Something I find a little strange, or perhaps just misunderstand, is that marxism is posited to be an morally unconcerned, descriptive theory, yet its adherents often don't adopt that attitude whatsoever. Most marxists I've ever met are activists and have a clear ethical problem with capitalism. However, this ethical problematization is never seemingly justified, just presupposed and unexamined. I don't think that's necessarily an inherent problem but it seems to run counter to the idea of the supposed amoralism of marxism. That supposed amoralism is used to counter liberal sentimentality yet it isn't actually amoralistic itself. You could probably even criticize Marx and Engels themselves for this, owing to their active engagement with a communist movement. If it's true that capitalism's collapse is an inevitability and the theory posts only that then why even concern yourself with ensuring or disrupting that outcome? Even if you want to argue that it is only a likely event and not strictly determined, from that we still don't have a reason as to why anybody should care, really. From the theory, communism is neither a positive nor a negative development, only a transformation. You could make an argument that you have a personal or community interest in communism but that would be an external moral argument that has no direct bearing on marxism.
>>2631856Mods, banish this one to /dead/.
>>2631859Why do you insist on being unnecessarily dismissive like this? If you don't want to discuss this you can just not reply.
Marxism technically doesn't imply a moral framework but in practice most communists have morals because they're human beings.
I suppose an alien or a sociopath could read all the descriptions of suffering workers in Capital and think, "whatever, this means nothing to me." But Marxism as a theory of class struggle and social change functions just fine without any implicit morality.
>>2631856Communism is better for life, for human species, or something.
>>2631856it also applies to even marx himself. The words he uses to describe capitalism has a moral character to them. Marx mocked moralism yet he strangely used it
>>2631887Thats probably not what moralism means.
posadas save meee
>>2631884Yeah, and as I said, I don't necessarily have a problem with that or anything. People always operate through an affective framework after all. But it just seems weird to try and present marxism as an amoralist analysis when many marxists will justify their activism through that theory exactly, or even use its supposed amoralism as an argument in favour of it (not nearly everyone does this I've just seen it before). So to put it in other words I think my concern is with what the underlying moral theory of marxists/communists generally 'is'.
>According to the laws of bourgeois economics, the greatest part of the product does not belong to the workers who have produced it. If we now say: that is unjust, that ought not to be so, then that has nothing immediately to do with economics. We are merely saying that this economic fact is in contradiction to our sense of morality. Marx, therefore, never based his communist demands upon this, but upon the inevitable collapse of the capitalist mode of production which is daily taking place before our eyes to an ever growing degree; he says only that surplus value consists of unpaid labour, which is a simple fact. But what in economic terms may be formally incorrect, may all the same be correct from the point of view of world history. If mass moral consciousness declares an economic fact to be unjust, as it did at one time in the case of slavery and statute labour, that is proof that the fact itself has outlived its day, that other economic facts have made their appearance due to which the former has become unbearable and untenable. Therefore, a very true economic content may be concealed behind the formal economic incorrectness.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/pre-1885.htm >>2631911Whatever moral outrage one feels at the oppression and exploitation of capital is separate from the scientific, critical conception of class consciousness, capitalist crisis and communism. Most workers don't have a good grasp of the latter, so it's supposed to be the task of the communist party to theorize and disseminate it. Although it's true that most parties have muddled that message together with moralism meant to appeal to the working class, so it looks like communists are making moral appeals against capital.
>>2631856Are morals ever anything more than simply normative? Why do I get the feeling that there's a big, fat G-word sitting somewhere at the bottom of this refuse?
A work can be amoral and purely logical but humans cannot. We are experiential machines and the process of experience necessarily filters through moral, ethical, and emotional layers. This is, incidentally, one of the things I find most puzzling about a certain brand of masculinity – this kind of rejection of the human experience, as if the simple existence of emotion or non-bibbled morality is a weakness which must be excised; that the simple presence of anything but cold Philo 101 undergrad logic is completely disqualifying, regardless of the fact that logic is often present as well.
My point here is that OP is gay, unserious, and I swear I can feel the spirit fingers on those keys.
>>2631856>Something I find a little strange, or perhaps just misunderstand, is that marxism is posited to be an morally unconcerned, descriptive theory, yet its adherents often don't adopt that attitude whatsoever. Everything you have said is Wrong. Marxism-Leninism is the only real science. Marxism-Leninism is concerned. Marxist-Leninist morality is the only true and scientific morality, therefore Marxism-Leninism is objectively moral.
Communist China Constitution
Article 24
The state shall promote socialist cultural-ethical advancement through widely accessible education on ideals, morality, culture, discipline and law, and through the formulation and observance of different forms of rules of conduct and public pledges among different urban and rural populations.
The state shall champion core socialist values; advocate the civic virtues of love for the motherland, for the people, for work, for science and for socialism; educate the people in patriotism and collectivism, in internationalism and communism, and in dialectical and historical materialism; and combat capitalist, feudal and other forms of decadent thought.
the bigger truth is that ethics itself is a logical science which can be discerned from reason. therefore, if politics is a matter of ethics, then politics is really subordinate to the proper science of ethics, not separate from it. plato and aristotle considered politics to be a form of class struggle based in the interests of a group to assert its own supremacy (e.g. monarchy, timarchy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny, etc.) and a perfect politics was also theorised under ethical terms. plato for example saw that the perfect state must be maintained by an ethically supreme elite class of "guardians" (what is otherwise referred to as "philosopher-kings"). aristotle saw that since friendships are the perfect relationship, a perfect politics should be based in this, wherefore aristotle sees that politics should then be based in private propriety of property, but an ethos of sharing what one possesses, even stating directly that the golden mean of class struggle is an expansion of the middle class (in a form of democracy). in the marxist case, if all political misfortune comes from a capitalist ruling class who steals the product of labour, then this ethical orientation is surely one of reappropriating this property. thus, the ethical position is to see profit as theft, and the prevention, or rectification of theft, as its resolve. why is capitalism bad? why should we oppose it? because its a system based on theft - once it is spoken, it seems obvious. however, if one does not regard profit as theft, then the communist indulges in ethical confusion, since they cannot articulate their opposition, but hypocritically. for example, aristotle in his first book of politics regards usury as a form of theft (this "usury", or "chrematistics" becomes marx's notion of surplus value, since it is money making money; M-C-M). aristotle says that reciprocity (equality) in trade underlies just economy, and so it is in equality which justice rests (such as in property), the same way aquinas later bases his aristotelian notion of a "just price" in this equality of value (even stating that a wage ought to pay by equivalence, to what one gives). so then, profit was once openly considered theft, before the rise of capitalism…
>>2631856>From the theory, communism is neither a positive nor a negative development, only a transformation.you're half way to answering your own quandry here with this sentence. the notion of communism and its critique of political economy describe tendential societal movements on the basis of objective amoralistic conditions, dynamics, and mechanisms. it does not by itself ascribe moral valence to those movements. communism isn't supposed to arise as a movement against bourgeois society because of some natural tendency of the social universe towards abstract objective moral justice, but rather because bourgeois society produces a mass majority class of people whose material interests are diametrically opposed to a society organized in accordance with bourgeois morality. moral outrage is produced by underlying class antagonisms, not the other way around. in this way, the critique of moralism is essentially a subset of the critique of idealism.
>>2631856>marxism is posited to be an morally unconcerned, descriptive theoryMarx and Engels clearly had substantive normative beliefs, at least a strong sense of what they saw as right and wrong and both complained about bourgeois morality. What they seemed to oppose was the widespread idea that capitalisms ills could be fixed through moral improvement i.e. the idea that factory owners just needed to be kinder and then all the problems would go away. In that sense, Marx wasn't a moralist but this didn't mean he was amoral or lacked morals. Marxoids seem to misinterpret this as a rejection of morality. Then they paint liberalism (or really any form of moral criticism) as sentimental bullshit compared to the hard science of Marxism. To an extent, this idea of "what we do is science and is therefore entirely objective and doesn't concern personal opinions" was there in Marx's own work.
>You could probably even criticize Marx and Engels themselves for thisMorality seemed to be a really weak area for them. They presented their views as a cold, amoral science which justified violations of basic morality. I doubt Marx would have supported Soviet collectivization or the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, but there's nothing in Marxist doctrine that says you can't make people suffer to realize a communist heaven on earth. The Soviets reasoned that since communism was inevitable, there was nothing wrong with sacrificing a couple thousand people or destroying the environment to make it happen so miners could be overworked or the Aral sea drained to achieve an unrealistic utopia.
So yeah a fault of Marxism is its pretense to amorality and its lack of a clear ethical anchor.
>>2632194The problem with Marxism is that its claims to objectivity don't hold up which is why the inevitable (collapse of capitalism via proletarian revolution) never seems to happen, meaning Marxists continually have to invent excuses for why it didn't happen instead of just admitting some of their core theories are flawed.
>>2632202if we are working on an understanding of "care" in the sense of ascribing qualitative ethical valence (good or bad), then it's very easy to see why any non-suicidal person should care about political economy which is the study of the system of social reproduction that sustains each of our lives individually and collectively. the specific valence of that care comes down to class consciousness. the term exploitation denotes a morally neutral and historically contingent form of surplus value extraction. the moralist connotation arises from the uptake and assertion of one of multiple possible mutually contradictory judgemental evaluations of the denoted form. you can treat the objective fact of aggregate sales revenues exceeding wages and capital costs as morally objectionable, or not. someone that draws their livelihood from this objective difference has a straightforward reason to be inclined to view it as non-objectionable, and reject the connotation of exploitation altogether, but they cannot reject the critical pre-normative facts pertaining to the conditions of their own self-perpetuation.
all that to say, the critique of political economy can't demonstrate why you should care in as much as that means why any given thing is good or bad. its practical use is in its ability to inform our considerations about what we care about and why.
>>2632331so, why should we care about politics?
obviously, if we lived in a perfectly ethical world, there would be no politics; so politics in itself signifies a medium for ethical discourse. what then, is the cause for concern? not "self-perpetuation", but abstract concerns of justice, which is why we have laws.
>>2632334One flaw of modern political thought is the assumption that we can derive an ideal political system and way of life through scientific understanding of human society or human nature. This is what Marxism claims to do. The attempt to cut out morality and ethics and personal subjectivity out of politics and make it rational and scientific hasn't lead to good outcomes.
>>2632348>derive an ideal political systemlol its not about ideals, communism is practical and about sheer necessity, and marxism is merely critique of ideology
>>2632339>so, why should we care about politics?you're just chewing on hume's guillotine. no one can derive a normative prescription from a factual description. politics is itself just the field where mutually contradicting normative appraisals are asserted and negotiated over descriptive realities. even still, you could very well not care about politics. plenty of people don't, and there is no set of facts i or anyone else can point to and compel them to.
>obviously, if we lived in a perfectly ethical world, there would be no politicsi don't see that as obvious because i don't see the notion of a descriptively perfect moral world as coherent in the first place.
>so politics in itself signifies a medium for ethical discourse. we are pretty close on this point.
>what then, is the cause for concern? not "self-perpetuation", but abstract concerns of justice, which is why we have laws.moral systems of law and justice exist to perpetuate the social structures which institute and maintain them. conflict arises precisely because of the antinomies which arise from the categorical distinction of is from ought. you cannot derive or demonstrate what is lawful or just from any set of descriptive facts other than that a particular historically contingent social convention backed by material coercion stipulates it so. competing and mutually exclusive evaluations of the same object or course of action cannot be resolved by syllogistic reason, but only through rhetorical persuasion and outright violent conflict.
>>2632421you are a substanceless person
>>2632421>competing and mutually exclusive evaluations of the same object or course of action cannot be resolved by syllogistic reason, but only through rhetorical persuasion and outright violent conflict.i should have added inductive reason as one of possible mode of resolution here.
>>2632449>you are on this website>you clearly identify as politically normative (e.g. leftist)this is self-evident of the clause to political discourse being broached by prescription over description. your fallacious purity of reason gives reason no object (e.g. subjective determination to concept), and no practice (ethics), thus you fail to be substantial in personhood. the non-political subject is not really a person (e.g. a slave), like how you deny your own personhood by denying the imperative to be political. the question thus:
why are you on this website if you had no duty to care?
>>2632471>>2632471>your fallacious purity of reason gives reason no object (e.g. subjective determination to concept), and no practice (ethics),practice gives reason its object. reason cannot provide its own object.
>thus you fail to be substantial in personhood. I don't think that follows, and it's also unnecessarily rude.
>why are you on this website if you had no duty to care?i'm sorry comrade, i wasn't aware that i was duty bound to while away the hours speculating about why people care about things and the nature of political economy as a scientific extension of ethical value theory on a third rate imageboard. i don't feel any special compulsion to justify everything i care about with reference to duty or obligation.
>>2632494>reason cannot provide its own object.the laws of thought are the same to all beings.
>I don't think that followswhy dont animals have the same rights as humans?
why dont children have the same rights as adults?
>bla bla blawhy are you on this website?
why do you call yourself a leftist?
>>2632507>the laws of thought are the same to all beings.you cannot demonstrate from the laws of thought alone how, why, or even whether any given being ought to regard or pursue any other given being in any given way. that they do at all is a historically contingent fact which cannot be had a priori.
>why are you on this website?to waste a bit of time primarily.
>why do you call yourself a leftist?because i am a proletarian by virtue of not owning capital, i don't have any expectation or ambition of becoming an owner of capital, and i judge the marxist communist political project to be the most theoretically accurate and practically efficacious means of asserting my interests as a proletarian.
>>2632537>you cannot demonstrate>historically contingentcan 1+1 ever equal 3?
>i judge the marxist communist political project to be the most theoretically accuratea "communist political project" is prescriptive, yes?
so it cannot be "theoretically accurate", but only morally imperative.
>>2632554>can 1+1 ever equal 3?no. what you have there is a descriptive, demonstrative fact that can be derived and proven from axioms and laws of inference. there is no deductive or demonstrative procedure by which you can derive or prove assertions about 'good', 'bad', 'ought', 'oughtn't', etc.
>a "communist political project" is prescriptive, yes?>so it cannot be "theoretically accurate", but only morally imperative.you're right, i should have been more precise. the project itself isn't "theoretically accurate", rather i regard the theory produced within the project to be more theoretically accurate than competitors. this is among the reasons that convince me to identify as a leftist, but it's not logically necessary for the project which produces the most scientifically accurate theory to be the project with the correct prescriptions about what one ought to do.
>>2632587>there is no deductive or demonstrative procedure by which you can derive or prove assertions about 'good', 'bad', 'ought', 'oughtn't', etc.if there is no reason to care, then why do you care?
>it's not logically necessary for the project which produces the most scientifically accurate theory to be the project with the correct prescriptions about what one ought to do.do you want to make the world a better place?
>>2632594>if there is no reason to care, then why do you care?the claim isn't that there is no reason to care at all, the claim is that there are no reasons to care given by mechanical procedures of deductive reason. i care for a multitude of reasons i could list, and plenty of others i couldn't. even if I had a full account of all the reasons why i judge any given thing as 'good' or 'bad', any syllogism i could ever try and construct to assert a truth value for my judgement which follows from those reasons would have to be either circular or invalid.
>do you want to make the world a better place?i believe so, yes.
>>2632616if ethical activity is not located in reason, as you say, then why do you have abstract ethical concerns at all? (e.g. beholding "the world" as an object to which care ought to be considered toward). if there is no reason to care, then why do you care? you have perhaps forgotten that you have given your personal gain as an imperative for ethical concern (e.g. "self-interest"). as yet, you would sacrifice your personal gain for the sake of the benefit of a stranger, showing how ethical activity is not based in concrete practicality, but is based in an abstract objectivity, which can be intuited by all rational beings. you speak falsely of historical contingency, when ethical universality was present in ancient rhetoric, as much as today. once we agree to this reality, we can then proceed to a question of politics as a question of justice in right and property, which is all that the "theoretical accuracy" of marxism is worth (e.g. profit is theft, workers possess the legitimate right of possession of the means of production, etc.)
>>2632075>>2632419Not only do I have no intention of making this into some bullshit about God, I also don't even believe the thing theists say where they say morality is somehow made objective as God exist. Objective morals are, as far as I'm concerned, a category error. They are indeed always normative; my point is, I'm trying to discern where the communists and the marxists get their norms from. I also am not criticizing the mere fact that communists and marxists operate through a moral view (see
>>2631911), but the justification of that moral view is often presented as coming from a marxism that they, at the same time, present as amoral in nature.
>>2632194>>2632331>>2632300(etc.) Sorry I can't really reply with anything proper rn I'll have to give it a read but your replies are interesting so it's appreciated.
>>2632646>if ethical activity is not located in reason, as you saythat's not what i say though. i say that the truth value of any given ethical proposition cannot be derived or demonstrated within deductive reason.
>why do you have abstract ethical concerns at all? you can apply deductive reason to ethical propositions, you simply can't derive the latter as truth values concluding from the former as premises. e.g. i can demonstrate that ethically, if i want to sleep, then ought to close my eyes. i can only demonstrate that I ought to sleep with reference to my desire to live in health and relative comfort. there is no objective ground upon which to terminate such a regress outside of that which is negotiated or imposed by ethical and political practice.
>as yet, you would sacrifice your personal gain for the sake of the benefit of a strangerbut only in as much as i want to, and again there is no demonstrative means by which you or i could ever procedurally prove whether i am right or wrong to without circularity or fallacy.
>>2631856You are entirely correct that a lot of communists abandon a scientific analysis of politics and are far too sentimental and moralizing.
Marxism is really just political science but actually good.
>>2632408Das Kapital isn't about communism though. Did you read the book?
>>2632419Yeah, but arguing on the basis of ethics and morality is fucking gay.
>>2631856Yet another discussion that's entirely philosophy undergrads who have wasted years reading anything except for even the most basic marxist shit. Communism is the movement of workers acting in self-interest, not some feelgood moral crusade.
Negative phenomena like poverty, unemployment, and inequality aren't just unfortunate, they're necessary outcomes of capitalism's profit-driven logic. The scientific approach isn't just to criticize capitalism but to show that these contradictions are built into the system. The critique is grounded in material conditions, not moral ideals, and marxism sees communism as a necessary transformation
for the proletariat first and
eventually for the rest of humanity as a whole, not an ethical aspiration.
< Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. >>2632648>I'm trying to discern where the communists and the marxists get their norms fromCommunists and Marxists have the oppression of the bourgeoisie (esp. the haute bourgeoisie) in their best material interests. The morals are just downstream from that. You can discern this very easily while studying Marxist theory, but Nietzsche also kind of makes this point.
Another point that you have to take into consideration is that Leninist organizing involves agitation as a tool of class struggle. Agitation will come with moralizing speech, for you need to conquer the minds and also hearts of the working class. That's just how people are.
>>2632698>that's not what i say thoughyes it is:
>>2632494<reason cannot provide its own object.thus, reason cannot be sufficient of its own cause as to the truth of propositions. you confuse yourself however by stating that deduction is true in regard to certain claims (e.g. 1+1=2), yet not to ethical concerns. it is contradictory to claim as such when you propose political prescription which originates from a rational source, based in abstract justice (e.g. "making the world a better place"), which is not "descriptive", except in the objectivity of virtue, which is justice, as i have explained (i.e. politics as the medium of law). thus, when it comes to defining what "makes the world a better place", you are determined to absolute conclusions. as an example, does a better world have more rape and murder in it? no. thus, rape and murder are principles of imperfection, or a lack of virtue, which we may then call "irrational" or "unjustified" by reason.
thus, there are ethical claims (e.g. "rape is good") which can be demonstrated to be false. thus, ethics, like mathematics, has its deductive validity, from whence the faculty of practical reason (e.g. ethics) emanates. justice is then objective, since it cannot be argued against on the basis of reason, and further, injustice is entirely insulting to the rational mind. what you might call "communism" is just perfect justice, no?
>>2632756>thus, reason cannot be sufficient of its own cause as to the truth of propositions. you confuse yourself however by stating that deduction is true in regard to certain claims (e.g. 1+1=2)deduction is not true with regard to a mathematical proposition because truth is a property of propositions not methodologies or procedures. you have it backwards. mathematical propositions are true with regard to the application of laws of inference to stipulated axioms. any attempt at a mathematical ethical calculus would have to begin from premises about things like good and bad which are stipulated rather than derived, much as the axioms of math.
>it is contradictory to claim as such when you propose political prescription which originates from a rational source, based in abstract justice (e.g. "making the world a better place")what does or does not make the world a better place cannot be demonstrated or derived without circularity or fallacy.
>thus, there are ethical claims (e.g. "rape is good") which can be demonstrated to be false.no, you cannot demonstrate that rape is bad in the same way that you can demonstrate 1+1=2 without either assuming what you mean to prove, or proving it with reference to something else which is assumed without demonstrative proof.
>justice is then objectiveno it isn't, and you haven't come anywhere in the vicinity of substantiating this assertion. you want soundness to be given in deduction alone like along with validity like a good rationalist idealist should, but it simply isn't so.
>>2632648>I'm trying to discern where the communists and the marxists get their norms from.Communist morality, the only true, materialist morality, is derived scientifically from the material conditions of the proletariat. Example is Friedrich Engels's The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845)
>>2631856yeah thats true but theres two things about it. one is that he considers the proletarian standpoint to be universal under a capitalist mode of production. but its still moral to say that proletarians
should win. theres also the argument that on a long enough timeline its also in the borgs interest to do communism. but thats also moral. the detach unmoral position is the analysis of capitalism and the trpf to which he says:
>"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. "so from a neutral analysis he just saying what will happen, but there is a not-so-hidden implication "and communism would ultimately be good/better for everyone from every perspective and every measure"
even the borg would be happier doing innovative competition amongst fully developed individuals instead of cuttrought competition between lucky circumstances and such a state of being would increase even their own capacity for action by learning through rivalry among competent equals and also they wouldn't have to worry about being stabbed by a hobo
>>2632648>my point is, I'm trying to discern where the communists and the marxists get their norms from.Depends where they live, what websites they use, what games / books / anime / etc… they engage with, what beliefs their parents attempted to impose on them, etc..
>>2632300>the Aral sea drainedthat happened after the restoration of capitalism
>>2632648>I'm trying to discern where the communists and the marxists get their norms fromits a sort of dialectical utilitarianism that comes out of universalized humanitarianism and anthrocentrism.
>I also don't even believe the thing theists say where they say morality is somehow made objective as God exist. Objective morals are, as far as I'm concerned, a category error. you should reconsider under something like "god has a plan" to mean something like "its good to be on the surface of earth because thats how gravity works" where god is absolute/supreme "being" in the sense that is it all that exists not "a being" in the sense that its a person/individual
from this perspective the moral or the good is to live in accordance with the laws of nature but theres also a dialectical part where you can manipulate nature according to desire such that desire and the laws of physics are in alignment and thats what it means to live a good life. kinda like a reciprocal daoism that integrates acceptance with directed change
this is pretty universal unless you want to adopt an ethical stance of something like who cares what humans think and it doesn't matter if mankind dies out. if you consider the scope of ethics to only include things that have sapience/sentience then you dodge the accusation of being anthrocentric because morality is something that humans do and only applies to humans(until we discover aliens) so it is objective in a dialectical way. you take a troll position and say its better for us all to die of climate change but then everyone else will just ignore/shun or kill you so your position is untenable in reality
i think this is the most reasonable position since its true you cant derive is from ought but the only thing you have to accept for marxist "ethics" to be true is that humans should exist and everything else follows
>>2633402>i think this is the most reasonable position since its true you cant derive is from ought but the only thing you have to accept for marxist "ethics" to be true is that humans should exist and everything else followsi broadly agree with this post, but where i break with you is when you say "humans should exist" is a sufficient premise from which to derive some kind of distilled ethics of marxian communism. kings and capitalists exist, as do serfs and proles. for me, the basic ethical premise which underlies any reasoned reflection on communism as the real movement abolishing the current state of things and what should be done to further it would be more like "people should exist without class distinction". the historical novelty of the proletariat, and why we hypothesize it as the world-historically revolutionary subject, is that it is the working class in the period of human history which first produces productive means sufficient to universalize itself as the only class through revolutionary activity, and thus is the first revolutionary working class historically capable of abolishing class distinction as such. what is important isn't so much a universalist humanism, which is arguably something more proper to the development of bourgeois society, but the universalization of a particular class position which simultaneously abolishes class position as a meaningful category.
>>2633486yeah i get what you mean i just think class distinctions are in contradiction with humans existing long term. thats what i mean by the proletarian standpoint being universal and common ruin. even if you might be better off as a self interested capitalist in the term of your 70 year life your childrens children wont exist if the planet burns up and class distinctions necessarily develope into capitalism industrialization and climate catastrophe. like the proles arent the universal class merely because they are a majority but because they represent the emergent face of humanity as a self directed organism become actualized
>>2631856There's different kinds of morals. It depends on the type of Marxism, because academic marxism can definitely be turned into something purely descriptive, but Marx himself was intervening in proletarian struggles. His standpoint, and the standpoint of communists, is that what's good for the proletariat is good. And what's good is simple, it's whatever increases our wellbeing and furthers our interests.
>>2634069By different kinds of morals i mean there's stuff like "freedom is good" and then there's like "it's bad if i starve". And there are morals that people try to put on others in order to give universal laws that all fall under, and then there's just the personal, biological even, value systems that are innate to us as living creatures. Something that hurts is bad so I'll avoid it. It's miles apart from "everyone must strive for truth and justice". The higher type of morality is what liberals play around with, and the lower is what communists rely on.
>>2631856The "amoralism" of Marxism is the descriptive study of where morality comes from, not a prescription to have no morals, those are in fact inescapable and propel the class struggle itself at the level of superstructural consciousness. Under class society, the oppressed have their own morality based on experiential affective understanding of the suffering caused by their oppression, the oppressors have their own morality based on the dehumanization of the oppressed, so as to not share their suffering, so as to benefit materially from it. If you materially benefit from Palestinian genocide you'll likely have genocidal morality, and if you don't you'll be horrified when you find out the Zionist entity is a fully committed genocidal society, and be compelled to support the liberation of Palestinians, whose suffering your material conditions allow you to empathize with.
But don't confuse this with merely stating that morality is historically contingent and you have no reason to oppose Zionism beyond your arbitrary circumstances. Marxism is no Postmodernism, because the latter rejects material reality as the ultimate source of "social constructs". Our true, non-historically contingent claim to righteousness is that empathy with fellow human beings allows for true scientific thinking, since to deny the humanity of the oppressed is to disregard their experienced reality as an object of serious dialectical inquiry, and at a greater degree it necessitates foregoing dialectical thinking entirely in favor of ideology to gaslight the oppressed out of their own experienced reality and to essentialize the system of oppression, denying the very reality of historical progress. Marx argues this when he analyzes that Aristotle could only gleam the form of value in exchange value, but not the substance of value in human labor, due to his class position in a slave society founded on the moral supposition of the inequality of men and thus their labor powers.
This is why we use scientific Marxism as our weapon of choice in the class struggle, while the reactionaries use eleven varieties of stupid retarded ideological bullshit, the most effective being identitarian fascism which is predicated on total dehumanization of the other, and on the other hand amoral utilitarian thinking, which allows for effective rational thinking completely taking inconvenient human experience out of the picture and without critically examining the class basis of the "priors" being considered. A true dialectical commitment to scientific inquiry, even if not explicitly Marxist, should lead one inevitably to discover and empathize with the truth of the oppressed, while idealist empathy for the oppressed will inevitably find out that only dialectical thinking, even if not explicitly Marxist, is the only path forward to achieve liberation. That Marxism is a science and that it is deeply committed to liberation is therefore not mere happenstance, it is the natural outcome that reason is founded in affect, something which was gleamed by philosophers for the purposes of self-realization, but only put to the purposes of liberation by Marx.
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