Milton Fisk, Marxism and Ethics

Milton Fisk, Marxism and Ethics Andrew Collier "\ I When Marxists have written about ethics - which they have hand we have statements such as that of Marx and Engels not often done at any length - they have generally that 'Law, morality and religion are to (the proletariat) so approached the topic in one of two ways: either they have many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just sought to explain moral codes as ideologies with definite as many bourgeois interests' (Communist Manifesto) - which material foundations and functions in the class struggle; or seems to suggest that the 'explanatory critique' of the they have claimed that there is a positive moral viewpoint class nature of morality leads to amoralism, such that the inherent in\l\arxism - explicit in Marx's early writings proletariat could base its actions openly on self-interest, as and/or implicit throughout his work. I have discussed and other classes have done covertly. On the other hand we rejected the latter view elsewhere (1), and shall not return have references to a specifically proletarian morality, to it here. The former exercise is certainly an essential which consists precisely in furthering the political aims of part of the work of the materialist understanding of his the workers. Thus Lenin insists there is a communist moral tory; and in itself it is often de-mystifying as well as ity, and rejects only morality 'based on extra-human and explanatory; but it yields no positive ideas for a 'Marxist extra-class concepts'. He goes on to say, 'Our morality is ethics'. Whether this is to be regretted is a question to entirely subordinated to the interests of the proletariat's which I shall return. class struggle' ('The Tasks of the Youth Leagues', Selected Milton Fisk's book Ethics and Society (2) is a system Works, p.613). atic attempt to fill this gap: to provide, that is, a Marxist But perhaps the contradiction between 'amorality' and theory of morality, based firmly on materialism and the 'class morality' is merely verbal: if collective egoism is the class struggle, and with positive, prescriptive consequences. foundation of individual altruism, as Plekhanov suggests (4), Most of its premisses are ones with which every Marxist then individual workers may observe a 'communist morality' would agree: the historical specificity and material basis of in the service of the 'amoral' egoism of their class. This moralities; the class struggle as the motor of history; the formulation serves to locate the problem, but not to solve primacy of collective over individual modes of practical it, for we all know the fallacy of Mill's inference: 'Each reasoning; and 'naturalism' in the sense of 'this-sidedness'; person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general the rejection of any grounding of morality outside of the happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all natural but socially complexified needs of mankind. persons.' The fallacy does not disappear if we substitute I am going to make some fairly far reaching criticisms the aggregate of all proletarians for that of all persons; we of Fisk's conclusions, so I would like to say at the outset still need to know what are the relations between the col that I not only agree with these basic principles and value lective self-interest and the obligation of the individual - many of Fisk's argument for and from them very highly; I not logical entailment, certainly. Is it an instrumental rela actually know of no better book on the subject in the tionship (individual altruism as a means to collective ad whole of Marxist literature. It is closely argued, with pert vancement which is in turn a means to individual interest), inent examples and without unexplained technical terms; it or an educational one (altruism inculcated in the individual should be accessible both to thinking Marxists without a by the collective), or what? Fisk's book is an attempt to philosophical training, and to anyone concerned with moral provide an answer. philosophy, even if unfamiliar with Marxist theory. It addresses itself to the central problems of Western moral For Fisk, morality can be nothing else but the obliga philosophy, and does so in a way that no open-minded tion of an individual to a group of which he or she is a person working in that tradition can afford to ignore. It member, and to fellow-members of that group. On the one should become essential reading for anyone who takes both hand, where there is no conflict between individual interest Marxism and moral philosophy seriously: I hope that a and obligation to someone outside the individual, any talk reasonably priced paperback edition will soon be forth of morality is redundant. On the other hand, that obligation coming, and make this possible (3). cannot be to God, or to some abstract Kantian moral law, for there is no earthly reason why we should take notice of 1 Class and ideology such alien imperatives; and this applies too to those coming from groups of which one is not a member. This (so far, Marxist accounts of moralities have always seen them as negative) conception of moral obligation, combined with a aspects of the ideologies of classes in struggle. In relation Marxist account of society according to which classes are to the moralities of the oppressing classes, these accounts the crucial groups into which mankind is divided, is deemed have an unambiguously de-mystifying role. The medieval to yield a class-determined set of duties as envisaged by ethic of chivalry, the puritan ethic of thrift and industri Lenin. Two points need to be added to this, though: firstly, ousness, or the nationalist ethic of self-sacrifice for the Fisk also refers to groups other than classes, such as gen fatherland lose all their plausibility and attractiveness if ders, ethnic and sexual minorities; secondly, he refers to understood to be conditions for the exploitation of peasants sum-groups such as a whole society with whose interest and workers by lords and bosses, or the sacrifice of youth ruling classes will generally confuse their own; and though on the altar of the arms profiteers. oppressed groups do well to be very suspicious of appeals But what about 'proletarian morality'? On the one to the sum-group's interests, they do appear to have some 20 purchase where alternative obligation is absent. Mankind as but constraining ideologies of the oppressed. Consider the a whole has no common interest, and hence generates aristocratic atheist who thinks that religion (of a certain duties only by virtue of the hope of future world socialism. sort) is good for the masses. Socialists can learn a lot from My first criticism of this position concerns an idea Nietzsche's concept of a slave rebellion in morals, which which I think underlies a lot of Fisk's arguments, though it defeats the ideology of the masters at the level of moral is not explicitly stated in the text. Indeed, he also says values, and in the process makes a real slave rebellion things which are inconsistent with it. This is the idea that appear unnecessary, as the slave class is seen as superior classes (and other groups) are more or less spontaneously in respect of what is considered the highest virtue - moral constituted as agencies. He often attributes to classes virtue. actions which an organised class, a 'class for itself', could We do not have to go back to second and third cen carry out, but which a mere 'class in itself', a group shar tury Christianity to find such ideological mechanisms: they ing a position in the social structure, could not do as such. are present in the worker who refuses to read about poli For instance, he regards discipline imposed by a group on tics and economics, regarding them as the preserves of des its members as a necessary condition of personal inter pised bourgeois intellectuals; the unemployed graduate who action acquiring an ethical character (pp.6-7). But discip considers de-industrialisation as the royal road to a low line can only be imposed by an organised group or hier technology utopia without the work-ethic; the woman who, archy. A class is not necessarily in a position to impose to the irritation of her male friends, plays on her status of discipline on its members - such a capacity depends on a helpless - but morally superior - femininity; the Rastafarian degree of organisation which can only be the product of a who lets the National Front off the hook because black prolonged struggle. In fact, Marx thought, probably cor people ought not to be working in factories and taking rectly, that some classes, because of the atomised nature Ephraim's jobs; the third world nationalist who makes a vir of their place in production, could never achieve such org tue out of consumer austerity. Such ideologies are the prin anisation; unless the organised proletariat was strong cipal enemies of socialism, both because they prevail among enough to win them over as allies, they could achieve poli those groups which, being oppressed, could otherwise be tical representation only through the external discipline of expected to work for socialism as in their objective inter a dictator. Such was the relation of the small proprietors ests, and because they are actually more inherently regres of rural France to Napoleon Ill. Are we to infer that their sive than the 'official', ruling class ideologies. personal relations had no ethical character? The only place given by Fisk to the possibility of Certainly, Fisk is not unaware that the 'groups' that regressive ideas arising among the oppressed as an effect form us into the people we are, are not for the most part of oppression itself rather than of the propaganda of the the sort of group you could join (e.g.

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