> Yeah that's the standard line, but do you really believe it? Sure he
> was annoyed by the screeching moralists of his day, as am I by their
> counterparts today, but why object to capitalism if it didn't offend
> you in some moral/ethical sense? What other basis is there for
> revolutionary politics?
Marx's conception of ethics is wholly positive. For him, ideally good relations - relations of mutual recognition - are an essential aspect of the good life, of "flourishing". For this reason, there are no rational grounds for moralistic condemnation of individuals for violating ethical principles, i.e. for acting "unjustly" in the sense of Aristotle. In fact, like punishment, moralistic condemnation hides unmastered sadism.
In his recent The Meaning of Life, Terry Eagleton comes close to what's involved in Marx's idea of "flourishing" (as summarized, for instance, in his Comments on James Mill).
"What we have called love is the way we can reconcile our search for individual fulfilment with the fact that we are social animals. For love means creating for another the space in which he might flourish, at the same time he does this for you. The fulfilment of each becomes the ground for the fulfilment of the other. When we realize our natures in this way, we are at our best. This is partly because to fulfil oneself in ways which allow others to do so as well rules out murder, exploitation, torture, selfishness, and the like. In damaging others, we are in the long run damaging our own fulfilment, which depends on the freedom of others to have a hand in it. And since there can be no true reciprocity except among equals, oppression and inequality are in the long run self-thwarting as well. All this is at odds with the liberal model of society, for which it is enough if my uniquely individual flourishing is protected from interference by another's. The other is not primarily what brings me into being, but a potential threat to my being."
"On the theory I have just proposed, two of the strongest contenders in the meaning-of-life stakes - love and happiness - are not ultimately at odds. If happiness is seen in Aristotelian terms as the free flourishing of our faculties, and if love is the kind of reciprocity which allows this best to happen, there is no final conflict between them. Nor is there a conflict between happiness and morality, given that a just, compassionate treatment of other people is on the grand scale of things one of the conditions for one's own thriving. There is less need, then, to worry about the kind of life which seems to be meaningful in the sense of being creative, dynamic, successful, and fulfilled, yet which consists of torturing or trampling over others. Nor, on this theory, is one forced to choose between a number of different candidates for the good life, as Julian Baggini suggests we should. Baggini proposes a range of possibilities for the meaning of life - happiness, altruism, love, achievement, losing or abnegating the self, pleasure, the greatest good of the species - and suggests in his liberal fashion that there is some truth in them all. A pick-and-mix model is accordingly advanced. In designer style, each of us can take what we want from these various goods and blend them into a life uniquely appropriate for ourselves.
"It is possible, however, to draw a line through Baggini's points and see most of these goods as combinable with each other. Take, as an image of the good life, a jazz group. A jazz group which is improvising obviously differs from a symphony orchestra, since to a large extent each member is free to express herself as she likes. But she does so with a receptive sensitivity to the self-expressive performances of the other musicians. The complex harmony they fashion comes not from playing from a collective score, but from the free musical expression of each member acting as the basis for the free expression of the others. As each player grows more musically eloquent, the others draw inspiration from this and are spurred to greater heights. There is no conflict here between freedom and the 'good of the whole', yet the image is the reverse of totalitarian. Though each performer contributes to the greater good of the whole', she does so not by some grim lipped self-sacrifice but simply by expressing herself. There is self-realization, but only through a loss of self in the music as a whole. There is achievement, but it is not a question of self-aggrandizing success. Instead, the achievement - the music itself - acts as a medium of relationship among the performers. There is pleasure to be reaped from this artistry, and - since there is a free fulfilment or realization of powers - there is also happiness in the sense of flourishing. Because the flourishing is reciprocal, we can even speak, remotely and analogically, of a kind of love. One could do worse, than propose such a situation as the meaning of life - both in the sense that it is what makes life meaningful, and - more controversially - in the sense that when we act in this way we realize our natures at their finest.
"Is jazz then, the meaning of life? Not exactly. The goal would be to construct this kind of community on a wider scale, which is a problem of politics. It is, to be sure, a utopian aspiration, but it is none the worse for that. The point of such aspirations is to indicate a direction, however lamentably we are bound to fall short of the goal. What we need is a form of life which is completely pointless, just as the jazz performance is pointless. Rather than serve some utilitarian purpose or earnest metaphysical end, it is a delight in itself. It needs no justification beyond its own existence. In this sense, the meaning of life is interestingly close to meaninglessness." (Eagleton, The Meaning of Life, pp. 168-74)