judeanpeoplesfront@. wrote: <<I said I’m seeking just such a “philosophy,” but I did feel a bit strange changing it from science to philosophy. They are not the same. I have read elsewhere that Marxism is not a moral framework and I am aware of how rigorously scientific Marx’s research was...I suppose I said philosophy because, although learning about the inner workings of capitalism and its contradictions has been eye opening, I would not have questioned capitalism in the first place if it weren’t for a moral reaction to what I see in the world. Based on the little I know about Marx (please correct me if I’m wrong), I believe he held a similar moral repugnance for capitalism, which is what led him to investigate it and scientifically critique it in the first place...This duality is fascinating. Marxism may be a science, but it seems to me (granted, I’m a total newcomer) that it is deeply, inextricably intertwined with moral issue...>>
I think that you are right. From my readings of Capital it seems clear that morality (working-class valued morality) is a red red thread running through and throughout the 3 volumes. No matter how 'objective' his writings are purported to be by many good comrades it is hardly soulless. Almost all passages save the introductory chapters of Vol 1--where he meticulously lays out his theory of value and surplus-value and exchange-value (the Law of Value)--from thenceforth it is a, well, manifesto, a delineation of the cruelties visited upon men by men. Most times these are not delivered as a preacher's sermon nor a school hall seminar handed down from a podium of some such 'recognized authority' who has deigned to illuminate the unwashed, the unshod, the ones invisible to all and, in many cases, to themselves. Many many times it is value judgement disguised as fact as implicit in its explication is condemnation as when he talks about the Native peoples being subjected to carrying 200 pounds of metal ore and being fed and bred upon beans and not the bread they would prefer. He cites: "The labourers in the mines of S. America, whose daily task (the heaviest perhaps in the world) consists in bringing to the surface on their shoulders a load of metal weighing from 180 to 200 pounds, from a depth of 450 feet, live on bread and beans only; they themselves would prefer the bread alone for food, but their masters, who have found out that the men cannot work so hard on bread, treat them like horses, and compel them to eat beans; beans, however, are relatively much richer in bone-earth (phosphate of lime) than is bread." (Liebig, l. c., vol. 1., p. 194, note.)” Quoted in Vol 1. Chap XXIII. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch23.htm But Marx is fair in his dispensation of his morality. He even makes a value judgment as to whether it is the landlord or the usurer who is the more blatant exploiter: "... the landlord, who does nothing at all for the improvement of the land, also expropriates his small capital, which the tenant for the most part incorporates in the land through his own labour. This is precisely what a usurer would do under similar circumstances, with just the difference that the usurer would at least risk his own capital in the operation.” “Vol 3.” Chap XXXVII. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch37.htm And Marx is again fair in his appraisal of the role of parsimony and self-sacrifice in the early origins of capitalists: " Variable capital, it is true, only then loses its character of a value advanced out of the capitalist’s funds, when we view the process of capitalist production in the flow of its constant renewal. But that process must have had a beginning of some kind. From our present standpoint it therefore seems likely that the capitalist, once upon a time, became possessed of money, by some accumulation that took place independently of the unpaid labour of others, and that this was, therefore, how he was enabled to frequent the market as a buyer of labour-power.” http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch23.htm ( http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch23.htm ). And just to be sure that this is not a lapsus lingua he repeats his appraisal of some early capitalists in the same chapter: “ The original capital was formed by the advance of £10,000. How did the owner become possessed of it? "By his own labour and that of his forefathers," answer unanimously the spokesmen of Political Economy. And, in fact, their supposition appears the only one consonant with the laws of the production of commodities.” And once more unto the breach: “ The accumulation of the first additional capital of £2,000 presupposes a value of £10,000 belonging to the capitalist by virtue of his “primitive labour,” and advanced by him.” http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm ( http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm ) ‘Capital”, in spite of its simple but academically imposing pseudonymously titled facade, is not a sterile, surgical, humaneless, ticking off of bullet points of the frailties and failures of capitalism, it is propaganda in its best sense of that word, it is ideas that propagate, that promulgate without pontification the overriding of the soulless essence of capitalism. JAI -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#5511): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/5511 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/79587279/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
