[lbo-talk] Blue Dogs cashing in

Shane Mage shmage at pipeline.com
Thu Aug 6 15:29:01 PDT 2009


On Aug 6, 2009, at 4:20 PM, c b wrote:


> Marx is also an amoralist for the following reason: morality concerns
> judging action that impacts that interests of _other_ people not the
> self-interests of the actor. Marx is trying to get the working class,
> working class individuals, to take action in their own self-interest.
> Marx does not appeal to the working class to revolt against the
> immorality of the ruling class, but to act in its own self-interest ,
> which is an amoral motive.

But the "self-interest" of the proletariat, as Marx conceives it, has nothing to do with "interest" (economic advantage) as conceived by individuals, including individual proletarians, in bourgeois society. The "self-interest" of the proletariat as a class *fur sich* consists of its *abolition as a class*. This is an entirely moral, not amoral, motive because it grounds communism in a concrete teleology--the planetary historical mission of human consciousness as the embodiment of what Hegel called "objective spirit."

Shane Mage


> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos



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