I struggle fully embracing a socialist/marxist stance because it feels so cold and detached from the humanity it speaks of.
How can I be part of a movement that is directly opposed to my moral outrage? I find capitalism intrinsically undoubtedly evil. Its inherent flaws are WHY I want it replaced. Not simply because it pragmatically doesn’t work but any system that exploits individuals, causes wage slavery, let’s children starve when food surplus exists, let’s medical debt run rampant and many to have to die because they can’t afford what should be their basic human rights, it all equals a morally depraved destructive gluttonous monstrosity.
What I keep seeing however is a severe lack of embracing the moral aspect of why MANY people turn toward the left in the first place. Something feels wrong about how the elites rule over us. Power in its nature is so intrinsically flawed and corruptible that it must be quelled. Capitalism is wrong, end of story.
But then I have many who I would generally call my ideological bedfellows being moral relativists and even moral nihilists about things that are my literal calls to action.
Racism, sexism, the starving of children in rich countries, the wealth disparity, the death and decay and destruction of our planet. These are not subjective wrongs. There is no “relative” way to interpret starving children in the world’s richest country. There is no context for which that is justifiable.
By playing down the inherent moral failings of capitalism, it defangs its horrors and what the top of the elite class are capable of.
To me, Marx’s failures start and end with underestimating the truly depraved nature of our current economic system. I think he was unable to envision just how horrible the ruling class would be to hold on to power, how they would pit us against each other and kill or destroy any who were threats to their way of life.
Shit, even how those of us in the lower classes would tear each other apart for the promise of being in the elite. Culture wars have completely eroded any true left movement in America specifically and treating it all in the dialectical materialism has, to my eyes, led our movement down a path of weak activism and passive acceptance of the erosion of all that we hold dear.
Or can we talk plainly about how the world’s worst possible ideological project, fascism, is not just allied with capitalism but seems a logical extension of their social Darwinian tendencies to cull the have nots?
All told, I’m just frustrated. Frustrated at an intellectual left that held so true to a scientistic, materialist analysis of human society that it couldn’t capture and motivate the very real moral failings that have hurt the heart of so many. By clinging to this vision of a cold and calculated march to progress, these thought movements instead let fascism and capitalism co-mingle into a toxin that very obviously could exterminate not just our species but every living thing on this planet.
So to all of this I ask of you what to do when there seems such a disconnect between the moral calling I feel for being a leftist and the reality of its followers being diametrically opposed to that call.
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I would argue that there was a tendency to oppose the liberal humanism that threatened the revolutionary core of Marxism to be attacked by a kind of objectivism, which is partially associated with Althusser’s interpretation of Marx.
I however don’t find Althusser compelling although see his role historically in resisting a degeneration of Marxism to merely liberal sentiment with Marxist form, but he also wasn’t my true to Marx’s dialectics.
There are certainly Marxists who do wish to emphasize the ethical content of Marx’s work without disregarding the scientific character of Marx’s work.
https://ilyenkovfriends.org/2021/09/21/zaira-rodriguez-ugidos/
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/articles/humanism-science.htm
d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdf
Marx criticized moralizing but wasn’t without an ethics and seems compatible with Virtue ethics against Utilitarianism and deontology.
Yes, Marx is big on not mere moralizing phrases but trying to balance means and ends of groups of people than providing an ethical theory for individuals on how to act.
But this doesn’t mean there isn’t ethical implications to class struggle nor that facts are entirely value free. If anything, there is a point that values and facts are to be balanced with good judgement against the neutrality posited by bourgeoisie as if science stands entirely above human affairs/activity.
Marx has much that criticizes normalizers, appeals that are purely emotive and without clear reasons for action. But this only criticizes the impotence of moralizing independent of action, it doesn’t render human actions or radical politics independent of ethics.
The working class movements itself present norms of what is ethical. For example solidarity is both an ethical and practical principle from class struggles in history. But if one framed that strictly as factual or an emotive appeal for propaganda, then they only show their bifurcated view of a human world.
Marx is said to have laughed at anyone who referred to morality
This is why Marx says "When our turn comes, we will make no excuses for the terror"
Marxism isn't 'when you feel subjective 'solidarity' for the broken toys and victims'
Indeed, solidarity isn’t a feeling but a characteristic of how one supports others as opposed to charity which is on your own terms of how you will help where solidarity is lending help on terms of the subject you’re seeking to help. It’s the opposite of paternalism.
But don’t make a false dichotomy between a purely objective amoral Marxism and subjective bleeding heart liberalism. All this will show is an inadequate attention to the relationship between facts and values and I would argue reflects a bourgeoisie sentiment of science above any ethical implication which reeks of the kind of men who will wash their hands of the wrongs through compartmentalization as their work is used to exploit others.
Do you only go as far as Hume and assert a is-ought distinction that is impassable?
It's not about charity or 'good-will' or any such thing either
Engels is clear that there is no such thing as "human morality" in class society
It's not about 'lending help,' but about the fact that science shows an objective determination & history points in this direction regardless of individual 'feelings' of this or that sense of 'morality' or 'justice' or good vs. bad etc
Marx says: foregoing this objective & sober sense of materialism for the sake of 'moralism':
Engels is even more direct here:
And this isn't 'presaged' or outlined or 'shown the way toward' by attempting to 'act out' your subjective opinion of what this proposed 'classless' society socially constitutes itself.
You are unable to make any kind of pre-determination, and this can only be moved toward based on given conditions. Those given conditions are class struggle, which jettisons these moralistic postures.
Engels suggests morality itself isn't even possible until then
I think you are taking Engels further than he himself says. The quotes ridicule those that replace analysis with moral rhetoric and emphasizing class sidedness of morality means that there isn’t the conditions of a universal morality in actuality rather than moral nihilism.
And I would note I am not emphasizing charity and good will in my previous post.
No, the quotes support what I said
Marx is clear that he's not invoking some special 'solidarity morality'
And this cannot be read from his published writings in any sense
If you cannot contemplate any ethically normative content or implications for Marx’s analysis then you need to argue better than saying that Marx’s work isn’t simply an ethical treatise. As Marx’s conception of human nature does hold ethical implications and I would argue grounds his analysis both factually and ethically in not so traditional terms which are one sidedly scientific fact independent of humans or one sidedly subjectively human.
That any dismissal of ethics has to make an argument for Marx’s moral nihilism opposed to the less grand claim that he criticized moralizing as a means of change or analysis. That he mocked those who called people to sacrifice themselves in the name of love instead of any practical self interest reason.
That adoption by a moral nihilism would better suit a Stirner egoist than Marx who is an advocate for abolishing capital but isn’t of utopian moralizing of its ills, sought to construct a scientific analysis of it. I don’t know one can readily at the outset defend a moral nihilist or anti realist position from Marx. It’s not without contention but neither it is self evident as that can just as likely be the way one thinks instead of the truth of Marx analysis.
To me it tends to read as awfully positivist rather than Marxist to frame him strictly as a scientific thinker and doesn’t recognize how his methodology is based always upon human activity, the unity of human action upon the world and that a moral nihilistic perspective would only make sense from one so alienated from their humanity that they struggle to see things as grounded upon humanity’s activity.
Marxism isn't about positing some given 'ethic' about 'solidarity' or whatever
Marx is clear that human practice is what scientific & objective reality are encompassed and disclosed through. Nothing about that is ethically 'normative' in this abstract sense
Marx isn't outlining some 'ethical' viewpoint or stance, but showing the ways in which mental production flows from domination of material production, not the other way around. Read Marx here:
Marx not adhering to some given 'ethic' predetermined or staked out beforehand doesn't mean it's nihilistic, quite the opposite actually
Marxism isn't about moralism in any sense.
Maybe read some of the female socialist pioneers and Unionists. That’s where you’ll likely find the compassionate, moral end of the stick. It’s there, it’s actually what drives the whole ideology.
You can be guided by your moral outrage, sure. I certainly am.
But as a member of a communist party you will have to work with party members who didn't grow up in your religious sect and may have a different perspective than yours.
You will also have to organize the masses, who will have a wide variety of views on all sorts of things.
The majority of self identifying leftists are non dialectical and are seemingly driven only by a sense of moral outrage. IMO that's why they've not gotten anywhere and why we're here in the first place.
I think it’s important to note that if the moral failings bother you in the current system there is only a handful of groups that care to improve those failings. Think lgbtq+ rights, women’s rights, immigration rights etc. all of those are much more prominent for leftist groups like the Democratic Socialists of America. Take a gander and be the change you want to see in the world. You want more people to care about the moral side of change? Join a group backing those ideals. And don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. That’s why we have 2 right wing parties masquerading for a 1 party state in the US.
The best way to describe it from my perspective as someone who hasn’t read all the theory is that back then, the only way they could safely deliver this information was via academia. You have to read and feel beyond the meaning and put yourself in their life circumstances at the time they wrote their literature. Once you do, it’s much easier to grasp why they were writing this and who they’re writing it for.
They’re not perfect people either. That’s why having that background about them makes them more relatable.
(And if you’re interested in learning more about why the economy is so broken, look up the ‘buy, borrow, die’ scam that’s been going on since 1913. It was never made to be logical. It’s been rigged since.)
What you have is fake compassion and fake morality. People like you who say socialism is "cold and doesn't have morality", are the same people who are quick to jump on the condemnation of currently existing socialist states(non-western countries). It's always lame excuses to say they're bad because they want to achieve economic sovereignty, breaking away from the shackles of IMF & World Bank. We support them when they're weak, but we condemn them once they finally stand up for themselves. That's your mentality.
Call it a hot take to be honest about human rights violations crossing the ideological divide. This is why many socialists during the first half of the 20th century were never communists because absolute power corrupts no matter the theoretical backing. If you really think that a communist regime isn’t equally capable of oppression, suppression, and malevolence, then you’re just an ideological simp and nothing more.
That’s the big hard truth about morality: all sides can be fuckers no matter their start. Wrong is simply wrong and the ends don’t justify the means like some consequentialist sadism.
I think the trouble you highlight with your hostility is why not more people follow their actual beliefs to the leftist side. Its purity tested and justified all ends no matter their palatability to a general audience. We don’t want Maoism or Stalinism, big apologies. We want a universal health care as a basic human right, a freedom from wage slavery, and more governmental controls on big business.
But with those wants comes a heavy skepticism that the cold hard “science” backed dialectical materialism brings hostility to the ideologically impure and justify heinous actions like genocide because “hey at least the means of production were seized…… by a new ruling class that culls dissent”.
Without humanities to check the realities of your theories, you’re just eugenics under a different trench coat ready to curb the populace of non believers because “hey the science says THIS!”.
Like it or not, you need a moral framework to lead a nation and a movement. Without one, you’re words on a page monsters use to kill.
Marxists need to be absolutely materialist including in their morality, your moral outrage has to be backed up by material existance and not personal subjective feelings. This is how i apply it. When i think being emotional and obnoxious about capitalism is useful i am.
what are you talking abt man? socialism is all morals no brain, no way this is the only thing
https://preview.redd.it/ckjq8ixf9y8g1.jpeg?width=891&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7ca5fafa0234acdd76adb00b24bfa006d16ddae2
Cry
Yes Marxism is flawed because it comes from the protestant world based in materialism and empiricism. Despite what early Marxists thought, communism was only able to get off the ground in places with real spiritual values like Christianity in Russia or Buddhism in Vietnam or confucianism in China whereas in the Satanic Protestant West, the best communism has been able to achieve have been degenerate drug addicted blue haired transgender hippie retards.
Communism is not off the ground in Russia, it's buried beneath it. It doesn't exist anymore.
Christianity was the reason why it fell. Without Christianity it would have lived on.