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Marxism, Morality and Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Steven Lukes
Steven Lukes
Affiliation:
Balliol College, Oxford
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Extract

A paradox, according to the OED, is ‘a statement seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, though possibly well-founded or essentially true’. In this article I shall try to show that the classical orthodox Marxist view of morality is a paradox. I shall seek to resolve the paradox by trying to show that it is only seemingly self-contradictory or absurd. But I shall not claim the standard Marxist view of morality to be well-founded or essentially true. On the contrary, I shall suggest that, though coherent, it is ill-founded and illusory.

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Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 14: Marx and Marxisms , September 1982 , pp. 177 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1982

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References

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91 This interpretation of Marx's view of Recht, encompassing law and morality, is similar to that of the early Soviet jurist Pashukanis. He writes that ‘morality, law and the state are forms of bourgeois society’, that they are forms ‘incapable of absorbing [a socialist] content and must wither away in an inverse ratio with the extent to which this content becomes reality’. He writes of ‘the social person of the future, who submerges his ego in the collective and finds the greatest satisfaction and the meaning of life in this act’ as signifying ‘the ultimate transformation of humanity in the light of the ideas of communism’. Morality is ‘a form of social relations in which everything has not yet been reduced to man himself. If the living bond linking the individual to the class is really so strong that the limits of the ego are, as it were, effaced, and the advantage of the class actually becomes identical with personal advantage, then there will no longer be any point in speaking of the fulfilment of a moral duty, for there will be no such phenomenon as morality’ (Pashukanis, E. B., Law and Marxism: a General Theory, translated by Einhoven, B. (London: Ink Links, 1978), 160, 159)Google Scholar. Pashukanis also exhibits the paradoxical pattern we have identified, arguing that there will, however, be a morality in the society of the future, understanding ‘morality’ in ‘the wider sense’ as ‘the development of higher forms of humanity, as the transformation of man into a species-being (to use Marx's expression)’ (Ibid., 160–161).

92 H. L. A. Hart isolates four features distinguishing morality (in this sense) from law: importance, immunity fron deliberate change, the voluntary character, of moral offences, and the distinctive form of moral pressure. See Hart, H. L. A., The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961).Google Scholar

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96 Mackie, , Ethics, 106Google Scholar. Compare Alan Gewirth's definition of ‘a certain core meaning’ of ‘morality’ as ‘a set of categorically obligatory requirements for action that are addressed at least in part to every actual or prospective agent and that are concerned with furthering the interests, especially the most important interests, of persons or recipients other than or in addition to the agent or speaker’ (Gewirth, Alan, Reason and Morality (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 1).Google Scholar

97 Ibid., 111.

98 Ibid., 170–171.

99 See Buchanan, Allen, ‘Revolutionary Motivation and Rationality’ in Nagel, Cohen and Scanlon, (eds), Marx, Justice and History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

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