http://www.grundrisse.net/grundrisse22/tellingTheTruthAboutClass.htm
One of the central questions of social theory has been the relationship between class and knowledge, and this has also been a crucial question in the history of socialism. Differences between people - acting and knowing subjects - may in?uence our view of the possibility of valid cognition. If there are irreconcilable discrepancies between people's positions, going perhaps as far as incommensurability, then unified and rational knowledge resulting from a reasoned dialogue among persons is patently impossible. The Humean notion of 'passions', the Nietzschean notions of 'resentment' and 'genealogy', allude to the possible in?uence of such an incommensurability upon our ability to discover truth.
Class may be regarded as a problem either in epistemology or in the philosophy of history, but I think that this separation is unwarranted, since if we separate epistemology and philosophy of history (which is parallel to other such separations characteristic of bourgeois society itself) we cannot possibly avoid the rigidly-posed conundrum known as relativism. In speaking about class (and truth, and class and truth) we are the heirs of two socialist intellectual traditions, profoundly at variance with one another, although often intertwined politically and emotionally. I hope to show that, up to a point, such fusion and confusion is inevitable.
All versions of socialist endeavour can and should be classified into two principal kinds, one inaugurated by Rousseau, the other by Marx. The two have opposite visions of the social subject in need of liberation, and these visions have determined everything from rarefied epistemological positions concerning language and consciousness to social and political attitudes concerning wealth, culture, equality, sexuality and much else. It must be said at the outset that many, perhaps most socialists who have sincerely believed they were Marxists, have in fact been Rousseauists. Freud has eloquently described resistances to psychoanalysis; intuitive resistance to Marxism is no less widespread, even among socialists. It is emotionally and intellectually difficult to be a Marxist since it goes against the grain of moral indignation which is, of course, the main reason people become socialists.
[End Selection from Tamás]
Carrol
P.S. This clearly leaves the way open to the use of "ethical" propositions for agitational purposes, but denies that ethics can enter into a Marxian _analysis_ of capitalism. Masses of workers and activists may be as indignant as they please, & formulate that I ndignation in any way they please No problem. But such indignation is (for both Marxists and non-Marxists) a serious barrier to understanding the dynamics of capitalist social relations. Tht is because the only ethics possible within a capitalist society are bourgeois ethics. The only way 'out of' bourgeois ethics is to abstract from ethical indignation. (And this leaves room for ethics grounded not in personal indignation but in Aristotelian-Thomist thought.) Personal moral principles remain groundless, and as such cannot be the grounds for anything.