Is the case for socialism, one of morality, cold logic or long term survival of our species?
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Just to clarify, this is not my own position, but is my best attempt at understanding of LBird’s position.
Here is an interesting article posted by a member on facebook and which relates to the topic of this thread. http://bigchieftablets.wordpress.com/more-big-chief-tablets/essays/test-3/
Hi VinThat was a good essay, by an SPGB member I take it?The bit about Marx not moralising, suggests to me that the author (and yourself) sees morality as a form of self righteous preaching, lead predominantly by the religious brigade. Whereas I and others on this thread see it simply as a set of unwritten social rules that bind a society together, the (socialist) foundations of which are already expressed within the SPGB DoP.I imagine education in a socialist society would include history. Do you think that capitalist principles would be given equal value?.
Hi SPI think the essay was by a member and probably expresses the WSM position on 'morality'. Tho' it is not a condition of membership.
SocialistPunk wrote:Whereas I and others on this thread see it simply as a set of unwritten social rules that bind a society together.If thats the the case then I agree but I would prefer not to call it morality. 'Morality' suggests universal 'wrongs' and 'rights'. Capitalism is no more 'wrong' than socialism is 'right'. I think capitalism makes socialism possible and I am sure future generations will accept and understand that.
Hi VinYou are correct in thinking that morality is about wrong and right, but I don't know where you think I or anyone else advocate a universal morality? I have a sense of right and wrong as do most people. That sense of right and wrong is what I would describe as socially orientated, in that it is motivated by the well being of others and myself. As to whether or not there should be a universal morality, that is an entirely different question altogether.If it is the word morality itself that is off putting, I refer again to what I said on another thread recently, that the words socialism and communism are bad words to many people. Words associated with the former Soviet Union and China. Yet we as socialists are determined, unashamedly to use those words, despite their association. Why? Because we know their true meaning. Likewise morality has nothing to do with religion that dictates, judges and harasses people with threats of eternal punishment for disobedience with the ranting of a supernatural entity that has the social and moral capacity of a psychopathic killer.I would argue that capitalism is as wrong as socialism is right. If I did not believe that capitalism was at its very core a rotten, inhuman system that favours deliberate minority privelage and opulence over the well being of humanity, then I would not be a socialist. It is my belief that a socialist society is the only way humanity can live without the fear of poverty, needless disease, starvation and war.To me socialism is right and capitalism is wrong. I make an unashamedly moral judgment between the two choices.
Hi SPI really don't think it is important as far as the case for socialism goes and I do not believe it should divide socialists. We all recognise that socialism is the solution
SocialistPunk wrote:It is my belief that a socialist society is the only way humanity can live without the fear of poverty, needless disease, starvation and war.I agree, but we will have to disagree as to whether or not ending poverty, needless disease, starvation and war is 'morally right' or simply in humanity's interests.
The essay on Marx was by me – thanks for sharing, I'm glad you liked it. I wrote it just before joining the SPGB for the second time, and I can't find much to disagree with in it now.If I was to make any changes, it would to concede that Marx's bourgeois, moralising critics do have a point. Socialists contend that a better world is possible – a world where we treat each other better, and don't allow greed for wealth or power to destroy our societies. It is reasonable to expect that people who make such claims also live in a way that demonstrate the truth of the proposition. My answer then to Marx and Engels's moralising critics would be that actually they did lead morally upright lives and they did act in ways that were true to their principles. They made mistakes of course – but they were human, that's what you'd expect. One of the great things about the SPGB is that, in my experience, all of its members have done likewise. Of course they make mistakes too – one has only to look at how easily a disagreement about the meaning of words or about the right course of action can blow up into anger and aggressiveness. But overcoming these things is very hard, much easier said than done.The other change I would make would be to try to make my understanding of what Lao Tzu is talking about clearer. In his Tao Te Ching, he makes morality a "second best" to natural human feeling. But his shouldn't be misunderstood – it's still a "best", even if only a second best! His view is close to that of Buddhism. If you can stay mindful and act wisely and compassionately, then the precepts will keep themselves. But if in doubt, follow the instructions – ie, just do what the precepts or moral rules say. This is second-best because no moral rule can apply universally, you need to be sensitive to context. "Do not steal" is a fine rule to follow, but it leads to evil if applied in a context where a few rich men "own" all the bread and the population is starving.To put this morality in a socialist context, consider what you do when confronted with a picket line. No doubt in the real world what you should do will be beset by all kinds of complex and contradictory impulses – you'll have to make your own decision in the full light of all these, guided by your compassion for your fellow workers. But if in doubt, just follow the instructions, just stick to second-bests and follow the moral rule: never cross a picket line!
Your dualist precept is so mercenary, it automatically turns itself inside-out into the very reverse of human morality.Its calculation of the personal safety of being “morally right” turns your moral precept into a parody of Pascal’s wager, that it’s safer to believe in God because, if you’re wrong, you lose nothing but, if you’re right, you gain salvation. Fat chance!Like all moral precepts, yours is pre-designed to paper over conflict. To avoid it at all costs.Yet socialists recognize conflict as the moving essence of life, society, the world, and our comprehension of them; and all humanity reveres the brave morality that fears not to cut across someone-else’s opposing morality, prepared to be proven “wrong”, something you dualist pacifiers find morally difficult to abide.So your best dualist effort can only amount to moral insipidity. A call to urge us all, in order to be morally safe, to justify our “morality” along rationalistic lines: Oh, I saved your life because, although I was “beset by all kinds of complex and contradictory impulses”, I was rationally “guided by my compassion for my fellow workers”.Compassion be damned! Capitalism knows no compassion.
If I understand you, twc, I agree with you. My point was precisely that you can't just follow any predetermined precepts and avoid moral complexity, including conflict and violence. Nevertheless, the precepts (morality, whatever you want to call it) shouldn't just be tossed aside as so much garbage – they are guidelines for living, widely accepted because they work. Compare Marx's evaluation of religion – he thought it the highest human achievement, not rubbish. Capitalism may know no compassion – but we do.
wrote:My point was precisely that you can't just follow any predetermined precepts and avoid moral complexity, including conflict and violence.Hang on, you just recommended a morally safe “predetermined precept” for me, and everyone else, to follow as fallback default.Secondly, your “moral complexity” remains trapped inside a philosophical “problem”, the sort of intellectualization that treats all things abstractly.Marx, as scientist, always re-applies his abstractions back upon the arena of human practice from which he abstracted them. Scientific abstraction is his analytical beginning, and not his end [just like Hegel].Scientific abstraction’s ascent back into the concrete is Marx’s scientific practice, which ultimately discloses analytic abstraction to be an indispensable functional tool—a necessary intermediary to human practice, to which it remains the vulnerable but testable subordinate.By contrast, your philosophical “moral complexity” stance, remains scientifically sterile, unless you are prepared to complete the circle, and actively treat your abstraction as a testable scientific foundation—the analytical residue of a preceding descent from the concrete world of practice into a workable scientific principle.Instead, you consider your philosophical work done and dusted, mistaking the end for the beginning, frozen paralytic at the only doorstep to comprehension.To then sublimely take solace in having uttered an abstract philosophical profundity [which is scientifically worthless, because practically untestable] becomes an impediment to actual comprehension.The essence of human practice is to overcome dualistic problems, and not rest content with contemplation of their ineffable complexity. Hegel first recognized the social driving force of dualistic problems because they insistently demand resolution. For that discovery, Marx forever revered the man.And we socialists have only one purpose under capitalism—to solve capitalism’s insistent dualistic problems—to transcend capitalism’s own solutions that can never solve, but instead haunt the mind as intractable abstract complexities. Human practice has one abstract goal: to comprehend and solve “complexity”.
wrote:they are guidelines for living, widely accepted because they work.Ignoring the obvious fact that “guidelines" are pre-determined philosophical precepts, I assume that you are referring to necessary human cooperation as something that transcends all societies.In which case, your socially transcendent “guidelines for living” are widely accepted only because they are essential to social reproduction as a whole, upon which we all [capitalist and worker, lord and serf, master and slave] depend. That’s why we are able to make a meaningful abstraction in the first place.Now, morality of the socially-transcendent type is ahistorical, or historically transcendent, morality. It can only transcend history if it remains true to the timeless condition of society which, however autonomous its stages, remains itself always and everywhere subservient to nature, upon which society’s continuing survival ultimately depends. Thus, historically-transcendent morality can only be the practical morality that functions to carry out the nature-imposed necessity for all societies to reproduce themselves.On the contrary, capitalism only indirectly carries out that nature-imposed necessity for its society to reproduce itself, but instead directly carries out the socially-imposed necessity for capital to reproduce itself.What residue, of historically-transcendent morality remains, is an historically practical scientific problem. If left to abstract philosophy alone, it becomes meaningless “complexity” when necessary social functionality has been hijacked to work in the interests of the capitalist class against the rest of us. That turns it into the socially necessary annihilation of historically-transcendent morality.When it comes to abstract thoughts on the amount and nature of any remnant universal morality that survives under capitalism, your hunch, or gut feeling, or hope, or desire or thought is just as good, or bad, or indifferent as anyone-else’s.
twc wrote:Like all moral precepts, yours is pre-designed to paper over conflict. To avoid it at all costs.Bollocks. Though I have no truck with Trotsky politically, I think the title of his 1938 work puts it rather well -Their Morals and Ours (www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/morals/morals.htm) Proletarian morality or bourgeois morality without the silly pretence that struggle for socialism can be shorn of any sense of moral outrage at what capitalism does to us
Well, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about twc, but it sounds damn saucy you naughty thing! Could you perhaps tell me in a single sentence, in words of plain English, what our disagreement is?
stuartw2112 wrote:Well, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about twc, but it sounds damn saucy you naughty thing! Could you perhaps tell me in a single sentence, in words of plain English, what our disagreement is?I'm actually beginning to wonder if twc isn't just a random-word-generator!I've tried numerous times to engage in a conversation, so I can try to unravel what twc means, but to no avail. twc just continues to spew out unfathomable lengthy diatribes at an uncomprehending audience.Must be some personal failing on my part; perhaps 'Lack of Moral Fibre'.Or, as twc would phrase it, 'Absence of Concrete Abstraction'.
Not in one sentence, stuart, but maybe in two paragraphs.
Marx, Capital Vol. 3, Ch. 48, wrote:Vulgar economy actually does no more than interpret, systematise and defend in doctrinaire fashion the conceptions of the agents of bourgeois production who are entrapped in bourgeois production relations. It should not astonish us, then, that vulgar economy feels particularly at home in the estranged outward appearances of economic relations in which these prima facie absurd and perfect contradictions appear, and that these relations seem the more self-evident the more their internal relationships are concealed from it, although they are understandable to the popular mind. But all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.Science abstracts rational principles [essence] from appearance to comprehend it. Most critiques of Marx mistakenly assume that essence and appearance must directly coincide, and therefore “prove” that Marx was obviously wrong. Similarly, appeals to our common humanity or to philosophical dualism assume the same direct coincidence, and so also “prove” that Marx was obviously wrong. Such “proof” is compelling for us denizens of capitalism who are dragooned into being “at home in the estranged outward appearances of economic relations, … which seem the more self-evident the more their internal relationships are concealed from it, although they are understandable to the popular mind”.
Sorry twc, but I still have no idea what you're talking about. Marx's quote on science is all very well as far as it goes, but it's old hat: science has shown there is no "essence" of things, that it's "appearance" all the way down and out the other side again. And I find it hard to believe that you object to appeals to our common humanity, since one of the most important things science has done in recent decades is prove beyond all possibility of doubt that all humanity is indeed one – ending any justification for racism, one of the great evils of the past few centuries. I'll challenge you again: could you tell me, in a sentence or two, using your own words, and preferably words of plain English, what our argument is about?
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