Petri Lahtinen & Max Tallberg
Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) was one of the giants of German-language thought, along with Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud, whose philosophy and thought have diverged from their original authors to the extent that they have been discussed and re-discussed to the point where these readings and interpretations have taken on a life of their own. In practice, this means that when we read Marx, for example, it is difficult in many places to distinguish between what is Marx’s own original thinking and what is the interpretation of later philosophers and scholars. In the case of Marx, there is a distinction to be made between Marx’s own thinking and Marxism, which is a socialist-philosophical system of doctrine based on the philosophical vision of Marx and Friedrich Engels, as well as a social ideology based on it. Marxism itself has also developed in a number of different directions, with historical developments including analytical, autonomist, feminist and ecological Marxism. It can be argued that Marx’s influence has been significantly greater on posterity than on his contemporaries; like Che Guevara, he has become a symbol appropriated into popular culture, but also elevated to prophetic heights – as a true prophet for his supporters and a false prophet for his opponents. Today, some Marxists look to Marx as an economist in times of global economic crisis. They stress particularly that Marx was aware of the logic of the crises within capitalism and think that reading Marx could thus help us out of the current crises. Others view Marx as a kind of prophet of radical liberalism, whose aim was to extend the formal values of freedom, fraternity, and equality of the French Revolution into the realms of social and economic justice. Others, on the other hand, prefer to read Marx, above all, as a philosopher, especially a materialist philosopher, who turned German idealism on its head and succeeded in depicting genuine reality. However, there is currently no shortage of daydreamers who want to see Marx as the father of scientific socialism and the first Marxist, even though Marx himself famously declared during his own lifetime that he was not a Marxist. It is therefore extremely difficult to write about Marx accurately and concisely in a text format such as blog. In this text, therefore, we will try to narrow down the scope of the subject by looking at Marx’s idea of justice and its historical influences. It should be noted, however, that this text is only one interpretation of Marx’s thought, based on a selection of research literature. It should therefore not be interpreted as some kind of final and definitive reading of Marx’s ideas on justice.
Ethical theory
The historical roots of Marx’s sociological and logical critique of capitalism can be traced back to three classical traditions of social ethics: the Greek ideal of the polis, the Hebrew prophets and German idealism of the 18th and 19th centuries. However, it should be noted here that the so-called Tucker-Wood thesis claims that Marx did not develop a proper theory of ethics or justice. The thesis is based on the premise that Marx’s scientific methodology and criticism of ideology would have prevented him from developing a proper theory of ethics or justice. Similarly, some social philosophers argue that while there are ethical criticisms to be found in Marx’s thought, he did not have his own theory of justice. In this context, however, such theories should be understood as too narrow, and we will assume that a theory of ethics and social justice can be found in Marx’s thought. This theory is difficult to outline unambiguously and clearly, since Marx’s thought cannot be approached solely from a social-theoretical point of view but also, and above all, from a philosophical one. First, Marx’s thought in this respect can be divided into ethics, which comprises moral values and the abstract ideals of classical ethics, on the one hand, and so-called metaethics, which includes modern political economic structures and social justice, on the other. Second, Marx’s ethics can be seen as consisting of individual freedom and moral autonomy, self-actualisation within the human possibilities offered by communities, a critique of alienation, exploitation and fetishism, and distributive justice, human rights and self-determination in a participatory democracy. Metaethics, on the other hand, involves, in an even more complex manner, three key theoretical analyses of Marx. The first analysis examines the past through a historical critique based on the use of transcendental logic. This analysis also includes the theory of value, abstract labour, and the history of capitalism. The second analysis explores the possibilities of the present through an immanent critique based on a dialectical logic. The second analysis also includes social contradictions and the theory of economic crises, as well as an examination of the logic of capitalism. The third analysis can be interpreted as a reflection on the future, based on a critique of epistemology and a materialist consensus theory of truth. The third analysis also includes the idea that ideals cannot be defined in purely theoretical terms but are formed through practical action or praxis. Finally, the third analysis includes the theory of economic democracy and the theory of praxis.
Marx’s ethics is based on the demand for a humane society, a society that is self-conscious of its ends. Its criteria of rationality are not based on instrumental elements or utilitarian presuppositions, but rather on the free, democratic, and articulated expression of a moral community. Since this new society is no longer based on arbitrary needs, the false universalisation of the liberal democratic state or the anarchy of private production, it is a true democracy that combines the universal common good with a specific species being (Gattungswesen). This requires not only the technological achievements of industrialisation and a new form of rationality by which society creates and manages its own history, but also the reconciliation of modernity and classical traditions. This in turn requires rational self-reflection and a spiritual reassessment of the foundations of modern culture. Marx argued that the most essential questions of ethics and politics lie in the analysis of the nature and structure of the socio-economic infrastructure and the organisation of productive relations. Questions of distributive justice, on the other hand, are tied to the patterns of consumption and exchange of commodities; in Marx’s own words “the structure of distribution is determined entirely by the structure of production”. Marx questioned the standard of measurement in the pursuit of a fair distribution because it is ultimately based on unequal physical and mental abilities between people. To overcome these so-called “bourgeois limitations”, Marx calls for the realization of rights that recognize both the individuality of personality and the diversity of the exercise of creative functions. Thus, self-actualization and its possibilities become the ethical principle on which distribution should be built. As the criteria of social justice respect the diversity of human needs and the development of personality, the emphasis on wage labour and production is reduced. For Marx, the necessity of communism lies in the moral imperative to develop the spiritual and higher needs of human beings, which are impossible to realise in a capitalist society.
Marx’s theory of social justice can be conceived as broad and comprehensive, and can be seen as consisting of the following elements: Freedom as an ethic that emphasizes the social freedom of the individual from alien external laws; the ethical values of self-actualization and the realization of species being; the opposition to fetishism as a means of defending individual freedom against the mechanisms of modern production, alienated wage labour, the laws of the marketplace, poverty and class; human emancipation that transcends the concepts of Bentham and Mill and responds to the inadequacy of the bourgeois values of “equality” and “freedom”; democracy, which for Marx means true, participatory democracy and workers’ self-determination; necessities, which Marx based on his views on species being, human creativity, praxis and his aesthetic vision of human nature; distributive justice of social wealth in production and consumption; rights, which Marx distinguished between the rights of economic acquisition in civil society and political rights in the public sphere. Moreover, Marx’s theory of social justice is strongly linked to his theory of economic exploitation, which is a synthesis of Marx’s value theory (history of capitalism), his theory of social contradictions (logic of capitalism) and the irrationality of the social system (rationality and capitalism) in his critique of the political economy. Marx’s critique of exploitation emphasises in particular the pace of extraction of economic surplus value and the loss of human qualities in wage labour due to mechanisation and intensification of work. Marx’s views on the economic irrationality of the whole social system are based on his critique of classical political economy, which accepts the so-called economic equilibrium theory, the balance between production and consumption, while rejecting the possibility of overproduction and economic crises. Among the ethical elements of Marx’s theory of crisis is the notion that the social system does not provide the material basis for real freedom or opportunities for individual self-fulfilment. The contradictions between the forces of production and the social relations of production form the basis of Marx’s analysis of the capitalist logic and the ethical critique of capitalism. According to Marx, the social system, by its very dynamics, is inadequate, crisis-ridden, exploitative, and dehumanising; in sum, it undermines the possibilities of human existence. Finally, Marx’s theory of social justice includes his theory of the people. This is closely related to Marx’s materialist and democratic consensus theory of truth, which represents the aforementioned metaethics in Marx’s thought. Suffice it to say at this point that Marx emphasised the primacy of community and how the public sphere demands real equality and freedom.
In outlining the structure of thought approximating to an ethical theory to be found in Marx’s writings and thought, it is worth emphasising that Marx’s ethics was not limited to his theory of social justice, which can easily be reduced to the economic distribution of material goods. Instead, in a more holistic view, it must be understood that Marx’s ethics also requires consideration of the distribution and organisation of production, as well as the totality of all human social relations. Social justice concerns the totality of human relations in any given society and how these same relations either impede or promote the development of rationality, self-consciousness, and freedom. As mentioned earlier, some interpreters of Marx argue that Marx cannot be regarded as having a theory of ethics or justice – at least not in a systematic sense. It is not the purpose of this text to engage in this scholarly debate; instead, we have sought to outline elements of Marx’s thought and interpretations that may still be useful for a holistic philosophy of justice and equality.
The historical roots of ethical thought
Now that we have briefly examined Marx’s ethical thought, it is appropriate to take a look at its historical roots; as this text is part of Global Visions’ project to outline the history of theories of justice, it is natural to consider how Marx integrated the above-mentioned classical traditions into his own time. Since in previous texts on the history of the idea of justice we have taken ancient thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle as our starting point, it is logical in this respect to explore their influence on Marx. During his university studies, Marx became particularly interested in philosophy, and in 1841 he completed his doctorate with a dissertation titled The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature. Although the dissertation does not deal with the theme of justice as such, Marx was already interested in the philosophy of law and Hegel, as well as in the broader thought of antiquity, among which Aristotle’s philosophy can be seen as the main influence on Marx’s thinking on justice. In particular, the Greek city-state, the polis, and Aristotle’s thought provided Marx with an early classical ideal from which he drew many insights and views relating to his own conception of the state and of humanity in general. Similarly, Aristotle’s notions of man as a political animal are strongly reflected in Marx’s notion of species being, and parallels can be seen between Aristotle’s virtue ethics and Marx’s social ethics. The notion of eudaimonia that we have discussed in our previous blog posts can equally be linked to Marx’s views on the need of human beings for self-realisation. Above all, the elements of Aristotle’s thought that can be considered to have had the most important influence on Marx’s own social thought were Aristotle’s emphasis on the social and political nature of man, the metaphysical relationship between matter and form, and Aristotle’s division between different forms of knowledge: theoretical (episteme), practical (phronesis) and productive (techne). For both, the goal of knowledge was to create the conditions for the enlightened liberation of humanity in a free community.
Besides Aristotle, another great historical philosopher who influenced Marx’s ethical thinking was Immanuel Kant. Marx turned Kantian morality into a question of power, class, and economy. Rather than a mere critique of political economy, Marx developed this influence into a theory of social praxis and workers’ revolution. First, for Marx, modern capitalism was not an eternal and permanent structure that a proletarian revolution would, in a single correct way, fundamentally and once and for all transform into something else. Second, capitalism constantly changes the modes of production, the organisation of labour and production and, through them, social relations, systems of power and political movements. Marx’s aim was to disavow the moral content and the deceitfulness of the ideologies of the natural justice theorists, utilitarians, and political economists. He believed these to be intellectual obstacles to a self-conscious community built around human dignity and individual freedom. Robert Solomon places Marx’s ethical thinking between the two main philosophical traditions outlined by him: the Aristotelian tradition emphasises social virtues and self-fulfilment, while the so-called Kantian tradition focuses on moral duty and individual autonomy. Marx’s approach to ethics seeks a certain synthesis between classical ethics and modern morality through the integration of Kantian and Aristotelian thought: Marx placed individual autonomy in the broader context of the structural relations of the political economy.
The liberalism, which was discussed in our previous blog post, was subject to significant criticism from Marx. This criticism can be seen to have been directed broadly at the epistemology, political philosophy, and economic theory of classical liberalism. On the other hand, it should be pointed out here that there are places in Marx’s writings where he sees certain features of liberalism as positive intermediate steps for the future emancipation of humanity, such as modern scientific and technological achievements and the establishment of political institutions based on political rights and civil liberties. However, for Marx, the classical liberal core values of freedom, equality, and fraternity, which grew out of the French Revolution, were merely expressions of modern mythology that only obscured and distorted the real problems. Some see Marx as a prophet of radical liberalism who wanted to extend these values to the sphere social and economic justice; the values of freedom, equality and fraternity form an image of utopian ideas waiting to be realised, whereas in liberalism they merely abstract the goal of human nature, the realisation of individuality in society, and the class system. When needs are measured only in terms of money and economic surplus value, liberalism, like capitalism, loses the ability to conceive of needs as self-fulfilment in the community. The market reduces all needs to those that can be ‘satisfied’ through private consumption and excludes all forms of real freedom found within productive activity. Private property, on the other hand, was seen by Marx as a form of religious barbarism and brutality. Thus, Marx should not only be seen as a powerful critic of classical liberalism, but his thought still offers insights for a critical examination of modern liberalism.
History
Marx’s conception of history is one of his central ideas. His and Engels’ conception of history is described by the term historical materialism, which emphasises the explanation of prevailing social and societal structures and conditions through history and scientific research, without recourse to mythological, religious, or supernatural explanations. Marx’s conception of work therefore starts from an in-depth study of a specific historical situation, namely the capitalist mode of production in Marx’s time and the conditions that led to it. These included the possibility of producing consumer goods within a primitive accumulation of wealth, the demarcation of common lands, state intervention to protect individuals from the theft of property, and the colonisation of the so-called Third World to obtain cheap resources and labour. In other words, the development of the forces of production inevitably leads to conflict. Marx’s theory of value is a historical theory that sees society and the processes of production as having been reorganised under capitalism to produce private economic surplus value; exchange value can only be a central social form in a capitalist society because it is the product of abstract labour. In his analysis and critique of capitalism, Marx examined above all how abstract human labour, on the one hand, and money, on the other hand, have appeared in history as a pure, insubstantial form of wealth capable of being transformed into capital. In Marx’s analysis, capitalism emerges precisely at the intersection of these two phenomena, as their accidental meeting.
Marx also analysed the historically different forms of society in their most reduced and therefore most essential forms, dividing them into three different types. The oldest type of society for Marx was represented by the so-called pre-bourgeois form of society. It corresponds to some extent to the views of classical social scientists such as Hobbes and Rousseau on the pre-societal state of nature, in which man lives at the mercy of nature and his capacity for production is as yet undeveloped and fragmented. In such societies, according to Marx, people are dependent on personal interdependencies, and are represented by patriarchal societies, slave societies and feudal societies, among others. They represent the ultimate unfreedom, where the individual is forced into a lifetime of servitude to a single master. The following society moves from pre-bourgeois to bourgeois, which also represented the society of Marx’s own time. The transition from personal dependency to personal independence has been made, but at the same time it has been replaced by a material dependency, which refers to the alienation (Entfremdung) – a theme we will discuss in more detail below. As bourgeois society develops into a capitalist system, living conditions, civilisation and humanity itself are transformed in a revolutionary and universalising way. In such a society, capital and money form a network that binds all economies together. Such a totalising system requires that everyone adopts a certain set of universal and disciplined practices that are perceived as universal and commensurate. The third form of society, for Marx, was the post-bourgeois and post-capitalist i.e. a socialist or communist society. We will return to this form of society in more detail at the end of this text, after a closer look at Marx’s concept of alienation, from which liberation is an essential step towards the escape from bourgeois society.
Marx’s analysis of the relationship between work and self-fulfilment led him to the conclusion that, in a capitalist social system, wage labour is always something quite different from free self-fulfilment, because work has many enslaving, oppressive and alienating features. Commenting on Hegel, Marx makes the point that the aesthetic aspect of work constitutes only half of its nature. In seeking answers to the question of why the true nature of work is precisely alienation and toil, Marx could not content himself with looking to the past in search of some kind of paradisiacal state of nature, for which he criticised the representatives of political economy. For this reason, Marx had to look at history as a complex process of the manifestation of truth. Here Marx also reacted to the Hegelian view that the world is governed by a rational world spirit. Like Marx, Hegel had a periodizing conception of history in which the world spirit was immersed in the primordial simplicity of nature. Marx argued that the contradictions arising from the development of the forces of production are the result of the fact that developing production begins to go beyond the limits of the principles of legality that regulate it, so that the accumulation of wealth and private property become at the same time a brake on renewed production and a justifying force for structural injustice. According to Marx’s historical materialism, the level of satisfaction of basic human needs such as food, drink and shelter and their distribution in society is directly reflected in the spiritual forms of culture. The interpretation of history should therefore always start from the interpretation of these things and how their production affects the structure of society, political struggles, and major schools of thought. History, according to Marx, was a process in which humanity progressed through different modes of production, with the associated class struggle eventually leading to communism. In the communist society envisioned by Marx, class division would disappear, based on the idea that humanity could evolve.
For Marx, humanity itself was also something absolutely historical, because he thought that as people change and shape nature, they also change and shape themselves and the conditions of their work. Each generation inherits what is known as an inherited condition, formed by the material and mental conditions and conditions created by the work of previous generations. Work is therefore not only the creation of material (consumer) goods, but also the redefinition and creation of the world and of humanity. Thus, societies and humanity are spatiotemporal creations of human labour and cannot be considered without historicity. Thus, Marx offers Hegel’s conception of human nature as intellectual self-production alongside economic and social history. Moreover, Marx also counts the aesthetics of labour in the description of the historicity of species being; human labour produces more than basic human needs, and the results of labour have a certain independent value, expressed as beauty beyond mere use-value. The material commodities produced as a result of labour, according to Marx, produce in human beings a new sensuality which makes it possible to enjoy these commodities. Sensory emancipation is also achieved through the liberation of labour that follows the abolition of private property. For Marx, human emancipation was the reconciliation of human subjectivity with the objectivity of nature and technology; on the other hand, this also requires the renunciation of egoism and utility through the rediscovery of humanity, social renewal and self-consciousness. Marx came to the conclusion that socialism or communism would no longer need to limit the needs of what he characterized as real, because socialism or communism would be based on a new enrichment of the richness and variety of human needs and species being.
Alienation
Alienation (Entfremdum) is also a central concept in Marx’s thought. Marx’s treatment of alienation psychologises structural phenomena, which manifest themselves above all in contradictions, conflicts, and struggles. Here again, there is a clear Hegelian influence in Marx’s thought. In his philosophy, Hegel outlined two separate but interrelated phenomena: externalisation (Entäusserung) and alienation. For Hegel, the first was the process by which the absolute world-spirit brings the universe into being and, at the same time, seeks to perfect its own reality. Externalisation should be seen as something positive, because by externalising its consciousness, the individual is able to create a shared culture in the form of a moral society. Alienation, on the other hand, for Hegel, signified how most people experience their existence as limited. However, without this alienation, the self-realisation of the absolute spirit would never take place. Externalisation and alienation have often been confused with each other, and this confusion has led to misinterpretations of both Hegel and Marx. For both thinkers, externalisation is necessary for human existence, while alienation is not. Marx, in his historical materialism, interpreted that all previous historical societies have been characterised by a certain degree of alienation, which explains to some extent the existence of religions and spiritual traditions, for example. However, for Marx, alienation was a realizable or reversible, and not in any sense a logical or metaphysical absolute.
In his historical analysis, Marx outlines that the modern capitalist social system has created a situation in which phenomena such as rents, wages, capital and other forms of private property based on the division of labour create and maintain alienated labour. The worker and the individual who sells his own labour to production and the capitalist are alienated from their own creative capacity to produce both intellectual and material goods, the economic surplus value of which is exploited primarily by the class that owns the means of production. Therefore, in a capitalist society the worker does not encounter the result of his labour as his own creation or as an extension of his sensuous body and his own energetic force, in which he realises his own humanity by making nature an extension of his own body, but above all as the property of another. The result of this labour, which Marx called the objectification of labour (Vergegenständlichung), is always a foreign and even hostile force for the worker, which turns against him in a competitive situation. According to Marx, labour is part of the species being of the worker. Thus, labour externalised (Entaeussern) as a commodity not only alienates the worker from the result of his own labour, from free, conscious and creative labour, but also from his fellow human beings, from his species being and from himself. As a result, alienated, man becomes mentally and physically machine-like and an abstract agent.
The new ontology of work also creates alienation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, because political-economic relations lead the bourgeoisie to see the proletariat mostly as a resource and a means to promote its own interests and wealth. Central to Marx’s thinking is his description of society through two opposing classes: those who acquire private capital and those who are forced to sell their labour in order to survive. Central to this was the observation that the more the wage-earner works, the richer the opposite party, the private owner, becomes. This happens because the private owner takes for himself the surplus value that the wage-earner generates through his labour input. This leads to the creation of two opposing classes. The capitalist wants to maximise the surplus value produced by the workers and thus obtain the maximum economic profit, while the worker wants to sell his labour at the highest possible price and thus reduce the amount of surplus value produced by his labour. Marx’s aim was to end alienation through the disappearance of class antagonism. On the other hand, Marx argued that the organised labour movement was the only force capable of achieving this. One of the key principles of Marx’s legacy is that the proletariat chooses to participate in politics in order to organise itself and take over the means of production – not in order to take over bourgeois state power. As already noted, history, according to Marx, was a process of progress through different modes of production, with the class struggle that would eventually lead to communism. One intermediate stage in this development was the dictatorship of the proletariat, which for Marx meant above all the solution used in ancient Rome: in times of crisis, when the very existence of the state was felt to be threatened, a reliable Roman could be entrusted with the power of exception, which involved taking temporary responsibility for the whole empire. Indeed, Marx was convinced that the bourgeois society of his time would disappear in favour of a socialist or communist society. The state, according to Marx, was in favour of class division, and once this was abandoned there would be no need for a state, but the necessary functions associated with it would be performed by elected representatives. However, he never set out in detail what a post-capitalist society would be like, because he doubted its actual possibility.
To return to the alienated work, it must be said that in none of his text did Marx regrettably give a very systematic answer as to what human emancipation would mean in practice. He seems to relate it most clearly to non-alienated labour, but even this concept did not receive a systematic treatment in Marx’s texts. It is therefore perhaps most natural, on the basis of Marx’s texts, to view this concept as a kind of negation of alienated labour; Marx seems to have thought that non-alienated labour is characterised by the immediate enjoyment of the worker and producer of the result of their own labour. This enjoyment of the result of one’s own labour in turn strengthens one’s natural capacities and powers. This so-called natural work is also characterised by the fact that the result of the work meets the needs of other people and thus reinforces the species being of humanity in the form of interdependence. This combines two aspects of human species being: individual and natural abilities and community. As society, which Marx characterises as aesthetic, transcends alienated labour, it also transcends individualism, that is the individualism defended by liberalism. Liberal emancipation tended to focus on the liberation of the individual from the threat posed by others, whereas the real human freedom advocated by Marx was something quite different. Marx believed that political freedom did not take into account the possibility that true freedom could be found in community and fellowship with others. In other words, true freedom is found in liberation from the alienating structures of the capitalist social system and a return to human community. This should not, however, be understood as the disappearance or purposeful destruction of individuality. Instead, in Marx’s view, individuality is precisely perfected in communism, which, according to him, was the true appropriation of human nature and a return to oneself as both a human and a social being. The return to one’s own species being is possible with the abolition of private property, because the interests of individuals are then no longer fundamentally in conflict with each other, and the antagonistic opposition between individuals disappears. In communism, the benefit is no longer seen as an individual benefit, but as something that benefits others. According to Marx, communism not only resolves the contradictions between subject and object, individual and society, but, more broadly, it is a metaphysical resolution between the human relationship and nature, existence and being, objectification and self-discovery, freedom and necessity, and individual and species.
Conclusion
In this text, we have tried to examine in a rough way the elements of Marx’s original writings and thought that help us to understand his idea of justice on the one hand, and the analyses he offers of the bourgeois and capitalist social systems that create and maintain inequalities and injustices on the other. Unfortunately, it is not possible within the framework of this text to explore any of these topics with the in-depth analysis that they require. However, we hope that we have succeeded in providing our readers with a general overview of Marx’s main ideas on these themes. Similarly, we must leave the examination of the usefulness and applicability of Marx’s thought in a contemporary context to another text. However, it is clear, given Marx’s legacy and the mutations in Marxism that are still constantly evolving, that Marx’s thought continues to appeal to many philosophical and social thinkers and actors.
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Per Månson: Karl Marx En introduktion
