Re: [Marxism] why did Marx reject moral?

[Julius Wilm <jwilm@xxxxxx>]

Dear James.

You seem to take our discussion a bit personal. By this I mean your
reference to the a/immoralism that I wanted information about as “your
(i.e. my) position” and the address “comrade…”. Let us try, not to go
where some of the other marxmail discussions went.

“That is why I referred to Machiavellianism, which I was
taking as a logical outcome of any immoralism. You seem to think that
they are not connected, but I would like to hear on what grounds you
think so.“

The reasons for this I already gave you. (Unrestrained interest would
not collide in socialism, etc.) To the example of a love relationship
you write: “But the good life and a good time are not the same thing.“
The question is, I think, whether humans themselves can handle this by
rational calculations or they need a moral rule to stick to. In the
a–moralist lecture I linked earlier the speaker argues that humans in
fact do this all the time (without moral). They distinguish themselves
from animals because they know how to cultivate their needs, and can
calculate how to satisfy them most pleasuring. (For example you can
abstain from eating if you know you are invited to a great meal an hour
later, even if you are hungry.)

As for asceticism and Catholicism. I did not use the term with anything
catholic in mind. In my mother language (german) the term simply denotes
a form of self-denial. My English dictionary tells me that the term has
not other meaning in your language. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the
Christian Church adds: “At the end of the Middle Ages there was a
twofold reaction: various movements stressed the interior life and
questioned the value of external ascetic observances, and the Protestant
Reformers, with their insistence on justification by faith, denied the
propriety of many conventional works of penance. The ascetical idea,
however, was upheld in the *RC Church*. Among the Puritans asceticism,
in the negative sense of abstinence from particular pleasures and
recreations, was widely upheld….” This means that your side-kick by
means of the history of ideas was ill-founded too.

If Marx saw “inspiring nobility“ in self-sacrifice, I would strongly
question his attitude on that, I must say. Just as I find your view that
okays every sacrifice in Cuba since 1965 when Che Guevara said those
words (24 years under the atomic shield and with aid of the Soviet
Union) questionable. When else should anything be possible, if not under
these conditions?

The last question is rhetorical. I, too, prefer to end this debate for
now to find out how these a-moralists argue, and if they are right or not.

Comradely,
Julius


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