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

[Haydi Zulfei]

 Everything begins with if we accept "Being before Thinking".
"German Ideology" , "Plekhanov's Considerations" , "The Holy Family" could come to one's help.
Being is not to be taken as something abstract irrespective of flesh and blood and the "contamination of any true thought with the Substantial". Being means : We as earthly bloody , fleshy , bony human beings ARE , tightly and indispensably confined and constrained by the conditions and circumstances of our material daily lives having the outside world (having pre-existed to ourselves having given rise to our very existence on ripe conditions) confronting us.

Now Marx has labeled the whole of our inorganic immaterial life arising from the specific social relations based on people's conditions of life "ideology". But he has no problem with this kind of ideology. He ridicules the type of ideology Max Stirner , Brauno Bauer , Feuerbach , etc. preach which is none but inviting the German people to follow thoughts , morals , legals , philosophy , religion , etc. which have their source not in actual real conditions of their lives but in disputes over whether the horse teeth is being identified by opening his mouth and verifying the objective or speculating by pure thought in a den for the truth of the fact. One cannot study any history without considering the material conditions and relations which have given existence to those histories. 

As to the first kind of ideology (pinned to the life conditions) , Marx remarks that they sustain and prevail up to the point where these ideological trends and corresponding social relations thereof would not hinder and block the continuance of the advancement of the material forces of the actual lives. 

Now Harshad and the supporters stick to the concept of "exploitation" to justify their commitment to the immorality of Marx's worldview forgetting that Marx is consistent with his ideas. First no one capitalist to this day has given up his greed for interest , surplus , and utmost luxury and mercilessness for sake of ethics. On the contrary , the whole world is now burning in flames which corporations have created. Trump is himself a slave of his greed and co-corporations. Huge amounts of ethics will not prevent him from inflicting all kinds of maladies to the oppressed people for the sake of "America Alone", that is , not America but his and other corporations' benefits. The supremiest miraculous Prophetic Ethics would not shake him for a moment to think of real peace and compassion. Within corporations no Ethics reign. Money the embodiment of surplus saves no place even for friends (two world wars to this day) . Second , Ethics is a science , a concept , a category , AN IDEA OR THE IDEA . That is we cannot say ANY idea creates the objective world but that what passes on Earth , in our conditions of life gives rise to this or that idea of the human being. Men also create their conditions of life through their ideas but not BY their ideas (Theses of Feuerbach). Ideas AFFECT circumstances INDIRECTLY but we should add , to the threshold of non-necessities. Freedom is knowing the necessary. Weaving looms would not bring out Shuttles. The Net will not tolerate walking CHAPARS , walking postmen. Marx gives data for "exploitation". Gives data for the claim that as far as appropriation of the surplus value works , the labourer remains captive to what he produces and there's no way out , his captivity arises from the objective material conditions of his social life not from speculations or phantoms. This differs from "do this" , "do not do that" without any base in reality or through a permanent uptake of "supposed good and evil". He cannot flee like plebeians to the cities to find a random occupation in a guild to be used to make a future. He seems to be an individual but is not. He is a social miser. He does not have a say in civil society which is so much praised by Hegel. The fact that Marx's so-called Ethics!! is embodied in measurable exploitation becomes a world difference to the point where Ethics becomes disparate and non-existent. It is like Feuerbach who revolts against religion but in the end he again makes a RELIGION of whatever like LOVE , etc. 

Surplus value has made the current world. Thoughts and ideologies of the governing classes penetrate every big and small mind , that is , Capital exploits the oppressed both materially and spiritually and the remedy is to know the real mechanism and to devise real defense systems in the dimensions of the whole world to combat all filth and arrogance. Hegel saw everything in order therefore he created his "philosophy of right". His public are not the real individual people to make social crucial decisions of their own to the detriment of the established existing social order which highly consists of the Monarch and the Corporations. What is real is rational. On those days , this meant no more than what exists is rational. His pupils gradually revolted against him. One might say he saw everything in flux. But the peril lies in the fact that his RELATIVITY and belief in continual change
led unfortunately and ultimately to the ABSOLUTE. He reached the end of the world. His great discoveries in philosophy is not to be denied. And he also came to the real society but again saw the real society as alienated creature of THE IDEA promoted to the RANK OF THE ABSOLUTE. His pacifity dictated him to accept to find the cure for all maladies in returning to THE IDEA. That was his Unique who brought out all salvation. And no surprise to the glorification on the part of the followers on matters of Ethics and Preaching. One cannot be a marxist and a Hegelian at the same time or concealing one's high sincerity to Hegel to the detriment of Marx preserving the right to the orthodoxies for Marx. 
Great apologies if I'm not able to continue the discussion if demanded. No pretext!

Sincerely 

Haydi    
  
    On Thursday, July 19, 2018, 6:30:10 AM GMT+4:30, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:  
 
  
Yes. The 1844 Manuscripts contain more obviously ethical language and ideas than Capital does at first sight, but we still have the same contradiction that wherever Marx addresses Ethics he dismisses it. In the later works he seems to be advocating a  "scientific objectivism" which is not so much the case with 1844. I neglected to mention in responding to Harshad, that Marx also rejected with justified contempt "emotivist" approaches to Ethics, i.e., the reduction of Ethics to feelings and preferences, which became very fashionable in the decades after his death. As you could see from that link I posted, the Social Democracy made a lot of efforts to fill this gap, but this was all swept away with the Russian Revolution and the Third International. I think it is only via Hegel that a Marxist Ethics can be recovered, but it is challenging.
 
Andy
 
   Andy Blunden
 http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm  On 19/07/2018 11:12 AM, Greg Thompson wrote:
  
  Sorry, I misread your post Andy. Don't think my question really makes sense in light of your meaning. (I assume that you'd agree with the sentiment of my question...). -greg  
 On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 1:09 AM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> wrote:
 
  Thanks Andy, that's very interesting/informative. Would you say that this is true for his 1844 economic and philosophical manuscripts as well? I'm thinking of the notion of "species being" as an ethical concept. 
  This is all well over my head, but I thought I'd try the question. -greg    
 On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 5:17 AM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
 
  
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/subje ct/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       
     
  
  Harshad Dave  ​hhdave15@gmail.com​ 
      
 
    
  
 
 
    -- 
     Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Anthropology
  880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower Brigham Young University Provo, UT 84602 WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu 
 http://byu.academia.edu/ GregoryThompson      
  
 
 
  -- 
     Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Anthropology
  880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower Brigham Young University Provo, UT 84602 WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu 
 http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson      
 
   
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