Is the case for socialism, one of morality, cold logic or long term survival of our species?
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Robin, The case for capitalism is based on 'morality' and most capitalist parties want to 'save the planet'.
northern light wrote:I see no problem in accepting all three ( morality, cold logic and survival of our species)and the economic interests of our class?
robbo203 wrote:Why this monodimensional obsession for one single explanation that accounts for everything?Because I am a socialist and a propertyless wage slave, simples My emancipation from wage slavery and the establishment of Socialism is the only answer. I will discuss 'morality' and saving the planet when I am free.
Christian MoralityChristian morality originally expressed the hankerings of the socially useless Roman proletariat,¹ a morality that could never survive in tact once Christianity became a world religion.Across the grain of its foundational doctrine, the Church was forced by material circumstances to resort to archaic theological terror: Be moral or be damned!Christian Morality as Part of Class IdeologyMorality is a part of the social superstructure, and must ultimately prove itself to be socially useful or perish, to be replaced by an altered morality that does prove to be socially useful.The social superstructure’s essential role is to preserve the social mode of production that calls it forth. In a class-divided society, it serves class rule.The morality of a class-divided society is communally duplicitous. It appears to be universal but it is actually the property and tool of the ruling class.To play out this duplicitous role, class-divided morality must ultimately rationalize and absolve many of the anti-communal practices it forbids in theory but performs in practice, simply because the ethereal utterances of its abstract God prove absolutely incapable of curbing actual anti-communal behaviour.There is one exception. Class-divided morality will never rationalize or absolve criticism of its material foundation — class ownership and control.And so the medieval Church obligingly caved in to social reality, and redeemed, through financial donation abetted by prayer, the socially necessary behaviour its “moral” teaching condemned in thought but was powerless to prevent in practice.[In this way, social being determined its consciousness.]PowerlessChristian morality settled into a moral sludge that purports to be, but never can be, a genuine expression of simple direct communality.Social circumstances inverted Christian theology to the extent that anti-God, and not God, became the enforcer of morality. Satan is the unwitting Christian moralist, the divine punisher of evil, while a morally indifferent God remains remote from our moral dilemmas and sufferings, here and hereafter.Satan, and not God, is truly “the god of this world” [2 Corinthians 4:4].The tacit proof that God is not morally interventionist is amply demonstrated by the Church’s “show” commissions for establishing God’s occasional miraculous interventions that, if moral, do little more than condemn Him as immoral for not intervening more frequently.²The history of Church morality provides 2000 years of proof that morality follows social need and not the other way round. It is proof, if such were needed, that pure moral thought is incapable of changing society.[Social being determines consciousness.]Abstract CommunalismThough religion and philosophy have proved powerless to alter society, they nevertheless expose to daylight the underlying communalism of society that persists, despite all social vicissitudes.This underlying communalism is no more than the now abstract recognition that we are social creatures, that we need each other, and what we are now we have inherited from our social past, and that we have a role to play in our communal present and future.This abstract recognition has often spurred humanity on. The materialist conception of history shows us how it may be realized in a world in which communal morality, instead of the cash nexus, becomes the natural relation that binds us all together in one united society.Footnotes¹ The capitalist proletariat, in the West, is equally becoming communally useless as it becomes increasingly useful merely to financial capital. Let’s hope it doesn’t thrust an equally insipid “morality” upon us all. We see the Left eagerly taking up moralistic positions on every conceivable injustice under capitalism, a sign of anti-socialist imbecility. ↩ [Back]² The late Christopher Hitchins was “devil’s advocate” at Mother Teresa’s beatification, even though she had renounced Christianity. He wrote “I was invited by the Vatican into a closed room containing a Bible, a tape recorder, a monsignor, a deacon, and a priest, and asked if I could throw any light of my own on the matter of “the Servant of God, Mother Teresa.” But, even as they appeared to be asking me this in good faith, their colleagues on the other side of the world were certifying the necessary “miracle” that would allow the beatification [towards conferring sainthood upon her] to go forward.” Revoltingly disgusting! But what else can one expect of the “morality” adequate to a class-society. ↩ [Back]
Vin Maratty wrote:Robin, The case for capitalism is based on 'morality' and most capitalist parties want to 'save the planet'.Vin. The case for capitalism is supported by capitalist morality. The case for socialism is supported by socialist – or proleterian – morality. I'm inclined to go along with Engels on the subjectWe 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 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 oppressedWe 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(Anti-Dühring). With respect, you are misreading what I say when I talk of morality and its indispensability. Im not talking about some abstract transhistorical timeless notion of morality. Im talking precisely about the "class morality of the oppressed class". If you are concerned with the wellbeing and interests of members of the working class apart from yourself then necessarily you are taking a moral perspective on the matter. That is what morality is about, after all. It is intrisically "other-oriented". It means regarding others as having value in themselves and not simply serving as a means to your own selfish ends i.e instrumentalism. Granted, you are being selective in your moral concern just as the nationalist is selective in his/her moral identification with fellow citizens of his/her nation state over those of other nation states. But it is still fundamentally a moral concern that you are expressing. There can be no class unity or anything like a sense of class consciousness without an underlying class morality that binds workers to one another. In short socialism would be inconceivable or unattainable without such a morality
Vin Maratty wrote:Robin, The case for capitalism is based on 'morality' and most capitalist parties want to 'save the planet'.northern light wrote:I see no problem in accepting all three ( morality, cold logic and survival of our species)and the economic interests of our class?
Hi Vin, I see the economic interests of our class as the logical part of the case. Also, could you explain how the case for capitalism is based on "morality"?
Indignation as Morality?Engels, as always, is dependably clear and theoretically correct.His equation of working-class indignation with working-class morality holds precisely for us socialists. And that I take it is the moralist case being supported in this thread.No doubt Engels was thinking of 18th century philosophe indignation prefiguring the French Revolution. He was also foreshadowing groups like us aiming to bring about common-ownership and democratic-control [world] socialism. [Perhaps by the 1870s Engels hadn’t explicitly claimed that socialism could only be world socialism.]However, for various reasons, many of which have to do with the anti-moral machinations of Communist parties in the name of the working class — especially those obnoxious Communist parties in the Western world — the working class is no longer receptive, i.e. is not yet at Engels’s intellectual or emotional receptive stage.Sure, indignation against oppression is everywhere in capitalism!Every group, and everybody, is indignant about “what’s patently obvious to them that we should do” but isn’t being done. Indignation about the current state of affairs is the common theme of politics. Indignation thrives in the capitalist air.But is it Socialist?Nobody, in their highest flight of imagination, could equate the everyday common-or-garden variety of personal or in-group indignation with socialist morality.Just examine by the “cold hard logic”, proposed in this thread, the familiar instances of such working-class “morality” as it manifests itself today. Large sections of the working class indignantly hold xenophobic, individualistic and loutish conceptions that are the very opposite of socialist morality.It is not Engels’s theory that is at fault, but our blind application of it to current contingent conditions.General working-class “morality” is almost indistinguishable from capitalist-class “morality” because it arises on the same foundation — the necessity of capitalist society to daily reproduce itself, and with it to daily reproduce capitalist social relations.In the 1890s that is precisely what Engels said. The working class thinks just like the capitalist class.Sickening state of affairs then, and the sickening reality of the present.Our socialist morality transcends most of what anyone could claim to be specifically working-class indignation today. That’s the fertile breeding ground of Reformism.Working-class morality, in Engels’s sense, is still socially rudimentary, just as we are currently a socially minuscule force.It's always been thus for us since 1904. That’s always been the spur!
twc wrote:Nobody, in their highest flight of imagination, could equate the everyday common-or-garden variety of personal or in-group indignation with socialist morality.Just examine by the “cold hard logic”, proposed in this thread, the familiar instances of such working-class “morality” as it manifests itself today. Large sections of the working class indignantly hold xenophobic, individualistic and loutish conceptions that are the very opposite of socialist morality.It is not Engels’s theory that is at fault, but our blind application of it to current contingent conditions.General working-class “morality” is almost indistinguishable from capitalist-class “morality” because it arises on the same foundation — the necessity of capitalist society to daily reproduce itself, and with it to daily reproduce capitalist social relations.In the 1890s that is precisely what Engels said. The working class thinks just like the capitalist class.Sickening state of affairs then, and the sickening reality of the present.Our socialist morality transcends most of what anyone could claim to be specifically working-class indignation today. That’s the fertile breeding ground of Reformism.Working-class morality, in Engels’s sense, is still socially rudimentary, just as we are currently a socially minuscule force.It's always been thus for us since 1904. That’s always been the spur!Yes, thats a fair point. The moral outlook of the working class today is indeed virtually indistinguishable from that of the capitalist class and for the good reason that the former fundamentally at present supports a social system that operates in the interests of the latter. But we are talking about a working class that has become, in Marxian terms, a class " for itself" not simply a class "in itself", a class that is fully conscious of its identity and determined to overthow the system that exploits it. Point being that you cannot talk about "exploitation" without this denoting a sense of moral outrage. Yes, exploitation is against our interests but it is also morally unacceptable The socialist case is one that seeks to persuade workers to become a class for itself. Necessarily it seeks to sharpen or re-focus the moral indignation that individual workers feel in the light of a socialist understanding of capitalism. Moral indigination is not some dispensable aspect of the struggle for socialism. It is part of what makes us human beings and not robots, Nothing can be achieved without it.
robbo203 wrote:The socialist case is one that seeks to persuade workers to become a class for itself. Necessarily it seeks to sharpen or re-focus the moral indignation that individual workers feel in the light of a socialist understanding of capitalism. Moral indigination is not some dispensable aspect of the struggle for socialism. It is part of what makes us human beings and not robots, Nothing can be achieved without it.[my bold]Unless one is a 'materialist', of course!Then, human creative activity ('persuasion', as you put it) is not required, and proletarian, Communist consciousness will magically emerge from 'material conditions'.Once again, this debate sharpens the divide and illustrates the difference between Marx's humanist 'theory and practice', and Engels' materialist 'practice and theory'.Waiting for the 'rocks' to speak to us is fatalist, whereas Marx argues for the creative aspect of human practice, which is how our class will become a class for itself.19th century 'materialism' is tantamount to rocks becoming rocks for themselves.
Please explain, as clearly and precisely as you are able to, what’s 19th century materialist about anything in my post #51.
twc wrote:Please explain, as clearly and precisely as you are able to, what’s 19th century materialist about anything in my post #51.I've tried discussion and explanation with you on several threads, twc, but you don't read and respond, but just re-iterate your 'beliefs', which you've learnt "parrot-fashion" from Engels. So, it's pointless me saying it all, once more.What's of more direct concern to the subject of this thread, is that your views (philosophical and ideological) fit better with (parts of) Engels and the selector of his erroneous views, Lenin.I know from everything else you say that you hate Lenin; plus, the SPGB's own strategy fits better with the arguments that I'm making, based upon the bulk of what Marx wrote, and you always make a strong case for the SPGB.So, I'm baffled as to why can't see the political implications which flow from your philosophical views.We've known since Einstein that the world (social or material) doesn't simply tell us what it is. This was also the view of many Ancient Greeks and Marx, too.But, if someone claims to have access to a special method which can be wielded by 'those in the know' which gives them an access to the world (social or material) not available to others, then they can claim to know better than the unenlightened masses.Surely even you can see the parallel dangers of 'elite scientists' providing a bourgeois authority for society, and 'elite cadres' providing a Leninist authority for workers?Unless we emphasise 'democratic methods' across all areas of society (politics and science, included), we will remain in thrall to a minority. The SPGB, as far as I can tell, is in favour of 'democracy', rather than 'minority consciousness', which is why I feel closer to the SPGB than to Leninists/Trotskyists.But, the words of you (and some other members on this forum) make me pause for thought. What sort of party would emerge from your notions of 'material conditions'? How do you know what 'material conditions' obtain at any time, without democratic decision-making? What about 'morality' in science? Personally, I think that the events of the 20th century have already given us many lessons which we must heed, in every sphere.
Hi SP. Hope you are keeping well.
SocialistPunk wrote:could you explain how the case for capitalism is based on "morality"?I was referring to the use of things like ‘thou shalt not steal’ because it is ‘wrong’ . The very basis of propertied society.You have argued in the past – and argued well I may say – about the social and cooperative nature of the human species. If that is what some socialists mean by a socialist morality then that’s fine but I do not accept it as ‘morality’.I could not be a socialist if I believed humans were uncooperative and anti-social.Morality’ as I understand it, probably came into existence with the development of property. I wonder if there have been any studies on morality and the so-called primitive communist communities; they certainly ‘cared’ for one another and lived by implicit 'rules'
Hi Vin, I have bad days and worse days. I was told it would be a long hard road to recovery and I can definitely say that was an understatement, but I'm starting to contribute here and that can only be a good thing. Thanks for asking.I can see where you are coming from regarding morality and capitalism, not a day goes by when some politician, priest or newscaster sees fit to share their moral views that are so full of holes, you could sail a cruise liner through them. Cameron's recent nonsense about Christian Britain being a classic. However I suspect you know the morality I am getting at, is that which has been mentioned recently on this thread, socialist morality. Such a human orientated morality can only exist within a socialist society of common ownership, free access and true democratic participation.I'm not sure about morality only coming about as property owning society came into existence. Morality simply concerns itself with acceptable behaviour within any given society. So obviously a minority controlled society will invent morality that reinforces its position. I imagine our early ancestors would have had rules of conduct.I agree with you when you asked what position the SPGB has regarding this subject and it is very noticeable that the discussion is being carried out by non party members.
Robbo. While I await LBird to substantiate his accusations that #48 and #51 are 19th century materialist…Just reread what you wrote, stripping away the verbiage — the working class’s view is pro-capitalist because it supports capitalism. As explanation that is priceless!You fully agree with Engels’s view, which is ultimately a direct implication of the materialist conception of history, though you dressed it up in Hegelian jargon.As to moral indignation. There are more morally indignant know-alls out there than you can poke a stick at, and none of them is socialist. Marx gave his life to get beyond relying upon emotion. Socialism is not going to be achieved through hysteria, but chaos can.As to persuasion. Any leader can easily persuade a mob against its own deep conviction, but it’s a fickle unconvincing feat. Socialism is not going to be achieved by political persuasion, but its opposite can.Perhaps we might acknowledge what a weak lot we 21st century folks, even the best, have become!Socialism doesn’t rely on indignation. Indignation, like all emotion is impermanent. It must be feigned to be kept alive, and then it becomes a mere self-serving pose. Our opponents are expert poseurs at this. We despise their subterfuge.Before getting carried away with indignation, first ask the indignant person just exactly what he is indignant about and then, from his reply, judge his sincerity and his socialism. Typically he merely seeks to parade his sincerity in order to persuade you to accept his politics. Such indignation is insincere but persuasive, and that’s why the dishonest resort to it. Most indignation surrounding us both misses the true mark and is the reverse of “morality”.When Marx and Engels died they left us a science that could bring about world socialism by conviction through simple scientific comprehension of socialism and its implications. That’s the only surefire legacy we have.Our opponents are persuasive indignant voluntarists. They need to be. They lack science. They lack conviction.
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