From Aristotle, as I pointed out, we obtain the idea of "justice" as
> that kind of state of character
> which makes people disposed to do what is just and makes them act
> justly and wish for what is just
It is the "kind of state of character" possessed of the fully developed "virtue" required for the "exercise of complete virtue" in relations with others.
In Marx, this "kind of state of character" defines the "true individuality," the fully "free individuality," of the "universally developed individual."
As he claims in the passages from "Private Property and Communism" I quoted to demonstrate that his social ontology is "individualist," the fully "good" ends in themselves activities that define the good life in "the true realm of freedom" are "social"; they are the activities constitutive of ideal social relations of mutual recognition. This is so even where they do not take "the direct form of communal manifestations of life carried out in association with others."
Marx there uses "scientific activity" to illustrate the meaning of this last claim. In the Grundrisse, he points to an artistic activity, "composing," to illustrate the same kind of fully free activity, an activity which he claims, in opposition to Fourier, requires what Aristotle means by "complete virtue." Since. like all end in itself activity as conceived by Marx, fully free artistic activity is "social" activity, the "complete virtue" required for fully free "composing" includes "justice."
So, as Marx elaborates them, fully good ends in themselves activities, those that constitute "flourishing" (Aristotle's "eudaimonia"), require "justice" in the above sense, i.e. they require the "kind of state of character" Marx elaborates as the "universally developed individual." For example, justice in this sense is required for fully free improvisation in the jazz group Eagleton uses to illustrate what he claims is the truth about "the meaning of life," a truth that paradoxically makes fully good activities "meaningless" in the sense of ends in themselves, non- instrumental.
"Justice" in this sense is missing from the "kind of state of character" Marx claims constitutes capitalist individuality. The latter is characterized by what Aristotle defines as "injustice," i.e. it is "that state which makes them act unjustly and wish for what is unjust." So the capitalist's relation to the wage-labourer is "unjust" in this sense.
One text, among many, where Marx characterizes the "kind of state of character" of the capitalist in a way consistent with this interpretive claim is chap. 24 of Capital. As he does consistently throughout his writing, he there makes "avarice" the dominant capitalist "passion." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm>
Thus, in their relations with wage-labourers, capitalists "desire what is unjust," they " “desire to get rich,” a desire that includes as an “element” the unjust “love of power” (in a footnote, Marx quotes Luther in support of this claim). At one point, Marx cites Balzac, “who so thoroughly studied every shade of avarice,” as insightful about the relation of the more infantile form of “avarice” as “hoarding” that dominates at the "historical dawn of capitalist production" to the more adult form that dominates capitalism in its maturity. He also quotes Goethe as insightful about this mature form (Goethe having, with Shakespeare, been quoted in the EPM manuscript, “The Power of Money,” as also insightful about the mistaken idea of "virtue," of "power," embodied in avarice).
Though "unjust" in this sense, the capitalist/wage-labourer relation isn't "unjust" in a juridical or moralistic sense.
It doesn't violate the "laws of property that are based on commodity production."
Moralistic judgment is invalid because the "injustice" of the capitalist issues from a lack of the "power" required for fully rational self-determination, a lack for which the capitalist is not "responsible" because it itself issues from the incompatibility of the internal social relations that define capitalism with those required for the development of "complete virtue."
As is claimed in The Holy Family, "the propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement." In the case of the proletariat, however, self-estrangement is compatible with, and, indeed, facilitates, the development of the "virtue" required to transform capitalist relations into those from which all barriers to the development of "complete virtue" have been removed. <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch04.htm>
I take it this point about the inappropriateness of moralistic judgments, not just in this case but in general, is what is meant by the following interpretive claim Kaufman makes about Nietzsche in the passage I quoted earlier:
"While Nietzsche's repudiation of hedonism is emphatic, he himself may be called a proponent of the Good Life. His earlier philosophy had put him into the inconsistent position of exhorting man that he 'ought' to live such a life. His conception of the will to power enables him now to say that the man who lives such a life is the powerful man, while the man who does not is weak - and if only he had the strength, he would live the Good Life, for it is what he, too, desires ultimately."
Nietzsche claims the psychological source of the inappropriate moralistic "ought" is unmastered instinctive sadism.
Ted