Seen elsewhere days earlier and have written a way longer unreadable rant about this, but here is my summarized consequence I drew, with some corrections being made. I just hope it is rather helpful to the cause than not.
We have to keep in mind: the class struggle — in the first place — is not the fight between consequentialism and deontologism, but between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. Moral categories are products of the works of human minds, which are the products of class struggle.
These categories are mere abstractions that were distilled from earlier class struggles, formulae that were applied once in the most sensible form and reapplied time to time but in an anachronistic, more nonsensical form (e.g. the 2000-year old „Christian moral“ reasoning from all ages and political sides in the West). The author somewhat consciously brings up mid-article that the moral arguments are not taken at face value by Marxist-Leninists, only „utilized“, that they have to convince people of consequentialism only as a stepping stone. But, unfortunately, leaves this thought alone, then doubles down by speaking of using pointing to „oppression“, „murders“, „skeletons in the closet“ as the final step of convincing people and lapses back to the fruitless philosophical speculation for the rest of the article.
If this is the real procedure that „worked“ on the author in convincing him of scientific socialism, then — I am sorry to say this — he is NO scientific socialist yet, nevertheless a very talented and passionate utopian or romantic socialist having a strong moral compass and a heart at the right place, hopefully.
Ps..: We must not fall into the mistake of confusing ethics and morals with emotions and conscience either. As one will see if he is paying attention to the developments around him, ethics and conscience are fundamentally opposed to one another (as religion/religious theology and belief are opposed to one another), which actually causes a lot of the dialectical motion leading to psychological dilemmas. Conscience actually almost always comes from the negation of an ethics perceived as wrong. And ethics is like, by definition the negation of acts perceived as coming from negative emotions. But I have not immersed myself in this topic enough yet to say anything more.
Thank you for your comment. Here's my response that I also wrote on reddit - "The "scientific" part in scientific socialism should be interpreted as systematic, careful, rigorous socialism rather than purely descriptive or something like that. Separating ethics from socialism will end up immediately non-persuasive to a lot of people. For example, why do we want to change the world? If you say - for the better conditions of the Proletariat, well, the thing is simply - why is that better? Engels was rich and born into a bourgeois family and was a class traitor. If socialism and communism are NOT just, then being a class traitor(with respect to Bourgeoise class) is baffling!
If socialism and communism are the treatment but capitalism is not even a disease, then what even are you treating? Remember comrade, "health" and "disease" presuppose normatively.
If you just mean that capitalism is a disease for the Proletariat, then again, why should the bourgeoise care? Engels cared but why did he? The simple explanation is - because Engels believed that capitalism was unjust (horrible, cruel, evil, suffering causing) even if he never explicitly said so or even rejected "moralizing". The stanford encyclopedia of philosophy article on Karl Marx showed how sometimes even very rigorous philosophers get confused about stuff - "Nevertheless, this leaves us with a puzzle. Much of Marx’s description of capitalism—his use of the words “embezzlement”, “robbery” and “exploitation”—belie the official account. Arguably, the most satisfactory way of understanding this issue is that Marx believed that capitalism was unjust, but did not believe that he believed it was unjust (Cohen 1983). In other words, Marx, like so many of us, did not have perfect knowledge of his own mind. In his explicit reflections on the justice of capitalism Marx was able to maintain his official view. But in less guarded moments his real view slips out, even if never in explicit language. Such an interpretation is bound to be controversial, but it makes good sense of apparent tensions in the relevant texts.
Whatever one concludes on the question of whether Marx thought capitalism unjust, it is, nevertheless, obvious that Marx thought that capitalism was not the best way for human beings to live. Points made in his early writings remain present throughout his writings, if not always connected to an explicit theory of alienation. The worker finds work a torment, suffers poverty, overwork and lack of fulfilment and freedom. People do not relate to each other as humans should. Does this amount to a moral criticism of capitalism or not? In the absence of any special reason to argue otherwise, it simply seems obvious that Marx’s critique is a moral one. Capitalism impedes human flourishing." - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/#Mora "
I have written a more subtle and better response to this, but unfortunately it was lost, nevermind.
You make the claim that Marx and Engels believed in socialism primarily out of ethics and they did this all for ethics... by lying or at least being intellectually dishonest, themselves being unable to understand what they said. That is not just „controversial“, that is... something.
Why would Engels be a class traitor? Why would any bourgeois be a [Marxist] class traitor? In the FIRST place, because they see the current class system poses an obstacle to the development of humanity, and only in the SECOND place because it is unjust, immoral, not in accordance with modern moral principles and so on. This is the foundation of ALL scientific socialism and materialist dialectics.
„If socialism and communism are the treatment but capitalism is not even a disease, then what even are you treating? Remember comrade, "health" and "disease" presuppose normatively.“
I like your wording very much here, it's so good it can overcome its own prejudices. For what is a disease? An asymmetrical lively contradicition for survival between two interlinked certain living organisms (prokaryotes etc. vs plants and animalia) or between certain parts within living organisms. What is the disease of capitalism, then? A new episode of asymmetrical lively contradiction between certain classes; today, namely, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. But where does this illness come from?
This is what the Gospel of the passionate socialist says: In the beginning was emotion, and emotion was with humanity, and emotion was humanity. This emotion caused the breakup of the traditional primitive communism, and the beginning of the social disease called class struggle, as Engels says, a development which was also a ruin.
But this is what the materialist socialist must always add: Before the beginning was already evolution and labor, labor and the productive forces begot the discovery of fire, the domestication of animals, the cultivation in agriculture etc. this then begot resource surplus, accumulation, privileges, prejudices, greed, cleverness, emotions and a class of oppressors and oppressed. This begot wonderful irrigation canals, pyramids, world wonders — by causing thousands of slaves unnatural pain and suffering. Where were the times when humans could be blissfully ignorant, what one could see more of, back in the days of the animalistic forefathers, who like many animals today, were so unconscious, yet so often so much more comfortable and in harmony, in touch with nature? The suffering then begot the genial consciousness and enlightenment of the oppressed, one unprecedented by the animal's unconsciousness. This begot the spread of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam etc. But they proved to fail when it came to liberating people and succeed when it came to pacifying. This begot a long dark age and ethics, and ethics were sent by abstractions and emotions into this world, so that he who believes in them may not perish, but have a „just“ world-outlook. Ethics according to ethical socialists therefore had to die on the cross because of our unjust emotions — the original sin, wrath, envy and disobedience, the fall from grace. It is— according to the ethical socialists — ethics and morals that are going to save us, not socialism. Needless to say, they are clueless in that respect. Modern ethics and sense of justice are just a step, moreover the last step of a dialectical development, not even the first. They are the merely the products and not the initiators of evolution and class struggle, they can be weaponized, but they will vanish once the struggle is over, just like Christianity will vanish in Heaven. This is the theory what Marx and Engels explain and expand much more subtlely in the Holy Family, German Ideology, Origin of the Family, etc.
Ps.: Yes, I believe also that pain and suffering are BAD things and it is in general BAD to hurt defenseless and innocent people posing no threat to us, as some people like to imagine the materialists as the psychotic maniacs which they are not.
"You make the claim that Marx and Engels believed in socialism primarily out of ethics and they did this all for ethics... by lying or at least being intellectually dishonest, unable to understand what they said. "
This is not my claim. I am not reading further because it looks like you do not understand me at all, comrade. Please understand that I mean, Marx or Engels were simply confused about some things. They thought they were doing something with no normativity anywhere, but it was always there somewhere. They did a good job examining the capitalist system and finding issues or holes, and they wanted to change the world for the better. They thought socialism (and then communism) would be better, and they basically examined capitalism and talked about the conditions in which capitalism would collapse or be overthrown and replaced with socialism. As Xi Jinping would say, "Capitalism is bound to fail. And socialism is bound to win." Marx and Engels systematically and rigorously examined capitalism and showed its failure points, which future socialists can use during the revolution. Marx and Engels did what utopian socialists did not do, that is, a systematic, rigorous analysis of the system that shows weak points in the system for victory and what should be done for victory. Then Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Deng handled the theory of revolution with more contributions from Jiang Zemin, Ho Chi Minh, Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping, etc. with respect to practical party work.
My point is that purely philosophically or theoretically, Marx's views has some issues that can be easily rectified by simply acknowledging the ethical side that was always there. They were NOT "intellectually dishonest" or anything like that. I am not accusing Marx, Engels of academic or intellectual dishonesty but simply mistakes that honestly happened because they really thought they could separate ethics or normativity from their project.
I certainly have made a language mistake, as I DO NOT think you accuse Marx and Engels of academic dishonesty as you phrase it. The point of my argument is mostly in the 5th to 7th paragraphs, and based on the rest of your comment, you should need to read further. Or Origin of the Family at least.
"Ethics according to ethical socialists therefore had to die on the cross because of our unjust emotions — the original sin, wrath, envy and disobedience, the fall from grace. It is— according to the ethical socialists — ethics and morals that are going to save us, not socialism. "
Well, no, because ethical or utopian socialists like Owens, Fourier, etc., were not just like... ethics or morals will save us, and not socialism. They did try to do socialism, but since they did not examine the full capitalist system as rigorously as Marx and Engels did, they failed. For example, when Owen tried doing socialism locally without meticulous analysis, he failed. His actual built system collapsed quickly. The USSR lasted very long, and now China, learning from even the mistakes of the USSR, has lasted even longer than the USSR, and China is still going strong.
Ethical socialists didn't have a good plan or strategy because they underestimated their enemy - capitalism. At least one good thing that happened from Robert Owens' experiment is that now we know the mistakes Robert made, and we learned from them. They underestimated their enemy because they didn't do rigorous research. Marx and Engels did the rigorous research, but they also committed a few mistakes regarding the normative side of things.
Seen elsewhere days earlier and have written a way longer unreadable rant about this, but here is my summarized consequence I drew, with some corrections being made. I just hope it is rather helpful to the cause than not.
We have to keep in mind: the class struggle — in the first place — is not the fight between consequentialism and deontologism, but between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. Moral categories are products of the works of human minds, which are the products of class struggle.
These categories are mere abstractions that were distilled from earlier class struggles, formulae that were applied once in the most sensible form and reapplied time to time but in an anachronistic, more nonsensical form (e.g. the 2000-year old „Christian moral“ reasoning from all ages and political sides in the West). The author somewhat consciously brings up mid-article that the moral arguments are not taken at face value by Marxist-Leninists, only „utilized“, that they have to convince people of consequentialism only as a stepping stone. But, unfortunately, leaves this thought alone, then doubles down by speaking of using pointing to „oppression“, „murders“, „skeletons in the closet“ as the final step of convincing people and lapses back to the fruitless philosophical speculation for the rest of the article.
If this is the real procedure that „worked“ on the author in convincing him of scientific socialism, then — I am sorry to say this — he is NO scientific socialist yet, nevertheless a very talented and passionate utopian or romantic socialist having a strong moral compass and a heart at the right place, hopefully.
Ps..: We must not fall into the mistake of confusing ethics and morals with emotions and conscience either. As one will see if he is paying attention to the developments around him, ethics and conscience are fundamentally opposed to one another (as religion/religious theology and belief are opposed to one another), which actually causes a lot of the dialectical motion leading to psychological dilemmas. Conscience actually almost always comes from the negation of an ethics perceived as wrong. And ethics is like, by definition the negation of acts perceived as coming from negative emotions. But I have not immersed myself in this topic enough yet to say anything more.
Thank you for your comment. Here's my response that I also wrote on reddit - "The "scientific" part in scientific socialism should be interpreted as systematic, careful, rigorous socialism rather than purely descriptive or something like that. Separating ethics from socialism will end up immediately non-persuasive to a lot of people. For example, why do we want to change the world? If you say - for the better conditions of the Proletariat, well, the thing is simply - why is that better? Engels was rich and born into a bourgeois family and was a class traitor. If socialism and communism are NOT just, then being a class traitor(with respect to Bourgeoise class) is baffling!
If socialism and communism are the treatment but capitalism is not even a disease, then what even are you treating? Remember comrade, "health" and "disease" presuppose normatively.
If you just mean that capitalism is a disease for the Proletariat, then again, why should the bourgeoise care? Engels cared but why did he? The simple explanation is - because Engels believed that capitalism was unjust (horrible, cruel, evil, suffering causing) even if he never explicitly said so or even rejected "moralizing". The stanford encyclopedia of philosophy article on Karl Marx showed how sometimes even very rigorous philosophers get confused about stuff - "Nevertheless, this leaves us with a puzzle. Much of Marx’s description of capitalism—his use of the words “embezzlement”, “robbery” and “exploitation”—belie the official account. Arguably, the most satisfactory way of understanding this issue is that Marx believed that capitalism was unjust, but did not believe that he believed it was unjust (Cohen 1983). In other words, Marx, like so many of us, did not have perfect knowledge of his own mind. In his explicit reflections on the justice of capitalism Marx was able to maintain his official view. But in less guarded moments his real view slips out, even if never in explicit language. Such an interpretation is bound to be controversial, but it makes good sense of apparent tensions in the relevant texts.
Whatever one concludes on the question of whether Marx thought capitalism unjust, it is, nevertheless, obvious that Marx thought that capitalism was not the best way for human beings to live. Points made in his early writings remain present throughout his writings, if not always connected to an explicit theory of alienation. The worker finds work a torment, suffers poverty, overwork and lack of fulfilment and freedom. People do not relate to each other as humans should. Does this amount to a moral criticism of capitalism or not? In the absence of any special reason to argue otherwise, it simply seems obvious that Marx’s critique is a moral one. Capitalism impedes human flourishing." - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/#Mora "
Furthermore, I highly recommend reading this - https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/geras.htm
I have written a more subtle and better response to this, but unfortunately it was lost, nevermind.
You make the claim that Marx and Engels believed in socialism primarily out of ethics and they did this all for ethics... by lying or at least being intellectually dishonest, themselves being unable to understand what they said. That is not just „controversial“, that is... something.
Why would Engels be a class traitor? Why would any bourgeois be a [Marxist] class traitor? In the FIRST place, because they see the current class system poses an obstacle to the development of humanity, and only in the SECOND place because it is unjust, immoral, not in accordance with modern moral principles and so on. This is the foundation of ALL scientific socialism and materialist dialectics.
„If socialism and communism are the treatment but capitalism is not even a disease, then what even are you treating? Remember comrade, "health" and "disease" presuppose normatively.“
I like your wording very much here, it's so good it can overcome its own prejudices. For what is a disease? An asymmetrical lively contradicition for survival between two interlinked certain living organisms (prokaryotes etc. vs plants and animalia) or between certain parts within living organisms. What is the disease of capitalism, then? A new episode of asymmetrical lively contradiction between certain classes; today, namely, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. But where does this illness come from?
This is what the Gospel of the passionate socialist says: In the beginning was emotion, and emotion was with humanity, and emotion was humanity. This emotion caused the breakup of the traditional primitive communism, and the beginning of the social disease called class struggle, as Engels says, a development which was also a ruin.
But this is what the materialist socialist must always add: Before the beginning was already evolution and labor, labor and the productive forces begot the discovery of fire, the domestication of animals, the cultivation in agriculture etc. this then begot resource surplus, accumulation, privileges, prejudices, greed, cleverness, emotions and a class of oppressors and oppressed. This begot wonderful irrigation canals, pyramids, world wonders — by causing thousands of slaves unnatural pain and suffering. Where were the times when humans could be blissfully ignorant, what one could see more of, back in the days of the animalistic forefathers, who like many animals today, were so unconscious, yet so often so much more comfortable and in harmony, in touch with nature? The suffering then begot the genial consciousness and enlightenment of the oppressed, one unprecedented by the animal's unconsciousness. This begot the spread of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam etc. But they proved to fail when it came to liberating people and succeed when it came to pacifying. This begot a long dark age and ethics, and ethics were sent by abstractions and emotions into this world, so that he who believes in them may not perish, but have a „just“ world-outlook. Ethics according to ethical socialists therefore had to die on the cross because of our unjust emotions — the original sin, wrath, envy and disobedience, the fall from grace. It is— according to the ethical socialists — ethics and morals that are going to save us, not socialism. Needless to say, they are clueless in that respect. Modern ethics and sense of justice are just a step, moreover the last step of a dialectical development, not even the first. They are the merely the products and not the initiators of evolution and class struggle, they can be weaponized, but they will vanish once the struggle is over, just like Christianity will vanish in Heaven. This is the theory what Marx and Engels explain and expand much more subtlely in the Holy Family, German Ideology, Origin of the Family, etc.
Ps.: Yes, I believe also that pain and suffering are BAD things and it is in general BAD to hurt defenseless and innocent people posing no threat to us, as some people like to imagine the materialists as the psychotic maniacs which they are not.
"You make the claim that Marx and Engels believed in socialism primarily out of ethics and they did this all for ethics... by lying or at least being intellectually dishonest, unable to understand what they said. "
This is not my claim. I am not reading further because it looks like you do not understand me at all, comrade. Please understand that I mean, Marx or Engels were simply confused about some things. They thought they were doing something with no normativity anywhere, but it was always there somewhere. They did a good job examining the capitalist system and finding issues or holes, and they wanted to change the world for the better. They thought socialism (and then communism) would be better, and they basically examined capitalism and talked about the conditions in which capitalism would collapse or be overthrown and replaced with socialism. As Xi Jinping would say, "Capitalism is bound to fail. And socialism is bound to win." Marx and Engels systematically and rigorously examined capitalism and showed its failure points, which future socialists can use during the revolution. Marx and Engels did what utopian socialists did not do, that is, a systematic, rigorous analysis of the system that shows weak points in the system for victory and what should be done for victory. Then Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Deng handled the theory of revolution with more contributions from Jiang Zemin, Ho Chi Minh, Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping, etc. with respect to practical party work.
My point is that purely philosophically or theoretically, Marx's views has some issues that can be easily rectified by simply acknowledging the ethical side that was always there. They were NOT "intellectually dishonest" or anything like that. I am not accusing Marx, Engels of academic or intellectual dishonesty but simply mistakes that honestly happened because they really thought they could separate ethics or normativity from their project.
I certainly have made a language mistake, as I DO NOT think you accuse Marx and Engels of academic dishonesty as you phrase it. The point of my argument is mostly in the 5th to 7th paragraphs, and based on the rest of your comment, you should need to read further. Or Origin of the Family at least.
"Ethics according to ethical socialists therefore had to die on the cross because of our unjust emotions — the original sin, wrath, envy and disobedience, the fall from grace. It is— according to the ethical socialists — ethics and morals that are going to save us, not socialism. "
Well, no, because ethical or utopian socialists like Owens, Fourier, etc., were not just like... ethics or morals will save us, and not socialism. They did try to do socialism, but since they did not examine the full capitalist system as rigorously as Marx and Engels did, they failed. For example, when Owen tried doing socialism locally without meticulous analysis, he failed. His actual built system collapsed quickly. The USSR lasted very long, and now China, learning from even the mistakes of the USSR, has lasted even longer than the USSR, and China is still going strong.
Ethical socialists didn't have a good plan or strategy because they underestimated their enemy - capitalism. At least one good thing that happened from Robert Owens' experiment is that now we know the mistakes Robert made, and we learned from them. They underestimated their enemy because they didn't do rigorous research. Marx and Engels did the rigorous research, but they also committed a few mistakes regarding the normative side of things.