>Bingo, QED. As I've said before, Marx's thought is the moralism that dare
>not speak its name. Marx was 100 percent in the Old Testament tradition of
>a fire-and-brimstone-spouting prophet denouncing a corrupt society for
>refusing to honor the Golden Rule.
Surely liberation theologians read Marx that way. Jose Miranda, Enrique Dussel, Franz Hinkelammert.
Yes some Marxists do often take distance from lay normativity, peoples' everyday moral and ethical critical beliefs about what they are obligated to do and how goods (including good, intrinsically rewarding work) are distributed. Andrew Sayer urges us to take lay normativity seriously.
So I think your challenge to this seeming positivist alienation from everyday morality is an important one, especially in this period of defeat.
Yet the Golden Rule seems realized in the free market, not contravened. Moreover, the Golden Rule compels action on the basis of duty, conscience and obligation. It is a rationalist morality alienated from just what you are insisting on--the the intuitive social social solidarity and commitment to one's own flourishing. Morality is alienation, as Kant's ethics, the formalization of the Golden Rule, makes so clear.
I have only argued that Marx did not condemn capitalism for its injustice; next question is whether he was an amoralist.
> To make that moralistic tradition
>relevant to the the arch-rational Victorian era, he erected a great clanking
>engine of scientific economic principles to frighten the bourgies and
>convince them he was no mere hand-wringing parson begging for a bit more
>charity in the world.
Well as his debate with Weston in Value Price and Profit makes clear, his science is quite comprehensible. But are you saying we don't need an explanation of surplus value, the internal relations among the different forms of wealth, an understanding of the causes of boom and bust, etc? On the basis of what do you defend working class struggle? Simply that workers should enjoy a fair or just wage? What would the unscientific mind say that to be?
>The irony, IMO, is that Marx succeeded mainly in adding a new type of
>alienation to the capitalist world. The very complexity of Marx's thought,
>though impressive as science, serves to reduce the transparency of
>capitalism's abominations.
What a waste of time to discuss how to strip away the halo of justice and fairness from capitalist institutions. The love and rage masses over there in Long Island are so beyond this.
Why not clarify what is wrong with exploitation. The paper by a Justin Schwartz is actually rather excellent.
Nor did it even occur to me that it was undercutting proletarian outrage to talk about what role non moral goods such as security, flourishing and well being--as opposed to natural justice--plays in workers' understanding of their own alienation and struggle.
>You shouldn't have to *study* Marx or anybody to
>grasp that the the existing economic order is contrary to moral law. Yet,
>instead of being told to trust their intuitions and recognize the system as
>a horror, the masses have traditionally been led to believe they must "do
>the reading" and, through arduous study of Marx, understand all the wiring
>diagrams of the system in order to appreciate how awful it is. That's a
>formula for disaster in terms of practical politics.
No one read a word of Capital to talk about above questions. In fact one need not be literate to discuss any of this. It just so happens that some of the most interesting things ever said about these topics are found in Capital and Marx's writings in general. I wouldn't say that of Lenin, Grossman, Mao, Horkheimer, Gandhi, GE Moore, Adorno or Foucault.
And what does your oh so sincere, intuitive sense of justice give you? A vision of a society in which everyone has a place and the distribution of income is fair? Pius XI's Quadragesimo Anno (1931)? Quasi fascist Catholic corporatist doctrine?
Oh that's not what you meant?
How do we know without argument and discussion?
From Riazanov's biography:
Brussels during the Spring of 1846.... a report of one meeting at which a furious quarrel occurred between Marx and Weitling. We learn that Marx, pounding his fist on the table, shouted at Weitling, "Ignorance never helped nor did anybody any good." This is quite conceivable, particularly since Weitling, like Bakunin, was opposed to propagandistic and preparatory work. They maintained that paupers were always ready to revolt, that a revolution, therefore, could be engineered at any moment provided there be resolute leaders on hand.
>Ultimately, I think Marx has done more than anyone else to disenfranchise
>the masses from their visceral outrage and slow the progress of socialism in
>the world.
Morality can be alienated from visceral outrage, as can the struggle not for emancipation but for a just society. And visceral outrage has its problems. Have you studied the career of Georges Sorel?
Rakesh