Ask a Red III

[Takhisis]

No such text exists. Everything and everyone has bias. This is not a bad thing.

I know that there's no true objectivity in the social sciences and disciplines, but there's degrees of bias that can be considered to be more or less neutral, to a degree.

 

[Traitorfish]

Only within the terms of a specific discourse, not in any transhistorical sense, so it doesn't constitute "objectivity". You're always working with a set of necessarily perspectival assumptions- epistemological, ontological, ethical, whatever.

 

[Takhisis]

to a degree.

QFT, man.

 

[potatokiosk]

No such text exists. Everything and everyone has bias. This is not a bad thing.

Why is it not a bad thing?

 

[Takhisis]

Because the existence of biases means that there are differences of opinion, if there were no bias, it'd be because everyone was part of a hivemind with no differences of opinion between different people. All glory to the hypnotoad, indeed.

 

[luiz]

A question regarding the marxist notion of morality.

In Capital and other texts by Marx, we can see quite a strong critique of the supposedly exploitative and dehumanizing nature of [19th Century] Capitalism, in what is essentially a moral criticism of Capitalism. In fact, I'd say that this "moral preaching" aspect of his writings are a big part of their success; they resonated with a lot of people who saw the present system as unfair and wanted a more just world.

But then we read other passages by Marx where he makes little of moral considerations; where he sees himself merely as a social scientist analyzing the past modes of production and anticipating a new one being born from the decay of the present. Both Marx and Engels suggest quite clearly that the economic reality determines morality, which is in itself not central to human evolution. In some of his writings (the ones with more explicit historicism) we can pretty much read that from his POV the "moral" thing for a capitalist to do is to act as a capitalist, Ie, play his part in the stage of history as a true representative of his class. So how can we morally criticize a capitalist for paying starvation wages and brutally exploiting his workers if that's exactly what's he is supposed to do to bring about the next stage of human evolution (communism)? How is he any less moral that the proletarian who is "playing his role" by trying to seize power for his class?

Marxist morality seems to me contradictory, illogical and self-defeating.

 

[Traitorfish]

You're conflating "morals" and "ethics", and also using a question thread as a soapbox. I would advise neither.

 

[luiz]

It was a question answer and it's not like I'm the first one to pose it.

Do you have an answer? Replace morals for ethics if you prefer (it wouldn't make any difference to someone actually interested in answering).

The question is all the more valid because Marxists usually avoid replying (just like you did) by resorting to some meaningless side-argument (just like you did).

 

[Takhisis]

You're only asking rethorical questions, luiz. Is any of your questions meant to be answered by someone other than yourself?

 

[Lone Wolf]

FYI I don't think that Luiz's question was automatically hostile.

 

[Traitorfish]

Luiz's question was barely a question, so if he's trying to present himself a sincere participant in discussion, he's doing badly. None the less,

Do you have an answer? Replace morals for ethics if you prefer (it wouldn't make any difference to someone actually interested in answering).

I don't think that's true. To say that Marx makes a moral critique of capitalism is to say that he attempts to identify capitalism as something "bad" in and of itself, which I don't think is even possible within Marx's ontology, let alone something that he actually attempts. Rather, his critique is of capitalism as an obstacle towards human self-fulfilment and the living of a good life, which is simply an ethical critique. To the extent that Marx is concerned for the capitalist, it is not to suggest that he Shalt Not exploit workers- for him, this is like telling a wolf not to kill deer- but to suggest that maybe capitalism does not permit him to lead good life, either.

 

[luiz]

You're only asking rethorical questions, luiz. Is any of your questions meant to be answered by someone other than yourself?

It wasn't rhetorical at all. I am genuinely curious on how to reconcile a moral/ethical criticism of capitalism with the also Marxist notion that the capitalist must act exactly like he does to bring about the development of humanity.

FYI I don't think that Luiz's question was automatically hostile.

Indeed it wasn't supposed to be hostile at all. My last line, though critical, would only be hostile to those who treat Marx as a religious figure as opposed to a social scientist. Social scientists are liable to being wrong and coming up with contradictory theories.

I don't think that's true. To say that Marx makes a moral critique of capitalism is to say that he attempts to identify capitalism as something "bad" in and of itself, which I don't think is even possible within Marx's ontology, let alone something that he actually attempts. Rather, his critique is of capitalism as an obstacle towards human self-fulfilment and the living of a good life, which is simply an ethical critique. To the extent that Marx is concerned for the capitalist, it is not to suggest that he Shalt Not exploit workers- for him, this is like telling a wolf not to kill deer- but to suggest that maybe capitalism does not permit him to lead good life, either.

But Marx does clearly try to highlight and criticize the supposed injustices of Capitalism. It reads an awful lot like a moral critique of Capitalism, though as you correctly said that is not possible within his own ontology (that's why I said I find it contradictory). Also, how can Capitalism be an obstacle towards human self-fulfillment if, again according to Marx, it's a necessary step towards it?

Let me pose a similar question to the first one, perhaps one that can be more easily answered: why, according to Marxist thought, should one side with the proletariat (assuming one is not a proletarian himself)? Why is the proletarian' claim to power, again according to Marxist thought, any better than that of the capitalist, aristocrat or whoever?
Is it wrong, under Marxist theory, to criticize a given capitalist for ruthlessly exploiting his workers? After all, isn't he playing his part in the stage of history just as validly as the workers themselves? Isn't he doing exactly what he is supposed to do to bring about the next stage of development?

Or in another way, still: is Marx saying "this is how it is" or is he saying "this is how it's supposed to be"?

To me it seems he is mixing up both, hence the question.

 

[Traitorfish]

But Marx does clearly try to highlight and criticize the supposed injustices of Capitalism. It reads an awful lot like a moral critique of Capitalism, though as you correctly said that is not possible within his own ontology (that's why I said I find it contradictory).

I don't think that Marx makes any claim of "injustice", because he doesn't make any claim of "justice". It's not a concept which really figures into his philosophy. What he highlights is the human suffering, real suffering, and criticises the conditions which give rise to this suffering. I don't think that this requires him to assert a position outside of history, as would be implied by a "moral critique", but simply to assert the common humanity of the sufferer and the observer, which at least for Marx, contains within itself the demand to abolish the conditions which produce that suffering. At least as far as he is concerned, all of this is possible without recourse to an extra-historical morality.

Also, how can Capitalism be an obstacle towards human self-fulfillment if, again according to Marx, it's a necessary step towards it?

That's certainly a contradiction. But is that Marx offers a contradictory description of capitalism, or that Marx describes an actually-existing contradiction within capitalism? He would argue the latter: that it is the very promise of human emancipation contained within capitalism that makes its failure to fulfil that promise so unbearable.

Let me pose a similar question to the first one, perhaps one that can be more easily answered: why, according to Marxist thought, should one side with the proletariat (assuming one is not a proletarian himself)? Why is the proletarian' claim to power, again according to Marxist thought, any better than that of the capitalist, aristocrat or whoever?
Is it wrong, under Marxist theory, to criticize a given capitalist for ruthlessly exploiting his workers? After all, isn't he playing his part in the stage of history just as validly as the workers themselves? Isn't he doing exactly what he is supposed to do to bring about the next stage of development?

Or in another way, still: is Marx saying "this is how it is" or is he saying "this is how it's supposed to be"?

To me it seems he is mixing up both, hence the question.

Marx doesn't believe that a capitalist can lead any more of a fulfilled life than a proletarian can, merely a more comfortable one. For him, human self-fulfilment isn't just a case of having a certain amount of stuff at your disposable, but about the possibility of direct and authentic sociality, which is impossible in a world where social relations are mediated by commodities. Only the prole is capable of bringing such a world into existence, because only the prole is so thoroughly dispossessed as to rebel not simply against a given distribution of property or profit or political authority, but against the social conditions that produce him. For Marx, this identifies the prole as the "universal class" (a partly-ironic, partly-not inversion of the Hegelian identification of the state bureaucracy as a "universal class"), representing not merely his own specific interests, but those of humanity-in-general, and through revolution realising the former as the latter and the latter as the former. Any capitalist who wants to live a meaningful live must, Marx believes, come to the realisation that, as with Orwell, "if there is any hope, it lies with the proles".

 

[Lone Wolf]

Also, how can Capitalism be an obstacle towards human self-fulfillment if, again according to Marx, it's a necessary step towards it?
...
After all, isn't he playing his part in the stage of history just as validly as the workers themselves? Isn't he doing exactly what he is supposed to do to bring about the next stage of development?

Soviet historiography insisted that capitalism can no longer develop the productive forces, and, thus, in modern times it is obsolete as a "necessary step towards self-fulfilment". It's progressive related to pre-capitalist systems, but reactionary compared to socialism.

Rather, his critique is of capitalism as an obstacle towards human self-fulfilment and the living of a good life

but simply to assert the common humanity of the sufferer and the observer, which at least for Marx, contains within itself the demand to abolish the conditions which produce that suffering.

I think that it's exactly what Luiz means by a "moral" critique. A Proper Materialist Critique would reject any kind of liberal-bourgeois-college-pseudo-leftist "self-fulfilment" and "common humanity" nonsense, and, without any emotions or fluffy puffing about "human fulfilment", fixate on the societal classes acting in their own self-interests and capitalism's inability to increase its own productivity that make capitalism's decay inevitable. Is this Proper Materialist Critique in reality a simplification of Marx' thought?

representing not merely his own specific interests, but those of humanity-in-general,

The proletarian represents the interests of the capitalists also, since it is in the capitalists' interests to overthrow capitalism, the cappies as a class are only incapable of doing it? What gross unorthodoxy

Though I guess it isn't as unorthodox as it seems - Proper Materialist Critique insists that capitalists as a class act the way they do in their own self-interest, and, therefore, can't do anything else, while your Horrible, Totally Unmarxist Unorthodoxy states that capitalists act the way they do not in their own self-interest, but they, as a class, can't do anything else.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I guess another answer to the Keynes question is that the link between immiseration and revolution is more complex then it seems.

Is the game Civilization an instrument of the bourgeoisie's cultural hegemony, since it presents every nation as fundamentally united, with class struggle delegated to a minor tertiary annoyance factor? Are Bethesda TES games reactionary, given that there is no movement of the oppressed classes against the Empire, with any opposition to it coming from purely nationalist frameworks?

Basically, to what extent a revolution will/should reject pre-revolutionary culture? Or is it the reverse - a true revolution rejects previous ruling-class infested creations like Civilization or TES, so if they aren't rejected, we aren't dealing with a real revolution here?

I'm being semi-serious, BTW.

Semi-Serious follow up here:
What do you imagine a class based strategy game to look like?

 

[Lone Wolf]

What do you imagine a class based strategy game to look like?

Using TES example: I think that Oblivion would be much cooler if you had at least the choice to participate in a revolutionary communist movement against both the feudal-reactionary Septim dynasty and fundamentalist-reactionary Mythic Dawn cult. They have magic there, which can deal with the question of productive forces necessary for communism. It would also give a revolutionary motivation for Thieves' Guild - they are using the money stolen from feudal aristocrats and bourgeios traders in order to finance the revolution.

In strategy games, you can lead a Spartacus-style slave uprising (symbol for quite a lot of revolutionary leftists) or other uprisings of the oppressed, instead of leading a reactionary feudal-bourgeois state, like you do in Europa Universalis or Civ (at least, you can be a Communist in Victoria, but the paradigm Paradox adopts to portray Communism is definitely liberal-bourgeois).

You could control miniature sprites of revolutionary workers and agitators in a Revolution game. You need to propagate your ideas in factories and fight for improvement of workers' conditions, while avoiding reactionary policemen in an exiting mix of parliamentary stimulator and Pac-Man. In the middle, the game becomes more like an Age of Nations-like RTS, in which your battalions of revolutionary workers fight policemen, bourgeois mercenaries and liberal parliamentarians who turn against you. In all culminates in a Civ-like turn-based grand strategy of a Global Civil War in which you can use propaganda to turn workers conscripted by 'Whites' on your side and then spread the revolution around the globe.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

In strategy games, you can lead a Spartacus-style slave uprising (symbol for quite a lot of revolutionary leftists)

Foolish ones. Spartacus' revolt, and Antique slave revolts in general, were about a bunch of slaves who wanted to stop being slaves. Spartacus et. al wanted to go home. The slave revolt in Syracuse that Hermocrates crushed owned its own slaves. These revolts were not aimed at the liberation of anyone except the revolting slaves themselves. They never attempted to End Slavery, nor were they even directed at slavery as a concept.

 

[ace99]

Using TES example: I think that Oblivion would be much cooler if you had at least the choice to participate in a revolutionary communist movement against both the feudal-reactionary Septim dynasty and fundamentalist-reactionary Mythic Dawn cult. They have magic there, which can deal with the question of productive forces necessary for communism. It would also give a revolutionary motivation for Thieves' Guild - they are using the money stolen from feudal aristocrats and bourgeios traders in order to finance the revolution.

Skyrim has Stormcloaks and Morrowind has the Twin Lamps.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Stormcloaks are nationalistic rebels, not class-based ones. Not revolutionary.
I guess the Twin Lamp abolitionists sort of qualify, but their goals are very limited when compared to the Proper Revolutionary Standard. I guess that is as far as the bourgeois developers are willing to go.

 

[Traitorfish]

Skyrim is actually a pretty good potted example of how bourgeois ideology- it's meant to be a pre-modern feudal/tribal/whatever sort of set up, but everyone's a commodity-producer (everyone's basically a capitalist, petty bourgeois or wage-labourer), the major political movement are liberal nationalists, and even the jarls are more like overly-powerful mayors than medieval potentates. It's basically early 19th century England in a bearskin and spikes- because, of course, that's simply how things have always been, forever, and always will.


On the other hand, I do like how both Morrowind and Skyrim present the Empire as a very precarious project, resting on a tenuous and irregular web of constantly-contested relationships, rather than the world-striding behemoth usually presented in fantasy empires. Pre-existing social and political structures continue to exist, and the Imperials have to have navigate these structures as much as they do the physical landscape- while, at the same time, the indigenous peoples and their institutions aren't just invariant objects of scenery, they're active agents who must navigate the structures of the Empire in return, and both of them have to navigate the new structures that their encounter throws up. I mean, granted, the basic reason they have great houses in Vvardenfell and jarls in Skyrim is from the designer's point of view as much about local/game-specific colour as anything else, but they way they've worked that into the lore is pretty impressive, at least in the context of a beards-and-dragons adventure game.

I just wish they'd integrated it into the civil war storyline in Skyrim a bit more effectively, because as it is the conflict is rendered pretty crudely as "loyalists vs. nationalists", when they had the opportunity to embed it, so to speak, more properly within in the internal society and politics of Skyrim, but the closest we seem to get to that is that some of the jarls think Ulfric's a jerk, and some of them think he's okay. They handle it a bit better in Morrowind, where all the pro-/anti-empire stuff is tied up with the pre-imperial relations between the great houses- and particularly how, from the perspective of the native dunmer, the imperial question is an inflection on their own internal conflicts as much as it is one imposed from outside, which is usually how these things actually work- but that conflict is never foregrounded in quite the way it is in Skyrim.