JBrown
I don't think it's a contradiction, if you look at what he's attacking. He opposes not just the conventional moralists of capitalism but its morality-based critics. For example, in his argument against utopian socialists such as Owen and Fourier: "Only from the standpoint of being the most suffering class does the proletariat exist for them." These socialists believed that by the
force of their moral ideas everyone will get on board without the necessity of struggle, sound familiar? This kind of moralism is counterposed to analyzing
power and class interest. Morality as a basis for action is insufficient, possibly class-blinkered, sometimes covering for an anti-working class agenda (or an aristocratic one). But this doesn't mean you need go at change amorally.
Jenny Brown
^^^^^^ CB: One thing strikes me in what you say: treating the working class as victims only. I learned from Marxists that a difference between liberals and communists is that liberals only see the working class as victims, whereas Marxists see the working class as victims AND as the potentially most powerful group for change. Perhaps this is what Marx meant when , as a youth, he wrote that famous letter to his father claiming to have found a way to unite the "is and the ought."