[lbo-talk] Nietzsche again

[Rakesh Bhandari]

Did Marx consider capitalism not unjust, basing his critique on its 
frustration of human flourishing (understood in Aristotelian terms on 
Nietzschean terms before the letter)? Just within the realm of 
exchange? But unjust from the perspective of production? Did Marx 
think morality and justice  would be transcended in a socialism of 
abundance? This debate raged among  American Marxists thirty years 
ago (see summary in Lukes' Marxism and Morality), but Marx's actual 
argument was completely missed as I suggested in my last post. Marx 
considered the relationship between the classes as classes, as 
collective subjects as indeed unjust, but to take a such perspective, 
that is to posit the existence of a collective subject as itself a 
concrete individual, was to apply standards foreign to the capitalist 
mode of production--we are created as quasi Newtonian atoms by legal 
and political ideology and structure (here Poulantzas had very 
interesting things to say). So capitalism is not unjust as Allen Wood 
did in fact argue. But not because Marx rejects justice as mere 
superstructure but because the subject who is treated unjustly is not 
recognized as existing.   It's a matter of social ontology 
ultimately. The connection between ethics and ontology was totally 
lost on the American Marxists....
To me Nietzsche's great importance may have been in understanding the 
metaphoric roots of our concepts (and he had great metaphors to 
capture the point), but his philosophy of language is far afield for 
this discussion. There is book by Nancy Love comparing Nietzsche and 
Marx. Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche in terms of forces and 
anti dialectics set the stage for post structuralist thought. Someone 
close to me is sympathetic to this in her forthcoming work...
Rakesh