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Originally published in 1990.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691637259 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/19/2016 |
| Series: | Studies in Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy , #1064 |
| Pages: | 542 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice
By R. G. Peffer
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1990 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-07789-5
CHAPTER 1
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARX'S MORAL PERSPECTIVE
It is sometimes said that Marxism has no moral component or that Marx's works — at least, his later works — have no moral component. As will be seen in what follows, these claims are clearly and demonstrably false. Although Marx never developed the philosophical basis for a full-fledged moral theory, he did exhibit a moral perspective, which remained relatively constant — although somewhat eclectic — throughout his writings. The objective of this chapter is to demonstrate his moral views. The approach taken is basically historical: the development of Marx's moral views, as well as the most important components of his empirical views, is traced from his earliest journalistic writings in his period of Radical Liberalism (1841–1843) through his periods of Revolutionary Humanism (1843) and Original Marxism (1844–1845) to the works of the Transitional Period (1845–1847), his works of maturation (1847-1858), and — finally — his fully mature works (1858-1883). (For my classification of Marx's works by period, see the Appendix.)
Besides laying the groundwork for refuting the claim that Marx's worldview is devoid of normative value judgments in general or of moral judgments (and principles) in particular — a refutation developed in detail in chapter 4 — the present chapter, together with chapters 2 and 3, takes up the issue of the nature of Marx's implicit moral views. Although these views have been given a great many divergent interpretations, I argue for the following theses. First, although Marx's concepts of alienation and exploitation are central to his moral perspective, they can be analyzed in terms of other, more basic moral values and principles. Second, the more basic values involved are freedom (as self-determination), human community, and self-realization. Third, Marx implicitly espouses a principle requiring an egalitarian (or relatively egalitarian) distribution of these goods, especially the good of freedom. (Whether this principle is identical to the principles he proposes for the first and second stages of communism — namely, "from each according to their contribution" and "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" — will be discussed in later chapters.) Fourth, if these values and principles can be analyzed in terms of some even more fundamental notion, it is not the notion of utility nor the satisfaction of preferences or desires, but that of human dignity and the good of self-respect — notions with a distinctly "deontological" ring.
Marx's First Period: Radical Liberalism (1841–1843)
In his initial, radical liberal period — from the time he received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Jena in Berlin (April 1841) until he resigned as editor of the Kheinische Zeitung (March 1843) — Marx found no problem in speaking of moral or ethical requirements or making explicit moral judgments. In this period we also find his only attempts at characterizing morality from an internal point of view as a realm of human discourse or theory. In his later, social-scientific works, he would characterize morality from an external point of view as a cultural or social phenomenon.
In one of his earliest articles, "Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instructions," which was originally written in 1842 for Arnold Ruge's Deutsche-Französische Jahrbücher but published by Ruge in Anekdota zur neuesten deutschen Philosophie und Publicistik (1843) in Switzerland when the Jahrbücher was shut down by the Prussian censors, Marx condemns censorship on the grounds that "it violates the most universal of all religions: the sacredness and inviolability of subjective conviction." The censorship instruction, Marx argues, puts forward no "objective norms" but instead relies on the judgment of censors as to whether or not "the tendency" of writings is "well-intentioned" or "harmful," and it must therefore be classified as "tendentious." "Such laws," he writes, "are based on a lack of character and on an unethical and materialistic view of the state. They are indiscreet outcries of bad conscience" (emphasis added).
In a paragraph that clearly reveals his Kantian predilections in his conception of morality at this time, Marx attacks those who fail to separate religion from morality:
The specifically Christian legislator cannot recognize morality as an independent sphere sanctified in itself, for he derives the inner universal essence of morality from religion. Independent morality offends the basic principles of religion, and particular concepts of religion are opposed to morality. Morality recognizes only its own universal and rational religion, and religion only its own particular positive morality. Following the Instruction, censorship will have to repudiate such intellectual heroes of morality as Kant, Fichte, Spinoza for being irreligious and threatening the discipline, morals, and outward loyalty. All of these moralists proceed from a principled opposition between morality and religion, because morality they claim, is based on the autonomy, and religion on the heteronomy of the human spirit.
The notion that morality can and must be an independent, autonomous realm that is not subordinate to religion also comes out at the end of his article "On a Proposed Divorce Law," one of Marx's contributions to Rheinische Zeitung and perhaps the essay of this period most replete with moral language and moral claims. There he contraposes "conscious subordination to ethico-natural forces" to "unconscious obedience to a supra-ethical and supernatural authority." Although Marx does not — here or elsewhere — explain what he means by "ethico-natural forces," it is clear that he is primarily distinguishing the sort of morality that would be based on such considerations from one based on religious commitments or the commands of God. One might be tempted to interpret his phrase as indicating that Marx has — at this point in his development, at any rate — a naturalistic theory of the good or that his ethical views take our naturalistic inclinations as the basis for all moral judgments, but this interpretation would be wrong. The most important element in the phrase concerning obedience or duty is the part reading "conscious subordination," which indicates that the choice of moral principles must be made on the basis of one's own rational reflection and must not be subordinated to any outer authority. Such a belief coincides with other remarks he makes around this time — especially those employing the terms autonomy and heteronomy — indicating his deep concern with the Kantian notion of the individual as an autonomous chooser of ends. And to whatever extent he accepted Kant's characterization of morality — which appears to be quite considerable — he would, of course, have distanced himself from the view that we should take our naturalistic inclinations as a basis for moral judgments. For the Kantian, to do so is a failure in moral reasoning of the first order: it is to let morality (practical reason) be ruled by the heteronomy rather than the autonomy of the human will. (We will do well to keep this in mind when, in chapter 4, we consider Skillen's and Collier's "naturalistic inclination" interpretation of Marx's normative perspective.)
Further evidence can be found for the fact that Marx makes substantive moral judgments in this period and that his views of morality, as well as these substantive moral views, are firmly ensconced in the deontological and rational-will tradition of Kantian and post-Kantian German philosophy. In "On a Proposed Divorce law," for example, he asks:
If a legislator considers spiritual sacredness and not human ethics as the essence of marriage, if he replaces self-determination by determination from above, inner natural dedication by a supernatural sanction, and loyal submission to the nature of the relationship by passive obedience to commandments — commandments transcending the nature of that relationship — can he be blamed for subjugating marriage to the church ...? [emphasis added].
However, even though religion cannot decree what is right and wrong, neither can the human individual or the legislator. Marx claims that "no legislature can decree what is ethical." Revealing his leaning toward the natural-law branch of the tradition of ethical rationalism at this time, he declares: "The legislator ... must consider himself a naturalist. He does not make laws; he does not invent them; he only formulates them. He expresses the inner principles of spiritual relationships in conscious, positive laws."
As to the substantive moral issue at hand, Marx writes, "The Rheinische Zeitung agrees with the bill in considering the present marriage law as unethical, the numerous and frivolous reasons for divorce inappropriate, and the procedure used so far not commensurate with the dignity of the matter" (emphasis added). He goes on to condemn those who "take an eudaemonistic view" of marriage and divorce for not taking into consideration "the ethical substance of the relationship." Furthermore, according to Marx, it should be the case that
the legislator shows reverence for marriage and recognizes its deeply ethical nature. Compliance with the wishes of individuals would become harshness against their essential nature, against their ethical rationality, which is embodied in ethical relationships [emphasis added].
A clearer declaration of kinship to the rational-will tradition of Rousseau and Kant could hardly be found. The requirements of morality stem from the autonomy of the will (i.e., reason) rather than from its heteronomy (desire or inclination). Individuals must attend (or, by law, be made to attend) to their "ethical rationality," i.e., to their real, rational wills rather than their empirical wills. As with most components of Marx's worldview in this period, however, his views on morality are mediated by those of Hegel — in particular, by Hegel's distinction between an ethical essence and its corresponding existence. In the same article on the proposed divorce law, Marx cites Hegel's distinction, claiming that "no ethical existence corresponds to its essence, or at least does not have to correspond to it." Marx differentiates himself from Hegel's authoritarian political views, however, and indicates his own commitment to democracy when, in the next paragraph, he states: "The guarantee ... that the conditions will be fairly substantiated under which the existence of an ethical relationship no longer corresponds to its essence ... will be present only when law is the conscious expression of the will of the people, created with and through it." Here Marx's view is closer to that of Rousseau — at least on those nontotalitarian interpretations of Rousseau in which autonomy and free consensual agreement are definitive of the general will.
Nevertheless, Marx at this time is basically a Hegelian in his view of society and history as well as in his normative political theory (with the exception noted above). He accepts Hegel's view that reason is progressively manifesting itself in history, as well as Hegel's concept of the state as the actualization of rational freedom. Tracing the historical development of this view, Marx writes:
Machiavelli and Campanella earlier, and Hobbes, Spinoza, and Hugo Grotius later, down to Rousseau, Fichte, and Hegel began considering the state from the human viewpoint and developed its natural laws from reason and experience.
While the earlier philosophers of state law derived the state from drives of ambition and gregariousness, or from reason — though not reason in society but rather in the individual — the more ideal and profound view of modern philosophy derives it from the idea of the whole. It considers the state as the great organism in which legal, ethical, and political freedom has to be actualized and in which the individual citizen simply obeys natural laws of his own reason, human reason, in the laws of the state....
Nevertheless, since "no ethical existence corresponds to its essence, or at least does not have to correspond to it," it is the job of philosophy to make sure that the state realizes its essence to the greatest degree possible. As Marx puts it: "Philosophy interprets the rights of humanity. Philosophy demands that the state be the state of human nature." (Here we should note that at least the very early Marx was not reticent to speak of human rights.)
But whereas Hegel interprets the freedom to be actualized by the state as merely the rationality of the bureaucracy which, in his view, is to run it, Marx interprets it as including not only such civil liberties as freedom of thought and of the press but the active and equal participation of the entire citizenry as well. While Hegel is a conservative who advocates monarchy, a limited franchise, and government by middle-class, professional bureaucracies, Marx is a democrat and, in many ways, a liberal. As a radical journalist writing for opposition newspapers in Germany, he defended freedom of the press and freedom of thought and, as we have seen, demanded that the state be subject to the will of the people rather than the reverse. "In an ethical state," Marx claims, "the view of the state is subordinated to its members, even if they oppose an organ of the state or the government."
Marx's Second Period: Revolutionary Humanism (1843)
As I have divided Marx's work, this period takes up only the second half of 1843 and consists of Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, on which he worked during the summer of 1843, and his contributions to the first and only issue of Deutsche-Französische Jahrbücher (namely, "On the Jewish Question," "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction," and "Letters to Arnold Ruge"). This issue was published by Ruge and Marx in January 1844. These works are most notable for (1) the change in his normative political position — Marx moves from being a supporter of the bourgeois democratic state to an advocate of some sort of more communal society along the lines of Rousseau's model of the good society — and (2) his modified views on the means of social change. From viewing philosophical and journalistic criticism as sufficient for social change, he comes to argue that political activity and even material force may be necessary. For the most part, these revised positions were the result of changes in his empirical rather than his moral views. From the beginning, Marx accepted the values of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution — enjoyment, liberty, equality, and fraternity — in addition to the Kantian value of moral autonomy and the value of self-realization as stressed by the German philosophical tradition. These values lie behind his demand for the "realization of philosophy."
The tremendous influence of French Enlightenment thought on both his descriptive-explanatory and evaluative views comes out most clearly perhaps in a somewhat later work: The Holy Family (1845). In a section entitled "Battle Against French Materialism," in which Marx defends the French Enlightenment philosophers from the attacks of the left-Hegelian Bruno Bauer and his school of Critical Criticism, he writes:
No great acumen is required to see the necessary connection of materialism with communism and socialism from the doctrines of materialism concerning the original goodness and equal intellectual endowment of man, the omnipotence of experience, habit and education, the influence of external circumstances on man, the extreme importance of industry, the justification of enjoyment, etc. If man forms all his knowledge, perception, etc., from the world of sense and experience in the world of sense, then it follows that the empirical world must be so arranged that he experiences and gets used to what is truly human in it, that he experiences himself as man. If enlightened interest is the principle of all morality, it follows that men's private interests should coincide with human interests. ... If man is formed by circumstances, then his circumstances must be made human. If man is by nature social, then he develops his true nature only in society and the power of his nature must be measured not by the power of the single individual but by the power of society.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice by R. G. Peffer. Copyright © 1990 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
- FrontMatter, pg. i
- CONTENTS, pg. ix
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, pg. xiii
- INTRODUCTION, pg. 1
- ONE. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARX’S MORAL PERSPECTIVE, pg. 35
- TWO. CONSEQUENTIALIST INTERPRETATIONS OF MARX, pg. 80
- THREE MARX’S THEORIES OF FREEDOM AND EXPLOITATION: A RECONSTRUCTION AND DEFENSE, pg. 115
- FOUR “MARXIST ΑΝΤΙ-MORALISΜ”: A CRITIQUE, pg. 169
- FIVE. MARXISM AND MORAL HISTORICISM, pg. 212
- SIX. MORALITY AND IDEOLOGY, pg. 236
- SEVEN. MARXISM, MORAL RELATIVISM, AND MORAL OBJECTIVITY, pg. 268
- EIGHT. MARXIST CRITIQUES OF JUSTICE AND RIGHTS, pg. 317
- NINE. MARXIST AND LEFTIST OBJECTIONS TO RAWLS' THEORY OF JUSTICE: A CRITICAL REVIEW, pg. 361
- TEN. TOWARD AN ADEQUATE MARXIST MORAL AND SOCIAL THEORY, pg. 416
- APPENDIX. STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARX’S THOUGHT, pg. 461
- BIBLIOGRAPHY, pg. 465
- INDEX, pg. 507