Ziyad Husami's "Marx on Distributive Justice" was one of the first essays I read when I wanted to seriously study Marx, and in it is a very good section titled "The Marxian Sociology of Morals and Marxian Moral Theory." Husami writes:
"Marx elsewhere uses identical and far more explicit language when he characterizes exploitation as 'robbery,' 'usurpation,' 'embezzlement,' 'plunder,' 'booty,' 'theft,' 'snatching,' and 'swindling.' For instance, in _Grundrisse_, he speaks of 'the theft [Diebstahl] of alien labor time [that is, of surplus value or surplus labor] on whih present wealth is based.'"
No moral system evinced here, huh?
In any event, I thought this "Was Marx a moralist?" debate was a 1970s thing, like ABBA, and had been solved -- in Husami's favor, and not Carrol's. Carrol's is a position that lost out definitely.
But whatever - hard to argue with Coxshaft about anything. I like it when Carrol posts poems, though.
-B.
Carrol Cox wrote:
"There is no contradiction, nor does this offer any support for seeing Marx as offering ethical judgments (i.e., judgments of human conduct from a basis prior to practice."