Andie: Maybe you missed the discussion on my defense of a Marxian theory of retribution. (I have a draft of a paper which I will send you on request) All the namby pambies here thought I was being barbaric. But did Chairman Mao say a revolution is not a dinner party? (If Doug can quote Stalin, I can quote Mao!) However, I I don't believe that retribution is based on resentment and envy. ------------------------------------ Jim F.: Well I suppose you could build such a theory on the basis of Marx's article on capital punishment, where he discussed various theories of punishment. He started off with a discussion of utilitarian or consequentialist rationales for punishment, which justified punishment in terms of deterrence, and he rejected those theories on essentially Kantian grounds. Then he went on to discuss retributivist theories of punishment as presented by Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel. He gave those theories a kind of endorsement but he, at the same time, rejected their postulate of a freely willing subject, pointing out that individuals are necessarily social products. So, as I read Marx, he wasn't really left with much of a basis for the justification of punishment, which may have been his point, anyway. ----------------------------------------- Andie: But sure this particular discussion of crude communism is shades of Nietzsche (as Charles noted off line, the correspondences are analogical if they exist; Marx having written first, and Nietzsche knowing nothing about Marx in general of this unpublished passage in particular) -- the passage in question. Marx disapproves of envy and leveling down and motivations for equality. All through his life and not just here, he was quite Nietzschean and anti-egalitarian. He despises morality, bourgeois morality in particular. (Never mind that he was as Victorian as they come in his personal life.) He never basis his critique of capitalism on inequality, but on repression of opportunities for the very Nietzschean ideal of self-realization and the very Nietzschean notion of artistic creation. Marx just thinks that these prospects and opportunities are far more widespread that Nietzsche thinks. Jim F. Marx commentators have always seemed at something of a loss in regards as how to interpret Marx's stated antimoralism. Was he rejecting morality in general, or really just rejecting bourgeois morality? Many commentators have accused Marx of inconsistency, arguing that despite his stated rejection of morality, he in fact based his critique of capitalism on a tacit moral philosophy, which he did not articulate. Some commentators like Richard W. Miller, have argued that Marx's antimoralism was more of a rejection of what analytic moral philosophers would call the moral point of view. Some of the Bolshevik Nietzscheans like Lunacharsky and friends, did attempt to link Marx's antimoralism with Nietzsche's. --------------------------------------- Andie: Trotsky gets the spirit of Marx right when at the end of Literature and Revolution, he talks about making a Goethe or a Newton and everyday type, and "beyond those heights, new alps arise." Even the alps talk is Nietzschean. Granted that is Trotsky, but he's got Marx the anti-egalitarian dead on. No leveling down, raising up, competition for glory of creation and extremes of brilliance, optimism that this can be widespread. ------------------------------ Jim F. Trotsky was a trenchant critic of Nietzche, but nevertheless he seems to have absorbed more than a little of his spirit from the Bolshevik Nietzscheans that I referred to above. ------------------------------------ Andie: In the Critique of the Gotha Program, neither of his distribution principles, according to work or according to need, is remotely egalitarian; in the first case (the work principle), he points that out explicitly; with regard to the needs principle he wants to "discard the narrow horizons of bourgeois right" [justice]. ------------------------------ Jim F. Well, Marx was not an absolute egalitarian. In the distribution according to work principle, he left room for inequalities in income based on differences in skill, experience, intensity of work etc. The distribution according to need principle was inegalitarian only to the extent that people's needs might vary. Either principle would give us a far more egalitarian society than what currently exists or has ever existed under capitalism or any other class society. ----------------------------------------- Andie: And conversely, Nietzsche has plenty of place for anger, outrage, cruelty, and retribution. -------------------------------- Jim F. But Nietzsche did rather explicitly reject retributivist theories of punishment, and for reasons similar to my own, which include the rejection of a belief in contra-causal (libertarian) free will. It seems to me that once you reject free will as Nietzsche did, it become much harder to make out a coherent case for retributivism. That doesn't mean that Nietzsche didn't think that things like anger, violence, and the desire for vengeance weren't parts of human nature. He clearly did and thought society had to provide room for the expression of these aspects of human nature, which is different from advancing a philosophical rationale for retributivism in the manner of Rousseau or Kant. ------------------------------- andie: Just because he is not a Nazi doesn't mean he's nicey-wicey, as a number of people have pointed out. The idea of der Wille zur Macht (the Will to Power), even if sublimated into creative activity rather than violence and oppression (which would, as I've said, bore a Nietzschean aristocracy to death and leave them displeased with distaste -- animal predation is for the old master class, long defeated), and having for Nietzsche's higher men no place for resentment, doesn't exactly bring up thoughts of sweetness and light. So, yeah, Marx and Nietzsche are very close in their attitudes to egalitarianism. Both despise it and for similar reasons. ------------------------ Jim F Well yes and no. Nietzsche clearly thought that only a select few could ever hope to become "higher men," whereas Marx believed that the many could and would succeed at self-realization in a communist society. The Bolshevik Nietzscheans that I have referred to previously, specifically embraced the ideal of the overman, but thought that this ideal was realizable by the many under communism. Nietzche in contrast, was an unabashed, unapologetic elitist, who thought that such an ideal could only be realized by the select few. That's a rather significant difference in my opinion. ------------------------------------ Andie: Neither has any room for envy and resentment. Both loathe the idea of leveling down. Neither has any use for morality as a basis for motivation 00 morality understood as bourgeois morality for Marx or Christian morality for Nietzsche, quite similar ideas. Both are stuck on perfectionist ideals of self-realization with artistic creation as the central model of desirable human activity. I hadn't worked this out before, despite having taught classes long ago on Marx and Nietzsche, so thanks for inspiring me to do so, James.