Marx's Ethical Vision

by Vanessa Christina Wills

"The communists do not preach morality at all"; this line from The Communist Manifesto might seem to settle the question of whether Marxism has anything to offer moral philosophy. Yet, Marx issued both trenchant critiques of "bourgeois" morality and thundering condemnations of capitalism's "vampire-like" destructiveness. He decried commodity-exchange for corroding our ability to value one another for who we are, not how much our lives could be traded away for. He expressed apparently ethical views about human nature, the conditions necessary for human flourishing, and the desirability of bringing such conditions about--views that are interwoven throughout his life's work, from his youthful philosophical poetry to his unfinished masterpiece, Capital.

Renewed attention to Marx's distinctively "dialectical" and historical materialist approach to conflict and change makes sense of this apparent tension in his thought. Following Marx, Vanessa Christina Wills centers labor--human beings satisfying their needs through conscious, purpose-driven, and transformative interaction with the material world--as the essential human activity. Working people's struggles reveal capitalism's worst ravages while pointing to a better future and embodying the only way rational transformation of our relationships to ourselves, to one another, and to the natural world, so that the human condition emerges not as a burden we must bear but as life we joyfully create. The purposiveness of labor gives rise to a normativity already inherent in the present state of things, one that can guide us in knowing what sort of world we should build and that further prepares us to build it.

Rather than "preach morality," the key task for moral philosophy is to theorize in the light that working peoples' struggles for survival shine on capitalism--an existential threat to humanity and the defining ethical problem of our time.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Economics, Politics, Nonfiction

316 pages, Hardcover

Published August 9, 2024

Reviews

[Kyrill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was hesitant to read this because I’m not that into moral philosophy and also assumed that the book would end up watering down Marx with some social democratic principles of morality. In fact, the book is a close textual analysis of Marx. In fact, the book explicitly challenges this liberal tradition. While Wills displays impressive control over Marx’s oeuvre, she also never gets lost in the weeds like most Marxology. The book remains immensely readable and coherent.

This is not to say that Wills attempts to stay neutral. She militates for a form of Marxist humanism that is unsentimental without being blunt. On questions like alienation and the refinement of needs, this will be my go to text for some time to come.

[Charles H · Rating 5 out of 5]

MARX'S ETHICAL VISION by Vanessa Wills (Oxford: 2034). I finished this book in two days. Couldn't put it down.

Probably not for everyone, but if you've read Marx or have a preconceived notion of his historical materialist method as lacking or hostile to ethics as such, highly recommend.

Wills reconstructs Marx's "ethics" on his own terms through a close reading of his work, from his obscure early poetry and dissertation through Capital and later writings.

Her argument about Marx's "radically irreligious" approach was among others insightfully on point and resonated with my own position or approach to the question of religion/atheism.

[Lenart Nici · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll come back and write a more thorough review at some point.

I wasn't entirely convinced by some of Wills's arguments regarding the "abolition of morality" in communism, probably largely due to the underspecification of what she has in mind when she speaks of "morality" (she seems to mean something like "what the Great Philosophers and the religious traditions have been saying about why you should be a good boy", but it isn't clear to me whether she thinks that Marx's views on the abolition of morality also entails that the communist "rich individual" would experience no compunction or moral dilemmas. Scattered remarks seem to suggest that she thinks so, but why we shouldn't think of such dilemmas as falling within the scope of the abolitionist argument remains unclear. This is all the more puzzling in light of the picture of communism that emerges towards the end of the book, which certainly looks like a state beyond heteronomy. Perhaps flakiness will always have a rational grounding, in communism. More seriously though, I think that Wills has the resources to respond to these kinds of objections, but it would be interesting to see (at least to me) what kinds of moral-psychological commitments would fall out of it.
Personal highlights were Chapter 8 ("Marx's Critiques of Rival Moral Theories") and her discussion of Marx's perfectionism (especially in relation to his views on - to borrow a phrase most associated with Marcuse - a 'new sensibility' in communism) in Chapter 9. I recommend anyone interested in Marx as a philosopher to read this book, but I expect that the reader who will get the most out of it will be someone who has been pulling their hair out over what moral and political philosophers in the analytical tradition (including the "analytical marxists"!) have had to say about Marx. He really couldn't have wished for a more competent and sympathetic reconstruction and defense than the one that Wills has given in this book.

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wills does a good job expounding on why Marx did not see that he was doing ethics, but his scientificity depends on norms that require some kind of ethical commitment. Furthermore, while the book doesn't appear to be about this, it goes into methodological debates about the nature of dialectics and the implications for morality. A solid and clear read.