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#14814483
I guess I'll reiterate. Why do you feel the need to (morally!) justify your actions when you are supposedly a Marxist? Please note that Marxists do not believe that anything like an objective morality exists, and that therefore, no ethical justification of anything you do is necessary (or even possible).

Marxist is justified instrumentally rather than via some abstract moralism. Whatever expands the forces of production is objectively good, whatever acts as a fetter on the forces of production is objectively bad. Before the Bolshevik Revolution, Russian society was mired in an ages-long feudal poverty and backwardness. After Stalin's industrialisation drive of the 1930s, which was tested in the furnace of total war, Russia had become one of the world's only two superpowers. As Churchill said, "Stalin [and by extension the Bolsheviks] found Russia with the wooden plough, and left it with the atomic bomb."

As for why it is necessary to justify one's actions, as Decky pointed out it is only petty criminals and the lumpen refuse of society who feel no need to justify their actions or behaviour beyond asserting that it's what they want to do at that particular moment. As Marx colourfully put it, such people are the shit excreted by the capitalist system. A bourgeois liberal justifies themselves by mouthing copy-book moralistic maxims which have no connection with reality, while living in comfort and high status by sucking the blood of the working people. They have their 'morality', and we have ours.
#14814501
Out of curiosity why would expanding healthcare so that more people lead healthier lives be a moralistic Maxim but expanding the forces of production isn't?

Surely expanding production is still tied to making people's lives better. Which is still a moralistic Maxim.
#14814506
Out of curiosity why would expanding healthcare so that more people lead healthier lives be a moralistic Maxim but expanding the forces of production isn't?

Socialised healthcare is worth having - in fact, is a necessity in a modern capitalist society - because a healthy workforce is a productive work force. The neo-liberals in the US, of course, are too blinded by short-term greed to be able to see this. This has nothing to do with moralism.

Surely expanding production is still tied to making people's lives better. Which is still a moralistic Maxim.

Define 'better'. There is only one objective definition of a 'better life', and that is a life which enables the individual to maximise their human and social potential as members of society. This requires a massive expansion of the forces of production, which capitalism has made possible. What capitalism has not made possible, and cannot make possible, is for the vast majority of the population to enjoy the fruits of that expansion of production. Massive economic inequality of outcomes is built into the capitalist system at its most fundamental level; in fact, it's a necessity for the system to continue working.
#14814509
For me I think better is pretty subjective. It's not clear to me that average happiness, fulfillment, or what have you come from maximizing their "human and social potential" (which could mean just about anything).

I don't know how you can ever divorce these things from emotionality and have the gall to call them objective. I think humans are fundamentally irrational. Our feelings, values, beliefs, morals, and actions are all ultimately irrational. It seems to me that to declare production or any other thing as an objective universal good is something you can't ever actual do.

I think this is why stuff like false conciousness always annoyed me. If a working class person thinks they are happy and fulfilled communists will just tell them they are wrong and they are actually miserable. (Not that you specifically do this but you know the type of communist that runs around at universities)

I think my main point is that you cannot simply declare anything objectively good by saying it maximizes human potential. That just moves the moralistic Maxim one step further down the argument by declared that vauge notion into a moral good.
#14814515
Potemkin wrote:As Churchill said, "Stalin [and by extension the Bolsheviks] found Russia with the wooden plough, and left it with the atomic bomb."


Nonsense as usual. Economically the Russian revolution was a disaster. Stalin "corrected" the mistakes of his commie predecessors and brought development back to its long-term trend, at a very high cost as we all know.

Potemkin wrote:Whatever expands the forces of production is objectively good, whatever acts as a fetter on the forces of production is objectively bad.


Eh wtf? :lol:
#14814516
For me I think better is pretty subjective. It's not clear to me that average happiness, fulfillment, or what have you come from maximizing their "human and social potential" (which could mean just about anything).

It means fulfilling their potential. You find out what their potential is, and then seek to enable them to maximise that potential and make a contribution to human society, either as scientists, as musicians, as engineers, as poets, or even simply as care-givers. This is quite objective. The Soviet government always prided itself on seeking out talented individuals from the poorest categories of society, and nurturing their talent.

Image

I don't know how you can ever divorce these things from emotionality and have the gall to call them objective. I think humans are fundamentally irrational. Our feelings, values, beliefs, morals, and actions are all ultimately irrational. It seems to me that to declare production or any other thing as an objective universal good is something you can't ever actual do.

Then how is it possible to adopt any coherent political position? How can you then say, with any shred of credibility, that "this is what we believe is good for America, and this is how we're going to achieve it"? If you don't believe that your own political beliefs are objectively true in some sense, then who will believe it? :eh:

I believe that human society can be studied objectively, in the same sort of way that the natural world can be studied objectively. Just as there is a science of biology, so there is (or in principle can be) a science of human society. And Karl Marx founded that science.

I think this is why stuff like false conciousness always annoyed me. If a working class person thinks they are happy and fulfilled communists will just tell them they are wrong and they are actually miserable. (Not that you specifically do this but you know the type of communist that runs around at universities)

False consciousness is not merely a belief that one is happy when one 'actually' isn't happy. That would be an absurdity. False consciousness involves a belief about the objective world which is not factually correct - for example, that what is good for the employer must also be good for the employee. This is a belief about the real world, and is factually incorrect. This is why it is possible, in principle, to dispel false consciousness by presenting facts and reasoned arguments.

I think my main point is that you cannot simply declare anything objectively good by saying it maximizes human potential. That just moves the moralistic Maxim one step further down the argument by declared that vauge notion into a moral good.

It's not a vague notion, and can be objectively measured. A person's potential can be, to a large degree, objectively measured. In fact, we do that all the time in capitalist society. What do you think exams are for? :eh:
#14814522
These might be interesting works to consider the way in which Marx muddies the is/ought (fact/value distinction). I haven't got a good handle on it because not familiar enough with Marxism and certainly unfamiliar with moral philosophy. But I have things that I have the sense might be fruitful in what perspectives they can offer. I suppose it might be useful to look at ontology to see the influence of Hegel upon Marxism and how it doesn't subscribe to the sort of fragmented and independence of things from one another common to a lot of thought. I get the impression a sort of process philosophy, one of a world in flux and not static entities which are seen as abstractions helps to see that things are related to one another.

http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdf
In evaluating specific moral questions, Marx evaluates a whole host of concrete historical factors to reach a conclusion about whether a particular action, principle, movement, etc., is such as to promote or inhibit the realization of human nature and the development of what he calls “rich individuals,” human beings for whom the exercise, development, and expansion of their own capacities is their greatest need, and for whom labor has been transformed from drudgery into “life's prime want.” And so morality, according to Marx, is not mere abstract moralizing, but a scientific analysis of which things are most likely to promote the development of human beings. The morality he develops is thoroughly historical, and so the specific fact of the matter about whether an action or a state of affairs is moral or immoral can be different in different historical situations. However, on Marx's view it is possible to say with a very reasonable degree of accuracy which things are actually likely to promote the development of the “rich individuality” of human beings, and which things are not. This allows Marx to claim an objectivity for the moral judgements that he makes.

Facts, Values and Marxism - Susan M. Easton
Spoiler: show
p. 126
A. Servitude: Scientific Description or Moral Evaluation?
Words such as 'servitude' and 'exploitation', one could argue, have a role in our language analagous to that occupied by terms such as 'liar' and 'thief' insofar as each combines factual and evaluative elements. For Engels, as we saw earlier, exploitation was a technical term used to describe the relationship between capitalist and worker. But it could also be seen as expressing certain values. For there is no way in which exploitation may be explained without containing pejorative notions. To understand how to employ this concept in the context of Marx's theories of surplus value is to understand what is wrong with an economic and political system. Just as one acquires the appropriate values in learning the correct use of the word 'liar', so one can be said to acquire a certain attitude towards capitalism when one learns the usage of concepts such as 'servitude', 'pauperization', 'ruling class', 'alienation' and 'surplus value'. The difference is that whilst for Phillips and Mounce one learns how to employ terms such as 'thief', 'liar' and so on in the course of conforming to society, Marx held that terms such as 'servitude' are acquired in learning how to transform capitalist society. But both share the view that moral concepts are acquired in human activity rather than in the speculations of philosophy.
Marx often referred to servitude and alienation in describing capitalism and accepted that these were good reasons for attacking it. But he never advanced an additional philosophical argument to show why these factors would constitute good reasons for condemning it,just as Phillips and Mounce argue that we require no further argument to establish that lying is bad. No doubt Marx was fully aware that capitalism could not be adequately undermined with an appeal to its own moral criteria. Presumably he felt that the reasons contained in his theory were sufficient. Hence no further appeal to moral principles was necessary to demonstrate the iniquity of capitalism.
Given this, the question of whether Marxism is prescriptive or descriptive, moralistic or scientific, is misplaced. This point has been made by Wood in his article 'The Marxian Critique of Justice':

Marx's own reasons for condemning capitalism are contained in his comprehensive theory of the historical genesis, the organic functioning, and the prognosis of the capitalist mode of production. And this is not itself a moral theory, nor does it include any particular moral principles as such. But neither is it 'merely descriptive', in the tedious philosophical sense which is supposed to make it seem problematic how anything of that sort could ever be a reason for condemning what is so 'described'. There is nothing problematic about saying that disguised exploitation, unnecessary servitude, economic instability, and declining productivity are features of a productive system which constitute good reasons for condemning it.~9

No one has denied that capitalism, understood as Marx's theory understands it, is a system of unnecessary servitude, replete with irrationalities and ripe for destruction. Still less has anyone defended capitalism by claiming that a system of this sort might after all be good or desirable, and it is doubtful that any moral philosophy which could support such a claim would deserve serious consideration. 20

p. 129
Indeed to argue that every man has an unalienable right to appropriate the full value of his labour, and that a denial of this right constitutes an injustice, is anachronistic. For it presupposes a mode of production based on individual private property with each individual producing his own means of production, a mode of production very different from capitalism whose hallmark is the co-operation of men in the work process using the same means of production.
Insofar as the extraction of surplus value is the fundamental and defining feature of capitalism, there can be no moral objection to this practice within the framework of a capitalist mode of production. The extraction of surplus value, argues Wood, is just and to try to deprive the capitalist of surplus value is unjust. It would therefore be wrong "to suppose that Marx's critique of capitalism is necessarily rooted in any particular moral or social ideal or principle".
The extraction of surplus value is not an abuse of capitalist production or an unfair practice within capitalism that should be abolished. On the contrary, this appropriation is of the essence of capitalism. It cannot be removed by social and political reforms. Only a complete change in the mode of production can remove it and this would involve a transformation of capitalism itself.
But if the extraction of surplus value may be defended as just, why did Marx condemn capitalism? Wood responds to this question in the following way:

It would be extremely naive to suppose that there could be any single, simple answer to such a question. The only genuine answer to it is Marx's comprehensive theory of capitalism as a concrete historical mode of production; for it was as a whole that Marx condemned capitalism, and his condemnation was based on what he believed was a unified and essentially complete analysis of its inner workings and its position in human history. Capitalism, in Marx's view, had performed a valuable historical task in developing social forces of production. He even speaks of this development as the historical 'justification' of capital. But this development had taken place at enormous human cost. Not only had it impoverished the physical existence of the mass of workers whose labour had brought about the development of productive forces, but the intellectual and moral lives of men had been impoverished by it as well. The rapidity of social change under capitalism had created a permanent state of instability and disorder in social relationships which had taken away from human happiness perhaps more than was added by the increase in human productive capacities. But the capitalist era, itself, in Marx's view, was drawing to a close. Marx argued that the capacity of capitalism further to develop the forces of production was meeting with increasing obstacles, obstacles resulting from the organic workings of the capitalist system of production itself. At the same time, and partly as a result of these same obstacles, the human cost of capitalism was growing steadily greater. The interests and needs of fewer and fewer were being served by its continuation, and its preservation was being made more and more difficult by the cumulative effects of its own essential processes. 25

Marx's critique of capitalism is derived from his account of the workings of capitalism rather than from abstract moral principles. Society is always changing. As it changes so does its own standards of justice. The exploitation characteristic of relationships between men in capitalist society cannot therefore be construed as unjust. Nor can this exploitation be removed by the demand for and extension of human rights or an appeal to absolute moral principles. Indeed Marx was highly suspicious of the abstract ideals of the French Revolution which he thought would serve to divert the working class away from its historical role as the agent of social change. If each mode of production has its own standards of justice we cannot say that Communism is better or more just than capitalism, as Taylor, Allen and Kline, each in their own way, imply. If there is no external moral standard against which different societies may be measured, the Communist society described by Marx cannot be seen as a better alternative. Nor can Marx be seen as advancing a moral theory. On the contrary he argues that "Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and the cultural development conditioned by it". 26 What comes with Communism is a new mode of production with its own peculiar judicial and moral institutions and practices. It will not be more or less just than capitalism but simply appropriate to that particular way of life.

p. 132
From the foregoing discussion we can note that whilst Marx transcends the fact-value distinction he embraces neither a scientistic approach nor a moral theory. Rather he gives a sociological account of morality, illustrating that description and evaluation cannot be separated and that juridical conceptions need to be understood in relation to the mode of production in which they arise, s° In the absence of an absolute notion of justice it is mistaken to see Marx as offering a critique of capitalism based on moral principles. Of course Marx had reasons for attacking capitalism but these are contained within his account of the capitalist mode of production. Yet whilst this theory is not a moral theory it cannot be described as a descriptive theory either. In Marx's work description and evaluation cannot be meaningfully separated.

In portraying Communist society as the solution to problems generated within capitalist society Marx is not sketching out a picture of a morally superior society but rather considering the possibilities of an alternative way of life with its own moral and judicial standards. Indeed the fact that Marx did not provide blueprints for future Communist society is itself symptomatic of his awareness of the difficulties involved in the attempt to describe in detail a form of social life based upon principles different from our own.

Is There a Marxian Ethic? - Bertell Ollman
Spoiler: show
I prefer to say that Marx did not have an ethical theory. But how then to explain the approval and disapproval which he expresses in his works, the fact that he sided with the proletariat and incited them to overthrow the system? How, too, it may be asked, do I account for his attachment to the cause of humanity and to the ideas of communism and human fulfillment? In asking such question, however, one must be careful not to assume at the outset the form the answer must take. For this is what happens if one is saying, 'Here are two worlds, facts and values; how do you link them?' But to accept that reality is halved in this way is to admit failure from the start. On the contrary, the relational conception which was discussed in the last two chapters required that Marx consider what was known, advocated, condemned or done by everyone, himself included, as internally related. Every facet of the real world, and people's actions and thoughts as elements in it, are mutually dependent on each other for what they are, and must be understood accordingly.

The logical distinction which is said to exist between facts and values is founded on the belief that it is possible to conceive of one without the other. Given a particular fact, the argument runs, one may without contradiction attach any value to it. The fact itself does not entail a specific value. Historically the view that moral beliefs are contingent has tended to go along with the view that they are also arbitrary. On this model, all judgment depends in the last instance on the independent se of values which each individual, for reasons best known to himself, brings to the situation. The ethical premise is not only a final arbiter but a mysterious one, defying sociological and even psychological analysis. Though some recent defenders of orthodoxy have sought to muddle the distinction between fact and value with talk of 'context', 'function', 'real reference', 'predisposition', etc., the logical line drawn in conception remains. Yet, if one cannot conceive of anything one chooses to call a fact (because it is an open ended relation) without bringing in evaluative elements (and vice versa), the very problem orthodox thinkers have set out to answer cannot be posed.

Moreover, on Marx's view, the real judgments which are made in any situation are a function of that situation and the particular individuals active in it. Thus, the very notion that it is logically permissible to take any attitude toward a given 'fact' is itself a judgment inherent in the circumstances out of which it emerges. Rather than being logically independent of what is, any choice—as well as the idea that one has a choice is linked by innumerable threads to the real world, including the life, class interests, and character of the person acting. Judgments can never be severed, neither practically nor logically, from their contexts and the number of real alternatives which they allow. In this perspective, what is called the fact-value distinction, appears as a form of self-deception, an attempt to deny what has already been done by claiming that it could not have been done or still remains to do.

Marx would not have denied that the statements "This is what exists' and 'What exists is good' or 'This is what should exist', mark some distinction, but he would not have called it one of fact and value. If we define "fact" as a statement of something known to have happened or knowable, and 'value' as that property in any thing for which we esteem or condemn it As man is a creature of needs and purposes, however much they may vary for different people, it could not be otherwise. Because everything we know (whether in its immediacy or in some degree of extension through conditions and results) bears some relation to our needs and purposes, there is nothing we know toward which we not have attitudes, either for, against or indifferent.

Likewise, our 'values' are all attached to what we take to be the 'facts', and could not be what they are apart from them. It is not simply that the 'facts' affect our values', and our 'values' affect what we take to be the 'facts—both respectable common sense positions—but that, in any given case, each includes the other and is part of what is meant by the other's concept. In these circumstances, to try to split their union into logically distinct halves is to distort their real character.

Followers of Marx have always known that what people approve or condemn can only be understood through a deep-going social analysis, particularly of their needs and interest as members of a class. What emerges from the foregoing is that the forms in which approval and condemnation appear—like setting up absolute principles or values—must be understood through the same kind of analysis. This is not the place to undertake such an analysis, but it may be useful to sketch its broad outlines. The attempt to establish values which apply equally to everyone results, to al large extent, from the need to defuse growing class conflict arising from incompatible interest in a class-ridden society. To apply values equally is to abstract from the unequal conditions in which people live and the incompatible interest that result. The main effort of capitalist ideology has always been directed to dismissing or playing down this incompatibility. The abstractions with which such ideology abounds are so many attempts to sever the class-affected 'facts' from the judgments and actions that ordinarily follow upon their comprehension.

Marx goes so far as to suggest that the fact—value distinction is itself a symptom of man's alienation in modern capitalist society: 'It stems from the very nature of estrangement that each sphere applies to men a different and opposite yardstick—ethics one and political economy another.'11 A chief characteristic of alienation, as we shall learn, is the separation of what does not allow separation without distortion. The organic unity of reality has been exchanged for distinct spheres of activity whose interrelations in the social whole can no longer be ascertained. Removed from their real context, the individual's relations with nature and society, taken one at a time, appear other than they are. As part of this process, many, often contradictory yardsticks for measuring achievement come into existence for different areas of life, making all broad plans of reform seem 'illogical' or 'irrational' in some respect of other. In this context, it would appear that altogether too much attention has been paid to the biased and false message in capitalist ideology and too little to what is predisposed in the forms of though themselves, to the class advantage contained in accepted rules of thinking. For any attempt to universalize a moral code, whatever its content, by undercutting the reality of class conflict only succeeds in serving capitalist ends.

As far as Marx's own work is concerned, those remarks which strike us as being an evaluative nature are internally relate facets of all he says and knows, which in turn are internally tied to his life and all surrounding circumstances—not as an exception, but because everything in the world is related in this way. However, being conscious of this, Marx integrated his remarks of approval and disapproval more closely into his system than have most other thinkers, making any surgical division into facts and values so much more destructive of his meaning. For example, Marx claims that when a communist stands in front of 'a crowd of scrofulous, overworked and consumptive starvelings', he sees 'the necessity, and at the same time the condition, of a transformation both of industry and of the social structure'.12 Marx is asserting that for those who share his outlook these 'facts' contain their own condemnation and a call to do something about them. If an individual ''''chooses otherwise, it is not because he had made a contrary moral judgment, but because the particular relations in which he stands (the class to which he belongs, his personal history, etc.) have led him to a different appreciation of the facts.13

I don't have a good handle on it myself as I'm not that educated on Marxism nor moral philosophy. But it's been interesting to see that Marx doesn't make moral arguments, but still makes evaluative statements in his analysis of capitalism. And I get the impression that it's because morality isn't some abstract metaphysical universal thing but something founded in our real conditions. And within these real world conditions we inject a certain subjectivity into how we perceive them.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch07.htm
We therefore reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever as an eternal, ultimate and for ever immutable ethical law on the pretext that the moral world, too, has its permanent principles which stand above history and the differences between nations. We maintain on the contrary that all moral theories have been hitherto the product, in the last analysis, of the economic conditions of society obtaining at the time. And as society has hitherto moved in class antagonisms, morality has always been class morality; it has either justified the domination and the interests of the ruling class, or ever since the oppressed class became powerful enough, it has represented its indignation against this domination and the future interests of the oppressed. That in this process there has on the whole been progress in morality, as in all other branches of human knowledge, no one will doubt. But we have not yet passed beyond class morality. A really human morality which stands above class antagonisms and above any recollection of them becomes possible only at a stage of society which has not only overcome class antagonisms but has even forgotten them in practical life. And now one can gauge Herr Dühring’s presumption in advancing his claim, from the midst of the old class society and on the eve of a social revolution, to impose on the future classless society an eternal morality independent of time and changes in reality. Even assuming — what we do not know up to now — that he understands the structure of the society of the future at least in its main outlines.

Things are very real and not purely subjective even when they're not empirical entities as they relate to the real conditions and social relations of our lived existence. So that as the concrete world changes, so to does our sense of how real the ideological layer on top of it is.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch01.htm
Spoiler: show
Let us take an example. No philosophical proposition has earned more gratitude from narrow-minded governments and wrath from equally narrow-minded liberals than Hegel’s famous statement: “All that is real is rational; and all that is rational is real.” That was tangibly a sanctification of things that be, a philosophical benediction bestowed upon despotism, police government, Star Chamber proceedings and censorship. That is how Frederick William III and how his subjects understood it. But according to Hegel certainly not everything that exists is also real, without further qualification. For Hegel the attribute of reality belongs only to that which at the same time is necessary: “In the course of its development reality proves to be necessity.” A particular governmental measure — Hegel himself cites the example of “a certain tax regulation” — is therefore for him by no means real without qualification. That which is necessary, however, proves itself in the last resort to be also rational; and, applied to the Prussian state of that time, the Hegelian proposition, therefore, merely means: this state is rational, corresponds to reason, insofar as it is necessary; and if it nevertheless appears to us to be evil, but still, in spite of its evil character, continues to exist, then the evil character of the government is justified and explained by the corresponding evil character of its subjects. The Prussians of that day had the government that they deserved.

Now, according to Hegel, reality is, however, in no way an attribute predictable of any given state of affairs, social or political, in all circumstances and at all times. On the contrary. The Roman Republic was real, but so was the Roman Empire, which superseded it. In 1789, the French monarchy had become so unreal, that is to say, so robbed of all necessity, so irrational, that it had to be destroyed by the Great Revolution, of which Hegel always speaks with the greatest enthusiasm. In this case, therefore, the monarchy was the unreal and the revolution the real. And so, in the course of development, all that was previously real becomes unreal, loses it necessity, its right of existence, its rationality. And in the place of moribund reality comes a new, viable reality — peacefully if the old has enough intelligence to go to its death without a struggle; forcibly if it resists this necessity. Thus the Hegelian proposition turns into its opposite through Hegelian dialectics itself: All that is real in the sphere of human history, becomes irrational in the process of time, is therefore irrational by its very destination, is tainted beforehand with irrationality, and everything which is rational in the minds of men is destined to become real, however much it may contradict existing apparent reality. In accordance with all the rules of the Hegelian method of thought, the proposition of the rationality of everything which is real resolves itself into the other proposition: All that exists deserves to perish.

But precisely therein lay the true significance and the revolutionary character of the Hegelian philosophy (to which, as the close of the whole movement since Kant, we must here confine ourselves), that it once and for all dealt the death blow to the finality of all product of human thought and action. Truth, the cognition of which is the business of philosophy, was in the hands of Hegel no longer an aggregate of finished dogmatic statements, which, once discovered, had merely to be learned by heart. Truth lay now in the process of cognition itself, in the long historical development of science, which mounts from lower to ever higher levels of knowledge without ever reaching, by discovering so-called absolute truth, a point at which it can proceed no further, where it would have nothing more to do than to fold its hands and gaze with wonder at the absolute truth to which it had attained. And what holds good for the realm of philosophical knowledge holds good also for that of every other kind of knowledge and also for practical action. Just as knowledge is unable to reach a complete conclusion in a perfect, ideal condition of humanity, so is history unable to do so; a perfect society, a perfect “state”, are things which can only exist in imagination. On the contrary, all successive historical systems are only transitory stages in the endless course of development of human society from the lower to the higher. Each stage is necessary, and therefore justified for the time and conditions to which it owes its origin. But in the face of new, higher conditions which gradually develop in its own womb, it loses vitality and justification. It must give way to a higher stage which will also in its turn decay and perish. Just as the bourgeoisie by large-scale industry, competition, and the world market dissolves in practice all stable time-honored institutions, so this dialectical philosophy dissolves all conceptions of final, absolute truth and of absolute states of humanity corresponding to it. For it [dialectical philosophy], nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher. And dialectical philosophy itself is nothing more than the mere reflection of this process in the thinking brain. It has, of course, also a conservative side; it recognizes that definite stages of knowledge and society are justified for their time and circumstances; but only so far. The conservatism of this mode of outlook is relative; its revolutionary character is absolute — the only absolute dialectical philosophy admits.


So for example, when the cops come in and break up a protest, the evaluation one makes of it would be based on how one perceives the legitimacy of the state. Which might be quite strong even though one might argue that it isn't against their interest in some way. But there is a general tendency of many to take different perspectives based on their relation to that objective condition.
A country invades another and kills their people, one side sees evil invaders, one sees evil commies people or some other propaganda, there is not neutral position from which one can stand.

I'm not familiar enough with their thinking but have the impression that some empiricists tend to treat only empirical entities as real and everything else as superfluous subjectivity that isn't as real as the empirically real.
http://69.195.124.91/~brucieba/2014/04/13/ilyenkovs-dialectic-of-the-abstract-and-the-concrete-i/
Ilyekov then reviews the failure of the empiricism of James Stuart Mill:

“For example, value in general, value as such, may according to Mill be conceived in abstraction, without analysing any of the types of its existence outside the head. This may and must be done precisely for the reason that it does not exist as a real property of objects outside the head. It only exists as an artificial method of assessment or measurement, as a general principle of man’s subjective attitude to the world of things, that is, as a certain moral attitude. It cannot therefore be considered as a property of things themselves, outside the head, outside consciousness.

According to this kind of logic, of which Mill is a classic representative, that is precisely why value should be regarded only as a concept, only as an a priori moral phenomenon independent from the objective properties of things outside the head and opposing them. As such, it exists only in self-consciousness, in abstract thinking. That is why it can be conceived ‘abstractly’, and that will be the correct mode of considering it.”

Hence why everything is so simple for the empiricists as material reality has been rigorously defined in advance as existing outside of the head that much of sophisticated philosophical enquiry into the nature of logic was seen as wasted effort. This mode of thought is the dominant one in western philosophy whereby we can dispense with abstract thought being a reflection of anything in the material world as this is completely fixed, unchangeable or static. All that is required is to gather more knowledge of the real existing state of things whereby we accumulate more understanding of it; a mere piling up of more and more facts about the objects of investigation before us. In this sense abstract thought has no real place in philosophy and definitely not in logic but deserves to be placed in the field of ethics or morals.

Ilyenkov dismantles the faults of this system by recourse to the advances in logic made by Hegel.

And I also get the impression that British empiricists such as Mill as summarized above adhere to a correspondence theory of truth which entirely neglects the actively perceiving subject.
http://braungardt.trialectics.com/projects/my-papers/lacan-parmenides/
Spoiler: show
If Lacan claims the discordance between knowledge and being as his subject, he takes an epistemological position that is diametrically opposed to the most common theory of truth, the correspondence theory. This theory, which is customarily attributed to Aristotle and which can be traced back to Plato’s “Theaetetus” and the “Sophist,” claims in short that a proposition is true if it corresponds to the facts. Correspondence theory has survived in various formulations until today, not so much because of the strength of its supportive arguments, but because of the weakness of the alternatives. It is intuitively the most acceptable theory. Nobody would deny that the real somehow affects us in perception. We are part of the real ourselves, but the question is how this exposure or inclusion can become knowledge. Lacan argues that the birth of the subject amounts to the experience of trauma and loss, and therefore knowledge can be considered as a defense against the traumatic impact of the real.

Correspondence theory is somewhat independent from particular ontological theories about nature or about the structure of reality. Its major flaw is that it is essentially tautological because it does not differentiate between truth and its justification (the test or the criterion for truth-statements.) The argument is circular, because the only criterion for the truth of a statement is the recourse to reality, but it is this relationship that is in question when we ask for the truth of a proposition.

Its strength is the fact that it avoids making truth dependent on the psyche (as in pragmatic or relativistic theories of truth, or in the coherence theory). For the correspondence theory truth does not depend on the structure of the mind. The basic idea behind the correspondence theory is a mirror model of the mind: it reflects the real. The model implies that the mind is essentially passive: it receives sensory data like images and then represents those images linguistically. Obviously the mind does more than that: In order to recognize similarity, identity, or difference, there must be an active principle in the mind that sorts, categorizes and compares the stream of sensory data. Where do those criteria come from? Are they inherent in the mind, or do they have a basis in perception? The classical answer, devised by Aristotle and adopted by Thomas, is twofold. According to their moderate metaphysical realism, concepts have a foundation in reality (“fundamentum in re”): Intelligibility means that things have general traits that allow their categorization in relation to a firm ontological structure (for instance Aristotle’s theory of categories). In addition to the intelligibility hypothesis, the act of recognition requires an “active intellect” (“intellectus agens.”) 23 Knowledge is shaped by the real as well as by an active power inherent in the mind. The mind acts as the principle that actualizes the form within the sensory image that we receive from the thing and thus reveals its suchness, or what in the tradition is called its “essence” (“Quidditas”).
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The second reason for Lacan’s rejection of the adequation theory is the elimination of the subjective dimension of truth. It assumes that the knowing subject is self-transparent. What is the difference between a proposition “p” and “p is true”? Against deflationary theories of truth, which claim that there is no difference, one can argue that the second proposition, “p is true” is a proposition about a proposition: it adds not more content, but another dimension. This dimension is no longer independent from the subject. Whereas traditional theories of truth only consider the polar opposites true/false, Lacan considers the opposition truth/lie. The reason for his emphasis on the “I am lying” example is exactly this: If one only thinks of the relationship between concept and reality for the question of truth, as the adequation theory does, then one has already foreclosed the dimension where the question of truth gains its relevance for us: the human dimension. Subsequently, on the level of concept/reality alone, the “I am lying” becomes a paradox, because “I” can only be understood as an entity that thinks: being has ontological priority. (This is the shadow of Parmenides.) The contradiction dissolves if one separates “I” from being; the separation shifts the dimension of truth from concept/reality to subject/Other (understood as the locus of the signifier) or to the relationship subject/language. In order to gain such a two-dimensional view of the concept of “truth” one has to accept the priority of the signifier in relation to the signified as a well as in relation to the subject.

Representatives of the adequatio theory realized that although truth is always truth for somebody, it cannot be subjective. They argue that the subject has to be excluded from the definition of truth because we live in a common reality (the facts of the world are the same for all of us). The exclusion of the subject is done with the assumption that the mind – as mirror – is self-transparent and that the subject in its particularity can be separated from the epistemic process. Because human consciousness can be self-referential it is easy to assume that the “I” is identical with itself; the next step is the subtraction of the subject from the equation of truth, even if it is the subject that enunciates the truth-statement. For Lacan, then, the correspondence theory hides the deeper split between the subject and the real as well as the split within the subject itself. What remains is the construction of a common reality.

For every speaking being, the cause of its desire is, in terms of structure, strictly equivalent, so to speak, to its bending, that is, to what I have called its division as subject. That is what explains why the subject could believe for so long that the world knew as much about things as he did. The world is symmetrical to the subject — the world of what I last time called thought is the equivalent, the mirror image, of thought. That is why there was noth­ing but fantasy regarding knowledge until the advent of the most modern science.” 26

I think Marx's thought is interesting to note how he makes very real abstractions that don't exist as some empirical entity, but are of course very real as they're thoroughly developed from simplest of abstractions to more "concrete" sorts. This he no doubt picked up in his education under the influence of Hegelian thought. Like money having value is in a sense socially constructed, but I don't stop the existence of it having its social function in becoming aware of that. That it's given an essence of some value expressed in numbers on a screen or pieces of metal/paper/plastic. Hell, its even an element of how abstract society is where the real value produced by human labour isn't even in view in such relations, money is seen as the relation, which develops in the necessity of having a means of a standardized value on which all commodities with different use value can share so that they can be exchanged appropriately.
Another element of how alienated people are, where they don't see the real relations between people but between things.
Spoiler: show
https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch04.htm
Corresponding to his concept of the wealthy man is Marx's view of the difference between the sense of having and the sense of being. "Private property," he says, "has made us so stupid and partial that an object is only ours when we have it, when it exists for us as capital or when it is directly eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc., in short, utilized in some way. Although private property itself only conceives these various forms of possession as means of life, and the life for which they serve as means is the life of private property -- labor and creation of capital. Thus all the physical and intellectual senses have been replaced by the simple alienation of all these senses; the sense of having. The human being had to be reduced to this absolute poverty in order to be able to give birth to all his inner wealth." [50]

Marx recognized that the science of capitalistic economy, despite its worldly and pleasure-seeking appearance, "is a truly moral science, the most moral of all sciences. Its principal thesis is the renunciation of life and of human needs. The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the public house [ Br., pub], and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither moth nor rust will corrupt -- your capital. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being. Everything which the economist takes from you in the way of life and humanity, he restores to you in the form of money and wealth. And everything which you are unable to do, your money can do for you; it can eat, drink, go to the ball and to the theatre. It can acquire art, learning, historical treasures, political power; and it can travel. It can appropriate all these things for you, can purchase everything; it is the true opulence. But although it can do all this, it only desires to create itself, and to buy itself, for everything else is subservient to it. When one owns the master, one also owns the servant, and one has no need of the master's servant. Thus all passions and activities must be submerged in avarice. The worker must have just what is necessary for him to want to live, and he must want to live only in order to have this." [51]
#14814527
It means fulfilling their potential. You find out what their potential is, and then seek to enable them to maximise that potential and make a contribution to human society, either as scientists, as musicians, as engineers, as poets, or even simply as care-givers. This is quite objective. The Soviet government always prided itself on seeking out talented individuals from the poorest categories of society, and nurturing their talent.


My point was not that nurturing talent is subjective (though I do think there are some ultimately subjective elements to determining talent and potential). My point was that nurturing talent a moral good is subjective not objective.

Then how is it possible to adopt any coherent political position?


I don't think any political positions is completely coherent from the point of view of objective reality. I don't believe we have access to objective reality. We have an internal construct that represents reality that is fundamentally flawed by our own natures. Our emotions shape our beliefs about what reality is.

My view is that fundamentally humanity is essentially irrational. We can certainly apply rationality from a premise using our models of reality and then hash it out in society by discourse. Even measure the results with empirical study. Fundamentally however the starting point is always an irrational one and thus every step in between is tainted by our fundamental irrationality. The argument may be logical and get the desired results but the question of morality and values is and always will be nonsense.

People go along with this because other people are fundamentally irrational as well. For the intellectual among us there are very large books that work very hard to justify our fundamental beliefs. For most people it simply doesn't matter.

How can you then say, with any shred of credibility, that "this is what we believe is good for America, and this is how we're going to achieve it"?


Because I do believe this is whats good for america and I can take that belief and, as best as I can work out, support a program that I think will best achieve it. I think that is perfectly credible and in fact the best we can actually do.

If you don't believe that your own political beliefs are objectively true in some sense, then who will believe it?


People that agree? Humanity shares many of the same irrational biases and beliefs. Like not dying being good. If someone needs convincing on something then it needs to be emotionally. Trying to rationally explain away a feeling is a fools errand. Someone who feels anxiety about flying can not be convinced to not be anxious by statistics about plane safety. Someone who is anxious about Muslims cannot be rationally convinced to feel safe.

I believe that human society can be studied objectively, in the same sort of way that the natural world can be studied objectively. Just as there is a science of biology, so there is (or in principle can be) a science of human society. And Karl Marx founded that science.


Sure we can measure things and create theoretical models about how the world works. But you are going from that to asserting that maximizing human potential is an OBJECTIVE moral good.

Morality comes from society. Perhaps one day society will evolve into communism and then maximizing human potential will be one of the principle foundations of that societies morality, but it will never be objective.

This goes into my fundamental criticism of communism. You have decided what society will look like and what morality will look like and you will try to force that vision onto reality. I'm not at all convinced that the next "evolutionary step" of society will look at all like what you want it to. I agree that society evolves, I disagree that it is at all clear that it will be as you describe.

False consciousness is not merely a belief that one is happy when one 'actually' isn't happy. That would be an absurdity. False consciousness involves a belief about the objective world which is not factually correct - for example, that what is good for the employer must also be good for the employee. This is a belief about the real world, and is factually incorrect. This is why it is possible, in principle, to dispel false consciousness by presenting facts and reasoned arguments.


Which is why I said stuff like false consciousness and not false consciousness itself. False consciousness is just the closest term that came to mind. I agree that some communists are being absurd though when they say workers can't be happy and if they think they are happy they are wrong.

It's not a vague notion, and can be objectively measured. A person's potential can be, to a large degree, objectively measured. In fact, we do that all the time in capitalist society. What do you think exams are for?


At it's base I am saying you cannot derive an ought from an is. You are conflating my objection that you cannot declare it an objective good with something I don't believe. I agree that we can measure human abilities. I don't even disagree that maximizing it is a good thing. I disagree that it is an objectively good thing.

These might be interesting works to consider the way in which Marx muddies the is/ought (fact/value distinction).


Which is a ridiculous thing to do IMO.

My main response to your post is that as I see it morality comes from society and as society evolves and changes so does morality. What is considered moral is also subject to dialectical materialism and no declarations of objective moral truth can actually be made.

Though we are starting to get off topic from how we form our political opinions into moral philosophy.
#14814652
You guys really do worship desk sitters don't you? :lol: Even the idea someone might value labour over sitting seems to drive you into a mad frothing at the mouth rage.
#14814660
Potemkin wrote:Marxist is justified instrumentally rather than via some abstract moralism. Whatever expands the forces of production is objectively good, whatever acts as a fetter on the forces of production is objectively bad. Before the Bolshevik Revolution, Russian society was mired in an ages-long feudal poverty and backwardness. After Stalin's industrialisation drive of the 1930s, which was tested in the furnace of total war, Russia had become one of the world's only two superpowers. As Churchill said, "Stalin [and by extension the Bolsheviks] found Russia with the wooden plough, and left it with the atomic bomb."

As for why it is necessary to justify one's actions, as Decky pointed out it is only petty criminals and the lumpen refuse of society who feel no need to justify their actions or behaviour beyond asserting that it's what they want to do at that particular moment. As Marx colourfully put it, such people are the shit excreted by the capitalist system. A bourgeois liberal justifies themselves by mouthing copy-book moralistic maxims which have no connection with reality, while living in comfort and high status by sucking the blood of the working people. They have their 'morality', and we have ours.


But you are the one who is moralizing here as well. You are saying that only certain bad people have no need for objective moral justifications for their actions, completely ignoring the fact that that's a value judgment.
#14814667
But you are the one who is moralizing here as well. You are saying that only certain bad people have no need for objective moral justifications for their actions, completely ignoring the fact that that's a value judgment.

The distinction I am making is between instrumentalist justification and moralistic justification. Communists (those who have read their Marx at least) justify their actions instrumentally, in terms of the expansion of the forces of production and in terms of enabling people to maximise their human potential. These are objective criteria, which can in principle be measured. Moralistic justification, on the other hand, refers only to some abstract moralistic system, which is usually historically determined and is subjective, and which usually serves the interests of the ruling elite at the expense of the majority of the population. The former is based on a materialist and therefore objective view of the world, while the latter is based on an idealist and therefore subjective view of the world. This is what enables Marxists to be scientific materialists and yet still make value judgements concerning human conduct.
#14814704
I would just like to clarify, in case anyone makes a simple reading of Potemkin's point, in emphasizing the expansion of production as an objective good is based in relation to it's ability to improve human self realization ie freedom.
It's not production for productions sake, but the idea that productive capacities underlie the future potential for all of humanity rather than just upper class folk to be free.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch04.htm
The aim of society, for Marx, is not the production of useful things as an aim in itself. One easily forgets, he says, "that the production of too many useful things results in too many useless people." [52] The contradictions between prodigality and thrift, luxury and abstinence, wealth and poverty, are only apparent because the truth is that all these antinomies are equivalent. It is particularly important to understand this position of Marx today, when both the Communist, and most of the Socialist parties, with some notable exceptions like the Indian, also Burmese and a number of European and American socialists, have accepted the principle which underlies all capitalist systems, namely, that maximum production and consumption are the unquestionable goals of society. One must of course not confuse the aim of overcoming the abysmal poverty which interferes with a dignified life, with the aim of an ever-increasing consumption, which has become the supreme value for both Capitalism and Krushchevism. Marx's position was quite clearly on the side of the conquest of poverty, and equally against consumption as a supreme end.

Independence and freedom, for Marx, are based on the act of self-creation. "A being does not regard himself as independent unless he is his own master, and he is only his own master when he owes his existence to him self. A man who lives by the favor of another considers himself a dependent being. But I live completely by another person's favor when I owe to him not only the continuance of my life but also its creation; when he is its source. My life has necessarily such a cause outside itself if it is not my own creation." [53] Or, as Marx put it, man is independent only "...if he affirms his individuality as a total man in each of his relations to the world, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, willing, loving -- in short, if he affirms and expresses all organs of his individuality," if he is not only free from but also free to.

For Marx the aim of socialism was the emancipation of man, and the emancipation of man was the same as his self-realization in the process of productive relatedness and oneness with man and nature. The aim of socialism was the development of the individual personality.

http://isj.org.uk/marxism-and-ethics/
Spoiler: show
The novelty of modern post-Kantian moral theory becomes apparent if we compare it with the classical Greek conception of ethics. Greek ethics, especially as developed by Aristotle,10 was unlike modern moral philosophy in that it did not suppose that to be good entailed acting in opposition to our desires. Aristotle held to a naturalistic ethics that related the idea of good to fulfilling human needs and desires.11 The good for man is eudaimonia.12 This is usually translated as happiness, wellbeing, self-realisation or flourishing, and Aristole relates it to our human nature or essence. In his model the virtues are those qualities which would enable individuals to flourish within a community.13 And because Aristotle recognised that humans are only able to flourish within communities—he defines us as “political animals”—he made a direct link between ethics and politics. The question of how we are to flourish led directly to questions of what form of social and political community would best allow us to flourish. Consequently, as against those who would suggest an unbridgeable gulf between ethics and politics, Aristotle declared the subject matter of his book on ethics to be politics: “The science that studies the supreme Good for man is politics”.14

While the specificities of Aristotle’s account of what it is to flourish were distorted by his “class-bound conservatism”,15 there is nothing intrinsically elitist about his system.16 It does, however, presuppose a pre-Darwinian model of human nature that is at odds both with modern liberal conceptions of individual egoism and with Marx’s historical humanism.
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One attempt to escape this predicament involves a return to classical (Greek) virtue ethics.37 Instead of focusing on the intentions of actors or the consequences of actions, virtue ethicists insist that the key ethical question should be, “What kind of person ought I be?” Unfortunately, while these writers hark back to classical discussions of ethics, Aristotle’s model of human nature is not only inadequate once we accept Darwin’s proof that humans are a product of natural evolution, but it is also at odds with liberal conceptions of our natural state as one of conflict. Developing a virtue ethics that goes beyond the limits of liberalism by drawing together individual and social conceptions of the good requires that we indicate some social and historically specific practices through which non-egoistic forms of human relations might emerge. It was Hegel who first pointed towards a solution to this dilemma by suggesting a historical model of human nature.

Both modern and classical conceptions of ethics share one common theme. They tend to treat the very different social contexts in which they were formulated as unchanging features of nature.38 Hegel’s great contribution to moral theory started from a historical comparison of these two contexts: asking how and why we (or more precisely Germans at the turn of the 19th century) are different from ancient Greeks. By doing this he began a process, later completed by Marx, of synthesising and overcoming the limitations of both Kantian morality and Aristotelian ethics.

Just as Aristotle sought to base his ethics on a model of human essence, Hegel insisted that ethics must start from a model of “what human beings are”. It is only when they are so grounded that it is possible to say “that some modes of life are suited to our nature, whereas others are not”.39 He followed Aristotle in assuming that the goal of life is self-realisation, but he broke with him by arguing that it is only by way of freedom that this is possible. Whereas Aristotle insisted that happiness is the end of life, Hegel believed with Kant that the end of life was freedom.40 But unlike Kant, who counterposed freedom to necessity, he insisted that to act freely was to act in accordance with necessity.41 He thus criticised “Kant for seeing dichotomies in the self between freedom and nature…where he ought to have seen freedom as actualising nature”.42 Moreover, he believed that moral laws, far from being universal in some transhistoric sense, are in fact only intelligible “in the context of a particular community”, and can be universalised only to the extent that “communities grow and consolidate into an international community”.43

Hegel thus provided a social content to the concept of freedom by relating it to the movement of “a living social whole”.44 In so doing, he simultaneously worked a dramatic change on Aristotle’s concept of happiness. For if human nature evolves with the cultural evolution of communities then so too does the meaning of self-realisation. His ethics is therefore best understood as a form of “dialectical or historicised naturalism”.45 It was this historical understanding of human nature that provided Marx with the basis from which he went beyond existing materialist (Hobbesian) and idealist (Kantian) models of agency.
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In fact “the central theme of Marx’s moral theory is how to realise human freedom”.57 Concretely, he points to the way that the meaning of freedom evolves over time through a process of collective struggles that are best understood against the background of the development of humanity’s productive forces.58 This should in no way be read as evidence that Marx reduced freedom to economic growth, for he insists that “although an individual cannot become free in isolation from others, nonetheless it is only individuals who are free”.59

I strongly suggest reading the second link 'Marxism and Ethics'.
As noted by Potemkin, things are to be based in the real world and not abstract universals like that given by Kant.
The later German philosopher Hegel pointed to the abstract nature of Kant’s morality, which he characterised at one point by its “sublime hollowness and uniquely consistent vacuity”.29 More generally, he argued that Kant’s moral standpoint, far from being the perspective of pure reason, in fact reflected “the ethical life of the bourgeois or private individual”.30

Freedom is self realization of our being, of human nature, to not be free is to not be human.
http://rickroderick.org/104-mill-on-liberty-1990/
For Hegel, freedom is more like a placeholder word. Let me try to explain what I mean by that. For Hegel, freedom is so important that it is the meaning and the point of human history in general. That if one asks about the bible: “Quickly, what’s it about?”, someone will go “The devil did it”, right? And that’s a quick account of the plot. Then if you ask Hegel quickly about history, Hegel will go: “It’s about how freedom wins”.

Hegel’s account of freedom is more sophisticated in a way than any I have given you up until now, because it is deeply historical. Here’s what I mean by that. In any given historical epoch, Hegel says: “Show me the obstacles that Human beings saw in their path to realising their concrete goals and the overcoming of those obstacles will receive the name Freedom”.

Now, the nice thing about that concept of freedom is it is a free concept of it, which means it allows each generation to pursue freedom’s goals, maybe reformulating them anew. All I have done is backtrack the 19th Century, contrast positive and negative freedom… tried to do that. But the Hegelian concept is historical and reminds us that when we formulate these goals… they are the work of each new group that comes along in the struggle for freedom.

For Hegel, freedom isn’t either external or internal or positive or negative. Freedom is not something which people have, to quote Alasdair MacIntyre, “Hegel’s view of freedom is not something that people have. It is what they are”. When they don’t have it, they aren’t. And that doesn’t mean they disappear, it means they are not human without it.
#14814711
Wellsy wrote:I would just like to clarify, in case anyone makes a simple reading of Potemkin's point, in emphasizing the expansion of production as an objective good is based in relation to it's ability to improve human self realization ie freedom.
It's not production for productions sake, but the idea that productive capacities underlie the future potential for all of humanity rather than just upper class folk to be free.


The "forces of production" is rather clearly defined term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productive_forces

We can sum it up as labor, capital and knowledge (used in production). Potemkin said expanding the "forces of production is objectively good", meaning:

- Expanding the workforce is objectively good. Babies!! :excited:
- Expanding the capital stock is objectively good. A rather puzzling statement, because capital accumulation is only a means to an end (the end being the maximization of consumption). The capital stock can actually be suboptimally high.
- Expanding the knowledge used in production, another word for increasing total factor productivity (TFP).

I'd say only the last one is generally considered to be "good", but calling it "objectively good" is still nonsense.

Potemkin wrote:It means fulfilling their potential. You find out what their potential is, and then seek to enable them to maximise that potential and make a contribution to human society, either as scientists, as musicians, as engineers, as poets, or even simply as care-givers. This is quite objective.


Some people "fulfill their potential" by murdering people or by playing video games all day long or by any other activity that is detrimental to the well-being of the community. Is that objectively good as well?
#14814712
Some people "fulfill their potential" by murdering people or by playing video games all day long or by any other activity that is detrimental to the well-being of the community. Is that objectively good as well?

An individual's 'potential' is defined socially. If an individual's potential is to play video games all day, then this could indeed be socially useful, if he becomes so good at it that he competes against others in tournaments which spectators enjoy watching. If another individual's potential is to murder people, then he can be recruited into the armed forces and murder his society's enemies for it. Or shoot counter-revolutionaries in cellars, whichever happens to be more useful at the time. So yes, that is objectively good too. :)
#14814714
Potemkin wrote:An individual's 'potential' is defined socially.


Then it's not the individual's potential, but rather the individual's potential constrained by society. Only when the individual is constrained his behavior becomes subjectively good.

(I can safely ignore the rest of your post).
#14814727
Then it's not the individual's potential, but rather the individual's potential constrained by society. Only when the individual is constrained his behavior becomes subjectively good.

Your thinking is still constrained by the limits of bourgeois liberalism, Rugoz. You see society and the individual as simply being in opposition to each other; society constraining the free will of the individual, and the individual rebelling against those constraints. Rather, the individual requires society in order to be free, in order to be most fully himself. Society and the individual are not in opposition to each other; they are in fact a dialectical dyad - they require and complete each other. Society requires free individuals in order to be adaptable and creative, while the individual requires society in order to be materially sustained and to achieve self-actualisation and freedom as a member of a human society. Freedom is not merely freedom from, but freedom to.

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