter 24 where Marx demonstrates the wage relation to be similar to a tributary one but then says that to describe it that way is to impose foreign standards on capitalism (the individualized nature of the concept of justice does not allow capitalism to be condemned for class injustice) and that indeed in the dyadic wage relation equivalent tends to be exchanged for equivalent, so there is on average no injustice.
If capitalism cannot be condemned as unjust, that opens a window on just what justice is. That is, a window is opened on the theory of historical materialism and the sociology of morals.
So then we can compare Marx's and Nietzsche's sociology of morals. So this debate is more than 30 years old. Which does not mean it's not interesting.
>
>That is depressing.
Perhaps giving up justice as a motivational basis is depressing but that would avoid certain traps, for example conservatism once it is realized that capitalism (no matter the class biased burdens it imposes and the irrationality it achieves) cannot be proven to be unjust as long as people have freedom to contract to get an equivalent for what they alienate--so workers would need rights of exit (contract breaches should not be criminalized and wages shouldn't be with-held to make sure workers can leave unjust contracts (these righs of exit were won in the US in the course of class struggle), and it could be argued that workers need some security via unemployment insurance to make sure offer unjust employment offers can be rejected.
But voila even Bush's capitalism is then roughly just. Are we willing to countenance action which may not only not be just but positively unjust in the name of non moral goods (security, flourishing, well being)? I think Marx was willing to do that after he had deflated, even mocked our high valuation of justice, especially formal justice. Which makes his position quite provocative, as Wood argued. As provocative as bad boy Nietzsche your sympathy for whom I can't square with your justice mongering!
Ethical socialism can also get in the way of understanding just why capitalism could not be just in a substantive sense, though of course that may imply that Marx does hold capitalism up to some substantive theory of justice based on a combination of contribution and need principles.
Yet I don't see Marx doing that, holding up capitalism to standards foreign to itself.
>It's kind of like poring over Old
>Testament documents for crossed t's and dotted i's.
I guess we see everywhere the modes of engagement we know best.
>
>I guess everyone has their hobby.
Wasn't much interested in this topic until the discussion began.
I also wrote this reply to you that you may have missed.
At 10:17 AM -0700 8/1/07, Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
>Obviously disagreeing with me, B the docile body wrote:
>
>>
>>No matter how some individuals might act, it's hard to
>>say that the kind of anti-authoritarian critique
>>anarchism presents will die, esp. as long as there are
>>unjust power relations between men and women, humans
>>and state, people and private power, between folks of
>>different cultures & races, etc.
>
>
>Yet you have not explained what you mean by unjust power relations.
>I can't imagine that you are in favor of what is done in the name of
>criminal or retributive justice. But you want our political practice
>(not punishment standards) guided by an ideal of justice--this
>despite your sympathy for Nietzsche.
>
>And isn't your position surprisingly conservative: you call for
>anti authoritarian resistance only to unjust institutions, i.e.
>institutions which can be shown to be unjust in some objective class
>neutral or transcendent sense.
>
>But aren't you then forcing us to remain within the closed
>totalizing horizon of juridical moral rules and norms?
>
>Or perhaps you have a concept of justice which you acknowledge that
>reason cannot compel the opposing class to accept? A messianic
>concept of justice? Derrida?
>
>After all...the employing class can claim to exchange an equivalent
>for an equivalent with each individual worker.
>
>
>True enough, if a capitalist begins with an outlay of $10,000 which
>returns annually with a surplus value of $2000 but he now consumes
>yearly $2000 out of that $10,000 which he had saved or plundered,
>then after five years his capital will be nothing but capitalized
>surplus value, and through formal exchange the capitalist class will
>be in a position to withhold the fruits of the workers' own labor
>until they agree to perform unpaid labor again.
>
>Yet how will you argue that the capitalists' holdings are the result
>of illegitimate behavior? Nozick will remain a bee in your bonnet.
>
>Yes Marx the great satirist succeeds in what is called today
>immanent deconstructionist terms in sending up bourgeois claims to
>justice but even he can't complete the argument.
>
>The relations of reciprocal exchange will only be formal after
>successive rounds of economic reproduction, but in terms of each
>individual wage bargain justice will on average be realized exactly
>because each party will have the legal right to with-hold from
>exchange until equal value can be secured. That is, capitalism
>ideally does achieve formal justice which in turn guarantees (a kind
>of) material justice. The employer will also scoff at the
>possibility that he has somehow committed an injustice against a
>class though he has not--as Marx himself seems to say--treated
>individual workers unjustly.
>
>Individuals are treated justly in this sense. Especially if the
>employer does not have the right to with-hold wages for an
>inordinate amount of time or to demand criminal penalties for a
>worker's breach of contract. Justice can inform good reformist
>practice (say the abolition of wage withholding and criminal
>penalties); workers now have these rights in the name of justice.
>The demand for justice remains however conservative or presentist.
>
>The oppressed have to be ready to fight for more even if they can't
>wave the banner of social justice.
>
>Talk of social justice is obsolete verbal rubbish, Marx insisted.
>
>But while Benjamin and Derrida agree to a point, they write of a
>spectral messianic justice which is beyond right, vengeance and
>calculation. Its spectrality disallows positive definition, I
>suppose, but even someone as sympathetic as Simon Critchley throws
>up his arms at this point.
>
>Mysticism? Surely Marx would have thought so. And of course that
>does not settle it.
>
>Rakesh
>
>
>