> Those arguing that condemnation of capitalism requires a moral basis are
> not being serious if they respond only to my arguments rather than
> responding to Ollman's arguments
You clipped a lot of passages out of the Ollman chapter, so any criticisms might be based on a misunderstanding of some larger argument absent from the quoted text. But if I understand correctly, Ollman makes three arguments. (Both arguments are made in a certain characteristic Marxist style in which, rather than saying "Xyz is wrong because....", the author says "Xyz differs markedly from Marx's view, which was...." One is presumably supposed to infer that the author, in saying so, "agrees" with Marx, but perhaps such an inference would be taken as insultingly implying that the author affirms the scandalous fact-value distinction. So it's hard to be certain whom to attribute Ollman's argument to.)
Anyway, the three arguments in the Ollman excerpt - the *only* three arguments (and the third one is not really an argument) - that address the crux of the issue at hand here seem to be:
1. [Pg. 48-49]: When Marx employs moralistic-sounding language such as "drenched in blood" or the "degradation" of workers, it might *seem* as he is making an "evaluation," using his own judgment. But actually, he's just "describing" things. And these "things" are actually Relations. When Marx says the worker is "degraded" under capitalism, he's merely describing the Relation between the worker under capitalism and the worker before capitalism. So there's no moralism involved in it at all. I wish I could say there was more to this argument but I really do think I'm rendering it faithfully. It reminds me of a comedy scene where A says "Well don't get mad about it" and B replies "I'M _NOT_ MAD!!! [pounding fist on table]." Only here it's "Don't get moralistic about it," followed by "I'm NOT being moralistic in describing the capitalists as blood-drenched, malevolent, degrading oppressors. I'm MERELY. DESCRIBING. A RELATION!!!"
2. [pg. 50]: The second argument goes like this: If you say Marx had ethical reasons for opposing capitalism, then
> the capitalist ideologist easily removes the noose Marx has placed
> around his neck by the simple device of rejecting what passes for the
> latter's principles.... It is in this manner, by permitting Marx's
> opponents to free themselves from the untenable position in which his
> criticism places them, that attributing an ethic to Marxism inevitably
> serves the ends of the bourgeoisie.
Obviously, this doesn't even pass for a rational argument. It doesn't even work as an instrumentalist-consequentialist argument, along the lines of e.g., "one ought not to attribute ethics to Marx because doing so serves the ends of the bourgeoisie." That's because Ollman gives no grounds whatsoever for opposing "the ends of the bourgeoisie" and his whole essay is devoted to rejecting one possible set of grounds for such opposition, i.e., ethics. So this leaves one with little to say.
3. [p. 41 and passim]: Moral arguments against capitalism have no basis because
> the distinctive forms of our ethical life, such as treating approval
> and disapproval as value judgments, are internally related to the
> whole social fabric out of which they arose.
This is the argument Carrol has been making. It's not really an argument because it has no close: Yes, and? So what? Wasn't Marx's critique also "internally related to the whole social fabric out of which it arose"? So, we should junk everything Marx said? Mathematics is created by the human mind; if I say 10 plus 10 equals 20, I'm "merely" making a statement about the structure of my and other people's minds. So? We shouldn't do math? What is the upshot of this argument?
SA