Moralism or Marxism. Bertell Ollman on Marx's Ethics

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[Footnotes not included]

Bertell Ollman, Alienation.
Chapter 4, "Is There a Marxian Ethic?"

*****
<p. 41>The question Marx set out to answer in _Capital_ is "Why is labor
represented by the value of its product and labor-time by the magnitude
of that value?" If Marx had succeeded in writing the work he planned to
do on ethics, I believe the question which would have occupied most of
his attention is "Why are approval and condemnation represented in our
society as value judgements?"  Marx's critique of the capitalist economy
is essentially an explanation of how existing forms of production,
distribution, exchange and consumption arose, and how they are dependent
on one another and on the character of human activity and achievement in
areas far removed from the economy proper.  Any critique of ethics would
likewise have concentrated on showing how the distinctive forms of our
ethical life, such as treating approval and disapproval as value
judgments, are internally related to the whole social fabric out of
which they arose.  Why is this aspect of reality organized in this
manner, into these forms?

        Such an approach is already apparent in some of Marx's brief
comments on this subject.  He says, for example, that in bourgeois
ethics speaking and loving lose their characteristic significance and
"are interpreted as expressions and manifestations of a third
artificially introduced Relation, the Relation of utility."  According
to Marx, "something is demanded of the individual's power or capacity to
do anything which is a foreign product, a Relation determined by social
conditions -- and this is the utility Relation."  In short, a social
relation has become a thing in the form of a principle, and moreover a
thing which exerts important influence over people's thinking and
action.

        Unfortunately, this approach to the problem of ethics has
received little attention from Marxist scholars.  Instead, they have
generally been content to elaborate on the following claims: "(1) moral
values change; (2) they change in accordance with society's productive
forces and its economic relations; and (3) the dominant moral values at
any given time are those of the dominant economic class."  As part of
this case, concepts such as "good," "right" <p. 42> and "justice" are
shown to derive their very meaning from the conditions of life and
corresponding interests of the men who use them.

        One result of avoiding the larger question of why acts of
approval and condemnation in capitalist society appear as value
judgments, as deductions from absolute principles, is that Marx's own
acts of approval and condemnation defy easy classification.  Without
wishing to probe to deeply into what is a vast and growing subject, the
unorthodox position taken in the last two chapters require some
clarification of what have been called "value judgments" in Marx's own
works.  Is there a Marxian ethic, no doubt different from other ethical
systems in what it is based on and in what it advocates but constructed
like them and performing the same general function?  The debate on this
subject has been badly marred by the existence of several different (and
not always recognized) standards for deciding.  Depending on which one
or few are chosen, Marx may be taken as being, or not being, or both
being and not being an ethical thinker. We come quickly to the same
conclusion if our standard is whether Marx is moralizing, that is
concerned with scolding and praising as ends in themselves.

        On the other hand, if we are asking whether Marx expresses
feelings of approval and disapproval in his works, the answer can only
be that Marx is an ethical thinker. The same answer applies if the
standard is whether Marx take sides with one of the classes he is
describing, and again, if it is a matter of whether he uses his writings
to incite people to act.  But perhaps the most important standard that
has been used concerns the character of Marx's own personal commitment.
Is Marx motivated, it is asked, by some idea of the "good"?  Phrased in
this manner, once more I am inclined to respond -- though with some
hesitation -- that Marx is an ethical thinker.  However, unlike most
writers who adopt this position, I find it difficult to decide just what
is his idea of  the "good".  Is Marx's morality a matter of defending
the interest of the proletariat, whom he thinks as as "the hardest
working and most miserable class"?  Does he believe that whatever
contributes to their interests <p. 43>is "good" and whatever harms them
is "bad"?  Or is humanity the cause Marx believes he must serve?
Lafargue recounts Marx's statement that scientists  should "put their
knowledge to the service of humanity."

        There are still third and fourth possibilities (among the more
plausible interpretations), which I shall treat as one -- as do most
writers who offer them.  Is it communist society and the human
fulfillment which occurs there that Marx regards as "good" and "just"?
An affirmative reply has recently been given by Charles Taylor who
claims that "Marxism has a definite standard of value, of higher and
lower... The basis of this standard of value lies in the teleological
notion of human nature: a stage or form of society is higher than
another because it involves a greater realization of human goals."  My
own difficulty with all these questions is not that I find it hard to
answer "yes," but that I find it hard to answer "no" to any of them.  In
other words, if Marx's theories -- including to his statements of
approval and disapproval, his siding with the proletariat, and his
incitements to action -- rest on some prior moral commitment, I believe
that this commitment can be stated equally well in terms of
working-class interest, humanity, communism and human fulfillment.  With
this admission, however, where have we arrived?  We have simply arrived
back at the theories from which we had originally set out.  That is,
once what is taken to be the "good" involves us with so many factors,
the relations between these factors needs to be explained, and the
explanation situates us within the very theories from which we thought
to stand apart. What is the link, for example, between serving
working-class interest and serving humanity, and between either, or
both, and the social and human achievements of communism?  In answering
such questions one must offer the very theories on man and society
which, on this model, are supposed to be the results of Marx's ethical
views.

        There is still another objection to ascribing an ethic to Marx
on the basis of his commitment to human fulfillment or any of the other
goals listed.  This as that it is easily mistaken for a description of
what Marx actually and daily does, rather than a way of viewing his
work. Neither Taylor nor Maxmilien Rubel, who takes a similar position,
sees Marx measuring each new question as it comes up alongside an
absolute standard and deciding which position to take accordingly.  Yet,
both men have been misunderstood in this way. <p. 44> This
misunderstanding arises because what is called "ethics" is generally
taken to involve a conscious choice; to act on the basis of a principle,
under any guise, is to decide to do so.  An ethic assumes that for each
question studied there was a period before the standard was applied when
one's attitude was neutral, or at least less certain than afterwards;
and also that there is a possibility that one could have chosen
otherwise.

        Robert Tucker rightly remarks that ethical inquiry (and hence
ethics) is only possible on the basis of a suspended commitment.  But
Marx never suspends his commitments; nor does he ever consciously choose
to approve or disapprove; nor does it make any sense to say of the
matters he studied that he might have judged otherwise.  Tucker's
conclusion is that Marx is not an ethical, but a religious thinker with
a "vision of the world as an arena of conflict between good and evil
forces." However, if expressing approval and serving certain goals are
insufficient grounds for ascribing an ethics to Marx, his conception of
class struggle coupled with his vision of the future society are hardly
enough to burden him with a religion.  But if Tucker is unlucky in the
alternative he offers, his criticism of attempts to treat Marxism as an
ethical theory or as a product of an ethical theory remains valid.

        The foregoing remarks may be summarized as follows: all ethical
systems, that is all those ways of thinking which are generally accepted
as such, have a basis for judgement which lies outside that which is to
be judged.  This results in a suspended commitment until the "facts"
have been gathered and their relation to the standard for judgment
clarified.  The evaluation, when it comes, is a matter of conscious
choice.  Our problem then reduces itself to this: do we want to say of
Marxism, where none of these things apply, that it either is or contains
an ethical theory?  One might, but then the limited sense in which claim
is meant would have to be made explicit.

                                        II

I prefer to say that Marx did not have an ethical theory.  But how
then to explain the approval and disapproval which he expresses in his
works, the fact that he sided with the proletariat and incited them to
overthrow the system?  How, too, it may be asked, do <p. 45>I account
for his attachment to the cause of humanity and to the ideas of
communism and human fulfillment?  In asking such questions, however, one
must be careful not to assume at the outset the form the answer must
take.  For this is what happens if one is saying, "Here are two worlds,
facts and values; how do you link them?" But to accept that reality is
halved in this way is to admit failure from the start.  On the contrary,
the relational conception which was discussed in the last two chapters
required that Marx consider what was known, advocated, condemned or done
by everyone, himself included, as internally related.  Every facet of
the real world, and people's actions and thoughts as elements in it, are
mutually dependent on each other for what they are, and must be
understood accordingly.

        The logical distinction which is said to exist between facts and
values is founded on the belief that it is possible to conceive of one
without the other.  Given a particular fact, the argument runs, one may
without contradiction attach any value to it.  The fact itself does not
entail a specific value.  Historically the view that moral beliefs are
contingent has tended  to go along with the view that they are also
arbitrary.  On this model, all judgment depends in the last instance on
the independent set of values which each individual, for reasons best
known to himself, brings to the situation.  The ethical premiss is not
only a final arbiter but a mysterious one, defying sociological and even
psychological analysis.  Though some recent defenders of orthodoxy have
sought to muddle the distinction between fact and value with talk of its
"context," "function,"  "real reference," "predisposition," etc., the
logical line drawn in conception remains.  Yet, if one cannot conceive
of anything one chooses to call a fact (because it is an open ended
relation) without bringing in evaluative elements (and vice versa), the
very problem orthodox thinkers have set out to answer cannot be posed.

        Moreover on Marx's views, the real judgments which are made in
any situation are a function of that situation and the particular
individuals active in it.  Thus, the very notion that it is logically
permissible to take an attitude toward a given "fact" is itself a
judgment inherent in the circumstances out of which it emerges. Rather
than being logically independent of what is, any choice -- as well as
the idea that one has a choice -- is linked by innumerable threads to
the real world, including the life, class interests, and character of
<p. 46> the person acting.  Judgments can never be severed, neither
practically nor logically, from their contexts and the number of real
alternatives which they offer.  In this perspective, what is called the
fact-value distinction appears as a form of self-deception, an attempt
to deny what has already been done by claiming that it could not have
been done or still remains to do.

        Marx would not have denied that the statements "this is what
exists" and "what exists is good" or "this is what should exist," mark
some distinction, but he would not have called it one of fact and value.
If we define "fact" as a statement of something known to have happened
or knowable, and "value" as that property in anything for which we
esteem or condemn it, then he would maintain that in knowing something,
certainly in knowing it well, we already either esteem or condemn it. As
man is a creature of needs and purposes, however much they may vary for
different people, it could not be otherwise.  Because everything we know
(whether in its immediacy or in some degree of extension through
conditions and results) bears some relation to our needs and purposes,
there is nothing we know toward which we do not have attitudes, either
for, against or indifferent.

        Likewise, our "values" are all attached to what we take to be
the "facts," and could not be what they are apart from them.  It is not
simply that the "facts" affect our "values," and our "values" affect
what we take to be the "facts" -- both respectable commonsense positions
-- but that, in any case, each includes the other and is part of what is
meant by the other's concept.  In the circumstances, to try to split
their union into logically distinct halves is to distort their real
character.

        Followers of Marx have always known that what people approve or
condemn can only be understood through a deep-going social analysis,
particularly of their needs and interest as members of a class.  What
emerges from the foregoing is that the forms in which approval and
condemnation appear -- like setting up absolute principles or values --
must be understood through the same kind of analysis.  This is not the
place to undertake such an analysis, but it may be useful sketch its
broad outlines.  The attempt to establish values which apply equally to
everyone results, to a large extent, from the need to diffuse growing
class conflict arising from incompatible interests in a class-ridden
society.  To apply values equally is <p. 47> to abstract from the
unequal conditions in which people live and the incompatible interests
that result.  The main effort of capitalist ideology has always been
directed to dismissing or playing down this incompatibility.  The
abstractions with which such ideology abounds are so many attempts to
sever the class-affected "facts" from the judgements and actions that
ordinarily follow upon their comprehension.

        Marx goes so far is to suggest that the fact-value distinction
is itself a symptom of man's alienation in modern capitalist society:
"It stands for the very nature of estrangement that each sphere applies
to men a different and opposite yardstick -- ethics one and political
economy another."  A chief characteristic of alienation, as we shall
learn, is a separation of what does not allow separation without
distortion.  The organic unity of reality has been exchanged for
distinct spheres of activity whose interrelations in the social can no
longer be ascertained.  Removed from their real context, the
individual's relations with nature and society, taken one that time,
appear other than they are.  As part of this process, many, often
contradictory yardsticks for measuring achievement come into existence
for different areas of life, making all broad plans of reforms seem
"illogical" or "irrational" in some respect or other.  In this context,
it would appear that altogether too much attention has been paid to the
biased and false message in capitalist ideology and too little to what
is predisposed in the forms of thought themselves, to the class
advantage contained in accepted rules of thinking.  For any attempt to
universalize a moral code, whatever its content, by undercutting the
reality of class conflict only succeeds in serving capitalist ends.

        As far as Marx's own work is concerned, those remarks which
strike us as being an evaluative nature are internally related facets of
all he says and knows, which in turn are internally tied to his life and
all surrounding circumstances -- not as an exception, but because
everything in the world is related in this way.  However, being
conscious of this, Marx integrated his remarks of approval and
disapproval more closely into his system than have most other thinkers,
making any surgical division into facts and values so much more
destructive of his meaning. For example, Marx claims that when a
Communist stands in front of "a crowd of scrofulous, overworked and
consumptive starvelings," he sees "the necessity, <p. 48> and at the
same time the condition, of the transformation both of industry and of
the social structure."  Marx is asserting that for those who share his
outlook these "facts" contain their own condemnation and a call to do
something about them.  If an individual chooses otherwise, it is not
because he had made a contrary moral judgment, but because the
particular relations in which he stands (the class to which he belongs,
his personal history, etc.) have led him to a different appreciation of
the facts.

        Such internal relations between what others take to be factual
and evaluative elements are also apparent in an early comment Marx makes
on the import of religious criticism: "The criticism of religion ends,"
he says, "with the doctrine that man is the supreme being for man.  It
ends, therefore, with the categorical imperative to overthrow all those
conditions in which man is an abased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible
being."  Marx's analysis of what religion is does not prepare us for an
evaluation but includes it.  And he believes that to fully accept one is
necessarily to accept the other -- because the latter, the judgment, is
internally related to the whole set of information which makes it both
possible and necessary.  Though it is not always so obvious, all Marx's
descriptions may be treated in a similar manner.  There are no "morally
neutral" statements in Marxism (which is no more than he would claim for
the statements of any other thinker).

        What then is the best way to characterize what are taken to be
evaluative elements in Marx's works?  On the basis of the preceding
analysis, I would say they are straightforward descriptions of the
factor or factors before him which he makes on the basis of its function
in the problem under consideration, set in the larger context of what he
knows to be true of the world.  Such knowledge, as indicated earlier,
includes where things are tending as well as where they have come from.
Alternatively, one may state Marx is individuating from the whole
information which contains elements which are ordinarily placed in each
sphere, rather than relating logically independent facts and values.
With the philosophy of internal relations, the problem is never how to
relate separate entities but how to disentangle a relation or group of
relations from the total and necessary configuration in which they
exist.

        Thus, in asserting that the workers are degraded, Marx is not
making an evaluation on the basis of what he sees but describing <p. 49>
what the workers are; but what they are is a Relation which includes,
among other things, the ties to other classes who are suffering less,
the state of poor people before capitalism, and the achievements which
everyone will be capable of under communism.  Viewed in this
perspective, that is conceiving what we would consider external objects
of comparison as parts of the workers themselves, the assertion that the
workers are degraded is a fair description of their condition.

        Treating the achievements of people in communism as one part of
what workers are depends not only on conceiving of workers as a Relation
that incorporates both their real past and future potential but on
analyzing this potential in a manner that uncovers these communist
achievements. Projecting present patterns and trends forward, given the
new priorities that would be established by a socialist government,
Marx's study of the past is likewise an inquiry into the future, into
the probable destiny of mankind.  He then he uses this vision of
communism, along with the other comparisons mentioned, to help orient
himself to the problems of his day.

        Finally, what applies to Marx's statements applies equally to
his concepts. That is, as his ideas about the world which find
expression in his terms, Marx's concepts convey the real relations which
he takes to be in the world; and, insofar as these relations include
elements which some would consider an evaluative nature, these concepts
can be said to convey in what they mean the very "judgments" that Marx
ordinarily makes with them.  It is in this way, we will recall, that
concepts were said to have a truth value apart from the statements in
which they are found.  Marx's concept "proletariat," for example,
contains as part of its meaning the same degradation and other "moral"
qualities which he uncovered in his analysis of the Relation,
proletariat.  The truth value of this concept, therefore, depends on the
validity of this analysis.

        It should now be possible to understand Marx's otherwise
confusing admission in The Communist Manifesto that "the theoretical
conclusions of the Communist are no way based on ideas or principles
that have been invented, or discovered by this or that would-be
universal reformer.  They merely express, in general terms, actual
relations springing from an existing class struggle, from an historical
movement going on under our very eyes."  Marx is concerned to explain
why capitalist economic, political and <p. 50> ideological forms appear
when they do and what general attitudes result from people's interest as
members of a particular class.  He never, however, goes beyond stating
the relations involved when he himself approves or condemns anything, or
when he concludes from a situation what must be done.  It is no
coincidence that other thinkers who possess a philosophy of internal
relations -- Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Dietzgen, etc. -- have likewise
foresworn the fact- value distinction; for partaking of this
philosophical tradition any value judgment would have to be understood
as internally related to what they know, and hence as an expression of
all that makes it both possible and necessary.  In the circumstances,
"Marxian ethics" is clearly a misnomer insofar as it refers to Marx as
opposed to certain "Marxists" who came afterwards.

        As with any misnomer in the human sciences, "Marxists Ethics" is
not without its ideological consequences.  For to accept that Marxism
either is or contains an ethic, to admit that Marx operated from fixed
principles (whatever content one gives them), is to put Marx on the same
logical plane as his opponents.  It is to suggest that Marx, for all his
effort at historical explanation and despite his explicit denial,
criticized them because he favored different principles.  In which case,
the capitalist ideologist easily removes the noose Marx has placed
around his neck by the simple device of rejecting what passes for the
latter's principles.  Either he declines the honor of serving the goals
of communism or of human fulfillment as understood by Marx because he
doesn't consider this state of affairs possible, or he refuses to serve
the interest at the proletariat or of humanity because -- for reasons
best known to himself -- he prefers other ends, whether of this or the
next world.  To berate such refusals as irrational only begs the
question, as it uses the very ends put aside as guides to what is
rational.  The crucial fault comes earlier in accepting that Marx's
position, and the criticism evolved from it, is based on any principles
whatsoever.

        It is in this manner, by permitting Marx's opponents to free
themselves from the untenable position in which his criticism places
them, that attributing an ethic to Marxism inevitably serves the ends of
the bourgeoisie.  This is the real danger, for example, in espousing
"Marxist humanism" (quite apart from its dubious standing as a
"scientific concept"), whatever the short-term political benefits in
Eastern Europe of this reformulation.

        <p. 51> The debate between Marx and the ideologists of
capitalism is and could only be a debate carried on at cross purposes,
and this fact must not be lost sight of through a too facile use of
labels.  Properly speaking, there is no clash of judgments or goals
involved here.  While capitalist thinkers belabor Marx for an
overemphasis on economic factors and -- without noticing any
inconsistency -- for idealism, Marx tries to trace their beliefs and
principles (including the forms taken) and the arguments based on them
to the real world out of which they arose.  Marx's object is, in the
broadest sense, to show that they have done something other than they
think, that what they have said generally results from and functions
other than they know, and through this analysis itself to bring readers
to another kind of understanding and action.  The enormous critical
power in inherent in Marxism is diluted whenever its scientific
character is misrepresented.

End of chapter.