[Xmca-l] Re: If economics is immune from ethics, why should exploitation be a topic of discussion in economics?

[Andy Blunden]

Harshad,

According to Marx, "exploitation," as he uses the concept in
/Capital/, is not an ethical concept at all; it simply means
making a gain by utilising an affordance, as in "exploiting
natural resources." Many "Marxist economists" today adhere
to this view. However, I am one of those that hold a
different view. And the legacy of Stalinism is evidence of
some deficit in the legacy of Marx's writing - it was so
easy for Stalin to dismiss ethics as just so much nonsense
and claim the mantel of Marxism!

Much as I admire Marx, he was wrong on Ethics. He was a
creature of his times in this respect, or rather in
endeavouring to /not/ be a creature of his times, he made an
opposite error. He held all ethics in contempt as if
religion had a monopoly on this topic, and it were nothing
more than some kind of confidence trick to fool the masses.
(Many today share this view.) In fact, contrary to his own
self-consciousness, /Capital/ is a seminal work of ethics.

The problem stems from Hegel and from Marx's efforts to make
a positive critique of Hegel. As fine a work of Ethics as
Hegel's /Philosophy of Right/ is, it had certain problems
which Marx had to overcome. These included Hegel's
insistence that the state alone could determine right and
wrong (the state could of course make errors, but in the
long run there is no extramundane source of Right beyond the
state). This was something impossible for Marx to accept.
And yet Hegel's idea of Ethics as something objective,
contained in the evolving forms of life (rather than Pure
Reason inherent in every individual as Kant held, or from
God via His agents on Earth, the priesthood), Marx wished to
embrace and continue.

So the situation is very complex. The foremost work on
Ethics was authored by a person who did not believe they
wrote about Ethics at all.

Here is a page with lots of resources on this question:
https://www.marxists.org/subject/ethics/index.htm

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
On 18/07/2018 2:54 PM, Harshad Dave wrote:
>
>
>   Why do we discuss on exploitation?
>
> As per Marx's views, ethics has no influence on economic
> processes. Does exploitation have no link with ethical
> feelings? The sense of exploitation is absolutely linked
> with our ethical feelings. If economics is immune from
> influence of ethics and sense of /*exploitation*/ is
> founded on our ethical evaluation, then discussion
> on /*exploitation*/ should not find place in the topics of
> economics/political economics.
> Harshad Dave
> hhdave15@gmail.com
> <https://www.researchgate.net/deref/mailto%3Ahhdave15%40gmail.com>
>
>
>
> Harshad Dave
> ​hhdave15@gmail.com <mailto:hhdave15@gmail.com>​
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20180718/6b4f64ed/attachment.html