Marxism And The Moral Point Of View

Morality, Ideology, And Historical Materialism

Kai Nielsen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367155551
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429718519
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Marxism and the Moral Point of View attempts to say what consistent Marxists working within the parameters of the canonical conceptions of Marxism should say about morality. This includes what they should say about the function of morality in society, about the extent of moral comment they can justifiably make, and about freedom, equality, and justice, including the justice of whole social formations. Karl Marx-and most Marxists follow him-was opposed.

1
Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9780429035548-1

I

Marxism and the Moral Point of View attempts to say what consistent Marxists working within the parameters of the canonical conceptions of Marxism should say about morality. This inchides what they should say about the function of morality in society, about the extent of moral comment they can justifiably make, and about freedom, equality, and justice, including the justice of whole social formations.

Karl Marx-and most Marxists follow him-was opposed to all moralizing. Marxists have, in opposition to utopian socialism, sought to put socialism on a scientific footing and have stressed the importance of developing a critique of capitalism that was scientific, not moral-that is, not simply or even primarily moral.

Morality, Marxists have claimed, is a form of ideology. A morality-specifically, the actual moralities in a given society-will have a certain character generally congruent with a particular stage of development of the modes of production. The pervasively held moral views of any society are deeply conditioned by the mode of production of that society and (where it is a class society) by the dominant class interests of that society. Our extant moralities function to reinforce and legitimate the class interests of the dominant class while purporting to answer in an impartial manner to the interests of everyone alike. Very extensively, we are sufficiently mystified to believe that our moral beliefs somehow reflect eternal truth when in reality they standardly reflect the class interests of the dominant class.

This is the iconoclastic side of Marx and Marxism, where the stress is on morality as ideology. But the writings of Marx, and of Marxists more generally, are replete with moral judgments-in particular with stern moral condemnations of capitalism. Moral judgments such as these make it look as if Marx and Marxists have rejected morality at the same time as they have deeply appealed to it in criticizing capitalism. This, of course, is hardly a comfortable position in which to be.

I seek to give an interpretation of Marxism that, without challenging the canonical conceptions of Marxist theory and practice, shows that in reality there is no conflict here. I provide a reading of the concept of ideology and an interpretation of the claim that morality is ideology that frees them of any epistemological or ontological claim that moral ideas cannot but be subjective and mystifying. (The reading and the interpretation also do this without committing themselves to the opposed claim of moral realism.¹) I also argue that historical materialism tenders a sociological account of morality compatible, with a contextualist objectivism that would allow for a rational assessment of the justice of whole social formations, including that of capitalism and socialism. In this fundamental way I side with the Marxist moralism of G. A. Cohen, Norman Geras, and Jon Elster and against the Marxist anti-moralism of Robert Tucker, Allen Wood, and Richard Miller, whose accounts I critically examine in some detail. I argue that neither Marx nor Marxism revolutionized ‘the foundations of ethics’ or showed that morality could not have a rational foundation or point. (Whether indeed it does or even whether such metaphorical talk makes any coherent sense is another matter-a matter about which Marxists can remain, without undermining Marxist moralism, utterly agnostic!) Rather, Marxism provides us with a sociological account of the function(s) of morality, with a critique of moralizing, and with a demonstration of the importance of taking morality seriously without engaging in moralizing or going on a quest for the rational foundations of morality.

II

In the chapters that follow, there are several recurrent themes, although each has different stresses and nuances.

1. The ambivalence concerning morality is in Marx and the Marxist tradition generally. Marx was one of the great denouncers of all time, yet he detested all forms of moralism. According to Marx, communism will break the staff of all morality, and we must recognize that morality is through and through ideological. But Marx also adjudged capitalism to be an inhuman system that has outlived its historical usefulness and is destined to be replaced by a socialist system representing a truly human society in which there is the possibility for greater human flourishing for everyone.² So we have on Marx’s part both a palpably negative evaluation of capitalism and a positive evaluation of socialism concomitant with a rejection of moralizing and a claim that morality is only ideology. Plainly there is tension and ambivalence here. Within the Marxist tradition and by Marxologists there have been various responses to it. All have agreed that Marx at least consciously rejected moralism-namely, the belief that ideas, including sound moral arguments and clear and humane moral ideals, will be the main causative factors in changing the world. Although they agreed on that, they disagreed about whether Marx made or Marxists should make a moral critique of capitalism and a defense of the ethical superiority of socialism. Some have taken the line that has come to be called Marxist anti-moralism and have argued that Marx rejected, and contemporary Marxists should reject, appeals to morality in appraising whole social formations or modes of production or in formulating strategic political reasoning about what is to be done. Instead, in class struggles the thing is to attend closely to the class interests involved and to be aware of what is and what is not feasible in a given historical situation. Marxist moralists, on the other hand, while not downplaying the importance of class interests and class struggle, have argued that Marx, among other things he did, made a moral critique of capitalism and a moral defense of socialism and that it is vital for Marxists to refine and develop that critique and defense.

Both of these views easily lead to caricature. However, it is important to realize at the outset that neither Marxist anti-moralism nor Marxist moralism, in spite of what the word ‘moralism’ suggests, is a silly view. Marxist anti-moralism, as we shall see, is a humane view without being a moral perspective and not at all an advocation of bloodthirsty realpolitik or cynical manipulation. And Marxist moralism is not naive about our moral powers or simplistically idealistic about how the world can be changed. It also, almost as fully as Marxist anti-moralism, stresses the ideological function of moralities in class societies.

I will ultimately side with a version of Marxist moralism, but I shall first show how the aforementioned tension in Marxist thought can be relieved. Marxists can, I shall argue, consistently criticize (and from a moral point of view) capitalism and defend socialism while stressing that morality is ideology. Stated in this way, such a remark, of course, sounds paradoxical. It will be an underlying rationale of this book to provide a reading and an understanding of that claim to relieve that paradox and to show it to be something to which it is reasonable to assent. However, in understanding what is involved here and in coming to see that and why the Marxist tradition has made a vital contribution to our understanding of morality, it is essential that we follow out the often complicated lines of reasoning of both Marxist anti-moralism and Marxist moralism. Both have had insightful and carefully reasoned formulations, and both are onto something vital in Marxist thinking about morality. Indeed-or so I shall argue-both consider things that should be a part of reflective thought on morality generally. A Marxist moralism without a full cognizance of the rationale and impact of the anti-moralist challenge would be an impoverished view.

2. I discuss historical materialism and ethics in the various chapters, from several angles, with somewhat different stresses. I seek to clearly articulate what historical materialism is, and I argue that historical materialism, even if it is a sound view of epochal social change, does not undermine belief in the objectivity of morals. There may be some distinctively philosophical reasons to reject the belief that moral claims can be objective, a viewpoint held by David Hume and updated more recently by Edward Westermarck and J. L. Mackie. Be that as it may and contrary to many popular misunderstandings, historical materialism does not afford a sound basis for rejecting the belief that some moral claims can have an objective foundation. It is, however, understandable that students of Marx might come to think that historical materialism does undermine morality. I argue that this is a mistake and that a belief that some moral claims can be objectively warranted is perfectly compatible with an unqualified acceptance of historical materialism.

I return to this from different angles and in one way or another in almost all of these chapters, but I introduce the topic in Chapter 2 and probe the issue most extensively in Chapters 7, 8, and 11. However, in Chapter 2, in introducing the topic, I argue that historical materialism may sanction a version of meta-ethical relativism. If that form of meta-ethical relativism is accepted it would, or at least should, lead a historical materialist, who accepts that form of meta-ethical relativism, to the view that people would only be justified in making mode-of-production-dependent judgments of what is right or wrong, just or unjust. It may be the case that if historical materialism is true, there could be no ground for asserting a transhistorical set of moral principles. I try to show the plausibility of that claim in Chapter 2, but I also point out that it is at least as reasonable to believe, as Friedrich Engels did, that the historical materialist may instead have a belief in moral progress incompatible with any recognizable version of meta-ethical relativism, and that instead presupposes a contextualistic form of fallibilistic objectivism. In morals, as well as in some other human domains, there can be objectively justified beliefs. Such a view, I argue, is at least as compatible with historical materialism as any form of relativism, squares better with the general Enlightenment orientation of Marx and Engels, fits better with our reflective hopes, and is at least as reasonable as its relativist, subjectivist, or nihilist alternatives. I leave open, vis-à-vis their compatibility with historical materialism, both the non-objectivist and objectivist stances in Chapter 2, but in Chapters 7, 11, and 12 I argue for the objectivist option.

What might on a quick reading appear to be a conflict between Chapter 2 and Chapter 7 arises from the fact that in the former, I do not as definitively try to close off certain relativistic possibilities as I do in the latter. However, in trying to canvass a range of at least prima facie possibilities, I do attempt to show in Section IV of Chapter 2 how strong the case is for meta-ethical relativism vis-à-vis historical materialism and how difficult the case is for moral progress. Still, while I argue that it is difficult, it is not impossible, and there are, against the fashion of our age, grounds for sharing Engels’s belief in moral progress.

3. Marx, and Marxists generally, spoke of morality being ideology or as being ideological. This, of course, cries out for interpretation, and it poses problems somewhat similar to those posed by historical materialism for ethics. I articulate and defend a distinctive Marxist conception of ideology in Chapter 5 and contrast it with more typical Marxist conceptualizations as well as with more global non-Marxist ones. In Chapter 6, more extensively than elsewhere, I apply this characterization to the thesis that morality is ideology. I argue that while all ideological conceptions are superstructural, not all super-structural conceptions are ideological. This leaves conceptual space for the existence of ideas, such as some new creative ideas about our social life, that are not ideological, although they are, innocently enough given the Marxist typology, superstructural.³ I also argue that the mark of the ideological-that is, what identifies something as being ideological-is that it answers to class interests, not, as is typically argued in Marxist circles, that it distorts. Ideologies, I contend, are distortion prone, but they do not necessarily distort. What makes a belief or practice ideological is that it answers to class interests.⁴ I also argue that the claim that morality is ideology should be understood as a thesis in the sociology of morals and not as a thesis in the ontology or epistemology of morals or as a meta-ethical thesis. So understood, it is of immense importance in understanding morality and in critiquing ideology. Understood in any of the latter senses the claim, ‘Morality is ideology’ or ‘Moral beliefs are ideological’ is itself mystificatory. These three theses taken together, I argue, give us a perspicuous representation of morality and ideology and help resolve the tensions and ambivalences I referred to earlier.

All of this is, I hope, articulated clearly in Chapters 5 and 6, but some of my remarks in other chapters (most notably Chapter 2) may appear to be in conflict with what I say about morality and ideology in Chapters 5 and 6. In these other chapters, for certain tolerably evident pedagogical and dialectical reasons, I stick with the standard Marxist characterization of ideology: To be an ideology, an ideology, on this conception, must distort. Working with that standard characterization rather than my own, I examine certain consequences of the thesis that morality is ideology. But there is no clash between what I argue there and what I argue in Chapters 5 and 6, for while in my own preferred characterization of ideology I deny that ideology necessarily distorts our understanding of ourselves or our social life, I also stress, in giving that characterization, that ideology is distortion prone and that most, indeed perhaps all, ideologies do give us a distorted picture of ourselves, our possibilities, and the nature of our societies. Let me repeat-answering to class interests, rather than being distortive, is the mark of the ideological, and it is not, to suggest a more complex criterion, the two together.

However, in arguing thusly I do stress-and such a stress is important for my conception of the ideological functions of morality-how standardly and pervasively ideologies do distort and how useful this is to the class whose interests the ideology serves. But in some places, I write as if the more typical Marxist characterization were being followed, where being distortive is a necessary feature of being an ideology. Suppose, in that vein, we define ideology as G. A. Cohen did: “as thinking that is not just incorrect but that is systematically deflected from truth because of its conformity to the limited vision and sectional interests of a particular social class.”⁵ Working, in places, with such a more typic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Marxism, Morality and Moral Philosophy
• 3. Engels on Morality and Moral Theorizing
• 4. Marx, Engels and Lenin on Justice: The Critique of the Gotha Programme
• 5. A Marxist Conception of Ideology
• 6. Marxism and Morality
• 7. If Historical Materialism Is True, Does Morality Totter?
• 8. Marx on Justice: The Tucker-Wood Thesis Revisited
• 9. On Marx Not Being an Egalitarian
• 10. Class Interests, Justice and Marxism
• 11. Marxism and the Moral Point of View
• 12. Marxism and Arguing for Justice
• Index