> Marx critiques capital from the standpoint of human development. Capital, he argues, is developed to such a point that it can only carry on as a barrier to human development – it is historically redundant.
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> What Marx rejects is not moral judgement as such, but that ahistorical invocation of moral absolutes which are, he argues, only the superficial reflections of the exchange process.
He elaborates development as the development of "powers." The "powers" in question are those that, when fully developed, are required for the actualization of an end that is essentially ethical.
This end is elaborated, among other places, in Marx's account of how we would produce if "we had carried out production as human beings." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james-mill/
The elaboration sublates Aristotle's ethics. The end is human "flourishing," eudaimonia. This is the perfect practice of "virtue" in Aristotle's sense, a sense sublated in Marx's idea of a human "power." "Virtues," "powers," include the practice of complete virtue in relations with others. When reciprocated and mutually recognised, this practice is true friendship/love (philia), again in Aristotle's sense. This is the ethical content of human flourishing.
Greed, the dominant capitalist motive, involves a mistaken view of this end. Its object, money, is "men's estranged, alienating and self-disposing species-nature."
"The distorting and confounding of all human and natural qualities, the fraternisation of impossibilities – the divine power of money – lies in its character as men’s estranged, alienating and self-disposing species-nature. Money is the alienated ability of mankind.
"That which I am unable to do as a man, and of which therefore all my individual essential powers are incapable, I am able to do by means of money. Money thus turns each of these powers into something which in itself it is not – turns it, that is, into its contrary." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/power.htm
It's for this reason that "the capitalist is just as enslaved by the relationships of capitalism as is his opposite pole, the worker, albeit in a quite different manner."
"The self-valorization of capital - the creation of surplus-value - is therefore the determining, dominating and overriding purpose of the capitalist; it is the absolute motive and content of his activity. And in fact it is no more than the rationalized motive and aim of the hoarder - a highly impoverished and abstract content which makes it plain that the capitalist is just as enslaved by the relationships of capitalism as is his opposite pole, the worker, albeit in a quite different manner." ("Results of the Immediate Process of Production" 1863-1866 Marx, Appendix to Capital, vol. I, Penguin ed., pp. 989-90)
With the full development of human "powers," the actualization of "true human being," this estrangement is overcome.
"Assume man to be man and his relationship to the world to be a human one: then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc. If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you want to exercise influence over other people, you must be a person with a stimulating and encouraging effect on other people. Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return – that is, if your loving as loving does not produce reciprocal love; if through a living expression of yourself as a loving person you do not make yourself a beloved one,then your love is impotent – a misfortune."
The greed that expresses capitalist estrangement is a "passion" in Hegel's sense, a motive that works to develop the powers - the "virtues" - required for its transcendence and the actualization of human flourishing.
It's for this reason that "capital" is, according to Marx, a "historical necessity," "an essential relation for the development of the social productive forces." That's one reason moralizing about it is of no use.
"Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a single instant deceive itself over the birth-throes of wealth. [24] But what avails lamentation in the face of historical necessity? If to classical economy, the proletarian is but a machine for the production of surplus-value; on the other hand, the capitalist is in its eyes only a machine for the conversion of this surplus-value into additional capital." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm
Ted