Yoshie wrote:
Marx said in The German Ideology: "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance." In short, it is the right of masters to create values, and in fact they do.
But Engels in the very good chapter on morality in Socialism Scientific and Utopian said that there was also the morality of the oppressed, of the working-class. It is not the ruling morality, which indeed it claims is immoral; it denies the ruling class the right to rule. It pitches not just might against might -- mastery against mastery. It confronts might with right.
We are up against the ambiguity of is and ought. The bourgeoisie mostly gets to enforce its morality, but there is resistance, claiming other values. Such relativity in practice does not justify relativism in the theoretical sense.
The ruling class rules in fact, and claims the right to, in the terms of the structures which it has set up. But it ought not to have these structures, to be ruling at all, because its rule is domination and oppression, which are wrong. In natural justice everyone is free and equal. We ought to treat others as we would be treated by them.
Proletarian morality recognizes this, and aspires to social structures which recognize it. That is why Marx stressed that the proletariat's aim was not the wielding but the abolition of power.
James Daly
----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages at gmail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2007 2:15 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] Master Morality
: On 6/14/07, james daly <james.irldaly at ntlworld.com> wrote:
: >
: > [LBO-talk] Master Morality (was Nietzsche: free will)
: >
: > Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
: > Mon Jun 11 06:58:10 PDT 2007
: >
: > Yoshie writes:
: >
: > A Nietzschean Marxist might say that, since "it is the peculiar _right
of
: > masters_ to create values" (Beyond Good and Evil), the working class
must
: > first become masters, think and act as masters, learn the art of honor,
in
: > order to create the values they want to create, of which responsibility
may
: > or may not be one, which is the essence of the dictatorship of the
: > proletariat.
: >
: > To my mind a Nietzschean Marxist is a contradiction in terms -- Marx is
: > Aristotelian. I don't think it is the right of masters to create
values --
: > we discover them, as is the case with the Golden Rule. That is why we
talk
: > of natural justice's being violated, or its requiring due procedure.
: >
: > However, Nietzsche may well be right in what he attacks -- for instance
the
: > dogma (to my mind a Protestant, not a Catholic one) that human nature
is
: > bad. But I do not agree with his methods. For instance his denial of
free
: > will (and blame) is tied to the defence of domination on the grounds
that it
: > is as natural and necessary (and as little motivated by evil) as the
eagle's
: > preying on the lamb.
: >
: > I agree with Yoshie that the working class and the oppressed peoples
need
: > honour --Marx said that in its struggle the working class would need its
: > honour more than it would need bread. He often used that concept and
the
: > concept of nobility. But the purpose of the dictatorship of the
proletariat
: > would be to abolish the social structures which require the power of
some
: > human beings over others, which Nietzsche patently did not want.
:
: Marx said in The German Ideology: "The ideas of the ruling class are
: in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling
: material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual
: force. The class which has the means of material production at its
: disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental
: production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those
: who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling
: ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant
: material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as
: ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling
: one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance." In short, it is the
: right of masters to create values, and in fact they do.
:
: A Nietzschean Marxist would be an oxymoron only if one were to adopt
: all ideas of Marx (such as the idea of history as progress) and
: Nietzsche (such as support for biologism and opposition to democracy)
: at the same time, but there is no reason to do so.
:
: On 6/11/07, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
: > In fact, this has always been a political rather than a moral question
for
: > leaders of popular uprisings. In most cases, they have responded to
rather
: > than manufactured mass demands for retribution against the the old
regime -
: > Stuarts, Bourbons, Romanovs, Chinese landlords, Batistianos, etc. This
: > widespread popular sentiment that justice be done has also corresponded
to
: > the cold political calculation at the top that the best way to thwart a
: > counter-revolution is to swiftly deprive it of its symbols and
apparatus.
:
: It is very much possible that it is when the dominant ideology of
: justice changes from retribution to prevention and rehabilitation,
: with retribution becoming a residual ideology stirred up only to
: support the dominant ideology, that prisons become enormous and
: surveillance ubiquitous.
:
: On 6/11/07, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
: > Retribution is _so_ backward looking.
:
: Walter Benjamin said that revolution is backward-looking and social
: democracy is forward-looking. I think he's right.
:
: Not man or men but the struggling, oppressed class itself
: is the depository of historical knowledge. In Marx it appears
: as the last enslaved class, as the avenger that completes
: the task of liberation in the name of generations of the
: downtrodden. This conviction, which had a brief resurgence
: in the Spartacist group,* has always been objectionable to
: Social Democrats. Within three decades they managed
: virtually to erase the name of Blanqui, though it had been
: the rallying sound that had reverberated through the
: preceding century. Social Democracy thought fit to assign
: to the working class the role of the redeemer of future
: generations, in this way cutting the sinews of its greatest
: strength. This training made the working class forget both
: its hatred and its spirit of sacrifice, for both are nourished
: by the image of enslaved ancestors rather than that of
: liberated grandchildren.
:
: That said, torturers cannot be dealt with in the framework of
: retribution. At the end of a rightly criticized essay, Ward Churchill
: wrote: "No matter what its eventual fate, America will have gotten off
: very, very cheap. The full measure of its guilt can never be fully
: balanced or atoned for" ("'Some People Push Back': On the Justice of
: Roosting Chickens,"
: <http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html>). Substitute
: the ruling class of America for "America" here, and it makes sense.
: Some debt is just too big to be ever repaid.
: --
: Yoshie
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