By Rodney G. Peffer
The interpreter of Marx's writings faces the duty of reconciling, at the one hand, Marx's common particular condemnations and criticisms of morality and, at the different, the most obvious means within which his world-view displays noticeable ethical judgments. during this booklet R. G. Peffer tackles the demanding situations of discovering in Marx's paintings an implicit ethical concept, of answering claims that Marxism is incompatible with morality, and of constructing the outlines of an enough Marxist ethical and social idea. Peffer analyzes the ethical elements of Marx's proposal and considers all of the significant interpretations of his ethical viewpoint; he concludes that Marx is a combined deontologist who's such a lot devoted to a greatest process of equivalent freedoms, either optimistic and adverse. He then makes use of modern metaethical conception to teach that Marxism is appropriate with morality mostly and with the thoughts of justice and rights specifically. Peffer proposes a substantially egalitarian thought of social justice (which subsumes Marx's personal ethical thought) and a minimum set of Marxist empirical theses, which jointly entail the Marxist's easy normative political positions. This ebook demonstrates that modern analytic political philosophy is necessary for coming to phrases with Marxism and that it's only Marx's much less summary empirical theories approximately periods and sophistication fight, the dysfunctions of capitalism, and the opportunity of developing democratic, self-managing postcapitalist societies which are wanted for the improvement of an enough Marxist ethical and social theory.
Originally released in 1990.
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Example text
In philosophy from the University of Jena in Berlin (April 1841) until he resigned as editor of the Kheinische Zeitung (March 1843)—Marx found no problem in speaking of moral or ethical re quirements or making explicit moral judgments. In this period we also find his only attempts at characterizing morality from an in ternal point of view as a realm of human discourse or theory. In his later, social-scientific works, he would characterize morality from an external point of view as a cultural or social phenomenon.
26 Marx's third change of this period—his acceptance of Feuerbach's humanistic moral terminology—is evident as early as a May 1843 letter to Ruge. Speaking about the manner in which society can be revitalized and improved, Marx states that "freedom, the feeling of man's dignity will have to be awakened. . Only this feeling . . "27 He claims that "despotism's only idea is contempt for man, dehumanized man. . "30 To see that Marx's criticism of politics at this time is very similar to Feuerbach's criticism of religion, one need only substitute the word "religion" for the terms "despotism," "despot," and "mon archy" in the sentences above.
46. 26 G. A. Cohen, "The Labor Theory of Value," p. 354. INTRODUCTION Marxism is defined mainly by two . . features. First, the be lief that alienation and exploitation interfere with the good life for man and that their suppression is not only desirable but feasible. Or at the minimum, the unfeasibility of suppressing them has not been proven. Secondly, Marxism is character ized by a few fundamental theoretical assumptions about the structure and development of societies, with emphasis on the interrelation between property rights, technical change and class struggle.