Maybe you missed the discussion on my defense of a Marxian theory of retribution. (I have a draft of a paper which I will send you on request) All the namby pambies here thought I was being barbaric. But did Chairman Mao say a revolution is not a dinner party? (If Doug can quote Stalin, I can quote Mao!) However, I I don't believe that retribution is based on resentment and envy.
But sure this particular discussion of crude communism is shades of Nietzsche (as Charles noted off line, the correspondences are analogical if they exist; Marx having written first, and Nietzsche knowing nothing about Marx in general of this unpublished passage in particular) -- the passage in question. Marx disapproves of envy and leveling down and motivations for equality. All through his life and not just here, he was quite Nietzschean and anti-egalitarian. He despises morality, bourgeois morality in particular. (Never mind that he was as Victorian as they come in his personal life.) He never basis his critique of capitalism on inequality, but on repression of opportunities for the very Nietzschean ideal of self-realization and the very Nietzschean notion of artistic creation. Marx just thinks that these prospects and opportunities are far more widespread that Nietzsche thinks.
Trotsky gets the spirit of Marx right when at the end of Literature and Revolution, he talks about making a Goethe or a Newton and everyday type, and "beyond those heights, new alps arise." Even the alps talk is Nietzschean. Granted that is Trotsky, but he's got Marx the anti-egalitarian dead on. No leveling down, raising up, competition for glory of creation and extremes of brilliance, optimism that this can be widespread.
In the Critique of the Gotha Program, neither of his distribution principles, according to work or according to need, is remotely egalitarian; in the first case (the work principle), he points that out explicitly; with regard to the needs principle he wants to "discard the narrow horizons of bourgeois right" [justice].
And conversely, Nietzsche has plenty of place for anger, outrage, cruelty, and retribution. Just because he is not a Nazi doesn't mean he's nicey-wicey, as a number of people have pointed out. The idea of der Wille zur Macht (the Will to Power), even if sublimated into creative activity rather than violence and oppression (which would, as I've said, bore a Nietzschean aristocracy to death and leave them displeased with distaste -- animal predation is for the old master class, long defeated), and having for Nietzsche's higher men no place for resentment, doesn't exactly bring up thoughts of sweetness and light.
So, yeah, Marx and Nietzsche are very close in their attitudes to egalitarianism. Both despise it and for similar reasons. Neither has any room for envy and resentment. Both loathe the idea of leveling down. Neither has any use for morality as a basis for motivation 00 morality understood as bourgeois morality for Marx or Christian morality for Nietzsche, quite similar ideas. Both are stuck on perfectionist ideals of self-realization with artistic creation as the central model of desirable human activity.
I hadn't worked this out before, despite having taught classes long ago on Marx and Nietzsche, so thanks for inspiring me to do so, James.
--- james daly <james.irldaly at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Doug wrote:
>
> Marx has an attack on "crude communism in the Paris
> Manuscripts, "the
> consummation of this envy [shades of Nietzsche] and
> of this leveling down
> proceeding from the preconceived minimum." EPR, ME
> Reader at 83 (Tucker, 2d
> ed.)
>
> A very important passage, but not a shade of
> Nietzsche. Nietzsche hated
> ressentiment only because his inferiors would have
> imposed on him idealistic
> democratic and socialist behaviour -- like that of
> "gentle Jesus meek and
> mild", or the Golden Rule. In fact Marx (like Che
> Guevara -- "an army that
> does not hate will not win") had a place for
> vengeance and hatred. He wrote
> in 1850:
>
> Above all, during and immediately after the struggle
> the workers, as far as
> it is at all possible, must oppose bourgeois
> attempts at pacification and
> force the democrats to carry out their terroristic
> phrases. They must work
> to ensure that the immediate revolutionary
> excitement is not suddenly
> suppressed after the victory. On the contrary, it
> must be sustained as long
> as possible. Far from opposing the so-called
> excesses - instances of popular
> vengeance against hated individuals or against
> public buildings with which
> hateful memories are associated - the workers' party
> must not only tolerate
> these actions but must even give them direction.
>
> Of course this was during a period of misery and
> famine, and these were not
> computer jockeys.
>
> The difference between Marx and Nietzsche in this
> regard is that between
> human righteous indignation and animal predation.
> Nietzsche wrote:
>
> And we are the first to admit that anyone who knew
> these "good" ones only as
> enemies would find them evil enemies indeed. For
> these same men who, amongst
> themselves, are so strictly constrained by custom,
> worship, ritual,
> gratitude, and by mutual surveillance and jealousy,
> who are so resourceful
> in consideration, tenderness, loyalty, pride and
> friendship, when once they
> step outside their circle become little better than
> uncaged beasts of prey.
> Once abroad in the wilderness, they revel in the
> freedom from social
> constraint and compensate for their long confinement
> in the quietude of
> their own community. They revert to the innocence of
> wild animals: we can
> imagine them returning from an orgy of murder,
> arson, rape, and torture,
> jubilant and at peace with themselves as though they
> had committed a
> fraternity prank...
>
> Can anyone tell me what we can learn from this? Or
> why there is, as one
> lister put it "nothing objectionable" in it?
>
> J. D.
>
>
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