The relation of ethics to Marxism has been a long-discussed and debated question, especially since Marx himself seemed to eschew ethical and moral thinking as necessary to communist reasoning. “The communists do not preach morality at all,” Marx and Engels say in the 1845 German Ideology. “They do not put to people the moral demand: love one another, do not be egoists, etc.” In Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) Marx puts it that “right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.” It is just such statements, and the structure of thinking they seem to embody, which Bill Martin challenges Ethical Marxism, intended as both supplement and critique in relation to the Marxist tradition.
We will be addressing the thesis and themes of this book more than once on this site. Following is the first part of an extensive discussion by Vern Gray of certain aspects of Ethical Marxism, as well as of themes and questions suggested by the book. The second and third parts of this essay will appear here over the next few days. A pdf of the whole will also be available.
At a later point I will also be writing about this book.
On Some Questions Provoked by a Reading of Bill Martin’s Ethical Marxism
by Vern Gray
Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation, by Bill Martin. Open Court, Chicago and LaSalle, Illinois, 2008. 479 pp.
By way of introduction, I would like to make a personal statement. This book is long, and it is no small effort to persevere and finish it, and to give it the consideration that it merits. But I think the effort is rewarded. This is a thought-provoking work that makes an important contribution to our revolutionary project on many levels. I say this as someone who has some significant differences with the book, as well as substantial agreements. One of the many strengths of this book is that it constitutes real engagement. I find it very refreshing that there is no trace of pretense or condescension; Martin clearly respects the reader. His approach is marked by modesty, intellectual integrity, and an openness to learning from everyone and from all modalities of the human experience. From one point of view, this is what one should expect from any honest, serious philosopher. From another point of view, it is not what some of us, given our political history, had become accustomed to.
Like Martin, I was in the orbit of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP) for about thirty years. But I ended up having to separate from “the party of Bob Avakian“ during the “purge of 2008.“ I learned many things from the party, and Avakian especially, over the many years of my association with them, initially mainly positive, but in recent years mainly by negative example. Part of my situation was that because of the nature and extent of my work with the party, as well as the prevailing theoretical climate and attitude toward investigation and discussion of ideas—which for a long time was not what it should be, and which deteriorated very significantly in recent years—my intellectual interests had to be pursued “on the side,“ outside of the purview of the party, which showed over and over that it had no serious interest in pursuing many of the questions I thought needed to be pursued. The party‘s behavior was in sharp contrast to Avakian‘s “official positions“ about the importance of intellectual ferment, debate, and so forth.
Now I am able to get into some of these ideas in a more inclusive forum, and Martin‘s book has prompted me to do so. In some ways, what I‘ve written here is focused on matters I‘ve been working on for some time. Overall, this is not so much a review of the book as it is an essay that takes up, and takes off from some of the themes in the book, though certainly not all of its most important ideas. Thus I have been able to say only a little about the author‘s discussion of imperialism‘s being the ethical question of today, with its overall moral quality being concentrated in the use of napalm during the Vietnam War; the animal question, which he believes is at the center of his overall treatment of ethical questions; and certain views concerning what is to be learned from religious perspectives regarding ethics and redemption.
In this paper I have found it important to do considerable criticism of the RCP‘s positions, especially in philosophy, though that is not my main focus. Being conscious of the need to give attention, but not undue attention, to Avakian‘s and the party‘s views, I have situated most of the discussion of them in footnotes. I have also used the notes to set out various issues to be explored later.
* * * * *
In his latest book, Bill Martin holds that ethics, rather than science, must be at the core of Marxism. His analysis of the history of socialism and the international communist movement persuasively argues that its overall failure to systematically integrate ethics into its theory, or in most cases even to speak of it, has been intimately linked with economism and revisionism. He argues that communism is attainable only if people think and act within an ethical framework whose horizon is not one of “interest“—even broad, long-term interest—but rather, of consciously trying to do the right thing because it‘s the right thing to do. He puts forward a provocative and in various ways novel examination of a broad range of other philosophical and political issues, including the role of a vision of a different kind of society, as opposed to a historical-determinist view, in shaping social development; the relationship of freedom, inevitability, and ethics in a “postinevitablist“ Marxism; the extent and character of the enormous moral rot in contemporary imperialist society, especially in the United States; the importance of the “animal question“ to an understanding of the culture of imperialism and environmental issues; the importance of Kantian ethics for twenty-first-century revolutionary ideology; and many others. Martin also calls for a kind of cross-pollination between what he refers to as “philosophical Marxism“ and “revolutionary movement theory.“ As with all of his writings, he brings a sincere and friendly style to the table, inviting his readers to examine his way of joining the questions and to participate with him in working through them.
The book does have various shortcomings. It raises a number of important questions that it passes over very quickly and often problematically. In some cases, Martin makes explicit his intention to address an issue elsewhere; in several others, however, he touches on a subject but then leaves us hoping for more or even wondering how or why his take on it is what it is. He evidently does not agree with, and does not develop, a consistent approach to ethics from a class viewpoint—though he does not explain why—or analyze the question of whether, in a class society, an ethical system always represents one class or another. He does not go far in examining how a people motivated by “interest“ can be transformed into one motivated first and foremost by ethics, and in particular, what the mass line (to use the Maoist term) may have to do with this. He leaves unexamined the question of whether a science of ethics or of consciousness more generally is possible. He mainly deals only indirectly with how contrasting views of the “human essence“ stand in relation to conceptions of ethics, freedom, and communism. And he does not explain the materialization of Kant‘s categorical imperative—or if he does, not in a way that I have been able to understand—or how his ethical doctrine as a whole could be integrated into Marxism.1
Martin‘s project of developing an ethical critique of Marxism, and beginning to rethink all of Marxism from an ethical perspective, is a major undertaking. Marxism, including in its most revolutionary expressions, has tended to ignore, marginalize, exclude, and even suppress ethics. In my opinion, there must be space for this kind of project to develop; it should be investigated, debated, experimented with. I am in strong agreement with him about the importance of “utopianism“ and “the call of the future.“ At the same time, I do not think that ethics should hold a privileged position within Marxism. One of the themes in this paper concerns the relationship between ethics and science.
I. ETHICS AND INTEREST
The concept of “theodicy“ is a key one in Martin‘s book. Although it originated in Christian theology, it has had a Marxist variant that, as he sees it, has often been dominant in the history of the communist movement. This view holds that inasmuch as the eventual triumph of communism is assured, everything that happens on the road there is part of a great chain of events leading to that supreme end. The deterministic character of this outlook is apparent, but Martin also wants to emphasize that it is profoundly unethical: “looking backward“ from the future communist society, all manner of horrors can be justified if they are seen as unavoidable steps on the way to an inevitable end. “The end justifies the means“—even if the end is decades (or more) distant.
In various places, Marx made statements, Martin points out, that were at least similar to theodicy. Here is one example of a passage in his works that concentrates this:
“ . . . although at first the development of the capacities of the human species takes place at the cost of the majority of human individuals and even classes, in the end it breaks through this contradiction and coincides with the development of the individual; the higher development of individuality is thus only achieved by a historical process during which individuals are sacrificed, for the interests of the species in the human kingdom, as in the animal and plant kingdoms, always assert themselves at the cost of the interests of individuals, because these interests of the species coincide only with the interests of certain individuals, and it is this coincidence which constitutes the strength of these privileged individuals.“2
The ethical message is implicit: the historical process will sacrifice some individuals in the interests of certain other individuals, and this coincides with the long-term “interests of the species“ and the “higher development of individuality.“ While this is surely true in some particular cases, the problem is that Marx‘s statement is of such a general and inclusive character that it is not apparent what cannot be justified in its terms.
Martin sums up: “As with the positivists, for Marx a ‘scientific‘ theory of society and history would be purely descriptive, not normative. The proletariat and oppressed people generally are in the happy position, in Marx‘s view, that historical development is ultimately on their side—and thus they can be partisans for truth on a purely scientific basis, without the need for a normative dimension. . . .
“Here is the paradox, or at least the intractable irony. On the one hand, Marx sets aside evil as a useful concept in his theory of society, in large part because he takes it to be a concept with too many theological overtones. But on the other hand, we supposedly do not have to worry about evil because everything works out in the end, and this happens inevitably, because of the way that historical laws work—some of which Marx even calls ‘iron laws.‘“3
Economism
Martin departs from the main Leninist tradition inasmuch as he holds that political activity that is based on any form of interest, even enlightened, broad, or long-term interest, is a form of economism, or at the least, is inadequate for overcoming it. Specifically, and most important, if, during the socialist period, the masses of people do not move beyond thinking and feeling that their actions can or must be justified on the basis of interest, then they will be unable to lead society to eliminate classes, and sooner or later—in today‘s world, sooner—capitalism will be restored.
He writes, “it is precisely the reduction to causal ‘thingness‘ that is the essence of economism, or, to put the point the other way around, it is the complete setting aside of any role for consideration of the thing that ought to be done, in some matrix of pure causality and interest, that is the essence of economism. Lenin saw this, in his critique of economism, and yet, out of the orthodox Marxist refusal of the ethical, did not thematize the point this way. . . . this refusal has had consequences, indeed dire consequences. I would say that, while this limitation does not cancel the real achievements of the Russian and Chinese revolutions (in their actual socialist periods), overcoming this limitation is absolutely essential for any future Marxist project.“4
Lenin‘s position can be seen even in what some consider his most “utopian“ work, written shortly before the October Revolution. He wrote, quite accurately, that there was “‘no trace of an attempt on Marx‘s part to make up a utopia, to indulge in idle guess-work about what cannot be known. Marx treated the question of communism in the same way as a naturalist would treat the question of the development of, say, a new biological variety, once he knew that it had originated in such and such a way and was changing in such and such a definite direction.“5 And Lenin, with his implicit assumption in this passage that consciousness could play no more role in humans than in a “new biological variety,“ largely endorsed this view.
The Intentions and Effects of Different Classes
In terms of the larger sweep of history, Martin questions, and tends to disagree with, the notion that a class can do good if it is not consciously aiming to do good.6 But surely his argument has special force when it is a question, not of changing society from one exploitative form to another, but to a society free of exploitation and oppression. In other words, the heart of his view is that in a socialist society in particular, if the masses have not (yet) reached a point where they are making major decisions within an ethical framework,7 then it is impossible for changes in society—major changes, anyway—to be for the better.8 It would also follow that the development from primitive communism through whatever forms of class society and so to the present, which has not overall been driven by the “wish to do the right thing,“ represents no ethical advance or progress. On the contrary, it is more correct to see that in whatever new stage of class society, there is the potential, and often the actuality, that things will be worse. This can be viewed from different angles—the developing gap between the level of the productive forces and people‘s freedom, the magnitude of social and economic inequality, the degree to which people‘s lives and actions are dominated by the exigencies of the existing system, the extent to which reactionary ideas and illusions restrict people‘s thinking, and so forth.9 Indeed, from an ethical point of view, and seen from the standpoint of people‘s freedom or lack of it, in comparison to the development of the productive forces, things have reached a new low in the modern imperialist stage over the past century and more. This can be seen not only in the absolute evil of Nazism but in the overall quality of life under U.S. imperialism. I will not attempt to summarize it here, but Ethical Marxism‘s discussion of many of the features of the ethical poverty, historical amnesia, and blissful state of denial, irresponsibility, and naiveté that exists among very large portions of the American populace is insightful and riveting. Martin analyzes it under the general subject of imperialism as “the ethical question of our time,“ and it is a section of the book that deserves a more thorough discussion than I can give it here.
But even if the development of class society is to be seen mainly as an objective advance, rather than an ethical regression10—or an implicit ethical standstill, in which questions of morality are driven into the periphery, as in traditional Marxism; and even if it has led through whatever interplay of objective and subjective conditions to the rise of capitalism and imperialism, which have laid the material basis for socialism: there is still the question of whether or how society can actually move beyond some form or other of exploitation and alienation, and what role ethical principles might play in this. Here we come to what, I think, is the heart of Martin‘s argument: if most people are operating on the basis of interest, then even if a leadership group (a revolutionary party, say) is working on the basis of a broader ethic—something that has by no means always been true, especially during the Stalin period in the USSR—it will not be possible to create a better society. To state the argument more precisely: it may be possible to overthrow capitalism and begin to build a form of socialism, as was in fact done in both the Soviet Union and China, but it will not be possible to move beyond this stage and eventually surmount all the various challenges on the road to communism. There will be a reversion to capitalism, which is what happened in those two countries. The active and conscious taking up of a communist ethic by the masses is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for moving to classless society.
Martin points out that Lenin broke with aspects of the politics of “interest,“ especially in his internationalist stand during World War I: “Why call Lenin‘s perspective an ‘ethic‘? In part because it goes against the grain of the existing society, and it does this on the basis of principle—yes, a principle based in a material dynamic in the world, but not based in a narrow conception of interest.“11
He also recognizes that Mao built on a communist ethic that transcended interest even more. Among the major indicators of this were Mao‘s directives to “serve the people“12 and, in a statement made during the Cultural Revolution, to “fight self, fight self-interest, repudiate revisionism.“13
Curiously, Martin does not proceed from the concept of “needs“ in Ethical Marxism—instead, he usually speaks of “interest“ on the one hand and “ethics,“ on the other, even though earlier he had said that “Maybe the word ‘needs‘ actually does help us sort some things out about how people find out what they really ought to be about.“14 But the concept of “need,“ which could serve as a possible bridge between “interest“ and “ethics,“ is needed, and it is not clear why, with some exceptions, he lets it reside in the shadows. Apparently he believes that need, as a basic motivation for much of human activity, does not really transcend economism any more than interest does. The result is a sort of split between interest and ethics that, I think, does not capture the ways in which they interrelate in the revolutionary process.15 Nevertheless, Martin‘s perspective represents a real advance over a view that is confined to the sphere of interests and does not even see the need to address an orientation toward revolutionary ethics.
We must examine the meaning of need from the standpoint both of people‘s most fundamental survival needs as well as those that are historically and culturally conditioned, as Marx and Engels did when they discussed the value of labor power, and to situate the discussion in the international context and in terms of the freedom and necessity of the international revolution at any given time. There are many difficult questions here, but I think they are unavoidable. As a general statement, the revolution should be about meeting the needs of humanity, increasingly broadly construed so as to merge with the expression of human potential in various spheres. This gets away from the anti-ethical components of “interest,“ while at the same time giving a more materialist grounding to ethics.
Getting to Communism
Regarding Marx‘s view of the decisive factor in getting to communism, Martin writes:
“. . . I think that in Marx technology does play a stronger role in terms of what are the more efficient means of production, more productive forms of production that allow us to create the basis for shared abundance. And once we have that basis, in fact, it will be such a strong basis that nobody will need to fight over anything anymore and we can all eat, we can all have a place to live, we can all have our basic needs met and beyond. And in some sense, you could call that the calculative basis for the possibility of communism.
“There‘s also what you might call the ethical basis. Namely that if society collectively is producing that which would enable society, and through highly socialized forms of production, that which would enable us to have a community of shared flourishing, then that‘s what we ought to have. The ethical imperative is that that‘s what we ought to have.“16
Martin links his point with an environmental perspective that has gotten little attention in the history of Marxism: “One definition of communism is ‘shared abundance.‘ . . . there is a tendency in Marxism to avoid what in ecology is called the ‘carrying capacity‘ question, or to figure that this can also simply be the object of a technofix. . . . There is also a way in which, however, abundance is a way around ethical questions, in that Marx seems to believe in a Hobbesian world where, if the things that will meet needs are scarce, then people will fight over these things, and some people will be made subordinate to others; some will be made expendable outright. For Marx, the only way to overcome this state of affairs is to have production at a level where there is so much need-meeting stuff around (and recognizing, with Marx, that ‘capitalism makes people rich in needs‘) that there is no need for any fighting.“17
Perhaps the simplest way to see his point in sharp relief is to recognize that whereas common abundance establishes the material basis for communism, the ethical basis must be strong enough that society can maintain a communist orientation even when the material basis may in some respects be undercut. Scarcities can emerge under communism—even possibly very great or generalized scarcities—and if and when they do, people must find the ways to deal with them on the basis of a communist ethic. Recognition of the importance of this point is linked with an understanding that even a communist society, far from being able to ensure an ever-expanding availability of material goods, will have to deal with all manner of environmental balances and imbalances, which may include some material privations during certain periods. And it would not necessarily be irreversible, even if only temporarily.18
II. Science and Ethics
Martin is surely right when he says, “to talk about right and wrong, we need to talk about right and wrong, not first of all our ‘interests‘ or pleasures.“19 He also states: “There is a gap, therefore, already theorized by Marx and even more so by Lenin, whereby even the working class must make a leap beyond bourgeois consciousness. The present book is motivated by two concerns: (1) that this gap can only be bridged by ‘the ethical‘; (2) that this gap, which already existed in Marx‘s day because of both the problem of false consciousness and the previously mentioned sublimations, has grown even ‘larger,‘ indeed, ‘qualitatively larger,‘ in the period between Marx‘s time and our own.“20
However, regarding (1), he doesn‘t really make the case that the only thing that can bridge the gap is ethics. Specifically, he does not discuss whether (as I believe) getting beyond bourgeois consciousness also involves a leap in the scientific realm, or what the relationship between that leap and the ethical leap might be. He does say, referring to the concern for “the most distant future generations“ that Kant wrote about, that “In some sense, my only argument in this book is that the concern itself is the ground of the ‘science,‘ of the systematic theorizing. That is the essence of Ethical Marxism,“ and that “my only coherent argument in this book is the ‘ethical basis‘ argument, the argument that the concern for what is right has to motivate the systematic investigation into what is true.“21 Undoubtedly, the concern for what is right must motivate some of the systematic investigation into what is true. Much of the motivation, however, has arisen historically from people‘s drive to fill their needs—especially but not only their basic material needs—even though, in class societies, most of it has been directed by the demands of the ruling classes. Some of it has sprung from a wish to understand the world. More generally, the investigation into what is true has developed from a wish and a desire for greater freedom. If Martin means to say something different—not that most investigation into what is true has been motivated by ethical concerns, but that it ought to be motivated by such concerns—then he has not said so clearly.
Further, by itself, the concern for “the most distant generations“ also gives rise to religion. So, while the concern for those generations is one of the “grounds“ of science, other, nonscientific belief systems also can and do spring from that same ground.
To expand on this point: there are many things that ground science, and the concern to do the right thing is indeed one of them, and it has been seriously neglected by the main pre-Maoist currents of Marxism—I am speaking of what the author calls “revolutionary movement theory,“ although it has gotten too little attention from theorists in other Marxist trends as well. But throughout human history, systematic scientific investigation has mainly been motivated by the drive to meet human needs—the whole range of needs, which are partly natural and partly socially and historically conditioned, which have both a material and a spiritual character, and the broad outlines of which, though not all the details, can be scientifically investigated. These needs are not, I think, reducible to “interest“ in the sense that Martin writes about it. Nor are all the particular values of any ethical system reducible to these needs. However, “needs“ make only a brief appearance in the pages of Ethical Marxism. Martin does not follow up, in this book, on his brief speculation in Marxism and the Call of the Future about the importance of the concept of needs; his brief treatment tends to dismiss it or to associate it predominantly with an economist understanding of history and of how classes will supposedly be eliminated in the future.
Further, even to the extent that ethical concerns do motivate science, we have to ask, in what ways does science form the basis for ethics, not just in the sense of telling it how to accomplish ethical ends, but helping to clarify and evaluate what those ends are in the first place. Martin defines science rather narrowly, and never takes a serious look at the scientific basis for ethics. Science can tell us a great deal about what human needs are.
His positions on ethics give rise to further questions: What is the substance of ethics? Where do values originate? On what basis are we to judge what is right and what is wrong? And, we have to ask, what does science have to do with any of these decisions? At best, according to Martin, it can provide some inputs into the process of ethical decision-making, but it cannot tell us anything about how those decisions are made or ought to be made. In short, in his view, science cannot “ground“ ethics, but again, ethics—and not even necessarily a worked-out ethics, but just a concern about ethical questions—is the ground for science.
Martin holds that if it is given greater emphasis in Marxism, ethics might turn out to be “the thing you add in that looks as though it‘s supplementing but it actually transforms the structure.“22 In some ways, that could be true; but his formulation makes it appear that ethics will be the only dynamic factor, the only thing that can fundamentally develop and transform Marxism.
According to Martin, “To say that truth values apply to some kinds of statements and not to others [i.e. statements about value or beauty] is to valorize the former,“23 taking a position similar to the one he took in his conversations with Avakian. However, another reason that value is downgraded (in addition to its being “inferior“ to truth), is that, allegedly (not according to Martin, but to others), it has only a subjective quality, whereas truth is objective and thus more “lofty.“
I believe that truth and value have important implications for each other, as I‘ll discuss below, and that value, as well as truth, has an objective character. I think it‘s clear that Martin holds to both these points as well, but they are not adequately discussed in Ethical Marxism. He does refer to an argument against the “fact/value distinction“ in the work of Donald Davidson, who “has shown that, although there are terms that are more directly ‘evaluative,‘ there is also an undercurrent of evaluation in all language, and there is no clear line to be drawn between the part of language that concerns ‘fact‘ and that part which concerns ‘value.‘“24 But Martin does not explore the possibilities of overcoming the split between truth and value from other perspectives, including, especially, through the role of revolutionary practice (as in Mao). On the contrary, he seems to turn instead toward learning from religion as part of creating a redemptionist Marxism, while suspending a scientific critique of religion. This method tends to reinforce the division between ethics and science.25
Let‘s look at Mao‘s famous statement:
“The immense complexity of Marxism can be summed up in one sentence: ‘It is justifiable to rebel.‘ For centuries people have been saying: ‘It is justifiable to oppress or to exploit people, but it is wrong to rebel.‘ Marxism turned this thesis upside down. That is a great contribution, a thesis established by Marx from the struggle of the proletariat. Basing their action on this thesis, people have shown defiance, struggled, and worked for socialism.“26
Although Martin does not take such a clear-cut stand as Mao, he does discuss this statement, something that not all Maoists, would-be Maoists, post-Maoists, or “beyond-Maoists“ have done.27 But he does not arrive at Mao‘s clear formulation, in which the basic truth of Marxism is at the same time an ethical imperative, and that imperative clearly is on an equal footing with scientific truth, and, as such, is fully “valorized.“28
In Mao‘s statement, the unity of “the basic truth“ and “what is right“—of truth and value—is located in action, specifically, rebellion against reactionaries, which changes the world. Mao does not develop the whole argument, but it is characteristic of him, and significant for examining the truth/value relationship overall, that he did approach it from the standpoint of revolutionary activity and locate it in that sphere rather than in contemplation.
It is remarkable how little has been written about Mao‘s statement, especially in its full form, not just shortened to “It‘s right to rebel against reactionaries!“ This stands in sharp contrast to the attention that has been given to Marx‘s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.“ Marx‘s thesis has not been dismissed as a meaningless fragment, or a piece of inspirational and agitational rhetoric with no epistemological content. And it has not been truncated to “Change the world!“ But when it comes to analyzing Mao‘s summary of what the fundamental truth in Marxism is, on the whole, there is a great silence. The result is that Mao‘s dialectical analysis is glossed over. Why does he say there is a fundamental truth in Marxism, and not just “thousands of truths“?29 Why does he make such a concentrated statement of the unity of this truth with a value—an ethical imperative? Why does he say that various other things “follow from“ this basic truth, such as “resistance, struggle, the fight for socialism“? The failure to pose these questions is part of the deep ignorance and philistinism that has prevailed with regard to Mao‘s works. And, severing Mao‘s “science“ from his “ethics“ by refusing to deal with how he saw their relationship is also a way of characterizing Mao as a subjective idealist.
At the outset, Martin states his view that the history of most strains of Marxism has been marked by scientism, the “philosophical, not ‘scientific,‘ view that only questions that are answerable—in principle—through scientific investigation are ‘real‘ questions. . . .“30 There is already a question having to do with why he has put the word scientific in scare quotes. On the one hand, he believes science must be given its due: “. . . to put it in a formula, even if scientific truth is not all truth, and even if scientific truths are to be understood on a fallibilistic model, there is no negating at least big parts of science without negating truth in general. . . .“31 On the other hand, he believes that science‘s claims have been overstated, that there is an illegitimate and annexationist “scientism“ at work, whereas an ethical perspective has been largely lost among Marxists, going back to Marx (he makes an exception for Mao, at least partially).
However, we should note that Marx‘s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach was a concentrated statement about the unity of the descriptive and the normative. (And although these theses were written early in Marx‘s life as a “Marxist,“ I don‘t believe that he ever departed from the view concentrated in that thesis.) While the thrust of Marx‘s theses on Feuerbach was their criticism of contemplative materialism and their emphasis on revolutionizing practice, it‘s also the case that the orientation of the eleventh thesis about “what the point is,” namely, to change world, is very similar to Mao‘s “it‘s right to rebel.” It is still true, however, and Martin is correct, that a coherent theory of Marxist ethics has been little developed, and the attempts that have been made have not come from the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist trend.
Martin criticizes what he calls the utilitarian strain that Marx shares with Mill: “What I am interested in here is this willingness [including by Avakian] to bring forward Mill but not Kant. The problem, as I see it, is that Mill shares a certain affinity with one side of Marx, but this is the side of Marx (and indeed a side of Mill) that ought not to be affirmed. There is the utilitarian side of Marx and there is the ethical-political universalist side.“32 More, quite a lot more, needs to be said here.
The Domain of Science
At the same time, Martin does think there is such a thing as valid science and that taking it up is a crucial part of the struggle for liberation. But, while it operates within a large sphere, he thinks it is important to recognize its limits. This opinion can be seen even in some of his endorsements of science. He believes that the critique of scientism “does not lead to the conclusion that we do not need all of the science we can get our hands on. I argue in this book that Marxism needs to resituate the ethical moment at its core, and to assimilate its scientific work, especially work in political economy, to that core.“33 He allows that “without an understanding (a systematic and even ‘scientific‘ understanding) of the real contours of the world system—as an imperialist order that is turning, in significant respects, ‘postmodern‘—our talk of ethics will be no more than what Marx feared, mere bourgeois moralizing.“ He recognizes that in this case, even the best ethics will be powerless to change the world:
“ . . . from what is generally accepted as an historical materialist conception, the ethical imperative by itself or ‘in the first instance‘ just does not have the necessary purchase on lived realities to bring about the transformation of society. This is the great irony, and Marx is right to make something of it, that ethical judgment, per se, does not have enough grip on people and the lives they lead to push them to do what would be an overwhelmingly ethical thing, to overturn unjust systems and systems of injustice. Ethics does not have what it takes to be ethical.“34
Also: “There is a Marxist analysis that tells us what likely will happen, given the way that capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism work, regardless of what would be right and what ought to happen. We cannot ignore this analysis—we will not find the openings for what ought to happen without engaging with a materialist analysis of social causes and effects, causes and effects that go, ultimately, to the mode of production.“35
And: “My aim is not to make light of the systematic work that ought to be done in political economy and in ecology: the day of reckoning for capitalism will come, but it is important to grapple with the ‘laws of possibility‘ in order to see how the crisis will unfold and therefore where the strategic openings may occur. In addition to this strategic sense, however, and the theoretical work and leadership that goes with it, is the question of what vision can galvanize the popular understanding that the existing form of society needs to be overthrown and a new form of society needs to be created. This ‘vision thing‘ is not an optional add-on, and the argument of this book is that this vision has to have the question of the ethical relation at its core.“36
Again: “As a theoretical issue that has practical consequences, the question is one of taking the parts of radical social theory, including political economy, that need at times to be coldly analytical, and wrapping them in the warmer blankets of human striving toward the good society.“37
My point in citing all these passages is to call attention to a current in the language and images concerning what does and does not lie within the sphere of science—in this context, social science: “scientific work, especially work in political economy“; “Marxist analysis“ about “the way that capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism work“; “systematic work . . . in political economy and ecology [the latter more part of natural science]“; “the parts of radical social theory, including political economy,“ and so on.
In these passages, while (social) science is treated as a necessary complement to ethics and vision, it is largely, if not completely, associated with political economy. Repeatedly throughout the book, social science is identified with political economy (and sometimes, political strategy), so that its province is clearly delineated. But there is no suggestion that a scientific approach to ethics is necessary, valid, or even possible. The approach is dualistic: a mechanistic science of things, but an ethics, and a consciousness more generally, that is above and outside science: on the one hand, “cold analysis“; on the other, “warm blankets.“
As noted earlier, a major question, and one that Ethical Marxism does not face head-on, is how to make the revolution while starting with a population that is motivated overwhelmingly by interest. What is to be the bridge between this interest and the ethic that will be required for the revolution to win, particularly in the socialist stage? Is it the “science of political economy“ that can infuse ethics with sufficient power to “have what it takes“ to be ethical? This is a peculiar idea: economics, a science much of which explicitly deals with interests, is supposedly that other thing that is needed for a revolutionary ethics to guide the struggle for communism.38 Rather, I would say that a more general training in science in all spheres is an important part of “what it takes to be ethical,“ as well as of the kind of ethics that Mao popularized, especially during the Cultural Revolution. In addition, a major part of what is missing in Martin‘s formulations is an understanding of the essential role of the mass line, without which no leading force can guide the masses to transcend interest and the “narrow horizon of bourgeois right“ and adopt an ethical viewpoint.39 To deal with the problem of how the ethical can be ethical, then, Martin would have to take up what the mass line is, and second, he would have to consider taking up those sciences that study how humans‘ behavior and consciousness develop in various circumstances. Clearly, these cannot be reduced to political economy, or even political economy plus ecology.
Ironically, then, it is not clear that by suggesting that science is needed to supplement ethics, and then largely reducing science to political economy, while avoiding a scientific approach to ethics itself, that Martin has imparted to ethics what it requires to come alive, “to be ethical.“
He avoids any petty approach to ethics that keeps it within the bounds of personal virtue, an ethics which is acceptable to the imperialist bourgeoisie. He gives ethics a tall order: “the most ethical things we can do are to fight imperialism, to be for internationalism, to fight for communism. To work in whatever ways we can to bring about a communist world. Those are the ethical tasks. And they are also the tasks that we would never get to if we didn‘t do political economy, if we didn‘t do scientific investigation, if we didn‘t try to understand what is going on out there.“40 It’s wonderful to read such a forthright statement that challenges the trivialization of ethics that is itself among the most unethical of things, particularly in an imperialist society. At the same time, once again, science refers to what is “out there“ but not to what‘s “in here,“ that is, mind, consciousness, and an ethical sense. Martin evidently believes that there is little science to be brought to bear on these things, whether neurology, psychology, or anthropology, to name a few. He does not tell us why this is so; his is a statement by omission. Is it because there have been more than a few pseudoscientific currents in these fields, and more than a little craven subservience to or enthusiastic collaboration with the powers that be? Is his concern that any opening to the “human sciences“ will result in a triumph of an omnivorous quantified positivism? Or is it his general observation that there is nothing in science to prevent what he calls “moral idiocy“ and he does not want to expose ethics to a potentially idiotic influence?41 On this last point, it is quite true that science under bourgeois rule, which is shaped in its application as well as its content by a bourgeois outlook and methodology, is more than capable of moral idiocy. But is this not also the case for bourgeois ethics? In other words, how would it throw light on this question to make a class analysis of both science and ethics?
Martin‘s attitude toward science, and its relation to ethics, may flow from any of these things or all of them, but I suspect that the fundamental reason has more to do with a view that science deals with the material world, ethics with the ideal world—and there is a major schism between the two that is bridged only at times of revolutionary opportunity and upheaval, and then by practice rather than theory.
Actually, for his development of an ethical Marxism, and specifically for a theory of ethics, Martin draws more on religious concepts than on areas that would make possible a more scientific understanding of ethics. The former, far more than the latter, have addressed questions of right and wrong, and can help provide a basis for creating a Marxism that is redemptionist and emphasizes the “call of the future.“ I agree that we should draw on and learn from the religious tradition. But this does not settle the question as to what kind of ethics are actually needed to change the world, and in particular, what the relation of science and ethics needs to be.
Even more, we must be concerned here, not only with the direct effects of science on ethics, but also with the implications of science for the development of materialist dialectics and how that, in turn, affects how we frame and analyze ethical questions. So there is a broad range of issues, including how the problem of inevitability should be understood (in its relation to contingency), and how the subjects studied by biology, psychology, anthropology, and other sciences have implications for our understanding of human nature as well as for the source of values—that is, broadly and somewhat simplistically speaking, the dialectic between biology and culture, or, in a very approximate analogy, as Marx put it, human nature in general, and historically modified human nature—the two components of human nature.
Martin believes that the ethics we are most in need of is Kantian ethics, but it can be argued that what revolutionary ethics is most in need of is not Kantianism, but an integration with both materialist dialectics and natural and social science, albeit not one that subordinates all ethical perspectives to those of science. This does not mean a “devalorization“ of ethics, not only because the scientific understanding of human nature is critical to an understanding of freedom and of ethics; but because there is also causality and influence in the opposite direction, from values to science, since values are critical to (1) how scientific methodology actually develops in society, and (2) the transformation of social and even natural reality, and thus the framework within which, and to some degree the substance with regard to which, science is carried out.
The unification of science and ethics is an ongoing project, because the subjects which they address are in continual development. However, the gap between science and ethics is inevitable under bourgeois ideology. This includes the so-called gap between, for example, “what is good for humanity,“ understood as a scientific question, and “what ought to be done,“ understood as an ethical question. Actually, each of these perspectives embraces the other. It‘s my view that there is and can be no schism between them in proletarian ideology or science.
“Ought“ and “Is“: The Objective Character of Value and the “Naturalistic Fallacy“
I believe that a correct resolution of this problem principally lies in the domain of social and political practice rather than of logic or linguistics. Further, the correct orientation toward practice requires a class perspective.42
If we look at the problem in terms of dialectics and not formal logic, then we can derive an “is“ from an “ought“ by bringing the situation described by the “ought“ into being, that is, actualizing it so that it also becomes what “is.“ This is done, not through “pure thought“ or contemplation, but through revolutionizing or at any rate transformative practice. Thus socialism can be brought about by revolution,43 while smaller changes can be effected through other means. An “is“ can be derived from an “ought“ in practice through scientific investigation of the requirements for actualizing the conditions expressed in the “ought“ statement, and the creation of those conditions through practice.
Can we also do the reverse, that is, derive an “ought“ from an “is“? In the sense of overall, long-term practice, and by knowing some things about the nature of humans and what is good for them, what promotes their “flourishment,“ as Martin calls it, can one arrive at a system of “oughts“? Let‘s examine this question. The customary critique of the “naturalistic fallacy“ proceeds from a contemplative position, sometimes in materialist form, and holds that an “ought“ cannot be derived from an “is.“44
From a dialectical materialist standpoint, the question is whether an “is“ can be transformed into an “ought“ in practice. I would hold that this is a question that can be answered through several considerations: (1) The most basic characteristic of humans, at the individual, group, or species level, is the struggle for survival, and the associated ethic—that human life has value—which it is impossible for humans, as a species, to countermand; in other words, the basic nature of humans necessitates a certain orientation toward this fundamental value; (2) On that basis, humans struggle for freedom and “flourishment”; (3) Humans are basically social beings, so that the question of values is set in a social rather than an individual (subjective) context; (4) There are many “derivative values,“ that is, values that are found, through scientific investigation, to be compatible with or complementary to, though not necessarily determined by, the most basic values; and (5) A society in which an “is“ can more consistently be transformed into an “ought,“ and vice versa, can be created through revolutionary struggle. The first four of these points are developed below, in Section III, where human nature is discussed; the fifth point is mainly discussed in this section.
The position that society might somehow choose not to work for what is good for society, overall and in the long run, becomes a formula for social extermination and thus an untenable position. It is possible to make ethical decisions within a bourgeois framework, but only for a relatively limited time, defined by such parameters as the viability of the bourgeois mode of production and a relative balance between society and the natural environment. Bourgeois ethics are inconsistent, and they are ultimately unsustainable. So the proponents of a distinction between “what is good for society“ and “what ought to be done “ must take refuge in scholasticism; in the real world, these two lines of development and ethical decision-making must and do converge, unless the process is truncated by planetary and species-wide disaster or even destruction.45
Another way to put this is that an “ethical choice“ is an illusion if it is something that we are constitutionally unable to choose by our nature—again, for the species as a whole and in the long run, not just temporarily, contextually, or certainly as individuals (the “suicide option“). Values exist at the class or species level, not the individual level; confounding values and individual preferences is like confounding class truth and individual “truth.“46
Erich Fromm makes a point that is both highly relevant in this connection and, I believe, true: “We can imagine a hypothetical culture where people do not want paintings or bridges, but not one in which people do not want to live. The drive to live is inherent in every organism, and man can not help wanting to live regardless of what he would like to think about it (note: Suicide as a pathological phenomenon does not contradict this general principle.)“47 Thus, for example, in the twenty-first century, if people grasp the scientific truth that a society based on the principle of private property is environmentally unsustainable, then their drive to exist can potentially be transformed into a conscious practice aimed at creating socialism.
The view that accepts a basic dichotomy between truths and values sometimes seeks to make use of the idea that since there are particular values that are not truths, and particular truths that are not values, then in the universal context, there must be a fundamental rift between truths and values. Sometimes this takes the form of asserting that truth is objective, and that that allegedly means that it does not change, whereas values do not exist objectively but only subjectively, and society‘s attitude toward them develops through history.
Whereas values change over time and differ in different places, this is not an argument against the objectivity of values. Objective values exist inasmuch as there are definite criteria for what is right or wrong in given conditions. For example, the idea that “we should institute socialism“ is not correct if the development of the productive forces is not even sufficient to sustain capitalism. An attempt to put this idea into practice would inevitably lead to defeat; thus it would not be a good thing. Similarly, unless it was somehow possible in history to reestablish primitive communism where it had been overthrown—and for any sustained period, it likely was not possible—then some form or other of exploitative class society was inevitable at that point in history.48 This is not a matter of any individual‘s subjective opinion, or even of what groups or even an entire class may hold to be right. We do not always know what is right, but our not knowing it does not deny its actual rightness.
Different classes have their own ethical systems. Unlike proletarian ethics, bourgeois ethics is internally inconsistent, as in: We want free thought and we want free enterprise. Further, it is associated with practices that are not sustainable, including environmentally. Proletarian ethics, by contrast, is not merely a codification of class interests; it is in transition; if the proletariat eventually becomes all of humanity, its ethic becomes a universal ethic. By contrast, the ethics of the bourgeoisie is, in an overall sense, a systematization of its own interests, albeit shot through with inconsistency, deceit, and self-deception. But regardless of whether an ethical system represents one class or another—as it must in class society—it still exists objectively.
Despite all that, it is a seldom questioned dogma of contemporary bourgeois thought that there is nothing in common between truths and values: one cannot derive an “is“ statement from an “ought“ statement or vice versa; and science can illuminate only the means that are conducive to various ends (or goals) of human activity but cannot throw any light whatsoever on the process of choosing among those ends, which must be guided by principles essentially foreign to and incommensurable with (although not necessarily hostile to) science. Under capitalism, this viewpoint is almost universally shared even among the best and most broad-minded professional scientists.49
The interpenetration of truths and values is profound. Rather abstract value statements can be fleshed out and “given meaning“ only by situating them in a materialist context through the application of scientific theory and experimentation as well as social practice more generally. Abstract “commandments“ can only be effectively and correctly implemented through their integration with science. Often in the process they will be modified, enriched, and extended in a way that no abstract moralizing could anticipate. Further, contradictions between different values can only be discovered and resolved through testing in the real world; here again, science is essential to the formulation of a scientific ethics.
It is in the process of struggling to satisfy basic needs, overcome adversity, master the forces of society and nature, allay their fears, learn how to assist others effectively, and liberate themselves from oppression that humans began to understand some of the rudiments of science. As with ethics, so with science: its overall form and content at any time, while reflecting valid knowledge of the real world, at the same time reflects the values that have grown up within the dominant structure and relations of society.50
That so many contemporary thinkers cannot imagine such a thing is a measure of their idealism: they do not consider the role of practice, which is the indispensable link between values and truths. For them, the chasm between science and ethics is linked with their consideration of the problem solely from the standpoint of “pure thought.“51
Why, then, does it seem self-evident to scientists today, even some of the most progressive of them, that “science can tell us nothing about values“? Historical materialism would suggest that the answer lies in the dominant relations within modern capitalist-imperialist society and, in particular, the ways in which the idea of the severance of science from morality serves the interests of the ruling class. When the issue is framed in this way, the answers seem apparent: the bourgeoisie‘s interests are served by restricting the application of science to certain narrow channels; while a limited ethics of science is possible, a science of ethics is for the most part forbidden. Ethics lies in some ideal realm, sometimes religious, sometimes secular.
Notes
[There will be a list of works cited, with full bibliographical information, at the end of this essay]
1 Martin makes numerous references to his previous book, which he co-authored with RCP chairman Bob Avakian, Marxism and the Call of the Future: Conversations on Ethics, History, and Politics. The conversations were held in 2002—before Avakian had initiated the misnamed “cultural revolution“ in the RCP (which was to have nothing in common with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China—with regard to its causes, content, methods, aims, or results). When Martin published Ethical Marxism, it was not clear to him what some of the “demarcations“ developing within the organization were. Because of a lack of information, and perhaps for other reasons, he did not take a position in Ethical Marxism on some of the questions addressed in the earlier book. However, on certain others, such as Avakian‘s erroneous ideas that no truths are socially or historically determined, or that, whereas truth has a meaning distinct from what is held to be true, value has no meaning other than what is believed to be right (see Marxism and the Call of the Future, pp. 38–39), and others, it would have been possible and correct to have made some basic criticisms of Avakian‘s positions. But further struggle clarified some fundamental differences, and as of some point in 2008, Martin was no longer a supporter of the RCP and began to openly criticize it.
2 Theories of Surplus Value, Part II, p. 118.
3 Ethical Marxism, pp. 34, 37.
4 Ethical Marxism, p. 189.
5 The State and Revolution, in Collected Works, vol. 25, p. 458.
6 It is a commonplace that individuals‘ actions can have good results even if they are not aiming to do good.
7 Naturally, not any old ethical framework will do. The question of the characteristics of an ethical system that is truly good for humanity is taken up in various places throughout the book. See below for some discussion.
8 This is a point on which there was disagreement in Marxism and the Call of the Future, with Bob Avakian arguing for a more traditional Marxist viewpoint that classes can do good—in the sense of changing things in a way that objectively moves society forward—even if they are motivated by something different. The discussion was not focused overall, however, on the transition from socialism to communism, but took on human history in general. Avakian did agree that a sweeping vision of the future is a necessary part of the movement toward communism. See, for example, pp. 118, 171.
9 Especially in some of their earlier writings, Marx and Engels called attention to this point, referring, in the familiar passage in the Communist Manifesto, to the increasing dominance of “callous cash payment“ in human relations. Comparing capitalism to feudalism, they wrote, “Thus, in imagination, individuals seem freer under the dominance of the bourgeoisie than before, because the conditions of life seem accidental; in reality, of course, they are less free, because they are to a greater extent governed by material forces“ (German Ideology, p. 87). Note, however, that these views are still consistent with the idea that capitalism represents an objective advance over feudalism because it, and it alone, can develop the productive forces sufficiently to lay the material basis for socialism.
10 Martin and Bob Avakian examine these issues with respect to the role of British colonialism in India in the nineteenth century, and Avakian cites Mao‘s assessment of how the changes caused by imperialism in China led to the creation of a proletariat, a necessary condition for a socialist revolution. See Marxism and the Call of the Future, pp. 143–44. Marx emphasized that capitalism, more than any preceding system could, laid the economic basis for socialism: “It is one of the civilising aspects of capital that it enforces this surplus-labour in a manner and under conditions which are more advantageous to the development of the productive forces, social relations, and the creation of the elements for a new and higher form than under the preceding forms of slavery, serfdom, etc.“ (Capital, vol. 3, p. 819).
11 Ethical Marxism, p. 164. Lenin also developed the idea of a communist ethic in various works. See, for example, his article about the subbotniks in the early Soviet Union—Saturdays when workers did volunteer work, motivated by communist ideals—in “A Great Beginning,“ Collected Works, vol. 29.
12 A theme running through all of Mao‘s work, which he called “the first duty of a revolutionary.” One chapter in Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung is titled “Serving the People.“
13 That the Cultural Revolution involved basic changes in the world outlook and motivation of the masses has been summarized by Zizek in this way: “Therein resides the necessity of the Cultural Revolution clearly grasped by Mao: as Herbert Marcuse put it in another marvelous circular formula from the same epoch, freedom (from ideological constraints, from the predominant mode of dreaming) is the condition of liberation, that is, if we only change reality in order to realize our dreams, and do not change those dreams themselves, sooner or later we regress back to the old reality“ (In Defense of Lost Causes, p. 196). From a materialist standpoint, the revolutionary process is the principal aspect, and the change in consciousness, including the content of dreams, is secondary. Marx and Engels said that the revolution was necessary, “not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew“ (German Ideology, p. 60).
14 Marxism and the Call of the Future, p. 118.
15 Part of what is missing in Martin‘s analysis is a discussion of the role of the mass line in spanning the distance between interest and ethics. See Part II.
16 Marxism and the Call of the Future, p. 182.
17 Ethical Marxism, pp. 287–88. The “technofix“ orientation toward meeting production goals, including for consumer goods, was clearly dominant in Stalin. Mao addressed the fact that Stalin‘s Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. “is not concerned with people; it considers things, not people“ (Critique of Soviet Economics, p. 135). It is interesting to examine what has been understood by the “basic economic law of socialism“ in connection with the concept of carrying capacity. Stalin, in his Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., says, “The essential features and requirements of the basic law of socialism might be formulated roughly in this way: the securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society through the continuous expansion and perfection of socialist production on the basis of higher techniques“ (pp. 40–41). In this conception, there is no suggestion that there is any limit to material requirements and, therefore, that there should be any limit to production, regardless of environmental or other factors. In The Shanghai Textbook on Socialist Political Economy, the “needs of the socialist state and the people“ are defined more broadly, and do not necessarily depend on an ever-increasing level of production: “. . . the aim of socialist production is to raise the level of the material and cultural life of the proletariat and the laboring people, consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat, strengthen national defense, and support the revolutionary struggles of the peoples of the world. In the final analysis, socialist production is aimed at eliminating classes and realizing communism“ (in Maoist Economics and the Revolutionary Road to Communism, p. 117). Such a formulation, although it does not explicitly refer to a balance between economy and environment or a carrying capacity of Earth, is open to the possibility of such considerations, which were getting increasing attention in socialist China at the time the last edition of the Textbook was published (1975).
18 Even though Marx and Engels did pay some attention to environmental issues, and there was a flowering of interest in the subject in the USSR in the 1920s, and in socialist China in the 1960s and 1970s, Martin is entirely correct that most Marxists have not dealt in any depth with ecology, even after the extent of the environmental crisis began to be broadly apparent in the 1970s. The generalized estrangement from nature is reflected in the predominant view of the “animal question“; see Part VI. In the past generation, some Marxist and left circles have begun to develop a theoretical and strategic approach to environmental questions and related issues in economics, politics, and culture.
19 Ethical Marxism, p. 23.
20 Ethical Marxism, p. 7.
21 Ethical Marxism, pp. 27, 29.
22 Marxism and the Call of the Future, p. 189.
23 Ethical Marxism, p. 394.
24 Ethical Marxism, p. 3. I would add that in a basic sense, a culture‘s values are at least implicit in many of the decisions about which meanings are articulated as words and are defined, and which are not.
25 Later in Ethical Marxism (p. 179), he writes: “The argument for Ethical Marxism in a nutshell is that the creation of a ‘social society‘ has to issue both from a political-economic analysis and a moral recognition of what is morally wrong about the antisocial form of society. The difference between these two recognitions, the former ‘scientific,‘ the latter ‘ethical,‘ is that the ethical has to be acted upon in order to be what it is.“ But the “scientific analysis“ also depends on human activity in a very broad range of ways, from the sphere of production to experiment, and it is characterized by a theory-and-practice dialectic that, as with ethics, does have “to be acted upon in order to be what it is.“ In a scientific theory of social development, objective laws do not, by themselves, create the possibility of social transformations “automatically,“ that is, without human intervention; they are not discovered, understood, or applied in that way. See the discussion of inevitability in Part IV.
26 From “Stalin‘s Sixtieth Birthday“ (Mao Papers, p. 17). It is characteristic that, in a speech celebrating Stalin‘s achievements, Mao would not fail to include a formulation with such an anti–economic determinist thrust. A somewhat different, more widely circulated translation of this statement is as follows: “Marxism consists of thousands of truths, but they all boil down to one, ‘It is right to rebel!‘ For thousands of years it has been said that it was right to oppress, it was right to exploit and it was wrong to rebel. This old verdict was only reversed with the appearance of Marxism. And from this truth there follows resistance, struggle, the fight for socialism.“ During the Cultural Revolution, Mao amended the pivotal sentence in the statement to read “It is right to rebel against reactionaries!“
27 In 1975, Alain Badiou wrote an essay about Mao‘s statement. See “An Essential Philosophical Thesis: ‘It is Right to Rebel Against the Reactionaries,‘“ which John Steele has analyzed. By contrast, Bob Avakian has never published any serious analysis of why Mao took this position on the central or basic truth of Marxism—one that clearly upholds the unity of truth and value. In part this is because Avakian essentially holds a reflection theory of truth, and it is revolutionary practice, not reflection, that creates the unity of value and truth. But it has a lot to do with the question of “class truth“ as well: because, in class society, key values have a class character—and surely whether it is right to rebel against reactionaries is one of them—then it follows that Mao is saying that the basic truth of Marxism, to which all the others “boil down,“ has a class character. That is a statement of class truth, right at the core of Maoism, not on the periphery, as Avakian once claimed when he said that Mao (like Lenin) had “a little class truth in him.“ Obviously, Mao never repudiated this statement; nearly thirty years after he made it, the words “against reactionaries“ were appended, but the truth/value unity of the original was retained. (I will analyze this question of class truth—why it actually does exist, rather than just pointing out that Mao believed in it (one cannot combat “truth by authority“ by indulging it)—in more depth in another paper.)
This basic truth about Maoism is one that Avakian has refused to recognize and has sought to bury, since the rejection of class truth is the basic content of his “epistemological leap,“ which is in turn the philosophical basis of his “new synthesis,“ which is why he, with the following of the RCP, considers “The Chairman [Avakian]“ to be the modern-day “Lenin“ or “Mao.“ It is worthwhile to consider what Avakian’s “authority” in philosophy is supposedly based on. Despite the claims about its earthshaking significance in the RCP‘s Constitution (2008), there is no pretense that the origins of this “new synthesis“ include what Mao identified as the three sources of knowledge in the broadest sense—class struggle, the struggle for production, and scientific experiment (see “Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?“). Rather, the Constitution identifies the sources of this “new synthesis“ more narrowly: “In a sense, it could be said that the new synthesis is a synthesis of the previous experience of socialist society and of the international communist movement more broadly, on the one hand, and of the criticisms, of various kinds and from various standpoints, of that experience, on the other hand.“ But anything that could be called an “epistemological break“ must have sources that go far beyond the experience of the socialist countries and the international communist movement, and the criticism of them. Yet, clearly, Avakian‘s “epistemological break“ does not. No serious argument can be made that his “developments“ draw, for example, on contemporary natural science in the ways that Lenin‘s or Mao‘s built on an understanding of physics. It is startling how little Avakian himself made of his philosophical contributions before his “cultural revolution“: in his 2003 speech, Revolution: Why It‘s Needed, Why It‘s Possible, What It‘s All About, which was more than eleven hours long, he spent just five minutes on philosophy—and three of the five on soccer. The flip from that attitude to the boundless adulation of a few years later—and the endless chatter about epistemology that Martin has commented on—is a sterling example of the instrumentalism that characterized the RCP‘s “cultural revolution.“ (Perhaps I should say “characterizes“; it is not clear to me whether the whole affair is over now or has only entered “a new stage.“)
28 The unity of truth and value in general, as well as of the most generally valid truths and values, does not imply that truths and values are identical. There are a number of related questions, such as whether all truths have a normative quality and all values have a descriptive quality. The important point here is that truths and values can be transformed into each other, and that, viewed over time even more than at any particular instant, the content of truths significantly affects the content of values, and vice versa. As Mao would say, they interpenetrate. It is de rigueur in many circles to deny all of this.
29 Note well: a fundamental truth in Marxism. Mao does not equate the “doctrine of rebellion“ with a truth—a universally true philosophy—that embraces Marxism.
30 Ethical Marxism, p. 5.
31 Ethical Marxism, p. 437.
32 Ethical Marxism, p. 362.
33 Ethical Marxism, p. 5. There is a discussion to get into regarding whether philosophy as a whole, rather than merely ethics—or science, for that matter—should be seen as being at “the core of Marxism“; and even more, even on the view that Marxism itself is a science, whether that science must be seen as being embraced by the philosophy of materialist dialectics rather than vice versa. Mao maintains that “Dialectical materialism is universally true because it is impossible for anyone to escape from its domain in his practice“ (“On Practice,“ Selected Works, vol. I, p. 305). By contrast, he says that after the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, the Chinese party leadership reexamined the question of whether Marxism was valid; it was not at all “axiomatic.“ I will pursue these issues elsewhere. Here I focus on the relationship between ethics and science.
34 Ethical Marxism, pp. 44–45.
35 Ethical Marxism, p. 84.
36 Ethical Marxism, p. 160.
37 Ethical Marxism, p. 67.
38 True enough, it is the content of the political economy of socialism that is bound up with overcoming the sphere of interest, whereas in these passages the author is talking about a political-economic analysis of capitalism; but he does not make the distinctions clear.
39 So long as Martin was moving in the RCP‘s orbit, he could not expect much enlightenment about the mass line, which the party never understood well enough to actually apply in a fruitful manner. In the RCP‘s 2008 Constitution, there is not even any mention of the mass line. The starting point is not practice, including social investigation, as with Mao, but “theory“ (as the initial stage of the “theory/practice/theory dynamic“).
40 Marxism and the Call of the Future, p. 194.
41 See the discussion in Ethical Marxism, p. 29.
42 Discussing it goes beyond the scope of this essay, but to have a clear understanding of the relationship between truth and value, one must also have a theory of truth. In a couple of very brief asides, Martin mentions a “one to one“ correspondence theory of truth (which does not exhaust the whole of correspondence theory by any means), saying it “does not really work,“ and contrasts it with scientific investigation, which “does work“ (Ethical Marxism, pp. 231, 437). Evidently he does not think the question of a theory of truth falls within the scope of his book. But it should be identified as an important matter for analysis elsewhere.
43 Posing the problem this way—that an “is“ can arise from an “ought“—emphasizes the ethical and visionary aspect of social change, as opposed to a deterministic view. This relates to the question of utopianism; see below.
44 The classic example involves John Stuart Mill‘s identification of “the desirable“ with what is desired, rather than with what ought to be desired.
45 It is interesting that Avakian accepts some basic assumptions of bourgeois thought regarding the possibility of a split between truth and value, including the alleged distinction between “what is good for humanity“ and “what ought to happen,“ and holds that this can be resolved only on the basis of proletarian partisanship. See Away with All Gods, p. 207. However, the idea that “what ought to happen“ is anything other than “what is good for humanity“ (and life overall on the planet; for purposes of this discussion, that extension is inessential) is not sustainable over time, socially or environmentally. This is not fundamentally because of class partisanship. (Elsewhere Avakian contradicts this statement: “Once more, the correctness, or incorrectness, of a particular ideology—whether or not it corresponds to reality—is something which can be objectively determined, and that determination is not reducible to—and is not in essence—a matter of class struggle“ [Ruminations and Wranglings, section on “Communism as a Science—Not a ‘Scientific Ideology‘“]. If the correctness of an ideology (as opposed to its incorrectness) is not essentially a matter of class struggle, then the correctness of an ethical system that generates judgments about what ought to happen (as opposed to what is good for humanity)—cannot be essentially a matter of partisanship. On the other hand, there is a whole category of truths that are created through class struggle, and to the extent that the correctness of an ideology depends on those truths, then whether it is correct is, in essence, a matter of class struggle.
46 Reducing class truth to “subjective individual truth“ (the philosophy corresponding to “identity politics“) has been a common theme in Avakian‘s comments on class truth.
47 Man for Himself, p. 18.
48 This is a stronger statement than the one that says that “the ethical [alone] does not have what it takes to be ethical.“ It is also saying that if that which the ethical requires—if it is to be ethical—does not exist and cannot be brought into being in the absence of very different conditions, then the ethical ceases to be ethical. There are, however, conditions in which either of two paths of societal development are possible, given the overall situation at that point, and then to struggle for the greatest possible enhancement of the ethical, and to oppose an ethical regression, is correct. This has been the global situation in terms of the contradiction between capitalism and socialism since at least 1848.
Viewed from an ethical standpoint, slave society (or capitalist imperialism) is not an advance over primitive communism. However, primitive communal society may not be sufficiently stable or materially strong, especially if it is a victim of aggression by an outside power, to subsist other than in particular isolated parts of the world. If this is true, then the transition from primitive communism to class society is inevitable, in terms of sociohistorical development overall.
49 Stephen Jay Gould, for example, argued that questions of fact and questions of value lay in entirely separate provinces, which was the ideological basis of his position on the long-term coexistence of science and religion. See Rocks of Ages. In general, the dogma that science can throw no light on values is a basis for what Lenin called “god-building.“
50 Thus, for example, in class society, theory in biology—or even, holy of holies, in physics—has a class aspect. Although the existence of bourgeois ideological content in the social sciences is broadly recognized, the fact that class outlook, methods, and values also penetrate the conceptual content of natural scientific theories has been little understood since the 1930s. Yet this viewpoint has been argued quite persuasively with regard to Darwinian biology and the post-Darwinian “modern synthesis“ of twentieth-century biology, as well as Newtonian and some variants of twentieth-century physics (though much work remains to be done in these areas).
Christopher Caudwell, a communist theoretician, analyzed how the bourgeois world outlook is woven into Newton‘s theories. From a somewhat different perspective, in various works, the cosmologist Lee Smolin has discussed some of the connections between philosophy and cosmological theory. On Darwinism and the modern synthesis, Stephen Jay Gould‘s work constitutes a critique and further development concerning fundamental themes like the units of selection, the tempo of evolutionary change, the limits of adaptationism, and others. In numerous works, Richard Lewontin has explicitly analyzed the ideological content of the exclusive focus on individual organisms, and the dogma that organisms only adjust to an existing environment while not re-creating it. Marx and Engels anticipated some elements of these critiques in their correspondence.
None of this means, however, that Darwin‘s theory of evolution, or Newton‘s physics, do not have a great deal of valid content. Darwin‘s theory does capture much of the reality of the evolutionary process; but some of the content of his theory and its derivatives is significantly affected by mechanical materialism and idealism, including especially some of the particular forms of them that were dominant in the nineteenth century. The fact that bourgeois philosophy affects biological theory, including some of its content, is not overruled by the errors of the “Lysenko affair“ (which some have erroneously assumed to be representative of all philosophical influence on natural science in the Soviet Union). To deny this necessitates maintaining that all science that demonstrably has a class content is thereby “not real science“; in other words, science is redefined to mean something that does not correspond to science as it has actually developed in the world.
Mao made a related point emphatically: that humans, and implicitly, a class, can affect even the laws of nature themselves. He did not accept Stalin‘s hard-and-fast division (in Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.) between “laws of science, which reflect objective processes in nature or society, processes which take place independently of the will of man,“ and “the laws which are issued by governments, which are made by the will of man, and which have only juridical validity. . . . they must not be confused“ as well as his reference to “astronomical, geological, and other similar processes, which man really is powerless to influence, even if he has come to know the laws of their development. . . .“ Mao stated flatly: “This argument is wrong. Human knowledge and the capability to transform nature have no limit. Stalin did not consider these matters developmentally. What cannot now be done, may be done in the future“ (Critique of Soviet Economics, pp. 136–37). It is plausible that Mao‘s considerations apply not only to communist but to class society.
51 Roy Bhaskar has argued on logical grounds against the dichotomy between facts and values: “. . . Hume . . . enunciated what has become—at least since the publication of Moore‘s Principia Ethica—an article of faith for the entire analytical tradition, namely that the transition from ‘is‘ to ‘ought‘, factual to value statements, indicatives to imperatives, is, although frequently made (and perhaps even, like eduction, psychologically necessary), logically inadmissible. In contrast, I want to argue that provided only certain minimal conditions are satisfied, it is not only acceptable, but logically mandatory. . . .
“. . . the particular character of Marx‘s explanations is such that they take the form of an explanatory critique of an object of enquiry which is revealed, on those explanations, to be dialectically contradictory. . . . Marx‘s explanations logically entail ceteris paribus a negative evaluation of the objects generating such entities and a commitment to their practical transformation. The particular systemic dialectical contradictions, such as between use-value and exchange value, which Marx identifies as structurally constitutive of capitalism and its mystified forms of appearance give rise, on Marx‘s theory, to various historical contradictions which, on that theory, both tendentially subvert its principle of organization and provide the means and motive for its supersession. . . .“ Note that Bhaskar, who does believe in the unity of truth and value, says that a commitment to “practical transformation“ is “logically entailed“ by “explanations“—in other words, an ethical imperative follows from a scientific analysis (Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom, pp. 146, 166–67).
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