Marx and Engels were against Moralism yet they were class traitors. What is the material explanation for this? Clearly empathy for the proletariat and their suffering is an insufficient explanation, because that's just moralism, and they weren't moralists.
Egoism. Also they likely understood that the petit bourgoise were downwardly mobile and wanted to be ahead of the curve.
>>2686836Engels was a factory owner, not petty bourgeois.
>>2686837>like you do realize why scientists put aside their own morals when doing science, right?no, explain.
>>2686847>why put aside subjective biases when trying to maintain objectivity and neutrality in researchbruh before even bothering to read marx we are sending you back to high school first
>>2686847Science is knowledge making/discovering, if the author is at all relevant beyond having valid credentials that poses replicability issues. Therefor you have to do science not as yourself but as a scientist.
Theres a funny tendency where communists say they are amoral but then you look at marx writings. He uses a lot of moral language in it.
>>2686858Provide some examples
>>2686862is this not moral language?
“Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.”
“The prolongation of the working day… only slightly quenches the vampire thirst for the living blood of labour.”
“Surplus-value is exacted from the labourer by the capitalist without an equivalent, and this transaction is therefore an act of robbery.”
“If money, according to Augier, ‘comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,’ capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood
>>2686855who are you quoting
>>2686871No. They are metaphors, also, robbery isn't necessarrely a moral term (it just describes a type lf stealing), you just asign it yourself a moral connotation.
I'm not sure you can say that Marx and Engels were "against moralism", rather they eschewed moralism in their analysis and sought to discover objective laws of social development. The basic structure of historical materialism holds that all societies must develop moral codes as part of their superstructure in order to justify any perpetuate their mode of production. It follows that a socialist society would necessarily need to develop a socialist morality as part of its superstructure.
>We therefore reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever as an eternal, ultimate and for ever immutable ethical law on the pretext that the moral world, too, has its permanent principles which stand above history and the differences between nations. We maintain on the contrary that all moral theories have been hitherto the product, in the last analysis, of the economic conditions of society obtaining at the time. And as society has hitherto moved in class antagonisms, morality has always been class morality; it has either justified the domination and the interests of the ruling class, or ever since the oppressed class became powerful enough, it has represented its indignation against this domination and the future interests of the oppressed. That in this process there has on the whole been progress in morality, as in all other branches of human knowledge, no one will doubt. But we have not yet passed beyond class morality. A really human morality which stands above class antagonisms and above any recollection of them becomes possible only at a stage of society which has not only overcome class antagonisms but has even forgotten them in practical life.
There is such a thing as morality, it's just been co-opted and manipulated by class interests. The triumph of communism will mean not abolition of morality, but the establishment of a really human morality not subverted by class antagonisms.
Marx rejected morality as part of objective scientific analysis of social economy, he didn't reject morality outright and clearly had some moral views of his own.
>>2686902>There is such a thing as morality, it's just been co-opted and manipulated by class interests.this contradicts the quote you posted
Class struggle and the eventual victory of the proletariat is an amoral fact. Choosing to partake in it and organize the labour movement is a personal, moral choice. At least thats how I've always thought of it
>>2686913Similiarly Marx and Engels discovered this amoral philosophy, and chose to spread it by their moral conviction. Just like penicillin killing bacteria is a basic, amoral fact, but wanting to spread it around the world to fight disease is a moral choice.
Yes Marx and Engels had beliefs and convictions. Yes they created narratives and myths as well to kickstart their political project. They also attempted to create an objective assessment of political economy. It's not super complicated.
>>2687009>Yes they created narratives and myths as well to kickstart their political projectnope, communism isnt an ideology and neither is marxism
>They also attempted to create an objective assessment of political economynope, they were doing critique
>It's not super complicatedyet it seems it flew entirely over your head
>>2687039>nope, communism isnt an ideology and neither is marxismWhat exactly does this mean?
>>2687065it's just some borderline religious shit people say on here because they're quirky and not like the other girls
>>2687039Critique is a systematic investigation of the scope and conditions of a topic, aka, an objective assessment.
>>2687234oh like "I'm not a leftist, I'm a a communist"?
>>2687039Communism is an ideology. Isolated workers' struggles have not led to communism thus far and the collapse of capitalism does not have to result in communism
>>2686917Well put. (Not bumping the thread because the thread should have ended there.)
>moralism is the base of marxism because I say it is, okay?!
only on /leftypol/ you see these things
they didn't just analyze society scientifically, they actively helped the workers at tremendous risk to themselves
Them being against moralism doesn't mean they have no morals.
>Moralism is a philosophy that arose in the 19th century that concerns itself with imbuing society with a certain set of morals, usually traditional behaviour, but also "justice, freedom, and equality".
^Non materialistic Christoid bullshit that isn't going to systematically reform society. What they were against was people using abstract bullshit like morality and virtues in their arguments, e.g. justifying private property with the "rights" of the owners
uygha did you even read Their Morals and Ours?
>>2688289moralism today is basically when people think the problem is just that our billionaire pedophiles are evil but the system is okay otherwise. anti-semitism is the ultimate form of moralism.
moralists have the persistent tendency to unironically see morality as the driving factor in how society works. honestly if you have ever interacted with people that unironically think this way, it becomes very obvious what marx wanted to distance himself from
>>2688295>honestly if you have ever interacted with people that unironically think this way, it becomes very obvious what marx wanted to distance himself fromtrvke
>>2688218But the last part is true
>marx
>class traitor
the guy was literally a prole journalist, even if you count his bro4life financing his research he is still an intelligentsia prole at best
We marxists are anti-moralist in the sense that we reject this idealist construction of morality.
Take the following 3 examples
"Exploiting workers is bad because God said so" - Moralism
"Exploiting workers is bad because its morally wrong" - Moralism.
"Exploiting workers is bad because we don't want it to happen. It makes us feel bad" - Not moralism.
"Workers produce most wealth, but take in a much smaller share of what they produce. Workers also don't control the production process. Therefore, our material interests is that we don't want exploitation of man by man but replace it with another system" - Not moralism, just describing both material reality and your real material interests
>>2686834Socialism isn't pauperism
>>2688570but leftychud told me unless you produce surplus value through commodity production in a factory you're not a real prole
>>2688638>"Workers produce most wealth, but take in a much smaller share of what they produce. Workers also don't control the production process. Therefore, our material interests is that we don't want exploitation of man by man but replace it with another system" - Not moralism, just describing both material reality and your real material interestsyou're describing the non-moralist conclusions of workers. but Engels was a class traitor who owned factories. Clearly he had some kind of morality motivating him and not merely his material interests.
>>2688150who are you quoting
>>2688150>>2689160I think they're insisting that all marxism is class treason because the theoretical homeless factory worker in their head is illiterate, and anyone that can read must be petbooj.
>>2686834Engles wasn't really bourgeois, while he had money from his family being factory owners, he himself was discouraged from it and his family forced him away from being a manager of his own mill.
>>2689242Well that's petbooj, but yeah downwardly mobile.
>>2686847>factory owner>not bourgeoisgoogle what that term means and get back to me, please.
>>2689244only technically petbooj, enough I think for him to not exactly fit into standard class interest.
>>2689245I think they were trying to say that Uncle Fred was Haute booj, anon. Petty bourgeoisie means muh heckin wholesome artisans and mom'n'pop stores, not factory owners or their heirs in wait.
>>2688295It is the other way around:
Their fault is because it has nothing to do with the integrity of society at all to begin with (which is classified as political art).
Hobbes & Rousseau nailed it. It is the lack of a civic religion like North Korea has.
Rousseau Social Contract pages 67 through 73.https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/rousseau1762.pdf>You may ask: ‘Why were there no wars of religion in the pagan world, where each state had its own form of worship and its own gods?’
>My reply is that just because each state had its own form of worship as well as its own government, no state distinguished its gods from its laws. Political war was also theological war; the gods had, so to speak, provinces that were fixed by the boundaries of nations. The god of one people had no right over other peoples. The gods of the pagans were not jealous gods
>This was the situation when Jesus came to set up on earth a spiritual kingdom, which, by separating the theological from the political system, destroyed the unity of the state, and caused the internal divisions that never ceased to trouble Christian peoples. This new idea of a kingdom of 'the other world' could never have occurred to pagans, so they always regarded the Christians as really rebels.
>However, as there was always a prince and civil laws as well as a church, this double power created a conflict of jurisdiction that made it impossible for Christian states to be governed well; and men never managed to discover whether they were obliged to obey the master or the priest.
>Several peoples, however, even in Europe and its neighbourhood, have tried to preserve or restore the old system–tired and failed, because the spirit of Christianity has won every time. The sacred cult has always remained or again become independent of the sovereign and not essentially linked with the body of the state.
>Among us Europeans, the Kings of England have been made heads of the Church, and the Czars have done much the same.
>The philosopher Hobbes is the only Christian writer who has seen the evil and seen how to remedy it, and has dared to propose bring the two heads of the eagle together again, restoring the total political unity without which no state or government will ever be rightly constituted. But he should have seen that Christianity's domineering spirit is incompatible with his system, and that the priest's side of the divide would always be stronger than the state's. What has drawn down hatred on his political theory is not so much what is false and terrible in it as what is just and true…
>But this religion, having no special relation to the body politic, leaves the laws with only the force they draw from themselves without adding anything to it; which means that one of the great bonds for uniting the society of the given country is left idle. Worse: so far from binding the citizens' hearts to the state, it detaches them from that and from all earthly things. I know of nothing more contrary to the social spirit.
>They tell us that a populace of true Christians would form the most perfect society imaginable. I see only one great difficulty about this idea, namely that a society of true Christians wouldn't be a society of men.
>Christianity is an entirely spiritual religion, occupied solely with heavenly things; the Christian's country is not of this world.
>But I'm wrong to speak of a Christian republic–those terms are mutually exclusive.
>Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favourable to tyranny that it always profits by such a régime. Genuine Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and don't much mind: this short life counts for too little in their eyes.Embrace your inner Jacobin, /leftypol/.
Christianity is more ruthlessly cosmopolitan than Liberalism & Communism combined (with Communism, you -get- internationalism)–Christianity is the culmination of the New Jerusalem, the anti-polis polis.
Christian maxims like
>Hate your family>Love your enemyIs to the fruition that Christianity may spread around more.
Another moron who uses the word 'moralism' without understanding what it means
>>2688638>"Exploiting workers is bad because we don't want it to happen. It makes us feel bad" - Not moralismThis is worse than moralism. Even a value system based on false gods will be more stable than organizing society according to what does or does not give you the ick.
>>2688570Only an illeterate animal would dare call Marx a proletarian. Words have meaning you imperialist cocksuckers.
>>2690415Another garbage chagosuyghur post
>>2689442i do not disagree with the notion of a civil religion since i have indeed suggested something to such an extent here
https://hidwehproject.nekoweb.org/pages/blog/posts/2025-11-04-On-The-Transgender-Question.htmlhowever the issue you face with this notion in its isolation is that even here you can not abstract morality or religion from material context. ultimately all religion grows out of our situated orientation towards the world and this not a stable phenomenon. with capitalism, there is a great abstracting tendency. we move from explicit social relations and a concrete time to a world governed by abstract labour and abstract time. it is within such a context that universal cosmopolitan conceptions of the individual is allowed to shine. the abrahamist's jealous god is hence quite a good fit for this mode of production and indeed capital is so too a jealous god. there is also the fact that the profit motive further drives capitalism's general deterritorializing tendencies which dissolve all civic ties as well as cultural substantiality.
ultimately even here morality is not something that can hang over the world umblemished. it always dragged down. the way i see it the things you propose are only sustainable under at the very least socialism. even then there are the inherent structural flaws with systems like monarchy but that is another issue that shall be elaborated in a later blogpost. ultimately the mutterrecht is, i believe, a mode of influence of religio far more noble than overt masculous displays of power
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