V of Ethical Judgment in Face of Social Problems

Labriola, with his usual piquancy, lashes those who reduce history to a case of conscience or to an error in bookkeeping.

With this he recalls us to the two-fold consideration (1) that for Marx the social question was not a moral question, and (2) that the analysis made by Marx of capitalism amounts to a proof of the laws which govern a given society, and not indeed to a proof of theft, as some have understood it, as though it would suffice to restore to the workman the amount of his wrongfully exacted surplus labour, so that the accounts may turn out in order, and the social question be satisfactorily solved. (53)

Leaving the second consideration, which yet gives us an instance of the ludicrous travesties which may be made of a scientific theory, let us pause for a moment over the first formula, which usually gives the greatest offense to non-socialists; so much so that many of them wish to put a little salt in the broth and complete socialism by morality.

In actual fact, offense and moral indignation have never been caused less appropriately.

Those remarks in Marx's writings which savour of moral indifference, bear a very limited and trivial meaning. Consider a moment, as indeed has been considered many times, that no social order of any kind can exist without a basis of slavery, or serfdom, or hired service; that is to say that slavery, or serfdom, or hired service are natural conditions of social order, and that without them a thing cannot exist, which is so necessary to man that, at least since he was man, he has never done without it, viz., society. Faced by such a fact, what meaning would our moral judgment have, directed against these governing human beings who call themselves slave owners, feudal lords and bourgeois capitalists, and in favour of these governed human beings who call themselves slaves, serfs, free labourers; neither of whom could be different from what they are, nor could otherwise fulfil the function assigned to them by the very nature of things. (54) Our condemnation would be a condemnation of the inevitable; a Leopardian curse directed against the genital power which rules in secret to the general harm. But moral praise or blame has reference always to an act of will, good or bad; and such judgments would on the contrary be directed against a fact, which has not been willed by anyone, but is endured by every one because it cannot be different. You, indeed, may lament it; but by lamenting it, you not only do not destroy it, you do not even touch it, i.e., you waste your time.

This is what Marx calls the impotence of morality, which is as much as to say that it is useless to propound questions which no effort can answer and which are therefore absurd.

But when, on the other hand, these conditions of subjection are not conceived as necessary for the social order in general, but only as necessary for a stage in its history; and when new conditions make their appearance which render it possible to destroy them (as was the case in the industrial advance toward serfdom, and as the socialists reckon will happen in the final phase of modern civilisation in regard to wage earners and capitalism); then moral condemnation is justified, and, up to a certain point, is also effective in quickening the process ot destruction and in sweeping away the last remnants of the past.

This is the meaning of Marx's other saying: that morality condemns what has already been condemned by history. (55)

I cannot manage to see any difficulty in agreeing to remarks of this kind, even from the standpoint of the strictest ethical theories. There is here no question of misunderstanding the nature of morality, and of wishing to make it into something fortuitous or relative; but simply of determining the conditions of human progress, turning the attention from the inevitable effects to the fundamental causes, and seeking remedies in the nature of things and not in our caprices and pious wishes. It must needs be thought that the opposition proceeds, not from intellectual error, but rather from human pride, or vanity it may be, owing to which many desire to retain for their wretched words a little of the virtue of the divine word, which created light by its decree. (56)

The same feeling must perhaps be present as the basis of the horror which usually greets the other practical maxim of the socialists; that the workman educates himself by the political struggle. But Labriola is fully justified in admiring in the advance of German socialism 'the truly new and imposing instance of social pedagogy; viz. that, amongst such an enormous number of men, particularly of workmen of the lower middle class, a new consciousness is developing, within which compete in equal degree, a direct sense of the economic situation, which incites to the struggle, and the socialist propaganda understood as the goal or point of arrival.' What means have the preachers of moral maxims at their disposal, to secure a result equal to this? Who are these workmen who combine in associations, who read their newspapers, discuss the acts of their delegates and accept the decisions of their congresses, if not men who are educating themselves morally?

But there is not only a question of vanity and pride in that feeling of aversion, which animates many with regard to the practical maxims of the socialists, and in the desire, which people also show, of undertaking in the name of morality or religion, the spiritual direction of the education of the working man; nor shall we wish to be so ingenuous and complacent as to confine ourselves to such a partial explanation. There is more, there is, I might almost say, an apprehension and a fear. An apprehension, little justified, lest the political organisation of the proletariat may lead to a brutal and unrestrained outbreak of the masses and to I know not what kind of social ruin: as if such outbreaks were not recorded by history in precisely those periods in which it is usual to suppose that the dominion of religion over conscience was greatest, as in the jacqueries of the fourteenth century in France, and again in the peasants' wars in Germany, and in which there was no organisation and political culture amongst the common people. (57) A fear, which is on the contrary thoroughly justified and arises from the knowledge that instinctive and blind proletariat movements are conquered by force; whereas organisation combined with an enlightened consciousness, is not conquered or only suffers temporary reverses. Does not Mommsen remark, in reference to the slave revolts in ancient Rome; that states would be very fortunate if they were in no other dangers besides those which might come to them from the revolts of the proletariat, which are no greater than the dangers arising front the claws of hungry bears or wolves?

These statements concerning ethics and socialist pedagogy having been explained, someone might yet ask: – But what was the philosophical opinion of Marx and Engels in regard to morality? Were they relativists, utilitarians, hedonists, or idealists, absolutists, or what else?

I may be allowed to point out that this question is of no great importance, and is even somewhat inopportune, since neither Marx nor Engels were philosophers of ethics, nor bestowed much of their vigorous ability on such questions. It is indeed of consequence to determine that their conclusions in regard to the function of morality in social movements and to the method for the education of the proletariat, contain no contradiction of general ethical principles, even if here and there they clash with the prejudices of current pseudo-morality. Their personal opinions upon the principles of ethics did not take an elaborate scientific form in their books; and some wit and some sarcasm are not adequate grounds upon which to base a discussion of the subject.

And I will say yet more; in ethical matters, I have not yet succeeded in freeing myself from the prison of the Kantian Critique, and do not yet see the position taken up by Kant surpassed; on the contrary, I see it strengthened by some of the most modern tendencies, and to me the way in which Engels attacks Dühring with regard to the principles of morality in his well-known book, does not in truth appear very exhaustive. (58) Here again the procedure is repeated which we have already criticised in connection with the discussions upon the general concept of value. Where Dühring, owing to the exigencies of scientific abstraction, takes for consideration the isolated individual and explicitly states that he is dealing with an abstract illustration (Denkschema), Engels remarks, wittily but erroneously that the isolated man is nothing but a new edition of the first Adam in the Garden of Eden. It is true that in that criticism are contained many well-directed blows; and it might even be called just, if it refers only to ethical conceptions in the sense of assemblages of special rules and moral judgments, relative to definite social situations, which assemblages and constructions cannot claim absolute truth for all times, and all places, precisely because they are always made for particular times and particular places. But apart from these special constructions, analysis offers us the essential and ruling principles of morality, which give opportunity for questions which may, truly, be differently answered, but which most certainly are not taken into account by Marx and Engels. And, in truth, even if some may be able to write on the theory of knowledge according to Marx, (59) to write on the principles of ethics according to Marx seems to me a somewhat hopeless undertaking.