“Evil” is a term that really only belongs to theology. The thing about evil is that evil (and the kind of good that goes with evil) is that they’re absolute. Things are good or evil “by nature” - from no particular perspective. That’s nonsense. We recognize that some things are good or bad (bad, not “evil”) from our perspective, but that the bourgeoisie have an opposed view. What they do is literally good from their perspective. We can’t, therefore, convince the bourgeoisie to give up power with moralistic arguments (because from their perspective they are right), it’s impossible. We have to actually overthrow them. Recognizing the necessity of the violent overthrow of the current order the, IMO, the fundamental belief of Marxism.
Basically, good and bad = good and bad for something, some person, some group, etc. Good and evil = supposedly good and bad per se. But that’s nonsense, and only a cloak that the ruling class uses to present what is good for them as good per se.
like dude, it’s all, relative, dude, but unironically
Although I disagree with ilyenkov on the specific use of “evil” because I think we should just use the term for egregious shit without fear of being mistaken for religious positions, I think this relativity it absolutely not “it’s all relative dude” but an understanding that the only absolute is between relativity. As analogy, location in space is relative; there is no way to say where something is without relation to another. That relation itself is absolute and can be the basis of a metaphysics much more complex than the dudebro shit. This is what made Hegel revolutionary in his thinking and Marx after. Keeping that analogy going, you can do the same thing with speeds: only meaningful relative to another but that relativity gives MORE clarity about speed than trying to analyze it alone. In fact, talking about speed without a reference frame can only cause you to miss the beauty of physics! It also makes acceleration uniquely interesting in it’s absoluteness, because it’s speed relative to speed WITHIN THE SAME OBJECT.
Marx loved this shit, the lovable nerdy shithead, and wanted to apply as rigorous of thinking to society possible with the help of the natural sciences which had such realizations. “Relative” in it’s vulgar form is dumb and only leads to inconclusive positions.
Maybe that was what you meant by your joke but don’t want a passerby to think we’re vulgar about this
that’s indeed what i meant
Expanding on this slightly, a question arises of “why not simply pick a perspective and go with it?” Meaning, in our developed societies, simply viewing evil as bad from the perspective of the proletariat. And some theorists, including Lenin, have taken an approach similar to this. But a Marxist understanding of the world can never pick one perspective with the full exclusion of others. This new concept of evil remains subordinated to class and inferior to it in explanative power.
The liberal concept of evil does fully exclude other perspectives, and can be used to explain the actions of “enemy” nations, turning them into the Axis of Evil again and again. Their leaders are personally evil, meaning, depending on the flavor of the liberal, being somewhere on the spectrum between mentally ill and in league with Satan. This kind of narrative is great if you want to do coups.
If we call, for example, Ronald Reagan evil, we do not mean it as personally evil, but evil as a function of his position in society. We can not explain his actions as being caused by some metaphysical evil, because our evil is directly and consciously linked to class. To fight this kind of evil is not to fight a personification of it, but the system itself.
This new concept of evil remains subordinated to class and inferior to it in explanative power.
materialism lets us look critically at aspects of bourgeois morality that exist at odds with the interests of humanity, but class on its own isn’t a complete blueprint for proletarian ethics. not all social interactions reduce to class relations, and you also have to account for nonhuman sentients who are outside of society altogether
Yes, this new concept of evil exists within the chosen perspective, and we can not hope to understand reality with just one perspective. That does not stop us from examining this single relation.
Things are good or evil “by nature” - from no particular perspective. That’s nonsense.
feel like it’s pretty free and easy to call things like child abuse evil, but that doesn’t have anything to do with political economy.
I would say because it originates from humans creating abstract Utopian and individualist concepts and tries to apply and shape the material world to fit it to a T or face condemnation instead of observing material reality to form material concepts to address the material world.
I will point to the actions of Lenin for an example:
MOLOTOV: It was in a small circle among us. Here is a telegram from Lenin to a provincial food commissar in his native Simbirsk in 1919: “The starving workers of Petrograd and Moscow are complaining about your inefficient management…. I demand from you maximum energy, a no-holds-barred attitude to the job, and thorough assistance to the starving workers. If you fail, I will be forced to arrest the entire staff of your institutions and to bring them to trial…. You must immediately load and send off two trains of 30 cars each. Send a telegram when this is complete. If it is confirmed that, by four clock, you did not send the grain and made the peasants wait until morning, you will be shot. Sovnarkom Chairman, Lenin.” I remember another case. Lenin had received a letter from a poor peasant of Rostov province saying that things were bad with them, that no one paid any attention to them, the poor peasants, that there was no help for them and that, on the contrary, they were oppressed. Lenin proposed the formation of a group of “Sverdlovers [adults from Sverdlov University]….” Lenin directed this group to go to the place in question and, if the report was confirmed, to shoot guilty parties right then and there and to rectify the situation. What could be more concrete? Shoot on the spot and that’s that! Such things happened. It was outside the law, but we had to do it…. Lenin was a strong character. If necessary, he seized people by the scruff of their necks.
- Quote from ‘Molotov Remembers’
One side would say these actions are evil and the other side wouldn’t bother with a monochromatic understanding of the world and say it was necessary
aimixin talks about morality and Marxism:
Saying Marxism isn’t about morality or excludes morality isn’t meant to say Marxists are immoral or amoral. It’s sort like, computer science doesn’t talk about morality, but that doesn’t make computer science immoral, or software developers amoral. They’re just separate topics.
Marxism is meant to treat socioeconomic development as a material science. Biology and chemistry can inform doctors on how to make medicine and what medicine to prescribe people. But biology and chemistry themselves do not prescribe anything. Prescriptions require some sort of stated end goal, which is subjective.
Stalin says something similar in Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, where he points out that political economy is the study of objective laws of social development which are outside of the control of the government, that the government’s policies are not equivalent to political economy as a science but are prescriptions informed by the science.
This is what Marx had to say on the subject.
Communists do not oppose egoism to selflessness or selflessness to egoism, nor do they express this contradiction theoretically either in its sentimental or in its highflown ideological form; they rather demonstrate its material source, with which it disappears of itself. The Communists do not preach morality at all.
They do not put to people the moral demand: love one another, do not be egoists, etc.; on the contrary, they are very well aware that egoism, just as much selflessness, is in definite circumstances a necessary form of the self-assertion of individuals. Hence, the Communists by no means want to do away with the “private individual” for the sake of the “general”, selfless man. That is a statement of the imagination.
—Marx, The German Ideology
In some sense, you can argue there is a Marxist morality, but not from the perspective of subjective prescriptions, but merely an attempt to explain an objective origin to already existing morality. Such as, the origin of liberal viewpoints, which are heavily steeped in morality, clearly emanate from the capitalist mode of production. One could also argue a socialist society would produce a different kind of morality, but this would not be a prescription but would have to be demonstrated with evidence.
I don’t think there is any reason to try and force morality or ethics into Marxism. Marxism does not need to be some all-encompassing worldview. It’s fine to get your beliefs and views from other sources. I am influenced by many writers, many of whom are not Marxist. I don’t get all my ideas from one source, I don’t feel a need to somehow make Marxism all-encompassing.
morality has never been easy to disentangle from history because everyone interfaces with material changes around them through a lens colored by superstructure. that means that in the application of marxism it’s always been impossible to keep them at arms length, and it’s counterproductive to try. e.g. here’s rosa
Thus, injustice by itself is certainly not an argument with which to overthrow reactionary institutions. If, however, there is a feeling of injustice in large segments of society – says Friedrich Engels, the co-founder of scientific socialism – it is always a sure sign that the economic bases of the society have shifted considerably, that the present conditions contradict the march of development. The present forceful movement of millions of proletarian women who consider their lack of political rights a crying wrong is such an infallible sign, a sign that the social bases of the reigning system are rotten and that its days are numbered.
or lenin
You have to build up a communist society. In many respects half of the work has been done. The old order has been destroyed, just as it deserved, it has been turned into a heap of ruins, just as it deserved. The ground has been cleared, and on this ground the younger communist generation must build a communist society. …
The entire purpose of training, educating and teaching the youth of today should be to imbue them with communist ethics.
But is there such a thing as communist ethics? Is there such a thing as communist morality? Of course, there is.
or marx himself
Shame is a kind of anger turned in on itself. And if a whole nation were to feel ashamed it would be like a lion recoiling in order to spring.
later marx would be alarmed by this subjectivity and try to set at least his historical method on transhistorical footing, but marxism is more than philosophers interpreting the world; in fact as praxis it aims to repair “the complete rift between books and practical life”
so I see at least a couple of pieces which frustrate attempts to put marxism into a little economic box:
- nobody is really a material interest maximizing robot, making moral sensibilities a key aspect of class struggle
- marxism acknowledges and celebrates the human drive for progressive change and expects the proletariat to finally seize “real possibilities of human freedom and happiness” (which necessarily includes building a communist culture that encompasses all spheres of social life)
lastly just to touch on your stalin quote, check out mao’s review of that book, he calls stalin’s blindness on this issue “almost altogether wrong”
Good post to flush out the bug-brained on the website.
They can’t resist the bait to talk about how suffering’s just like a perspective as they likely feast on a festering chicken wing in a room lit up by a Reddit-plastered computer screen.
One of the aspects of Marxism that I love is that it’s centred around real-world, practical conditions and actions. It minimises value judgments and abstractions where it can, which makes it a lot more understandable and ultimately, achievable for an organised mass of people.
Raymond Geuss talks a bit about moralization in his Marx lectures https://invidious.protokolla.fi/embed/25aYrfvOGUs?t=708
