Page 511
45
Marx against Morality
Allen Wood
i
Introduction
Marxists often express a contemptuous attitude toward
morality, which (they say) is nothing but a form of illusion,
false consciousness or ideology. But others (whether they
consider themselves Marxists or not) often find this attitude
hard to understand. The Marxists condemn capitalism for
exploiting the working class and condemning most people
to lives of alienation and unfilfilment. What reasons can
they give for doing so, and how can they expect others to
do so as well, if they abandon all appeals to morality? The
Marxist rejection of morality, however, begins with Marx
himself. And it is, I will contend, a defensible view, a
natural consequence, as Marx says it is, of the materialist
conception of history. Even if we do not accept Marx's
other views, his attack on morality raises significant issues
concerning the way we should think about morality.
ii
Marx's Anti-Moralism
1478
Marx is habitually silent about the sorts of issues which
interest moralists and moral philosophers. But from what
he does say, it is clear that this silence is not due to benign
neglect. His attitude is rather one of open hostility to moral
theorizing, moral values, even to morality itself. Against
Pierre Proudhon, Karl Heinzen and the German 'true
socialists', Marx regularly employs 'morality' and
'moralizing criticism' as epithets of abuse. He bitterly
condemns the Gotha Programme's demand for 'just wages'
and 'just distribution', asserting that such phrases 'confound
the realistic outlook' of the working class with 'outdated
verbiage' and 'ideological trash' which his scientific
approach has rendered obsolete (MEW 19: 22, SW 325).
When others do prevail upon Marx to include bland moral
rhetoric in the Rules for the First International, he feels he
must apologize to Engels for it: 'I was obliged to insert two
phrases about ''duty" and "right" . . . ditto about "truth,
morality and justice", but these are placed in such a way
that they can do no harm' (CW 42, p. 18).
Marx regularly describes morality, along with religion and
law, as forms of ideology, 'so many bourgeois prejudices
behind which lurk just as many bourgeois interests' (MEW
4, p. 472; CW 6, p. 49495; cf. MEW 3, p. 26; CW 5, p. 36).
But he does not condemn only bourgeois ideas about
morality. His target is morality itself, all morality. The
German Ideology claims that the materialist con-
1479
Page 512
ception of history, by exhibiting the connection between
moral ideology and material class interests, has 'broken the
staff of all morality', irrespective of its content or class
affiliation (MEW 3, p. 404; CW 5, p. 419). When an
imaginary critic charges that 'communism does away with
all morality and religion instead of forming them anew', the
Communist Manifesto replies not by denying that this
charge is true, but instead by observing that just as the
communist revolution will involve a radical break with all
traditional property relations, so it will also involve the
most radical break with all traditional ideas (MEW 4, p.
48081; CW 6, p. 504). Evidently it is Marx's view that just
as doing away with bourgeois property will be one task of
the communist revolution, so 'doing away with all morality'
will be another. Marx even goes so far as to side with moral
evil against moral good. He insists that in history 'it is
always the bad side which finally triumphs over the good
side. For the bad side is the one which brings movement to
life, which makes history by bringing the struggle to
fruition' (MEW 4, p. 140; CW 6, p. 174).
Some, such as Karl Kautsky, have interpreted such remarks
as pleas for the 'value freedom' of Marxian social science.
But that reading is both implausible and anachronistic. It is
not at all what the passages themselves say. And the idea
that science should be 'value-free' was largely a neo1480
Kantian invention; Marx wrote at a time, and in a tradition,
which was both unfamiliar with and unsympathetic to it.
No reader of Marx could possibly deny that he makes
'value judgements' about capitalism, and Marx never
attempts fastidiously to segregate his scientific analysis of
capitalism from his angry condemnation of it. When Marx
accuses capitalism of stunting human potentialities, stifling
their development and preventing their actualization, he
avails himself unashamedly of judgements about people's
needs and interests, and even of a (recognizably
Aristotelian) naturalistic framework of ideas concerning the
nature of human well-being and fulfilment.
Judgements about what is good for people, what is in their
interests, certainly are 'value judgements', but they are not
necessarily moral judgements, since even if I care nothing
about morality at all, I may still be interested in promoting
the interests and well-being of myself and others whose
welfare I happen to care about. It would be entirely
consistent for Marx to reject morality and nevertheless
advocate the abolition of capitalism on the ground that it
frustrates human well-being, so long as his concern with
human well-being is not based on any moral values or
principles. Marx's attack on morality is not an attack on
'value judgements', but it is a rejection of specifically moral
judgements, especially those involving the ideas of right
and justice.
1481
iii
Historical Materialism
It is the materialist conception of history which Marx
credits with 'breaking the staff of all morality'. Historical
materialism treats history as divided into epochs, each
characterized fundamentally by its mode of production. A
mode of production consists of a set of social relations of
production, a system of economic roles assigning effective
control over the means, processes and fruits of social
production to the
1482
Page 513
occupants of some roles and excluding the occupants of
other roles. These differences between roles are the basis of
class differences in society.
On the materialist theory, social change comes about
because society's powers of production are not static but
change, and on the whole tend to grow. At any stage of
their development, the employment of the powers of
production and their further growth are facilitated more by
some social relations than by others. No one set of
production relations has a permanent advantage over all
others in this regard; instead, at different stages of the
development of productive powers, different sets of social
relations are better suited to promote productive
development. Eventually, any given set of production
relations becomes obsolete; they become dysfunctional in
relation to the employment of the productive powers, and
they 'fetter' their further development. A social revolution
consists in a transformation of the social relations of
production which is required by and for the growth of the
powers of production (MEW 13, p. 9; SW, p. 183).
The mechanism by which social relations are adjusted so as
to promote the development of productive powers is the
class struggle. The social relations of production divide
societies into groups, determined by their roles in
production and their degree and type of control over the
1483
material instruments of production. These groups are not
themselves classes, but they become classes as soon as
there exists a political movement and an ideology
representing their class interests. The interests of a class are
based on the common situation of the class's members, and
especially on its hostile relation to other classes. Generally
speaking, members of those classes which control the
conditions of production have an interest in retaining their
dominance, and those over whom this control is exercised
have an interest in wresting it away from those who have it.
These individual interests, however, are not directly class
interests. Since classes are not just categories of individuals
but social and political organizations or movements bound
together by ideologies, the interests of a class are always
something distinct from the interests of the class's
individual members. In fact, Marx identifies the interests of
a class with the political interests of the movement which
represents the class (MEW 4, p. 181; CW 6, p. 211).
Ultimately, the interests of a class consist in the
establishment and defence of the set of relations of
production which assign control of production to the
members of that class. But it does not follow from this that
class interests are simply the self-interest of the class's
members, or that class interests are pursued in the form of
egoistic interests. For in a war between classes, as in a war
between nations, victory is sometimes possible only
through the sacrifice of individual interests. The individuals
1484
who are called upon to make such sacrifices see themselves
as fighting for something greater and worthier than their
self-interest; and in this they are right, for they are fighting
for the interests of their class.
iv
Ideology
This greater and worthier thing, however, is seldom
presented to them as the
1485
Page 514
interest of a social class. Instead, a class shapes from its
material conditions of life 'a whole superstructure of
different and characteristic feelings, illusions, ways of
thinking and views of life' (MEW 8, p. 139; CW 11, p. 128)
which serve its members as the conscious motives of the
deeds they do in its behalf. When these feelings, thoughts
and views are the products of a special class of mental
labourers working in the class's employ, Marx has a special
name for them: ideology. The products of ideologists of
priests, poets, philosophers, professors and pedagogues are,
on the materialist theory, typically ideological. That is, the
content of these products can best be accounted for by the
way in which it represents the worldviews of particular
social classes at a particular time and serves the class
interests of these classes.
In a well-known letter to Franz Mehring, Friedrich Engels
describes ideology as 'a process carried out by the so-called
thinker with consciousness, but with a false consciousness.
The real driving forces that move him remain unknown to
him; otherwise it would not be an ideological process. Thus
he imagines to himself false or apparent driving forces'
(MEW 39, p. 97; SC p. 459). According to this, the chief
illusion in any ideology is an illusion about its own class
basis. This is not ignorance, error or deception about the
individual psychology of one's actions. When ideologists
1486
think they are being motivated by religious or moral
enthusiasm, very often they really are Engels does not
mean to claim that they are necessarily victims of the sort
of self-deception which occurs when I act self-interestedly
but deceive myself into thinking I am acting from moral
duty or philanthropic love. But the question is: what does it
really mean to act on moral, religious or philosophical
grounds? What is the relation of such actions to the social
life of which they are a part? When we act from such
grounds, what are we really doing?
When they are motivated by ideologies, people do not
understand themselves as representatives of a class
movement; but they are just the same. They do not think of
class interests as the fundamental explanation of the fact
that these ideas appeal to them and to others; but that is the
correct explanation nevertheless. They do not act with the
intention of promoting the interests of one social class as
opposed to others; but they go right on doing so, and
sometimes all the more effectively just because they truly
have no such intention. For if they truly knew what they
were doing, they might not continue to do it.
v
Ideology as Unfreedom
The Marxist attitude toward ideological false consciousness
reflects the fact that it is taken to be a form of unfreedom.
On the most obvious and superficial level (where, in the
1487
English-speaking liberal tradition, issues about freedom
usually remain) freedom is taken away from us when we
are frustrated in the pursuit of our goals by external
obstacles, such as prison bars and threats of violent harm.
Going a little deeper, we may also recognize internal
obstacles (such as compulsive desires and incapacities) as
destructive of freedom. If we go deeper still, we may
1488
Page 515
see that ignorance can be unfreedom, when our intentions
are formed without accurate knowledge of the way our
actions affect the outcomes we care about, or without
correct ideas about the range of alternatives open to us. The
threat to freedom posed by ideology is something like this,
yet not quite the same, since it is quite possible for victims
of ideology to be fully informed as regards the things they
care about. The problem is that the full significance of our
actions may extend beyond what we care about, even
beyond what we are capable of caring about, because it
extends beyond what we understand about ourselves and
our actions. I act from religious motives, for example, but I
promote the interests of a certain class without realizing
that I am doing so. When this happens I am unfree in what I
do because the meaning of my actions eludes my free
agency; because it is not I as a thinking and self-knowing
being who does it. This is not the unfreedom of being
unable to do what I intend; in fact, one could describe it as
the unfreedom of being unable to intend what I do.
I am fully free in this respect only if my actions have what
we may call 'self-transparency': I know these actions for
what they are and I do them intentionally in light of this
knowledge. When a certain system of ideas is socially
available to me because of the class interests it serves and
my actions are motivated by it, then I can be fully free in
1489
performing those actions only if I understand the role
which class interests play in my actions and choose those
actions in light of that understanding. But if the system of
ideas itself inhibits such an understanding by disguising or
falsifying the role played by class interests in its own
genesis and effect, then it destroys self-transparency of
action of those who act on it; it undermines their freedom.
Self-transparency of action is not merely a theoretical
value. For knowledge is subversive: if we clearly
understood the social basis and significance of what we do,
we would not go on doing it. Humanity may be
unacquainted as yet with any social way of life which could
be led self-transparently by its human participants. If Marx
is right, then all societies based on class oppression and that
means every social order which history records, including
our own depend for their stability on the fact that their
members are systematically deprived of the freedom of
social self-transparency. The oppressed can be kept in their
place only if their ideas about that place are suitably
mystified; and the system might be threatened even if the
oppressors acquired excessively accurate ideas about the
relations which benefit them at others' expense.
Revolutionary classes can more effectively enlist the
support of other classes, and even that of their own
members, if they present their class interests in a glorified
form. Ideology is not a marginal phenomenon, but essential
to all social life as it has existed up to now.
1490
vi
Morality as Ideology
In the light of this, it should not be surprising that Marx
regards morality, along with law, religion and other forms
of social consciousness, as fundamentally
1491
Page 516
ideological. Morality is a system of ideas which both
interprets and regulates people's behaviour in ways which
are vital for the workings of any social order. It also has the
potentiality for motivating them to make large-scale social
changes. If the history of past societies is fundamentally a
history of class oppression and class struggle, then it is only
to be expected that the prevalent systems of moral ideas
would take the form of ideologies through which class
warfare is being simultaneously waged and disguised. In
this way, Marx thinks that historical materialism has
'broken the staff of all morality' by revealing its foundation
in class interests.
Perhaps we are not surprised to find Marx attacking
morality in this way, but we may think his position
exaggerated and needlessly paradoxical, even if we grant
him for the sake of argument that historical materialism is
true. Some moral precepts (such as minimal respect for the
lives and interests of others) seem to have no conceivable
class bias, but apparently belong to any conceivable moral
code, since without them no society at all would be
possible. How can Marx want to discredit these precepts, or
think that historical materialism has discredited them?
Further, if all class movements need morality, then
apparently the working class will need it too. How can
Marx want to deprive the proletariat of an important
1492
weapon in the class struggle?
To reject morality, however, is not necessarily to reject all
the behaviour morality enjoins and advocate the behaviour
it prohibits. There may be some patterns of behaviour
common to all moral ideologies, and we might expect
moral ideologies to emphasize them, since it helps to
disguise the class character of the ideology's more
characteristic features. If people must do and refrain from
certain things in order to have a decent social life, then
Marx would certainly want those doings and refrainings to
continue in the communist society of the future. But Marx
would not want them to be done because some moral code
enjoins them, since moral codes are class ideologies, which
undermine the self-transparency of the people who act on
them.
Perhaps the fear is that without moral motives, nothing will
prevent us from falling into the uttermost barbarism. Marx
does not share this fear, a first cousin of the superstitious
fear that if there is no God, then all is permitted. The task
of human emancipation is to build a human society on
rational self-transparency, free from the mystification of
morality and other ideologies. Marx knows that at present
we have no clear conception of what such a society would
be like, but he believes that humanity is equal to the task of
bringing one into being.
Marx has powerful reasons for refusing to exempt working1493
class moral ideologies from these strictures. The historic
mission of the working-class movement is human
emancipation; but every ideology, including working-class
ideologies, undermines freedom by destroying selftransparency of action. Marx rails against moralizing within
the movement because he regards the 'realistic outlook'
brought to it by historical materialism as indispensable for
its revolutionary task (MEW 19, p. 22; SW, p. 325).
1494
Page 517
vii
Justice
Marx supplements his attack on working class moralizing
with an account of the justice of economic transactions.
The justice of transactions which go on between agents of production
rests on the fact that these transactions arise out of the production
relations as their natural consequence. [The content of a transaction] is
just whenever it corresponds to the mode of production, is adequate to
it. It is unjust whenever it contradicts it. (MEW 25, p. 3512; C 3, p.
33940).
A transaction is just whenever it is functional within the
existing mode of production, unjust whenever it is
dysfunctional. From this it follows directly that the
exploitative transactions between capitalist and worker, and
the system of capitalist distribution resulting from them, are
perfectly just and violate no-one's rights (MEW 19, p. 18;
SW, p. 3212; MEW 19, pp. 359, 382; MEW 23, p. 208; C
1, p. 194). But equally, once we see that this is what it
means for capitalist exchanges and distribution to be just,
we will no longer take the fact that they are just as any sort
of defence of them.
As Marx tells us, his conception of justice rests on the way
in which moral norms arise out of relations of production.
It is not an account of justice which either a defender of the
system or a moral critic of it would give, and it is not
1495
intended to be a conception of justice which captures the
way in which social agents think about the justice of the
transactions they regard as just. But it is an account which
intends to identify what in fact regulates their usage of
terms like 'just' and 'unjust', and in this way it anticipates
certain features of some contemporary philosophical
theories of reference. According to these theories, people's
use of a term like 'water' refers to H2O if people's use of
this term is regulated by the fact that the substance they
refer to is H2O, even if they would not accept this as an
account of what they mean by 'water' (because, for
instance, they have no concept of H2O, or because they
have superstitious folk-beliefs about the nature of water).
Analogously, Marx holds that people's use of terms like
'justice' and 'injustice' of economic transactions is regulated
by the functionality of these transactions for the prevailing
mode of production, and hence that these are the properties
of the transactions to which such terms refer even though
understanding justice and injustice in this way has the
effect of depriving these terms of the persuasive force they
are usually taken to have. In Marx's view, it is only moral
ideology which makes us regard moral properties such as
justice as inherently or necessarily desirable. (Once we
come to understand what justice really is, we will acquire a
more sober view about how desirable it is.)
viii
Morality and Rationality
1496
There are some conceptions which are essentially selfdefining, through an activity which is associated with them.
Scientific rationality, for example, is not limited to
1497
Page 518
what people have called 'science' in the past, because the
activity of science consists in criticizing itself, rejecting its
present content and giving itself a new one. What has in the
past been considered 'rational' behaviour, even the very
criteria of rationality, may be subjected to self-criticism and
now treated as less than rational. In modern culture, there
has been a strong tendency simply to identify morality with
practical reason, and consequently to regard moral
reasoning too as a self-critical and self-determining notion.
On this view, all errors in moral thinking are errors in the
content of particular moral beliefs; 'morality itself always
(perhaps even 'by definition') transcends all moral errors, at
least in principle.
Marx's view of morality involves the denial that morality
can be regarded in any such way. If there is a kind of
practical thinking which is self-correcting in this manner,
morality is not it. The reason is that morality, moral
concepts and principles, moral thoughts and feelings, have
already been appropriated to quite a different sort of task
with quite a different method of operation. Along with
religion and law, the essential tasks of morality are social
integration and class advocacy, its essential method is
ideological mystification and self-disguise. A morality
which understood its own social basis would be as
impossible as a religion which founded itself on the clear
1498
perception that every belief in the supernatural is a
superstition.
ix
The Illusion of Impartial Benevolence
We can see why this is so if we attend to one fundamental
feature of morality as such. It is characteristic of moral
thinking to present itself as founded on such things as the
will of a universally benevolent God, or a categorical
imperative legislated by pure reason, or a general happiness
principle. Whatever the theory, morality is depicted as the
standpoint of impartial or disinterested well-wishing, which
takes account of all relevant interests and gives preference
to some over others only when there are good (impartially
based) reasons for doing so. It is this feature of morality
which renders it fundamentally ideological.
No doubt people can think they are behaving in such a
manner, and a particular action may even actually be
impartially benevolent as regards the immediate interests of
the small number of people whom it immediately affects.
As long as we think only of our particular actions and their
immediate consequences, as morality encourages us to do,
there is no general problem about achieving the impartiality
it demands. But morality also encourages us to think of our
actions as conforming to a moral code which is valid for
others as well as for ourselves. When we do this, we
implicitly represent our actions as conforming
1499
systematically to principles of impartial benevolence which
we imagine as possibly effective on a large scale. It is at
this point that the illusory character of moral impartiality
becomes evident. For in a society based on class oppression
and torn by class conflict, there can be no socially
significant and effective form of action which has this
character of impartial benevolence. Actions which are
commended as 'just'
1500
Page 519
(because they correspond to the prevailing mode of
production) systematically promote the interests of the
ruling class at the expense of the oppressed. Actions taken
to overthrow the existing order, which may be commended
by some revolutionary moral code, advance the interests of
the revolutionary class at the expense of other classes.
According to Marx, the most pervasive characteristic of
ideology is its tendency to represent the standpoint of one
class as a universal standpoint, the interests of that class as
universal interests (MEW 3, p. 4649; CW 5. p. 5962; MEW
4, p. 477; CW 6, p. 501). This is precisely what moral
ideologies do: they represent actions which benefit the
interests of one class as disinterestedly good, as actions in
the common interest, promoting the rights and well-being
of humanity in general. But it would be an illusion to think
that this deception could be remedied by some new moral
code which succeeds in doing what these class ideologies
only pretend to do. For in a society based on class
oppression and torn by class conflict, impartiality is an
illusion. There are no universal interests, no cause of
humanity in general, no place to stand above or outside the
fray. Your actions may be subjectively motivated by
impartial benevolence, but their objective social effect is
never impartial. The only actions which do not take sides in
a class war are actions which are either impotent or
1501
irrelevant.
All this is just as true of the working class as of any other.
Marx thinks the working-class movement is in the interests
of 'the vast majority' (MEW 4: 472; CW 6: 495); but
working-class interests are the interests of one particular
class, not the interests of humanity in general. Marx does
believe that the working-class movement will eventually
abolish class society itself, and thereby achieve universal
human emancipation. But its first step toward this must be
to emancipate itself from the ideological illusions of class
society. And that means that it must pursue its class interest
in its own emancipation consciously as its class interests,
undistorted by ideological illusions which would portray its
interest in a glorified, moralized form for instance, as
already identical with universal human interests. Marx
thinks that it is only by becoming clearsighted about itself
in this way that the revolutionary proletariat can hope to
create a society which is free both from ideological
illusions and from the class divisions which create the need
for them.
x
Can Marx do without morality?
Marx was a radical thinker, and his attack on morality is
clearly one of his most radical ideas. The Marxian idea of a
revolutionary social movement and even a radically new
social order which would abolish all morality was intended
1502
to shock, frighten and challenge its audience, to test the
limits even of what it could conceive. Perhaps it is
understandable that many who are sympathetic to Marx's
critique of capitalism should find this idea useless, barely
intelligible, embarrassing, and that they should think the
only viable or sympathetic interpretation of Marx is one
which reads it entirely out of his texts. Marxist antimoralism combines badly with the widespread notion that
the monstrous atrocities which have disillusioned
1503
Page 520
our century (and for which self-proclaimed Marxists have
borne no light burden of responsibility) have been due
fundamentally to calamitous moral failures on the part of
politicians, parties and peoples. The notion itself may be
highly dubious typical of the sad human tendency to react
first with moral blame toward whatever we hate and fear
but do not understand. But to those for whom it is second
nature, a Marx who attacks morality is easily groomed as
someone whose thought leads straight to the purge, the
gulag and the killing fields.
But this way of thinking rests on some erroneous
assumptions, and some invalid reasoning. To reject
morality is not necessarily to approve of everything
morality would condemn, nor is it even to deprive oneself
of the best reasons for disapproving of it. We may reject
morality and nevertheless have a rational, humane outlook
as Marx did. Morality is not the only possible remedy for
the abuses which Marxism has suffered, nor is it even, I
venture to say, a very good remedy. Fanatics continue to
prove every day that even the purest moral intentions
cannot prevent us from committing the most monstrous
crimes unless we successfully employ our intelligence
along with our moral fervour. Thus a better remedy might
be simply to address the human intellect seriously to
deciding whether our means will in fact achieve our ends,
1504
and whether our ends truly answer to our considered
desires.
But the fear will be that without morality we have no way
of trusting our desires. Why should we bother to overthrow
capitalist oppression, or avoid the nightmares of
totalitarianism, if, on reflection, we don't happen to want
to? What if our own self-interest happens to lie on the side
of the oppressors? What, if not morality, could provide the
necessary counterpoise? But it is a basic tenet of historical
materialism that the human motivation which is most
powerful in human affairs, and explains the fundamental
dynamics of social change, falls neither into the category of
self-interest nor that of morality. Marx regards self-interest
as an important human motive, but he thinks the selfinterest of individuals as such is too varied in its effects to
effect any world historical transformation. On the other
hand, a high-minded concern for the universal interest or
for justice in the abstract is going to achieve results only if
it serves as the illusory pretext for the promotion of definite
class interests.
It is these class interests themselves which are the real
driving forces of history. Class interests are far from
impartial they do not aim at the general welfare or impartial
justice, but at the achievement and defence of a certain set
of production relations, those which signify the
emancipation and dominance of a certain social class under
given historical conditions. It is solely to the class interests
1505
of the revolutionary proletariat that Marx means to appeal
in advocating the overthrow of capitalism and the
establishment of a more emancipated and more human
society. Marx does think that proletarian class interests will
appeal to some who are not themselves proletarians but
who have risen to a theoretical comprehension of the
historical process (MEW 4, p. 472; CW 6, p. 494). This
appeal arises from an informed identification with a
concrete historical movement, not from crude self-interest,
and even less from any impartial commitment to moral
principles
1506
Page 521
and aims which the movement is thought to serve. Those
who join the proletarian cause with the latter attitude have
not risen to a theoretical comprehension of the historical
movement; they have simply been caught in the snares of
moral ideology.
It is evidently from Hegel that Marx derives the idea that
abstract (Kantian) morality is impotent, and that the
motives which are historically effective always harmonize
individual interests with those of a larger social order,
movement or cause. (Similar neo-Aristotelian or neoHegelian ideas have recently been defended by Alasdair
MacIntyre and Bernard Williams, among others.) But
Hegel (like these more recent philosophers) attacks
'morality' only in a narrow sense, while trying to save it in a
larger one. He locates the harmony of individual interests
and social action in 'ethical life', which remains something
distinctively moral by the fact that its ultimate appeal to us
is supposed to be the appeal of impartial reason. The
system of ethical life is a system of right, duty and justice,
which actualizes the universal good; it even includes
'morality' (in the narrower sense) as one of its moments.
Marxian class interests, however, are not 'moral' even in an
extended sense. They are the interests of one class which
stands in a hostile relation to other classes, and they can be
advanced only at the expense of the interests of their class
1507
enemies. All this holds, moreover, as much for proletarian
interests as for those of any other class. To represent
working-class interests as universal interests or as
something impartially good (as happens when they are
treated as a morality) is for Marx a paradigm of ideological
falsification and an act of betrayal against the workingclass movement (MEW 19: 25, SW 325).
xi
Has morality any future?
There is one passage in Anti-Dühring in which Engels
contrasts the ideological moralities of class society with an
'actual human morality of the future' (MEW 20, p. 88; AD,
p. 132). This passage conflicts with the anti-moralism
characteristic of Marx (and of Engels too, in many other
passages). But we ought to be clear about just where the
conflict lies, and how profound it really is. There is a direct
conflict between the claim that there will be morality in
future communist society and the Communist Manifesto's
assertion that the communist revolution will 'do away with
all morality instead of founding it anew'. But perhaps the
conflict does not go very deep after all. Morality thinks its
principles are impartial and universally human, and that
following them will give your actions a justification which
transcends the conflicting interests of particular individuals
and groups. The Marxian view is that this cannot be done
as long as class society exists, and that the fundamental
1508
ideological deception of morality is the way it passes off
particular class interests as universal interests. But Marx
and Engels think that after class society has been abolished,
it will be possible for individuals to relate to each other
simply as human beings, whose interests may diverge at the
margins but are fundamentally identified through their
common participation in a fully human social order. It is
the classless society, therefore, which will actually
1509
Page 522
accomplish what morality deceptively pretends to do. And
on this ground, it may be understandable that Engels should
speak of the 'actual human morality' of future society, even
though this involves a revision in the more characteristic
(and clarifying) Marxian concept of morality as essentially
the false pretence to universality found in class ideologies.
The point not to overlook, however, is that Engels regards
this 'actual human morality' as something future, not
something available to us now, while we are still the
prisoners of class society and its inevitable conflicts.
Engels is emphatic in denying that there are any 'eternal
truths' about morality. He plainly thinks that the principles
of an 'actual human morality' belonging as they do to a
future social order are as unknowable by us as the scientific
truths which will belong to some future theory which lies
on the far side of the next major scientific revolution.
Nothing in Engels's remarks gives any comfort to those
who would use moral standards to criticize capitalism or
guide the working-class movement.
xii
Conclusion
Marx's anti-moralism is not an easy idea to accept. It is not
clear how we could think of ourselves and our relations
with others entirely in non-moral terms. If all morality is an
illusion, then a clear-sighted person must be able to go
1510
through life entirely without moral beliefs, moral emotions,
moral reactions. But is it possible for anyone to do this?
Yet Marx's anti-moralism is far from being his only
shockingly radical proposal for humanity's future. After all,
communism as Marx conceives it would abolish not only
all morality, but also all religion, law, money and
commodity exchange, along with the family, private
property, and the state. Marx's anti-moralism actually
appeals to some of us as it surely must have appealed to
Marx himself precisely because it is such a radical,
dangerous and paradoxical idea especially since, as I have
been trying to argue, it is at the same time a disturbingly
well-motivated idea in the context of Marx's materialist
conception of history.
Yet even if we are not persuaded by historical materialism,
Marx's critique of morality raises some troubling questions
for us. Do we pretend that we understand the real social and
historical significance of the moral standards we employ?
Can we be sure that we would still accept those standards if
we did understand their significance? In the absence of
such understanding, how can we suppose that a devotion to
moral ends and principles, which we so closely associate
with our sense of self-worth, is compatible with the
autonomy and dignity which we want to ascribe to
ourselves as rational agents? And what sort of life,
individual or collective, might there be without morality?
What does it look like, that territory which lies (in
1511
Nietzsche's uncanny phrase) beyond good and evil?
Modern moral thought sees itself as essentially critical and
reflective, not merely preaching traditional morality but
questioning received moral ideas and seeking out new ways
of thinking about both our individual lives and our
collective life. Marx belongs to a radical tradition of
modern thought about morality a tradition which also
includes Hegel, Nietzsche and Freud thinkers who have
1512
Page 523
made us painfully aware of the ways in which the moral life
involves us inevitably in irrationality, self-opacity and selfalienation. What this tradition suggests is the enigmatic and
abysmal possibility that it may not be feasible for modern
moral reflection to go all the way with its critical thinking
without undermining the moral character of that thinking. To
paraphrase Marx (MEW 1, p. 387; CW 3, p. 184): what may
turn out to be Utopian is a merely reformist thinking about
morality, which hopes to make repairs in the structure of our
moral convictions but still to leave the pillars of the house
standing.
References
Writings of Marx and Engels are cited in both the German
and a standard English translation. All translations presented
here, however, are my own. I use the following system of
abbreviations:
MEWMarx Engels Werke (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 196166),
cited by volume and page number.
CW Marx Engels Collected Works (New York:
International Publishers, 1975 ), cited by volume and
page number.
C
Marx, Capital (New York: International Publishers,
1967), cited by volume and page number.
SW Marx Engels Selected Works in one volume (New
1513
SC
AD
York: International Publishers, 1968), cited by page
number.
Marx Engels Selected Correspondence (New York:
International Publishers, 1965), cited by page number.
Engels, Anti-Dühring (Moscow: Progress Publishers,
1962), cited by page number.
Kautsky, K.: The Materialist Conception of History, trans. J.
Kautsky (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).
Further Reading
Brenkert, G.: Marx's Ethics of Freedom (London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1984.)
Buchanan, A.: Marx and Justice (Totawa, NJ: Rowan and
Littlefield, 1982).
Cohen, G. A.: Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).
Cohen, M., Nagel, T. and Scanlon, T., eds.: Marx, Justice
and History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
Elster, J.: Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985).
Geras, N.: Marx and Human Nature (London: New Left
Books, 1983).
Henry, M.: Marx: A Philosophy of Human Reality
(Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1982).
1514
Kamenka, E.: The Ethical Foundations of Marxism (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972).
Lukes, S.: Marxism and Morality (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1984).
1515
Page 524
Miller, R.: Analyzing Marx: Morality, Power and History
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Nielsen, K.: Marxism and the Moral Point of View
(Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1989).
Nielsen, K., and Patten, S., eds.: Marx and Morality
(Guelph: Canadian Association for Publishing in
Philosophy, 1981).
Wood, A.: Karl Marx (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1981).
1516