Marx and morality: An impossible synthesis?

✍ Scribed by Harry Linden

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1984
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 929 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0304-2421
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00159259

✦ Synopsis

HARRY VAN I)ER LINDEN

Can the case for socialism be based on a specific sct of values and does this constitute a remedy for bureaucratic communism or does it lead to elitism and even repression? Did Marx believe that wage-labor is unjust or was it his view that any concern with economic justice is a typical bourgeois preoccupation'? And, finally, should the appeal to values play a role in revolutionary motivation? These are some of the more important questions raised and discussed in the above publications, which are concerned with the normative aspects of Marx's thought.

Evaluative Perspective

Marx appraised the emergence of the communist society as progress rather than as mere change. Throughout his work he both investigated capitalist society and condemned it. These value judgments are launched from different perspectives in his early and later works. In the early writings (notably, the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts), Marx unfolds a conception of human nature that functions as his evaluative perspective. He singles out certain human capacities as truly human, denouncing capitalism as inhuman because it causes man's alienation from these capacities. In the communist society this alienation is overcome, thus making it superior to the capitalist society. Such an attempt to ground normative judgments in a conception of human nature is characteristic of humanistic socialism, whereas it is, of course, repudiated by scientific socialism. l)epartment of PhikJsoph.v, Washington Universit.v, St. I.ouL~.