----- Original Message ----- From: "andie nachgeborenen" <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 2:40 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Nietzsche again
Andie wrote that Marx:
despises morality, bourgeois morality in particular.
***********
What he despises is appeals to the moral good nature of capitalists, and the belief that there could be such a thing as a fair wage.
**********
... he never bases his critique of capitalism on inequality
**************
Not so -- he includes in the grounds of its condemnation the extortion of unrequited labour, making the rich get richer and workers relatively poorer.
The thesis of Marx's immoralism is immensely damaging. In the abstract to an article, I wrote:
Marx's thought about justice is essentialist and dialectical. It has been interpreted in terms of immoralism. It is rather a synthesis of the traditional natural law, based on the Aristotelian concept of nature as the potential for perfection or ideal fulfilment, radically different from the Hobbesian reductionist concept of nature as atomistic and mechanical; of the tradition of dialectics in its German idealist form; and of Feuerbach's humanism [love, the I- thou relationship -- but in production for each other's need -- couldn't be further from Nietzche]
Marx's explicitly realistic idea of science reveals "veiled wage - slavery". Concentration on the market exchange, to the exclusion of the subsequent exploitative use of labour-power, deceives exclusively analytic observers into the belief that there is some justice in capitalism.
Marx characterised the proletariat as the " universal class", capable of bringing about the fulfilment of the human essence in a family-style mode of production, because it is the victim of *total injustice*(Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction). However, he criticised workers for not rising above such bourgeois selfishness as demanding "a fair wage", which is not even a coherent concept. Capitalism is not only a moral injustice, but an ontological injustice, a violation of the worker's humanity. It is coercion into alienation, fetishism and idolatry.
****************
but on repression of opportunities for the very Nietzschean
************
Individualist, elitist?
***************
ideal of self-realization and the very Nietzschean notion of artistic creation. Marx just thinks that these prospects and opportunities are far more widespread than Nietzsche thinks.
***********
Or cares about -- besides, who is going to hew the Elite's wood and draw their water?
J. D.