- 14 Jun 2017 10:57
#14814483
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.
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.
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." - Marx (Groucho)