Bill Martin’s recent book Ethical Marxism is subtitled The Categorical Imperative of Liberation, and the ethics which Martin proposes must be made integral to a reconstituted Marxism is very much a Kantian one. This aspect of Martin’s perspective, along with others, is taken up in this, the final portion, of Vern Gray’s essay, “On Some Questions Provoked by a Reading of Bill Martin’s Ethical Marxism.”
(At right is a manuscript page from Kant’s “Perpetual Peace.”)
V. Kantian Ethics
I am not well versed in Kant‘s writings nor in the voluminous literature about them, and I come to the debates about his ethical theory with some circumspection. However, my objectives in writing this section include two that, I think, make the effort worthwhile. First, the summary and criticism of some of Kant‘s ethical views may be helpful to readers of Martin‘s book. Second, I wish to highlight the question of whether, and how, Kantian ethics can be of service in the struggle for revolutionary change, and particularly, in revolutionary periods—a question that the literature on Kant that I have read, even when nominally Marxist or semi-Marxist, does not much address.
Martin‘s interest in Kant‘s ethics is conditioned to a significant degree by his view that there has been little appreciable development of Marxist ethics, and indeed, that some of the fundamental tenets of traditional Marxism are inimical to the development of ethics. While there is much truth to his view that there has been little development of ethics by Marxists, it is not entirely true. For Steven Lukes, for example, Marxism has had a deeply ambivalent attitude toward ethics, in which it has upheld and developed what he calls an “ethics of liberation“ while failing to have, and opposing, an adequate “ethics of Recht (right).“93
Martin, by contrast, feels that it would be an overstatement to say that a strong theme in Marxism is an “ethics of liberation.“ He holds that, in practice (but not in any coherent ethical theory), Marxism has had to attach to itself a “language of value and vision.“ He says:
“Despite the achievements of socialism under this reactive, ‘scientific‘ mold—real achievements that should not be buried under what were also the real shortcomings and failures but also the real attacks and slanders—we can also see real limitations that go directly to this purely ‘scientific‘ scenario, and we can also see the way in which the languages of value and vision are continually smuggled in, though without ever being given their due. This smuggling operation is philosophically illicit and incoherent. It is also absolutely necessary, because there is no transformation of the world without values and vision. The upshot is not that values and vision should be artificially attached in a purely instrumental way to a Marxist science. The result of such an operation, repeated many times in revolutionary (or ostensibly revolutionary) movements, is that values and vision become themselves instrumentalized, treated as mere means, and this is a fundamental betrayal of what they really are. Significantly, the redemptive transformation of the world is betrayed in the process.“94
Although Martin, in his maximum program, believes that Kantian ethics can be wedded to Marxism, he does not, in my opinion, demonstrate why or how this would be the case. Still less has he shown how or why Kant should be the principal voice in reconstructing the kind of ethics that can and must, in Martin‘s view, be at the core of Marxism. I believe he has not “made the case“ because it cannot be made. I think he is right that Marxists should study Kant‘s ethical writings and that there is something important to be learned from them (by both positive and negative example). I also believe that ethical theory has been seriously underdeveloped by Marxism. But it is not evident how Kant and Marx could be fused, or Kant could be integrated into Marxism. However, Martin also makes a more limited claim: he talks in one place about “bringing Kant into the conversation“ and “want[ing] to know how this other register [in which, in contrast to Marx, one talks about right and wrong, good and evil] fits with the core of Marx‘s arguments. . . .“95
How do we understand Kant‘s ethics, including its class content, materiality, and practicality? Kant did not attempt a class analysis of ethics, and his discussion of how to materialize his ethical views or make them practical is notoriously incomplete. Martin does not, in my opinion, do a great deal to specifically advance the Kantian project on these fronts. In what sense is it a valuable contributor or corrective to Marxist ethics even if it does lack a proletarian perspective or specifically scientific content? Kant thinks that “the moral law within us“ comes from reason, but he also knows that his reason must have some “raw material“ to act on if there are to be specific moral judgments that can serve as a guide in life. So then, how do we analyze a moral position and know whether it is valid? How does one determine whether what is viewed as being right actually is right? In short, what “grounds“ the laws arrived at by reason?
Here one wishes that Kant‘s own voice would enter the conversation more. If the index is correct, excerpts from Kant‘s works, which are confined to his “secondary essays“ and none of his major “critiques,“ take up a total of only fifteen lines in Ethical Marxism—which is a long book.96 Close analysis of Kant‘s key positions would be in order. This would help the readership of Ethical Marxism—including those of us coming out of a background whose parameters and signposts are part of “revolutionary movement theory“ and tend to know little about Kant. Martin might do some more analysis of what the “categorical imperatives“ are about and situate them concretely in the struggle to transform the world, giving more of a presentation that would be important in its content as well as for the sake of popularization. He does have “one foot“ in both the “philosophical Marxist“ and “revolutionary movement theory“ camps, which can be an important strength, but he has not done as much as we need in terms of translating between the two worlds.
Before getting into some of the specific questions, I want to say that from what I can tell, Kant‘s positions are not as simplistic as many characterizations of them would have us believe. In his very useful book Kant‘s Ethical Thought, Allen Wood refutes some of these facile and fundamentally erroneous criticisms. It is said, for example, that Kant‘s ethics are individualist, “deontological,“ and abstract. But according to Wood, Kant‘s ethics emphasize community and are fundamentally “consequentialist“ rather than deontological, and Kant sought to ground his abstract ethical principles in science. Kant was, in other words, aware of the importance of avoiding the kinds of weaknesses with which he is charged. Although he shared many of the social prejudices of his time, it is I think true that he genuinely wanted to create a better world. Accordingly, an evaluation, including a critique, of Kant‘s views must settle for neither vague endorsements nor caricatures.
The Individual and the Collective
Martin does not adequately get into the question of collectivity, even if it is true, as Allen Wood has stated, that Kant thought collective action was necessary and that an ethical community was the aim of ethical action. In any large collectivity that consists of a very large number of individuals, the question of how to mediate and resolve the views of different individuals looms large. But it is not apparent how Kant‘s program could be implemented “in the real world.“97 Kant‘s supposition, in “Perpetual Peace,“ that there can be ideal forms of government that preserve the peace does not tell us how such forms can be created or maintained, nor, indeed, how they could actually apply their principles in today‘s world. Further, Kant‘s approach to ethical questions was very deliberative; it is not apparent how it could be applied in complex situations, especially rapidly changing situations with limited information, interrupted communications, material shortages, and all the other characteristics of revolutionary situations and struggles. Of necessity, there is a division of labor among the revolutionary people, and ethical principles must flow from and be applied to different collectivities of people rather than individuals. Kant‘s categorical imperative instructs an individual to “act in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law“ as well as to “so act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or that of another, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.“98
Bearing in mind the principle, upheld by Kant, that “ought“ always implies “can,“ and recognizing the different freedom and necessity that different collectivities face in the struggle—parties, classes, states, and so on—it becomes apparent that the categorical imperative as stated cannot be applied. For example, as Mao said, in the international context, while socialist countries make compromises with imperialist states—because, done correctly, this can advance the proletarian internationalist cause—it does not follow that people in the imperialist countries are required to do so. Similarly, in another context, if Lenin goes abroad to avoid repression by the tsarist authorities, it is scarcely a solution to call on all of Russia‘s people to go abroad.
Now, to be sure, Lenin‘s situation and his responsibility are different in various ways from those of the ordinary people, even though they share a fundamental unity. So then, one must turn up the focus on the moral imperative and argue that it is a universal law for people in Lenin‘s position, with his freedom and necessity, his background and ability, and so forth, to act as Lenin did, in the particular circumstances he faced. But then all those conditions will never exactly be replicated for everyone. No one has ever been in precisely the situation that Lenin was in. Mao‘s, for example, was different, even in a general sense: the leadership of a protracted people‘s war, with its ongoing revolutionary situation, is probably impossible from a location outside the country; or, at best, Mao‘s ability to lead the war would have been significantly restricted had he been abroad for significant amounts of time. In Russia, however, the absence of revolutionary conditions between 1905 and 1917 meant that Lenin could lead the party from outside the country, even while the ripening of those conditions required that he return to Russia in the spring of 1917.
Both Lenin and Mao were creatively applying Marxist principles to their different situations. I do not see how Kant‘s categorical imperative has the necessary materialism or dialectics to have guided their actions—not if the revolutionary efforts they led were to prove successful.99
Ends and Means
Martin characterizes Kant‘s attitude toward the French revolution in this way: “. . . Kant himself was somewhat aware, not as aware as we would need to be, of the contradiction involved in that whole means/ends question, especially around the question of revolution. Because in a revolution one class violently overthrows another, and with that violence those who are overthrown are instrumentalized in the sense that some of them are even killed. It‘s hard to put that into the mix of their supposed flourishing, if they‘re killed. So Kant found himself with this contradiction that, before the fact he couldn‘t justify the French revolution. But after the fact he thought it was a great thing and was very positive toward it. But that‘s a contradiction, and I don‘t think he necessarily has the full resources for resolving it.“100
An answer to this issue must be based in a recognition that the values of the opposed classes in the France of 1789 were opposed to each other. If the possibilities of the flourishment of the masses were to be supported, then the status quo, with its repressive state, had to be opposed. There was no way to uphold the flourishment of both classes. And that kind of analysis is lacking in Kant‘s ethics.
In general, Martin is critical of what he calls “calculation“ in general and by revolutionaries in particular, both on normative grounds—because it is part of the apparatus of “interest“ (calculation, as he discusses it, is not necessarily quantitative)—and on logical grounds, because it assumes that there is a demonstrable connection between many decisions and the goal that is said to be consistent with them. However, he grants that calculation in warfare is necessary: “To take a simple example, to carry forward a just struggle involves strategy, and one part of strategy is a measurement of the forces that are arrayed on the battlefield (whether literal or in some broader sense)—in other words, tactics.“ But he does not explain why calculation—in the broader scientific sense of discovering and weighing relationships between different phenomena—should have any more validity with regard to military questions than with regard to a broad range of political questions. In some passages he seems to posit a pure military science that is composed of something very different from ethics: “. . . at the end of the day, if calculation is ‘all that it was all about,‘ and winning means no more than that ‘our side‘ beat ‘their side,‘ then there may be winning and victory, but this is not justice.“101
That is true, but he has posed the question in a dualistic way. For a revolutionary army, which is and must be entirely dependent on the conscious mobilization of and reliance on the people in a struggle against a more professional army and an overall state apparatus with much deeper material reserves, ethics are interwoven with military strategy and tactics at every step. There can be no prospect of sustained victories in battle if the ethical element is not integral to everything. If strategy, tactics, and organization become severed from revolutionary politics and ethics, then the problem facing the revolutionaries is more complex than one that can be fixed by insisting that ethics not lose out to military calculations.
The problem here, I believe, is a kind of reductionism. The ethics that deals with the kinds of complexities that characterize revolutionary struggle cannot be reduced to the atomistic Kantian determinations. It is true, as Martin notes, that there are some actions that are unethical in the context of any group, no matter its size, such as sadistic torture or rape. But it is also the case that such actions are utterly inimical to any genuinely revolutionary consequences.
Steven Lukes writes that Marxism has a long-term consequentialist ethics:
“By ‘consequentialism‘ I mean a theory which judges actions by their consequences only, and requires agents to produce the best available outcome, all things considered: it relates the right and good by holding that it is always right that agents should act so as to bring about the best outcome overall. . . . Plainly, consequentialism contrasts with deontological theories, which standardly hold that it is sometimes wrong to produce the best outcome overall, and right not to do so, by imposing ‘side-constraints‘ or ‘agent-centred restrictions‘. According to such theories, the ‘right‘ is not related instrumentally to the ‘good‘ but is otherwise justified, e.g. by reference to the ‘moral law‘ or to some notion of personal integrity or respect for persons, or to the will of God. It therefore comes as no surprise that Marxism is deeply and unremittingly anti-deontological: hence the systematic hostilities we have traced among the orthodox to Kant and Kantianism. Or, to put it another way, relaxation of such hostilities represents a deep form of revisionism. For Marxism and orthodox Marxism thought requires an exclusive, single-minded preoccupation with the attainment of emancipation.“102
Ethical consequentialism is often contrasted with “deontology,“ the idea that the main thing about any ethical idea or act is what it is in and of itself rather than with regard to its surroundings and consequences.103 Certain acts are wrong, and others are right, and these evaluations cannot be changed by appealing to their consequences.
By contrast, according to materialist dialectics, a thing or process is mainly understood by examining it in context, in its connection with other things, in its contradictory relations with them. Therefore, evaluation of the ethical content of an idea or act cannot be determined principally by the act in its own right—though such an evaluation generally does have secondary validity—but in its context, and above all, by its effects in the revolutionary process.
Kant‘s ethical system is commonly considered, as by Lukes, to be deontological rather than consequentialist. Allen Wood, however, contests this:
“The striking thing is Kant‘s insistence that the determining ground of a rational will must always be an end (Zweck), for this might be thought to contradict what he says elsewhere. Earlier in the Groundwork [of the Metaphysic of Morals] Kant stressed that the good will does not have its goodness in any end it might achieve and that the moral worth of an act done from duty does not consist in its end but in its maxim. But on closer inspection there is no contradiction between saying that the good will is motivated by an end and saying that its goodness does not consist in its usefulness in producing any end. . . .
“Kant‘s ethical theory has often been criticized as ‘formalistic‘ and ‘deontological‘ by those who insist that an obligation to follow a rule or principle makes sense only if there is some value or end that provides a reason for following the rule. To anyone tempted to think that Kant‘s theory is vulnerable to such criticisms, it should be of interest that Kant himself made exactly this point as early as 1764, and even made it the basis of the Groundwork‘s argument that a categorical imperative can be binding on a rational will only if there is an objective end or end in itself. In fact, if a ‘deontological‘ ethical theory is one that precludes grounding a moral principle on substantive values or ends, then the aim of Kant‘s argument is to show that no deontological theory is possible.104
“In fact, within the system of ethical duties (this is a crucial qualification), Kant is not (in the now commonly accepted sense of these terms) a ‘deontologist‘ but a ‘consequentialist‘. For he asserts the priority of the ‘good‘ (of the end to be effected) over the ‘right‘ (taking this term not in Kant‘s sense but only in the Anglophone philosopher‘s sense, meaning an action that conforms with our ethical duty).“105
Nevertheless, despite Kant‘s consequentialist orientation, it remains true that if one lacks the scientific means to trace the connections between means and ends—not in the sense of absolute predictability, but rather, of approximation or probability—and even more basically, to determine whether the ends are morally worthy in terms of a scientific knowledge of the nature of humanity, then the consequentialism is more of a wish than anything that can actually be concretized. In this sense, criticism of Marxist theodicy would also seem to entail criticism of Kant‘s version of consequentialism. Kant‘s ethics also has difficulties with collective contexts, as discussed earlier, and, what is very important from a Marxist standpoint, it lacks materialism.
Idealism and Materialism
Regarding the first formulation of the categorical imperative: as argued above, one can never replicate the exact same conditions, as there is always a substantive difference, at least in the background, and in a revolution, such differences are enhanced as conditions shift rapidly. Thus the rule cannot strictly be applied even if we are dealing only with situations and choices facing individuals, not collectivities. Either the conditions in Situation A and Situation B are sufficiently different that the categorical imperative cannot be applied; or the conditions are judged to be essentially the same, giving rise to judgments that claim, or at least aspire, to be universal about what should be done in such conditions but that give rise to fundamentally contradictory ethical guidelines. Thus the Kantian maxim that it is always wrong to lie. But what if one is protecting fugitives on the underground railroad or the family of Anne Frank? Adherence to the categorical imperative as a strict rule seems to be tied up with a lack of concrete analysis of concrete conditions.106
The divergence between conditions in different situations is especially marked in a revolutionary situation. Here all kinds of changes in tactics are necessitated. Kant could not adequately come to grips with this within his own conceptual framework, which in part would seem to explain why he opposed the idea of the French revolution before the fact but approved of it afterward. In his analysis of Kant‘s viewpoint, Wood writes:
“The intermediate premises connecting the Formula of Humanity with conduct are hermeneutical in nature: They involve interpreting the meaning of actions regarding their respect or disrespect of the dignity of rational nature. There can be no neat algorithms or decision procedures for the interpretation of human actions. But such intermediate premises may be accepted or rejected on the basis of reasons; they do not depend merely on blind intuitions or irrational prejudices. If the dignity of humanity provides the correct basis for deciding moral questions (and even gives the correct explanation of why we ought to care about people‘s welfare at all), then Kantians need not apologize for the fact that their principle does not lead to tidy utilitarian calculations (whose pretense to precision turns out in practice to be illusory anyway). No fundamental moral principle should be seen as directly solving all moral problems (especially controversial ones). Its task is rather to provide a correct framework within which problems can be raised and discussed“ (pp. 154–55).
Kant recognizes the need for grounding the “intermediate premises“ in a knowledge about the world:
“ . . . Kant regards empirical information about human nature as well as a priori or metaphysical principles as determining the content of moral ends and thereby of ethical duties. Such information is to be used not merely in choosing means to moral ends but in determining which ends we ought to set as moral beings (the ‘ends which are also duties,‘ which the Metaphysics of Morals calls ‘duties of virtue‘). . . .
“. . . It will obviously require empirical knowledge of human nature to determine which ends will suitably honor the rational nature of human beings and which ends are contrary to the respect we owe to human dignity. Further, no attempt to determine the laws that will unite the ends of rational beings into a realm can afford to ignore what ends such beings are empirically disposed to adopt.“107
But there is still the problem of how to establish the “intermediate premises.“ And here Kant is explicit, according to Wood, in his marked skepticism about any kind of science that is necessary to ground those premises in the real world. There is a way of claiming to deny the possibility of science by denying that it can exist in its most extreme or reductionist form. Wood summarizes Kant‘s view about a science of humanity, with regard to human behavior as well as consciousness, by saying, “Commonsense guesswork may enable us to foretell what people will do some of the time, but there can never be anything approaching a predictive science of human behavior. . . .
“. . . Kant thinks our awareness of the appearances of inner sense is characterized by uncertainty and deceptiveness, and no study of them can ever achieve the precision of a genuine natural science.“108
Undoubtedly, reference to a predictive science of human behavior and to the precision of natural science is meant to suggest that a science of humanity cannot be held to the standards of physics and astronomy (the only sciences that possessed any considerable degree of precision in Kant‘s time). But then we are allegedly thrown back to the level of “commonsense guesswork“ and an “uncertain“ and “deceived“ awareness. There is nothing intermediate, a science that, even if it is generally imprecise, can nevertheless be quite comprehensive, with considerable explanatory and, to some extent, predictive power. Indeed, if a high degree of mathematical precision is to be required of all science, then not only most of Marxism but also Darwinism are unable to meet the test. (There are no mathematical formulas or formulations in all of the Origin of Species. This by no means implies that Darwin‘s theory, even as he first conceived of it, is entirely descriptive and lacks any predictive power.)109
In attempting to develop a universal standard of the kind he enunciates in the categorical imperative, it seems to me that Kant created an idealist abstraction from the great variety of conditions, circumstances, and complexities, both long-term and momentary, that defy a universal ethical standard of that kind. Accordingly, communists must develop their ethics on a different foundation.
VI. Animals, Agriculture, and Places
How do the operations of capitalism as an economic system interact with bourgeois ethics to create a tendency toward ecocide, whereas a viable human prospect requires a different ethic informed by a knowledge of what is environmentally sustainable? Note well: a human prospect, not the prospect that humans might be able to salvage a bleak existence on a toxic planet.110 How is ethics shaped by our relation to the natural environment? A notion of environmental ethics111 is something that has been largely, though not always, marginal in Marxist theory and practice, and has come to it only “from the outside,” slowly and haltingly, and in ways that it often did not feel obliged to address. Here economism has played a very large part, from its arguments that environmental issues could be ignored because human interests would be served by the supposed possible) unlimited potential for economic growth, to the idea that these issues should be ignored because they lent themselves to class collaborationism since all classes allegedly shared a common interest in a healthy environment.
While these questions have slowly come onto radicals’ and Marxists’ “radar screen” over the past forty years, progress has lagged far behind the accelerating destruction of the natural environment as well as of the needs of revolutionary politics to forge an informed program. And even to the extent that some progress has been made, the issue of the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals (and not just pets)—what Martin calls “the animal question”—has barely been a blip on that screen. He writes: “When I call these cows and pigs our ‘fellow, feeling creatures,’ I not only intend to invoke the idea that we should emphasize with them as fellow sentient beings (of course we should), but also to convey that, if we do not experience fellow-feeling for cows and pigs, we are not likely to feel this for other people or our earthly habitat, either.”112 I think it is a very good thing that he has embarked on a discussion of this question and has insisted that others take their positions toward it.113
More than that, certain positions he takes in this context make his perspective particularly worth discussing. First, he argues that the meat industry lies at the heart of commodification in the capitalist economy as a whole: “This system [the present food-production system] is at least a large subsystem of the overall system of production, and the system of rendering animals into meat is at least a large subsystem of the overall food-production system. However, I would maintain that carnivorism is more than a subsystem, it is a system in its own right, and furthermore, it is the ‘heart’ of the present system of commodity production.”114 Second, he believes that the animal question concentrates an overall ethical challenge. He writes, “the current food-production system and . . . human participation in that system is a great wrong that calls us to ethical action. Furthermore, and to repeat, the animal question gives us the very model of such a call.”115 Third, he holds that “It would not be a stretch to say that it is from animals that we humans learn ethics, or learn something crucial about what ethics really is, and by this last I mean real ethics as a resistance to mere utilitarianism and calculation based on interests.“116 These positions, which likely appear outlandish to many traditional Marxists, are ones that we should explore more.
It is worthwhile to reflect on the fact that the predominant attitudes toward animals in U.S. society, both theoretical and practical, took a specific turn around the beginning of the twentieth century, just as the county was emerging as a global imperialist power. In 1913, the psychologist John Watson published his article “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It“—sometimes called “The Behaviorist Manifesto.“117 Behaviorism was to dominate Western psychology for most of the rest of the twentieth century, and it still has great influence. It reinforced the view that animals were automatons—unthinking, if occasionally protesting, machines. Interestingly, Watson‘s article appeared just seven years after Upton Sinclair‘s The Jungle had exposed the evil practices toward animals in the meat production industry. And that, in turn, was less than a decade after U.S. imperialism embarked on its military invasions of other countries. So the theory and the practice of the degradation of animals were coming together, in specific ways that reflected and reinforced the general outlook and values associated with the onset of the imperialist stage. The degraded status of animals also made it more possible, depending on imperialism’s ideological and political needs, to cast vast portions of humanity, especially those in the oppressed countries who had already been assigned a subhuman status, as similarly degraded. Martin‘s discussion of how the animal question figures in the ethics of imperialist society is very insightful, something that it is important for us to take a hard look at. Developing a deeper understanding of the animal question is an important part of developing an all-round comprehension of the relationship between humankind and the rest of nature, which is foundational to a visionary and scientifically sound view of the relationship of the natural environment to revolutionary politics.
Having said that, I want to raise some aspects of the animal question about which I may disagree with Martin, although I do not have a good understanding of his views. These mainly concern questions about which he says very little. One of these concerns animals’ consciousness.
Martin, as I have cited above, does refer to cows and pigs as not only our “fellow, feeling creatures,” but as our “fellow sentient beings.” However, he seems to think that the question of whether animals have consciousness is not essential to the ethics of the animal question. He writes: “ . . . to mention [Donald] Davidson’s perspective on nonhuman animals, where he argues (in the well-known essays, ‘Thought and Talk’ and ‘Rational Animals’) that consciousness is intimately related to language; nonhuman animals, not possessing language (or being possessed by language, as the case may be), do not have consciousness. (Davidson’s main aim is to show what language and consciousness are for human beings, it should be added, and only secondarily to say something about nonhuman animals.) However, Davidson argues that, if anything, the conclusion to be drawn is that humans should give even more consideration to nonhuman animals; in this respect he cites Jeremy Bentham’s well-known claim that the relevant question is not whether animals can think, but instead that they can feel. I do not mean this to be the end of a discussion on animal thought and consciousness, but instead only to underscore the basic point, [that is,] the immense cruelty done to animals. . . .”118
While I think that Martin is right to argue that the ethics of the animal question do not turn, fundamentally, on animals‘ mental abilities, I cannot see where they are irrelevant to those ethics, either. First, I am not sure that we can know much of anything more about animals‘ feelings than about their consciousness. Second, animals comprise a very large kingdom, with a dozen different phyla. This raises the perplexing question of how far Martin‘s ethical principles are to be extended toward animals, and how they can be implemented practically—a project full of contradictions. Third, I cannot see where animals with more consciousness ought not to be given more ethical consideration; if not, it is hard to argue that humans should get more consideration than nonhuman animals (even if we can all think of particular humans who deserve less consideration). The existence of animal consciousness, in addition to animals‘ feelings, makes cruelty toward animals even more unethical. Fourth, it seems to me that to deny that animals have consciousness, or even to maintain an agnostic view, in the face of ever more scientific evidence, is an important part of maintaining an anthropocentric viewpoint while devaluing and instrumentalizing animal life (a process that has been bolstered by behaviorism), and such views must be criticized. Acknowledging the mental abilities of animals is part of respecting them as whole, sentient beings. And fifth, the practical politics of the animal question, as well as the popularization of the scientific work being done to investigate animals’ cognitive abilities, require that we address the question of their consciousness as part of winning people to an ethical treatment of animals.
These kinds of questions give rise to many others, such as: Is suffering—as opposed to mere irritability or pain—possible without consciousness? Does suffering require a sense of self?
Along the lines of Antonio Damasio‘s research regarding the interdependence of thought and emotions in humans, perhaps the ways could be found to do analogous research with some species of mammals and birds.119
Further, what does animals‘ consciousness consist of? How is it like human consciousness, and how is it different? What are animals‘ actual capacities for learning, solving problems, communicating, and so on?120
From an evolutionary standpoint, as well, it appears that there is much to learn about, and from, animals‘ morality, as some experiments with apes, birds, dolphins, and others in recent years have shown. If, in accord with the views of Darwin, Mayr, and many others, the difference between the consciousness of humans and animals is a matter of degree rather than kind, then the idea that the evolutionary origins of human morality may lie in the morality of animals should not be dismissed.121
The other thing I would like to register here has to do with habitat destruction and the crisis of biodiversity.122 This is a huge question, an example of negligence, instrumentalism, and cruelty on the largest scale, and one that some environmentalists believe is shaping the direction of things even more than climate change itself. Doesn‘t this relate closely to the animal question? I look forward to hearing Martin’s views about this in future works.
* * * * *
With regard to agriculture and places, Martin is initiating an exploration of issues that, like morality and ecology, have gotten relatively little attention from traditional Marxism—as well as, in this country anyway, most of “post-1960s” Marxism—which has developed a different sensibility (and lack thereof).
The concept of “place” is related to alienation from the natural environment in capitalist society, which is greater than in previous stages of society. It is also related to the effects of the increasing acceleration of everything in bourgeois society, which makes it more difficult to settle in any one place, physically or mentally: in the urban middle class, hyperactivity, distractedness, and the maximization of the consumption of “experiences.”123 The mobility of finance capital, and its need for a labor force that is mobile as well as flexible in time, undercut a sense of ties to any one place.
It is also important to analyze place in connection with revolutionary politics. For example, we should understand better how the concept of places played out in China‘s Cultural Revolution and the policy of sending students and professionals to the countryside for a couple of years, which disrupted their urban existence but also put them in touch with rural areas and agriculture. Did this tend to strengthen their sense of place? How did it relate to the development of their revolutionary consciousness? We should also consider Lenin‘s policy as described in What Is to Be Done? in which he upholds a model of mobile cadres who get to know the country as a whole (as well as other countries) rather than being tied to any one location. What is the division of labor between such revolutionary cadres and the masses who are more situated in particular places, and how does this affect the development of the revolutionary movement?
We should also analyze how geographical and political “placelessness“ is related to an ungrounded epistemology. The RCP is a good example.124
Martin is very critical of gigantism and overcentralization in the history of socialism, especially in the Soviet Union, which tended to obliterate the economic, social, and cultural relations of people to the places where they lived. There was also the vastly accelerated and top-down collectivization of agriculture, urbanization, and industrialization that had a greatly disruptive and in some ways a disorienting effect. By comparison, in China‘s socialist period, there was a much more dialectical approach to economic development that took agriculture as the foundation, weighed sectoral and regional differences, and grasped the relationship between centralization of overall line and plan, and as much decentralization as possible in elaboration and concretization.125) He writes:
“Although in producing products for exchange it can be said that the producers are alienated from the fruits of their own labor, it is hard to see how the forms of market exchange that involve something like the village center, and that work primarily through barter, are especially damaging to some fundamental humanness.“126
“First is what might be called the ecological-ethical question of the sustainability of industrial production, and the need to rethink agrarianism. . . . Our species has to find a solution to the ‘progressive‘ spoiling of the nest, regardless of what this means to the teleology of forms of production. The erosion of topsoil may not seem like a very ‘avant‘ issue to those convinced of the idiocy of rural life, . . . but in fact this is an issue of world-historic significance.127
“Second, there is the greatly significant de-industrialization of the United States and the countries of Western Europe. . . .“128
These questions are linked to Marxism’s historical failure to develop a vision of the future society, as well as to create, or understand the importance of creating, “spaces” within the existing society—culturally and socially, but also geographically and economically—that embody aspects of that vision. In one passage, Martin addresses these themes in this way:
“The Leninist current, in the past, has tended to instrumentalize this culture [lively opposition and intellectual ferment]—it is ‘useful‘ on the way to revolution, but after the revolution we won‘t need it anymore. Another manifestation of this orientation is the idea that ‘without state power we are nothing.‘ (This was a slogan of the Communist Party of Peru. . . .)129 Perhaps this idea even has the larger share of truth, but there are two ways in which this idea is misleading. First, the attempts of people to create alternatives that circumvent the existing structures are not ‘nothing.’ [For example, the efforts to study sustainable, 'natural systems' agriculture are] not only not ‘nothing,’ but could also become the key to everything, and this can be said without exaggeration or hyperbole. Second, there has been the tendency in practice, again ‘after the revolution,‘ to flip this slogan over, to go from ‘nothing’ to ‘omnipotence’—’with state power we are everything.’ The Stalin period gives us every reason to be wary of this sort of thing. . . .”
Martin then offers several theses:
“1. If the problems of good farming, land, food, and place are to be solved, they will have to be confronted both piecemeal and in the arena of the state. . . . ‘Quiet’ economic circumvention by itself will just be a way of watching the world go to hell in a hand basket.
“2. This does not mean, however, that in the meantime it is not a good thing to create experiments and foreshadowings of an alternative food economy. . . .
“3. . . . care for the land and for actual places means that everything that can be done locally (or in a ‘local way’) ought to be done locally; everything that cannot be done locally but that still needs to be done ought to be continually under scrutiny. For instance, if there are forms of production that cannot be carried out in a given locale, then there should be a broadly participatory way of talking about whether these forms should be carried out at all. . . .
“4. . . . When there is no more productive land, there will be no more people. But this question does not seem to be what Marx and Engels were addressing in saying that ‘the workers of the world have no country.’ And yet it is a fact that most of the people in the world do not live on and with the land, in a caring relationship; this has made capitalism, as it has developed through successive stages, both deeply alienating and unsustainable economically and ecologically. . . . Marx‘s thesis that all history is the history of class struggle needs to be brought more fully into contact with his (parallel? alternative?) thesis that history can be understood as the transition from the countryside to the city. . . . Our present cities require bad farming, which is really not farming at all. Our present cities require that there be fewer and fewer places in the world. . . .
“Someday, perhaps in the not-too-distant future, there will be so few places that the workers of the world will have neither a country nor a world to win. We need to think about the struggle of the dispossessed as crucially involved with becoming both native to places, in their tremendous plurality and singularity, and native to this whole earth.”130
These are very stimulating thoughts; they break out of the narrow, urban, economist, environmentally fragmented, short-time-frame model. I will offer some brief comments (the numbering of my points, though, does not correspond to Martin‘s):
(1) The places question and the animal question are significantly related to both ethics and ecology. Martin does not assess the importance of the natural environment in Marx‘s work or some of the theory and practice in the early Soviet Union and in socialist China. But there can be no quarrel with him that the greater part of this work, both theoretically and practically, lies in the future.
(2) The understanding of the importance of place has been underestimated in the history of Marxism and, in fact, it has been misunderstood and opposed. It is related to the fact that, outside of China, agriculture was considered far less important than industry.
(3) Development of a vision of the future, as materialized in utopian models, requires a place where a community can establish itself, embryonic institutions can develop, and so on. The burial of utopianism in the “scientific socialist” tradition has been related to the downgrading of “places.” Utopian models should have both a rural and an urban component; and the urban should include agriculture (as in “permaculture”). In a country like the USA, where a very small percentage of the population is engaged in agriculture, utopian models and institutions related to agriculture are of particular significance.
(4) On the one hand, large numbers of people do need to break from provincialism and have a sense of the movement as a whole and the conditions throughout a country and, in a basic sense, in the world. And our orientation must be not only to “think globally” but also to “act globally” (as well as locally) and in an informed and coordinated way based on the needs of the planet as a whole.
VII. Conclusion: Expanding and Enlivening the Discussion
Martin believes that society cannot get to communism without communist ethics; that these ethics are not reducible to interests; and that ethics can be fully ethical only when, if I may paraphrase Mao, it is taken up by the people. The first two of these ideas go up against much of the tradition of the communist movement; the third, if it would not be disputed by that movement, it would mainly be because the movement had no sense of real, dynamic, revolutionary ethics. Martin has done something very important by formulating these positions and putting them on the agenda. They pose great challenges to communists and everyone else striving to create a better world: how do we bring an understanding of them to the people, starting from the realities of an unethical society, especially unprecedentedly unethical twentieth-century imperialist society?
Martin writes: “It is worth mentioning in the present context that an important problem as regards utilitarian tendencies in Marxism is that Marxist revolutionaries will almost ‘naturally’ tend to be ‘ethical Marxists’ before the revolution, whereas after the seizure of state power there is a ‘natural‘ pull toward calculation, instrumentalism, and utilitarianism (as well as other alienating practices and alienated sensibilities that tend to spring from or accompany large institutions of whatever kind. . .).“131 On the one hand, there is truth to this, and it points to the dangers that exist when the proletariat is in power and, as Avakian put it, it no longer has “nothing to lose,” a danger especially shown in the history of the USSR.132 However, it is the case that a new calculus of freedom and necessity presents itself to a socialist state. It is able to effect changes, domestically and internationally, that a proletariat out of power cannot. It is more possible to trace the connections between its actions and their effects, and thus there is more validity to a consequentialist ethics. It has a greater ability, and a greater responsibility, to weigh the consequences of its actions in ways that do involve calculation. Martin recognizes the role of this in wartime, but he does not discuss this aspect of the issue in general, or for socialist states in particular. True enough, there is “a ‘natural’ pull toward”—or perhaps better put, a spontaneous one—on the socialist state toward some bad things, but it is bound up with the ability of a socialist state to make full use of its new freedoms in forging its political, economic, diplomatic, and military strategies, and its responsibility to do so and create many good things.
As Marx said, “the point” is to change the world, and it is in the context of the struggle to advance the practical revolutionary movement that, in an overall sense, the greatest development of revolutionary theory occurs. Today, communists are facing a huge raft of unanswered questions, unquestioned answers, and questions that have not been raised, arising from the history of communism, but much more broadly, the development of a new world.133
Martin has made a valuable contribution toward analyzing the weaknesses in Marxism—and sometimes the suppression by orthodox Marxism—concerning ethics in theory, and what some of the disastrous results have been in practice. He is entirely right, I think, to emphasize these points as well as the need for a more coherent ethical theory that recognizes the greater role that must be played by ethical judgments and decisions, and a “call of the future,“ in the struggle for communism, both before and especially after a socialist revolution. And in this process, he is willing to learn from some aspects of religious morality and recast them in a Marxist framework.
Boiled down to a sentence, I think the core argument of the book, and its central strength, is this: Communist ethics are essential to communism, and communism is needed if there is to be a future for humanity. I think that is a very coherent argument, in its broad outlines. And then there is a lot of ambiguity, and matters to investigate, ponder, and struggle out, within that framework.
In my judgment, the book‘s principal weakness, which is its secondary aspect overall, is that it does not provide all the necessary conceptual tools—and especially science in its full scope—for understanding the questions that it poses, or raising other vital questions. What Martin often seems to be disputing is a caricature of science that, in certain respects, may correspond to the theory and practice of science in imperialist society but that scarcely exhausts the liberating potential of science in the process of changing the world. It is one thing to recognize how the development of capitalism has shaped the content and application of science—something that orthodox communists have often underestimated; it is another to fail to see its centrality to the revolutionary project.
Over the last generation, Martin has largely upheld “revolutionary movement theory,” especially Maoism, in politics. By contrast, as a professional philosopher, he has moved to a significant degree within the orbit of “philosophical Marxism,” a distinct trend that he identifies.134 I agree with him completely about the importance of engaging with—learning from, as well as criticizing—this trend, with its explorations of philosophy, psychology, cultural theory, and other areas that have gotten relatively little attention from “orthodox” Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. However, I think the philosophical Marxists have often been noted, among other things, for their denial of the relevance of Marxism and nature to each other, their relative ignorance of natural science, and their rejection of materialist dialectics (sometimes justifying the latter by the degeneration and ossification of dialectical materialism in the Third International, and not understanding why Mao continued to uphold it as a universal philosophy). Martin gravitates toward some elements of this view, not so much in terms of an all-round theoretical position as in a practical delimitation and bracketing of natural science, and a sometimes indiscriminate disposition to hold it suspect.
He says that “it is not clear yet, and perhaps may never be clear, how the reality of ethics squares with the picture of reality that science gives us.”135 Here I must disagree. However, surely it is true that it will never be clear if the reality and significance of ethical questions are denied, and that failing has been, with regard to the ethics-science relationship, by far the principal one in the history of Marxism. The relative novelty of Martin‘s orientation and approach to ethics, and some of the lines of thought that he has opened up around it, constitute, in my opinion, the strength of Ethical Marxism.
But just as surely, the relationship between ethics and science will never be clear if science is understood mechanistically, and in particular, if the science that can bring us closer to understanding the material basis of consciousness, as well as consciousness as such, is neglected. The whole range of physical, biological, and “human” sciences have to be brought to bear when we consider ethical questions, and in general. I believe Martin has relatively neglected this side of things, and that is the main substance of my criticism.
A few paragraphs above, I gave my rendition of what I think is the most significant argument in the book, and my evaluation that it is a coherent argument, even though not fully formed. It is not, however, the same as what the author says: “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.“ In this sense, I think he is underestimating the book‘s key strength and what makes it most worth reading.
A list of works cited in the course of the essay, with full bibliographical information, follows the notes.
Notes
94 Ethical Marxism, pp. 444–45.
95 Ethical Marxism, p. 269.
96 While Martin contrasts the “ethical“ Kant with the “utilitarian“ Mill and argues that Marxism needs more of the former, here, perhaps, he could have applied a bit more of Mill‘s point about letting the advocates of a position speak for themselves. Avakian, of course, upholds Mill‘s point in the abstract, but he does not apply it with any consistency; witness his pamphlet on Jefferson.
97 As Bertrand Russell puts it, “Kant maintained that every human being is an end in himself. . . . There is, however, a logical difficulty in Kant‘s view, since it gives no means of reaching a decision when two men‘s interests clash. If each is an end in himself, how are we to arrive at a principle for determining which shall give way? Such a principle must have to do with the community rather than the individual“ (A History of Western Philosophy, p. 183). Allen Wood, however, argues that “. . . it is utterly false to claim that Kant views the moral life ‘individualistically‘ in the sense that it abstracts from social and historical realities. On the contrary, Kant thinks enlightenment will be possible for individuals only through the free give and take of ideas of an enlightened public and that the struggle against evil can be effective only if it is carried out through an ethical community, in which the virtuous disposition of individuals to pursue moral ends grasps these explicitly as common ends and objects of collective striving“ (Kant‘s Ethical Thought, p. 332). Yet, despite Wood‘s summary of Kant‘s views, it is not clear how this abstraction is to be acted on, how the individuals in a society, whose human nature Kant would characterize in general as having an “unsociable sociality, self-conceit, or the radical propensity to evil in human nature (three different names for the same reality)“ (p. 334), are to organize the kind of ethical communities that can engage in the kind of give and take required to reach enlightened ends. It would not be much of a response to say, as Wood summarizes Kant‘s position, that “Kant also holds that the development of our human predispositions is a social process, a result of the collective actions of society (most of which are unknown to and unintended by individual agents). Moreover, . . . in Kant‘s view the evil in human nature is a social product, and our fulfillment of our moral vocation must equally be social in nature. Our only hope for human moral improvement lies in our being members of an ethical community with shared or collective moral ends. (On all these points, the common characterization of Kant as a moral ‘individualist‘ could not be more mistaken.) . . .
“When people follow reason‘s laws of freedom, uniting them in a realm of ends, the freedom of one cannot conflict with that of another, because all their ends form a single harmonious system. But this rational freedom, grounded on human dignity, is the direct contrary of what we seek under the influence of the natural passion for freedom, grounded on competitive self-conceit. . . .“ (pp. 203–4, 256). It is also the contrary of what characterizes a society divided along class, national, and gender lines. How to get from here to Kant‘s ideal ethical community?
Wood quotes Kant‘s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint: “In working against the [evil] propensity [in human nature] . . . our will is in general good, but the accomplishment of what we will is made more difficult by the fact that the attainment of the end can be expected not through the free agreement of individuals, but only through the progressive organization of citizens of the earth into and toward the species as a system that is cosmopolitically combined“ (cited in Kant‘s Ethical Thought, p. 336). Again, a “progressive organization of citizens of the earth.“ By what means?
98 These and other formulations of the categorical imperative are given by Allen Wood in his Kant‘s Ethical Thought; see pp. 17, 18. The final phrase of Kant‘s second formulation is sometimes sloppily rendered as “never as a means“ rather than “never merely as a means.“ As Wood says, this principle, which he calls the “Formula of Humanity,“ “does not forbid us to use a person (whether ourselves or another) as a means to our ends. It forbids only omitting to treat a person ‘at the same time as an end.‘ In fact, according to Kant‘s conception of an ideal ‘realm of ends,‘ moral laws ‘have as their purpose just the relation of [rational] beings to one another as ends and means.‘ Thus to be a member of a realm of ends you must be a means to the ends of other rational beings (just as they have to be means to your ends)“ (pp. 142–43).
99 In addition, if we consider the situation of the masses in Russia and China, their conditions differ not only from those of Lenin and Mao, but from each other‘s. Again, it is not apparent how the categorical imperative can be applied in this context.
100 Marxism and the Call of the Future, p. 179.
101 Ethical Marxism, p. 212.
102 Marxism and Morality, p. 142.
103 Avakian summarizes Maoist morality in the following consequentialist way: “The basis for communist morality is contained, in a concentrated way, in what Maoists refer to as the ‘4 alls.‘ This is drawn from the summary by Marx of what the communist revolution aims for and leads to: the abolition of all class distinctions (or ‘class distinctions generally‘); the abolition of all the relations of production on which these class distinctions rest; the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production; and the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations. (See The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850.) This provides the basic principle underlying communist morality and the basic standard for determining what is and what is not in accordance with communist morality: whatever conforms to and contributes to these ‘4 alls‘ is consistent with communist morality; whatever does not is opposed to, and opposed by, communist morality“ (Preaching from a Pulpit of Bones, p. 69). Avakian‘s formulation only addresses those cases in which there is a way of determining whether and how a particular course of action today will have some impact on a specific outcome in the remote future. But often this cannot be known—which is central to Martin‘s point. In addition, the elimination of the “four alls“ constitutes only a “negative“ description of communism—telling us what some of its characteristics are not—and leaves open the question of what communism is and, in some sense, why it should be the aim of the people‘s struggle. Part of the problem is the symptomatic, traditional Marxist avoidance of “utopian speculation.“
104 Kant‘s Ethical Thought, pp. 112, 114.
105 Kant‘s Ethical Thought, p. 327.
106 And this, in turn, is related to Martin‘s apparent rejection of any “correspondence theory“ of truth. If ethics overall is treated only as part of the subject, while science applies only to the object, then ethics becomes detached from science, and ethical choices will tend to be evaluated, not from the standpoint of their consequences in the material world, but in terms of their intrinsic content or worth in an idealized moral realm.
107 Kant‘s Ethical Thought, p. 195.
108 Kant‘s Ethical Thought, p. 181.
109 It is a common error to confuse prediction in general with very precise prediction or forecasting that applies to phenomena of a given type. Mao‘s military theory is based on probabilities because, as he says, war is characterized by probability; but it does not follow that his theory has no predictive value. If it did, the people‘s war would have had a very different outcome. It is not clear to what extent Martin thinks a genuine science must be quantitative. Again, it is not entirely clear what his critique of scientism consists of or is based on.
110 To paraphrase the French biologist René Dubos, he feared not that humans would be unable to adapt to a despoiled world, but that they would.
111 In the 1940s, the ecologist Aldo Leopold was one of the first to address these themes, writing about a “land ethic.” See A Sand County Almanac.
112 Ethical Marxism, p. 244.
113 He certainly did this in his conversations with Avakian; obviously it was not an issue that Avakian would have raised.
114 Ethical Marxism, p. 251.
115 Ethical Marxism, p. 213.
116 Ethical Marxism, pp. 211–12. This does not deny that there is also some “calculation” among animals, as has been illustrated in recent experiments studying the maneuvers of crows and bluejays to prevent other birds from discovering their stores of food.
117 According to behaviorism, externally observable and measurable behavior provides the only scientific basis for understanding the psychological functioning of humans as well as animals in general. Behaviors can be reinforced or attenuated based on the manipulation of objective variables, but there is no necessity, or basis, to invoke any particular internal processes. Any talk of mind, consciousness, feelings, and other subjective notions cannot provide any valid data and should therefore be dispensed with. The upshot is a theory that emphasizes a one-sided, mechanical focus on external conditions and their control. Such a theory has obvious utility for slotting people into their assigned places in the social order. The birth of behaviorism also marked the approximate beginning of a regression in the view of animals, their consciousness, and their feelings that dominated almost all research until it began to break down in the 1980s. The contrast with what Darwin thought is remarkable; see his The Descent of Man and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
118 Ethical Marxism, p. 213.
119 Part of Damasio’s work has involved humans who have suffered damage to parts of their brains, and studied how these injuries are related to specific emotional and cognitive deficits. See Descartes’ Error.
120 The neurologist Gerald Edelman makes this distinction: “As human beings, we know what it is like to be conscious. Moreover, we are conscious of being conscious and can report on our experience. Although we cannot experience the consciousness of members of another species, we surmise that animals like dogs are conscious. We do this on the basis of their behavior and the close similarity of their brains to ours. But we do not usually attribute consciousness of consciousness to them“ (Second Nature, pp. 14–15). But why should we assume that although they are conscious, they are not “self-conscious“? Among some others, it is asserted that animals “are not aware of their own mortality.“ What could be the scientific basis for such speculation? Those who deny the complexity of animals‘ consciousness—in the face of studies of the behavior not just of the “highest species“ (most recently evolved) or only mammals, but of a growing variety of birds, reptiles, etc.—have had to make an accelerating retreat since 1970 (which was a “tipping point“ for environmental awareness as well). In December 2009, the use of coconut shells by an octopus constituted the first observation of tool use by an invertebrate.
No less eminent a biologist than Ernst Mayr wrote in 2001: “There is no justification in the widespread assumption that consciousness is a unique human property. Students of animal behavior have brought together a great deal of evidence showing how widespread consciousness is among animals. . . . How far ‘down‘ in the animal kingdom one can trace such signs of consciousness is arguable. It may well be involved even in the avoidance reaction of some invertebrates and even protozoans. However, it is quite certain that human consciousness did not arise full-fledged with the human species, but is only the most highly evolved end point of a long evolutionary history“ (What Evolution Is, p. 282).
Among the most remarkable research projects concerning animal intelligence is that done by Irene Pepperberg with the African Grey parrot Alex. To insist on pigeonholing the kind of highly complex intelligence that this parrot demonstrated solely under the rubric of “behavior“ rather than consciousness is an increasingly untenable position. The verb parrot may have emerged as one of the most misdefined in the language. These considerations have spread well beyond interpretations of the intelligence of primates, dolphins, and other mammals.
121 On the evolution of altruism in animals as well as humans, see Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson’s Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. One question that students of animal behavior are examining is the relationship, and the distinction, between genuinely unselfish behavior and “kin selection,” in which an animal comes to the aid of closely related, but not to unrelated, animals of the same species. This may be considered analogous to the relationship between ethics and interest in humans. Whether more than just an analogy is involved—that is, whether there is an evolutionary linkage—is a subject of investigation and debate.
122 See, for example, The Atlas of Endangered Species and The World Atlas of Biodiversity.
123 For a discussion of some different aspects of this, see James Gleick‘s Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything.
124 After nearly thirty-five years, the RCP has barely established itself anywhere, despite the long-standing list of thirteen “places“ in its newspaper. This is associated with the party’s erroneous epistemology. Terry Eagleton comments on those lacking an epistemological vantage point as follows: “They do not see that situatedness and radical critique belong together. One must be, as they say, in a position to know—which is why, say, women or poor peasants or the victims of Western imperialism know more of the truth of their condition than their masters. If they were standing nowhere at all, which is what some mistakenly take objectivity to mean, they would know nothing whatsoever. Nothing is as blind as a God‘s eye view. Not everyone is so situated as to be capable of objective judgements“ (“On Telling the Truth,“ in Socialist Register 2006, pp. 280–82). Studs Terkel cites the British journalist James Cameron, who made a similar point, albeit using the term objectivity differently; see Touch and Go, pp. 202–3. Avakian has distorted, disparaged, and dismissed any such perspective as being part of “identity politics.“ There is even the striking similarity between Eagleton‘s and Avakian‘s choices of metaphor, though with the opposite significance: Avakian repeatedly refers to the “godlike position of the proletariat“ as being integral to its ability to achieve a knowledge of the truth about the historical process as a whole.
125 This is best discussed in Raymond Lotta‘s introduction and afterword to the Shanghai Political Economy Textbook. See Maoist Economics and the Revolutionary Road to Communism.
126 Ethical Marxism, p. 240. But what does he mean by “fundamental humanness“—is it “human nature in general,“ the very concept that he has been reluctant to examine, or build on, in his discussion of ethics?
127 Marx, basing himself on the researches of the German scientist Justus von Liebig, did anticipate the increasing significance of this question in his studies of soil depletion. See the discussion in John Bellamy Foster‘s books, for example, Marx‘s Ecology: Materialism and Nature.
128 Ethical Marxism, p. 176.
129 Ethical Marxism, pp. 301–2. The CPP slogan was actually “without state power we have nothing,“ which was a reference to Mao‘s “Without a people‘s army the people have nothing“ (“On Coalition Government,“ Selected Works, vol. III, pp. 246–47).
130 Ethical Marxism, pp. 302–3.
131 Ethical Marxism, pp. 45–46.
132 See Conquer the World: The International Proletariat Must and Will.
133 Mike Ely‘s Nine Letters argues in this vein, in contrast to the “ideological settling in,“ and messianic fervor associated with Avakian‘s “new synthesis.“
134 Ethical Marxism, p. 350.
135 Ethical Marxism, p. 29.
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