Karl Marx’s Ethics of Human Flourishing with Sam Badger

In this episode of Varn Vlog, we sit down with Sam Badger to explore the moral philosophy hidden within Marxian theory. While Karl Marx is famously derisive of "moralism," this discussion unpacks how his work actually outlines a robust "Ethics of Human Flourishing"—a vision of human liberation rooted in the realization of our creative and social potential beyond the constraints of capital.

We delve into Sam’s latest research, comparing Marx’s views on character development and well-being with Aristotelian ethics, while highlighting how Marx’s focus on labor and class status creates a unique framework for modern social movements.

Key Topics Covered:
The Ethics of Character: How Marx defines the "good life" through the lens of historical context and labor.
Alienation and Well-being: The impact of capitalist structures on individual development and freedom.
Beyond Aristotle: Why Marx’s version of flourishing is inclusive of the working class, unlike classical elite-focused ethics.
Modern Social Movements: Using Marx’s ethical framework to address today’s economic and social inequalities.

Referenced Work:
Book Citation: Badger, Sam. Karl Marx's Ethics of Human Flourishing. 1st ed. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2026. (ISBN: 9798216251026).

Connect With the Guest:
Sam Badger’s Substack: sambadger.substack.com

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Transcript

C. Derick Varn 0:00

Hello and welcome to Varmblog. And today I'm talking with friends of the show, author of Stab Badger, Substack, author of Karl Marx and Human Flourishing and Proletarian Ethics, PhD holder and humanities, philosophy. Philosophy. Okay. Yeah, philosophy. Philosophy. Your dissertation is pretty much the monograph form of the book we're talking about today. Your book, which came out by Bloomsbury Academic on Karl Marx and the Ethics of Human Flourishing. You pick up the question that I think it's limited to like four groups of people. The anti-moralists who think talking

Welcome And The New Book

C. Derick Varn 0:48

about Karl Marx and ethical morality is a waste of time. The virtue ethicist like Alester McIntyre and his Marxist disciples, as opposed to his predominantly Catholic disciples, who try to pick up virtue ethics and Marx and Lenin and Trotsky. Where it's a little bit more explicit, actually, in Lenin and Trotsky than it is in Marx, but nonetheless. Then you have the analytical Marxists who are like, Marx makes normative claims, therefore he's doing ethics, therefore, shut up. And then there's, I guess, Vanessa Wills and yourself who are trying to unearth the implied ethical world of Marx while admitting that he thought that he was getting beyond ethical claims in some way. So I guess I'm gonna always start on this one because this is one of those controversies where everybody gets all uppity. What made you want to to do Marx and ethics as your as your as your field of study? Like what interested in it? Yeah, you know, what brought you there?

SPEAKER_03 2:00

That's a good question.

SPEAKER_04 2:02

I mean, it is kind of a weird approach in general, because yeah, you know, Marx is pretty pretty against uh talking too much about ethics, but I think for me it really this is a combination of a couple different things. I got into Marx when I was kind of young, and as as young people often do, for very very much for like you know, it's out of sentimental moral reasons, you know. It's like we live in you know such a wealthy society, and you know, there's like homeless people, and uh you know, people are being forced to work over time and crappy jobs, and doesn't just seem really unfair. And and then I got into philosophy,

Why Study Marx And Ethics

SPEAKER_04 2:48

I actually kind of got into virtue ethics, in part like through like Marx was like one of the people who who kind of drew me in that direction. I'm not the only one. And then you know, I read Marx, and I was like, oh, he's he's really more just interested in like the science of economics, political economy, you know, theory of history, and setting out like a revolutionary program. Uh he's not really talking about what we ought to do. But but then I, you know, I guess I uh you know engaged also with with some of his philosophical anthropology, especially you know, the 1844 manuscripts, and then Little Bits in Capital as well, which I read sort of between undergrad and grad school. I'm like he does seem to still be making some really important normative claims here, and they do kind of match up with those, you know, early, early senses of indignation I have, you know, with the economic system that we have and how it you know degrades people, turns them into you know, cogs in the machine, I guess is the cliche. And you know, I'm I'm in grad school. I went to grad schools because you know, really what I wanted to do. And I wanted to write on something that you know really motivated me, really fit with my my core interests, and and not like you know, something on the philosophy of language about you know sense and reference or you know, which the stuff my my wife was a bit more interested in actually. But and then I guess it really returned to to Marx and Ethics, because it was like, you know, there's not a lot of literature on this. This is something I I could write about, and it interests me. So sort of check both of those, you know, boxes, I guess, on the you know, motivation.

C. Derick Varn 4:48

Yeah, I mean for me, it's interesting when we talk about Marxist ethics. I can kind of count on maybe maybe both my hands, the number of people who have really, really devoted study to Marx and ethics. GA Cohen to some degree, don't love his work on this, but I I think he was trying to do it. You have Howard Selsam, Selson, I have no idea how to pronounce that name. You have Kitarinko from the Soviet era trying to do Soviet ethics, as well as Prolinko and Krushuna Krushtunava. You have Alester McIntyre back in the day when he was still a Marxist. You have the the Marxist who try to pick McIntyre back up and reincorporate him in the Marx. You have Vanessa Wills, who recently wrote a book on it, which I was actually kind of laughing because your book kind of came out in the shadow of that, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_04 6:03

Yeah. Well, it came out too between my dissertation and my book. So I had to go and like read her book and incorporate a bunch of stuff and respond to her a few of the points that she made. Which I I like her book, it's it's a good one. I think it I think it maps onto a lot of what I say, but I do different things. So my arguments aren't all quite the same.

C. Derick Varn 6:26

Yeah. Uh one thing I liked about your book, and I I want to like talk about this a little bit. I I used to talk a lot about the 70s crisis in Marxism, um to Sterin Lukash, and then outsiders like Alvin Gudner intervening and saying, you know, this isn't just an interpretive crisis, it's a kind of conflicting claims in Marx himself crisis. And Gudner goes into a weird place with it. But I actually think your work on ethics gets to the conflicting thing that we're talking about there that doesn't necessarily seem to just be about ethics, and that is the normative versus the predictive quality of Marxism. And in that, whether or not it is deterministic or are political. Because if it's deterministic,

Norms Versus Predictions In Marxism

C. Derick Varn 7:14

then the politics seems a little like unnecessary, uh, even. And if it's super political, then the deterministic predictions seem to be you can kind of forget about them because like, oh, well, where they're not scientific anyway. And you go to this point about alienation and human condition in the first chapter, which is about the 1844 manuscripts. And I I can't I couldn't help but when I was reading the first hundred pages of your book, I was like, this feels like an anti-altitarian argument, like the whole thing. But you've you you seem to root you know these these ethics in in flourishing in alienation. So I guess for that, what do you think alienation is doing in Marx? And then here's the the kicker question that everyone always is going to ask you when alienation comes up. Does it apply to late Marx?

SPEAKER_04 8:10

Yeah, yeah. On the first question, I mean, I

Alienation As Social Relationship

SPEAKER_04 8:18

think the second question for me is easier to answer, but I think that the first question, you know, better just start there because I think that it orients us to to an answer to the second one.

SPEAKER_03 8:27

I mean, I think it's doing a few things. And uh one of the problems, I guess, is is the scope isn't always entirely clear.

SPEAKER_04 8:37

Like, to what extent does Marx think that, and I know there's a lot of readers who who think along this line that the alienation like really only exists in capitalism, or that the alien that Marx talks about it only only exists within capitalism. And to what extent does he is he talking about like a type of alienation that exists under capitalism and is is distinctive of it. And I think that there's also an important question as to whether we understand alienation as just like a subjective quality, right? So, you know, and I think this is often the way we go, that we we think of alienation strictly as as the way that we feel or the the relationship we have with the world, right? You know, so in in alienation in the 1844 manuscripts, it's very much about this this othering, right, of something which is very much our own, which you know he's getting from from Feierbach and Hegel. And you know, obviously that that's going to be pretty important under capitalism, right? That the means of production become other from us, even though we we make them our co-workers become other from us, even if we cooperate with them, all these ways in which like the world that is ours is is kind of removed from us and and become something that with them we always take for granted was always other, you know. And you know, you could read that in in like really psychological terms, right? It's like the experience of this othering, right? Like the way you know women might might feel when they get objectified, say, by other men and become alienated from their body in some way, or the worker who has to work 12 hours, you know, even if you know his means he's got to leave his kid alone and you know, no one to care for them, right? Because he needs the food to feed them. And and so if you understand it strictly in terms of experience, I think that's clearly important, right, to Marx's concept of alienation. But for me, at least I yeah, I think of alienation more is like a it's a relationship, it's not just the subjective experience of this othering, but it's the social process of this othering, too. And you know, this is a couple of things. I think you know that there's an easy attack for you know the concept of alienation that is you know not a particularly good one, but it's easy, which is to say, well, a lot of people like their jobs, a lot of people don't feel alienated at work, they do what they love. But if if you're not thinking of alienation strictly as like a psychological, like subjective experience, then uh you know, but but your actual relationship to the world that might cause certain experiences or might tend to cause certain experiences, then you might you very easily say, well, you know, this person doesn't feel alienated, right? He might really enjoy working at McDonald's, but that doesn't mean he's not alienated, you know, and he might experience it psychologically, subjectively later. Right and so I think that like that's that's like a pretty pretty important thing. And I think alienation also it's it's a sense in which our possible development in in the future and previous development in the past, something that is determined by structures that are just completely other to us that function according to reasons that have no personal relevance to us and and are and so for the as for the second question, does it apply to his later work? Yes, I think it it does. I think Al Thusar is kind of wrong about that. I think maybe where Al Thusar is right is that it's it's not centrally important, right? It's not something that he he talks about a whole lot, right? He doesn't actually I think use the term alienation in capital, but he does use some similar to talk about things like being alien, not necessarily alienated.

C. Derick Varn 13:05

Being alien, the commodity fetish actually seems to be a form of alienation and a different metaphor. There's a couple of things, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:14

Exactly. So yeah, the commodity fetish is a good example. And so I do think it applies to his later work. I think it's just that's not what he's trying to do anymore, you know, or it's at least a much smaller portion of his work. Like the experience of alienation stuff, it does come up, for instance, in the chapter on the working day, which is where I get a lot of the stuff. It's actually it might be my favorite chapter in the book, it's kind of weird, or like maybe two or three favorite chapters, which is you know, it's very long and dry, and it's just like a bunch of factory reports and you know, terrible, awful stories. But you know, I think for the for the late Marx, he's much more interested in describing the mechanics of the economy, you know, the how capitalism works, like a mechanistic system, you know, the way goods and services flow through it, what causes it to be the way it is. And you don't really need to talk a whole lot about alienation to do that. I think it's yeah, that's that's the best thing I could say. But also it's like his philosophical anthropology is still there. I think that's that's a really important, you know. He even uses actually a similar phrase to talk about human nature, distinct from animal nature, right? So oh the beavers make dams and the bees make honeycombs, right? He returns to this example he used in the 1844 manuscripts. And so he's that's you know, I would argue he's still thinking of these same ideas, even if they're just not as important to what he's doing.

C. Derick Varn 14:48

Well, this brings me to a kind of next question that I've been thinking a little bit about, is like in chapter one of your book, I was thinking about the 1844 manuscripts. And the other thing that comes up in that, and you mention it, is species being. And it has a very specific resonance of Forabach that at first seems very intuitive, and then actually you go through it and you realize, oh no, it's not actually what we think of as human flourishing today. But I was thinking about this and compared to Marx because the whole uh Marx didn't think about human nature. And Norman Gereth wrote a whole book, Marx and Human Nature, that basically argues, oh yes, he did. It's just in the 1844 manuscript, and you don't like it because it says that unalienated human nature is unknowable because of social nature of our work, basically. And

Species-Being And Human Nature

C. Derick Varn 15:36

in fact, one might say that our social nature, our social laboring nature together, the laboring is going to become more important. When Engels writes about it later on, particularly in his his anthropological writings and his theories of biology and dialectics of nature. But I was gonna ask you because it if the concern here is kind of an ethics that leads to human flourishing, it does imply we have to know what human flourishing would be, and that would be based off of a baseline assumption about what humans are, and that would be based off like what we might call unideologized human nature, right? Our our Marxist version of species being. So I wanted to ask you what what role does species being play in this notion of alienation and ethics in early marks?

SPEAKER_04 16:28

Yeah, that's a a good question. I mean I think it is doing a couple things. I mean, as you you know said, the connection to the Feuerbach, uh he's very clearly still still playing with these these Feuerbachian notions. It's it's interesting because it's I think for Marx, you know, it's kind of a you know an ontological concept, right? I mean, literally it's a species being, it's like the the type of of thing that we are, and it's a category, right, that that binds us, right? So all all human beings, you know, have this species being, and then it becomes alienated from us. When I take it like what what Marx thinks is like the most characteristic aspect of species being is to a certain extent our ability to you know define our own nature socially, not completely, right? Not kind of without limits. There are, you know, certain biological you know needs that we have, but you know, beginning from that foundation, you know, what we do is like through our labor, we we define what it is to be human, right, in our particular instance. And then that's connected to all other human beings because we share the social nature, right? So a part of my nature is to be in a society alongside these other human beings that are doing the things that that they do. So, in a certain sense, I have a relationship with the nature of the fisherman, even if I'm not a you know a fisherman, because you know, I am a part of this human society that includes this within its totality. And I think with with alienation, what happens is is this I don't know if the right word would be capacity, but this this feature about nature, this maybe I guess it's the essence, you might say. Uh, if we want to kind of use the the that sort of language, it's it's taken over by you know these institutions, right, that we've created. And you know, so capital obviously is is under capitalism going to be the institution that actually determines our our nature and practice, right? And it it's still in a sense related to to species being in the sense that, yeah, we created capital, right? So it's not that we've like totally lost this this nature, but it's been concealed from us, right? And I think this is a relationship to you know reification, right? That you know, in this process of alienation, it's it's become other to us, and now that it's other to us, you know, I I'm going to interpret it as something that is is just in itself to be objectively, you know, a part of of nature that I really have have no control over, you know, it's just the way the world is. And so, you know, in in I was actually just talking with this about my like my ethics class yesterday, the you know, the original Lockean idea of freedom is you like just go out and you chop down some trees and you put up a fence, grow some corn, and now now you own the land, right? And because we live in a a modern you know capitalist society, that's that's something you can't do anymore. Either the state owns the land or it's owned by a private developer, or you know. And and so what it is to be human, obviously shelters is a critically important part of that, you know, but you know, the the logic that you know distributes shelter that that builds it in the first place isn't actually determined freely by us anymore, but becomes something that has been kind of imposed on us by this alien institution.

C. Derick Varn 20:57

Well, you know, the alien institution is interesting because it's an institution of our own creation, but uh it's it we we can come back to that because uh one of the things I think that that gets it also gets into, you know, Marx is basically after his thesis on Fuhrer Bach is basically arguing that he's not doing philosophy anymore. But for a guy who's not doing philosophy anymore, even in the late Marx, you have to continuously deal with Aristotle. Like, how many footnotes on Aristotle's like you know, understandings of the market are in capital because they're also in Joseph Smith, who kind of did think he was doing philosophy in some ways. Not Joseph Smith. Adam Smith. Oh my god, I've been in Utah for a while. They're also in Adam Smith, but you know, Aristotle comes up a lot. Like, one one thing I'll always say is like, you know, everyone tells you you need to know Hegel for Marx and it's more important, but it also helps to know Aristotle for Marx. And I guess this is this is one of the areas. Because you posit the moral consequences of alienation actually gets us to an interesting way to understand how Marx is different from like classical Aristotelian virtue and ethical theory and actually even what we might call Aristotelian anthropology because there's like Marx's teleological thinking, it is in there, but it's radically different than Aristotle's. So I'm just gonna ask you to do some of that contrast between Aristotle and Marx on what they think human beings are and what they think ethical norms should be.

SPEAKER_04 22:39

Yeah, that's that's a really good question. Actually funny. I've I've been sitting in on my my former dissertation chair's capital class, and he agrees with me on a lot of my reading, but we were kind of discussing this kind of you know going between emails, because I think this is like a really important question, right? Maybe kind of one of the central questions to sort of unpacking this whole puzzle. So you're right, Marx does talk about Aristotle a ton, right? He talks about, for instance, Aristotle's critique of crematistics, which I think is interesting in and of

Aristotle, Teleology, And Equality

SPEAKER_04 23:14

itself and is like a whole other rabbit hole I could go down. Maybe that's a tangent I shouldn't touch, but right for Aristotle, crematistics is really bad. Actually, it is related to this problem of human nature, because you know, Aristotle sees it as something which, you know, because of its teleology, is going to orient us towards uh vice and and degeneracy and decadence in all these various ways. And I actually think Marx largely agrees with that, but he doesn't really spell it out a whole lot, right? He just kind of you know throws it in a footnote. And then, yeah, there's that other footnote where in the I think the first chapter where he says that Aristotle almost understood the market, right? He's like closer than anyone, you know, even closer than Adam Smith, right? But he just missed this one thing because he was living in a slave society 2,400 years ago, right? So Aristotle's theory of teleology. I mean, there's I guess some debate exactly about, you know, because he's an ancient philosopher, and you know, there's disagreements, but yeah, the traditional reading is that you know, and I guess everyone's gonna agree with most of this, that you know, everything in the cosmos has four causes, and those four causes are you know associated with the type of thing that it is with its essence, you know, with its nature, and you can determine what that teleology is by understanding its its function, right? And its function is going to help tell you, well, what is you know the thing's teleology, but to figure out its function, you need to look at what differentiates it from everything else, right? So, as I I like to explain in my ethics class, right? This is uh such a great example of how Aristotle thinks, right? What's the what is the telos of a rock? Well, you look at its its function, what does it do in the universe? Well, it falls down to the middle of the universe, which for Aristotle being a geocentrist is the core of the earth. And you can kind of do that for every type of thing for Aristotle, right? And for human beings, that ergon, the function that we have is contemplation, and also seems to be politics, right? He also calls us political animals, he calls us rational animals that we contemplation, and then also being virtuous, I think, is one of the other possible ergons or functions that we have. And you know, those are the things that differentiate human beings from dogs and spiders and rocks or whatever. So and this leads Aristotle to like a very elitist ethics, right? Because, well, who does politics, who does contemplation, who has the most time and resources to master their virtue, we'll see aristocracy, not like the oligarchs at the top. Aristotle doesn't really like them a whole lot. There's definitely not the poor, the slaves, women, you know, artisans, they're they're gonna have a harder time, right?

C. Derick Varn 26:32

They'll have some amount of virtue, but won't necessarily the virtuous, in Aristotle, like the virtuous nobility is kind of anachronistic, but lower nobility are the aristocracy the warrior class. And you you kind of feel like you've got a soft spot for merchants but not artisans. Like which is interesting compared to like you know later medieval Christian thinking of the Aristotle kind of flips that valuation that like artisans are better than merchants, merchants are throughers and whatever. But but yeah, I mean, you know, but he also doesn't, you know, Aristotle doesn't seem to like really like kings and tyrants and and and demagogues either. There's a very narrow spot that that Aristotle wants to like take as like the human norm. You know, I I've actually mentioned if you look at what Aristotle, the four causes that Aristotle says makes a human, by his way of understanding them, most people aren't human. So yeah, I'll hand that back over to you.

SPEAKER_04 27:41

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, he does say at one point, right? Like what distinguishes natural slaves is they they lack that. Not all slaves are natural slaves for Aristotle, but some are, right? And because they're not they're not quite fully fully human or women aren't quite fully human.

C. Derick Varn 28:00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:02

He says that they they have all the rational faculties, but to a lower degree, right? Yeah. But obviously, right, Marx isn't gonna be interested in any of that. But yeah, I do think he he has like he incorporates in fact at one point in Capital you can kind of see this. I think it's the the chapter that deals with philosophical anthropology. But he I think it's like chapter seven or chapter eight, but he actually gestures as at the four causes, right? When he talks about you know human nature, you know, oh god, I wish I had the book in front of me. I I I was thinking I should I should get my copy of Capital, but it's falling apart. But you know, Marx does like this four causes, right? Not for nature, because he's a post-Darwinian, at least by the 60s, although by 48, I think he's already kind of in that, you know, he's there's a reason why he's so quick to accept Darwin, right? That he he's not interested in teleology and nature. And there's this great letter to LaSalle in like 1960, or 1861 or 1862, which according to Alex Levine, who's a specialist in Darwin, was like the year that Origin of Species was translated into German. And he excitedly writes to LaSalle that Darwin, you know, well, Darwin he's crude because he's English, but he's brilliant still because he, you know, Marx is anglophobia, especially someone in like Anglo-Bangarat is like a like, you know, we throw that around today, but Marx could have invented the term.

C. Derick Varn 29:46

He really shits on the English constantly.

SPEAKER_04 29:51

We're surrounded by him too, you know. I guess I guess we've got to put up with him. But yeah, he he says, like, but you know, the great thing about Darwin is he does away with teleology and nature, you know. But then also, you know, Marx he very clearly uses teleological thinking, right? What defines capital? Well, it's teleology, right? And in fact, you could see, you know, teleology just infuses his his theory of capital, right, in many different ways. Like machinery has a certain end, right? Um and in as much as we define our nature through work, right? Work does seem to have this this tele relationship to teleology for Marx, in as much as we define our nature through work, then we are still beings that have a teleology, right, in a way that rops don't and maybe much of organic life, right? That's actually what I was disagreeing with with my chair about. It's just like where does Marx draw the line? It's like what is and isn't teleological. But it is it is clear that I think for him, like human nature is teleological, as Aristotle thinks, but we don't define that teleology the way Aristotle does. Instead, you know, I think the way I put it in the book at one point is that you know, for Aristotle, our ergon is contemplation and politics, as I said earlier. But for Marx, our ergon is to create ergons for ourselves, right? We our function is to create new functions, right? And he says this constantly, like in the 1844 manuscripts, he says, you know, we we create new needs for ourselves. And that creating new needs for ourselves, we we change our nature and change the way that we work and the things that we do, right? So, you know, Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest have a you know a need for you know salmon that has been cultivated through the you know the ways that they work, right? And the the resources that they obtain from from nature, right? The most available food that obviously someone in like the Maghreb or the Gobi Desert or something, they're not gonna share that, right? But the person who lives out there is gonna have like different dietary needs that are not only culturally situated, but you know, even your body adapts to them in various ways, right? So so human beings we're we're constantly redefining ourselves, and in that way you can I think have a much more egalitarian notion of human flourishing for Marx than is remotely possible in Aristotle, right? Although Aristotle at one point in the politics, he does say that there would be no need for slaves if we had tripods of Hephaestus and statues of Daedalus, where you know Hephaestus is God, he makes these tripods that can do stuff, and Daedalus is the Icarus' dad, right? And he makes these machines that can do all sorts of things. And so Aristotle does seem to think, well, maybe that you know, if we automate everything, he doesn't use the language automation, obviously, but it's clearly what he's thinking about, you know, then there would be no need for slaves, and he doesn't state it, but I you know, I take it the implication is we would all just be free to contemplate philosophy all the time. You know, I do think that that would, I guess, be Aristotle's, you know, utopia that he doesn't think is really possible. But I think Marx has a much more like you know generalized, you know, notion of human flourishing. And yeah, there's that phrase in you know that Marxists always love to quote about you know fishing in the morning and etc. etc. and criticizing after dinner, right? Which I know is has recently come into some contention about whether or not that was a phrase that Marx approved of. But I don't I don't, I I think that that Marx actually was was in agreement with that. But also you see, like, you know, Fourier or Fourier, I guess, and you know, a lot of these other you know, utopians that are influencing Marx as well. You know, it does seem clear that Marx values use you know freedom to produce all sorts of things in different ways. And he seems to think that you know that is an aspect of flourishing, right? It's us all being able to work in an unalienated way on the things that we love to do in a way that provides for the people that we care about, which hopefully under communism would be everybody, right? And so, yeah, I think that that's like the main difference for for Marx and Aristotle is that like Marx, I think, has a much, I don't want to say he's like completely fluid, right? There are clearly still natural constraints, right? That eating is always gonna be a part of our you know function. But for Aristotle, like eating is just like a means to the end of contemplation, right? But for Marx, you can say, well, you know, eating is a part of a flourishing life, right? We can all eat like delicious, healthy food that that we love. And you know, that that is just as much a part of a flourishing life for Marx as you know, reading Plato or Aristotle.

C. Derick Varn 35:22

So I was gonna this brings us now to Capitol and like where we kind of depart from early Marx. You you make a lot of hay about the humanist controversies and commodification, the commodity fetish, and what you think capital's ontology is in relation to ethics. Why did you find that important to address in a book about ethics?

SPEAKER_04 35:51

Yeah, I mean part of it, I think, is Al Thousser, right? At least a little bit. Well, maybe in the future I might be if I I do some more reading, but I don't consider myself like a you know an expert in Al Thusser.

Capital, Commodities, And Human Formation

SPEAKER_04 36:10

But I you know that critique in his for Marx against the humanists, I think, is is really important to to deal with, right? And you know, he's basically arguing that you know the late Marx moves away, kind of as we were talking about earlier about alienation, and is really just trying to do descriptive work and views any kind of like normativity as as strictly ideological and therefore outside the scope of Marxist philosophy or science, whatever you want to call it. And I think what's what's really important for me at least is is to show how Capital still contains the philosophical anthropology of his early work and and also to kind of set up so I got a phone call put that away, to to set up, you know, the wrong word, that you know, most of capital really it is like a scientific work, right? And I think like this is an important thing to acknowledge. I think this is what like Al Thuser gets right, right? That like his his late work is is still largely focused on talking about like like what how like how the mechanics of a capitalist economy work and develop through history, right? Historical origins as well as as what it's continuing to do today. And I think what was really important to me is is to find like a link of sorts between that largely descriptive analysis of political economy with his theory of human nature's philosophical anthropology that I think is there, which then I can then connect to his normative claims, which are also there, although he's not like super explicit about them, but he does actually make even in capital like so several normative claims here and there. And I think that that's that's very much associated, right, for you know, with the the philosophical anthropology and and the way that you know we become commodities as a type of thing, right? And if our human nature is variable and and able to take different forms depending on the social conditions, then you know, if we live in a commodified society and our labor is being commodified, then we are being socialized to be commodities, right? And so understanding what a commodity is, not only the commodities in the marketplace that we can buy and sell, you know, bread and and and iPhones and and whatever else, but uh ourselves, that we our own nature is being altered to to be this type of thing in in certain important ways. And then that's how you can get exploitation, right, which sets up his mechanistic account of you know the descriptive side, right? Which are is clearly, you know, again, what capital is is mostly about. And I think for Marx, like that's like the real utility of capital is its descriptive analysis. But it's he's giving this descriptive analysis to the workers who he thinks largely are going to agree with the normative claims, especially once a descriptive account is made clear. Yeah, so I guess I would say like the philosophical anthropology, I think, is really important, like holding all this together, right? And actually linking the descriptive stuff with the you know normative stuff that like an althuserium might say, well, that's just the ideology, that's not really what what Marx is talking about. But then you do see Marx, right? He he's you know going to the workers international, and of course, the stuff he's saying in this institution, it's not quite the same as what he's saying in Capitol, but it's not inconsistent with it, right? And and he is making recommendations for what he thinks the you know the working class should do, and he very clearly has like a certain ethos in mind, you know, in like his inaugural speech, where he's talking about like the importance of solidarity, and you know, it was he even like praises co-ops at one point, which is is not something he's he's usually like super excited about, co-ops, but he talks about how well the co-op's gonna help develop the workers into the kind of people who are gonna be able to manage a whole economy, and and that's what the working class movement will be able to do, right? And then it also I think it helps to explain so much of of the content in capital that's that's not doing this mechanistic stuff. Like, why does he spend like you know 100 pages regurgitating these factory reports about like you know children dying getting their ching fingers chopped off in a you know a spinning mill, right? The one that I think is is most striking is he talks about like Marianne Walkley, who's this woman who is worked to death to make fancy dresses. You know, why is he talking about that, right? In in this really hard-nosed you know, work of a you know scholarly economic science or political economy, you know. He could have only put one of those in, right? But no, he's like he just kind of bombards you, right, for page after page.

C. Derick Varn 42:34

Yeah, I mean this is this is like the the thing that's always gotten me. If he's not making normative claims, then the the normative ethical anecdotes and the otherwise hyperbolic language, which would get in the way of his other, you know, his deterministic understanding, like you know, all the monster talk and capital. Vampirism. Yeah. Yeah, the the vampirism talk. I mean, all that that that very much reads of you have to have an ethical commitment for that, not to I mean for that to make sense. Yeah. But how do we square that away with this claim that he's not doing ethics like at all?

SPEAKER_03 43:22

I think there's a couple ways.

SPEAKER_04 43:24

So one thing that I think is really telling is there's this letter that Engels writes to Peter Lavrov. And in it, Engels actually he says, well, the reason we didn't talk about morality is because we didn't think that that's what the German and French and English workers needed to hear. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with writing about it, and he tells maybe maybe that'll be more useful in the Russian context, because Peter Lavrov is like a important Russian, you know, revolutionary at the time, contemporary Marx and Engels. I think the setter was in the 1870s. And

Why Marx Avoids Moral Language

SPEAKER_04 44:10

so what what Engels seems to be saying is like like we had a particularly scholar, a particular scholarly task or intellectual task, maybe a better word. I guess both both terms could work, but that task is to understand capital as an economic system. You know, there's plenty of other people making normative arguments, right? That Marx and Engels they cite a lot, you know, like like the utopians, right? Like Fourier, right, is, you know, and Marx does talk about Fourier's vision in the Grundwiese, you know, kind of critically, but also positively. He named ups them a few times in Capital as well, largely approvingly, but not entirely. And so I think first off I think that for Marx and Engels it's just it's not the argument that needed to be made. And I think for them the workers' movement had was like a little too moralist in the sense that you know they were very much motivated by their indignation and their belief that they were on the you know the morally correct side of things. But they were arguing against a bunch of hard-nosed you know bourgeois scientists who were saying like oh you know your indignation and anger is great but unfortunately this is just the way the world is and there's nothing we can do about it. Actually before the podcaster I was reading Engels's speech on the 10-hour bill right the the 10-hour workday bill in England and at one point he says like the indignation of the workers is great and I agree with it and they're totally right to be indignant about this terrible system. However the problem is is that the political economists will just confront them with economic reality right and you see this today right when whenever you argue that you know oh well maybe socialism would be a better way of organizing our economy you know the economists will say well that's you know just it doesn't it doesn't fit economic science right and I think you know in capital what Marx and Engels are are mainly well Marx mainly obviously he's the guy who wrote it although Engels is the editor of the other two volumes anyways but they're you know largely interested in providing a theory of economics that A like exposes the fundamental contradictions of capitalism. So you know capitalism is irredeemable as a system yeah it had a useful historical function but you know that there's no way within the logic of capitalism of dealing with these problems. Right? And then also showing that also the the things that we do under capitalism are historical creations. So there's no reason that we can't organize society in a different way. And I think for for them like that's the argument that really needs to be made in this particular context you know it's it's like normativity was just there's a the workers already you know from Marx Engels point like they already know they're in the right right like you don't need to give them a really sophisticated argument to explain to them why exploitation is wrong when they're coming home from like the 14th hour of you know the the steel mill you know they they already feel that in their bones right what they really need is is an economic argument so that they can have the hope that actually their their belief that you know we shouldn't organize society in this way isn't just like a naive fantasy.

C. Derick Varn 47:54

So that really brings me to a couple of things that interest me in your book.

SPEAKER_04 48:06

I was thinking about you know you have a whole chapter on the dialectics of the working day can you kind of break down that argument and then fill in how what that says about you know human flourishing and ethics yeah and that that was like a a pretty important chapter for me to to write as well so I actually I think it was actually much longer in my dissertation I had to I actually kind of sp split it in two um I had to like cut it down a lot too so I

The Working Day And Class Struggle

SPEAKER_04 48:41

think that the working day is is for Marx like one of the most fundamental questions of you know capitalism and it is for a number of different reasons. First off he expressed you know in his system he he shows the length of the working day is the expression of exploitation or the you know the maybe not the expression is not quite the right word but it is like the the primary phenomenon you know that that reveals exploitation because the capitalist class increases the amount that they exploit primarily through increasing the length of the working day. You know because they're gonna pay the worker the the worker is is getting paid what they need to survive however long they work. So the best way for them to exploit the workers to just you know pay them the same but then have them work twice as many hours. For Marx I think what's really important is this is a product of capitalism right that if you go back far enough right in like the 1500s, 1600s, there was no issue with overly long working days. You know most peasants you know most of the country were peasants at that point are working however long they need to fulfill their their grain rent right and then they're spending the rest of the year you know hanging out waiting for the corn to grow right or the the wheat. And the the workers right there are either these vagrants who don't have jobs or they're working for like six seven hours you know and even you know that they're actually passing laws to increase the working day because people you know don't don't want to work that long right and it's sort of the norm to not work that long. But what happens when you start introducing machinery which for for Marx is really like the beginning point of industrial capitalism is it's machinery is you create a new incentive system for the people I mean really it's what makes capitalism possible because that's how you can have capital in the first place right when you just have simple tools anyone could do the job so you know you're not going to be able to have this one guy who owns all the hammers in town you know and and you know so his someone else could just buy their own hammer and compete with him. So when you get these like really complicated machines you know or or even the the concentration that large scale manufacture allows for which is not so machinery intensive but does involve like breaking up tasks to make them more efficient once you have have this now you have like a investment on fixed capital. You know it's like you're buying your your engine to run the the steel mill right or the lathe and stuff like that. And now that now that you have this investment you need to pay off that investment in as short a time as possible because A, that machine's gonna become obsolete someday and you're gonna need to buy a new one and B, you're also competing with all these other companies that are also buying that same machine and you want to be just as profitable as them. And like volumes two and three you see why which is it's not just that you know they they want more money it's that you know they need credit right to stay competitive and they're gonna get credit at the best rates you know if if they can show that they're just as competitive as their rivals. So they all have have now have an incentive to keep pushing the workers longer and longer hours. And this is also facilitated by the fact that machinery makes work easier not only can you not have children and women doing the work but you can also have someone who is sleep deprived and you know hasn't rested in 14 hours doing the task and if they lose a finger because they fall asleep with the machine the task is so simple you can hire just about anyone to do it. And so what ends up happening then is the the capitalists have this incentive to to push the working day about you know to the human bodily limits and even a little bit beyond there, right? And what's important for Marx is the moral justification that capitalists give for it. I mean it's one of the things that's important for it you know is is that what capitalists say is well this is a free exchange between me and the worker right I hired Bob and Bob agreed to the labor contract and so you know this is just free and fair exchange and if Bob didn't want to work a 16 hour shift then he he could have gone somewhere else right and so you know if we have the capitalist this is this is completely fair. But for the worker Marx is from the worker's point of view this is this is unfair right and it's unfair on several different levels for one thing it is you know the there's this famous difference in Marx right between the the value of labor power right or the the price that that labor power gets on the market and the value of labor in terms of like what you're actually bringing to the commodity right so you pay the worker to keep them alive and that's always going to be less money than the the revenue per employee on average at this this company right and and exploitation is that difference between between those two two values. And so for the workers' point of view they're they're getting underpaid because they're like hey we produce all this for you you know we're working our asses off and you you get all this you know revenues as a result well you could pay us just as much and we could work fewer hours or you could pay us more money right and only that would be fair and so what what's interesting is is you know Marx is is setting up this this struggle right class struggle right and this really is like the working day chapter is like the chapter of class struggle I think more than any of the other chapters you know it crops up all over the place but uh really the whole thing is like just about class struggle about you know this particular issue not only the length of the working day but also working conditions and so in this struggle I think what was really interesting is that both the capitalists and the workers are presented as in a way having a point right that the wage relation in a certain sense is fair and in a certain sense is unfair right and I think this is one of the reasons that that Marx is always kind of wary of language of fairness right is he doesn't want to say like well you know the workers are entirely wrong but at the same time by the the same set of moral standards that the workers are using the capitalists can say well it is fair right and so so bourgeois morality kind of ends up in in a conflict with itself right between the the classic bourgeois morality as the bourgeois sees it the bourgeoisie sees it and and the proletarian appropriation of bourgeois morality and there's it this famous line that Marx says about you know in a conflict between equal rights force prevails right and so now this normative conflict between these two classes becomes a political struggle and it's a political struggle that he describes in detail right where basically the you know the workers are organizing to shorten the working day and then what's interesting is that some of the capitalists agree with the workers right and so so Mark like the industrial capitalists obviously the last thing they want to do is shorten the working day but because they had just passed the grain laws right which basically reduced the tariffs on imported grain that the the landed aristocracy and those the sort of like early embougefied landed aristocracy or bourgeois former aristocrats who own land whatever you want to call them they which I guess there's like both in England at the time right I mean even to this day there's some of these people we still call them classical aristocrats but the these landed elites are now in conflict with the industrial bourgeoisie and they actually side with the workers to kind of get revenge for the corn laws right and you know they end up reducing the length of the working day from I think it's first of 50 hours or it's 10 hours a day right it's a 10 hour day bill which I think at the time would have translated to like 60 hours a week because I think they they were doing it in a six day work week right although there's even like a little part in this where where Marx actually talks about how the capitalists are even making their workers work on Sundays you know to to act to extract really like every little bit of value they can get out of their their capital. And you know Marx makes fun of them right because they're all these like sabbatarians right they believe that the Sabbath is important and that one must you know not work on a Sunday right because it's the Lord's day of rest. And and you know Marx is presenting these workers these communistic workers as in a way better holders of the Sabbath than the the capitalist elite right who are now sort of suddenly changing their minds on it. Right. And so I think what's really important for Marx then is is this struggle to limit the working day which I think for Marx is something he thinks is going to continue right when he's writing capitals like the 40 hour right we're pushing for 40 hours. And I think for Marx it that that would continue up until the point where there's finally a socialist revolution and I think for for Marx it's really the workers coming together to push for legal limits on the working day which helps to generate sort of collective subjectivity or shared subjectivity or agency as a political subject more than anything else right and he worked he writes a lot about the working day and I think actually you know this is one of the the normative claims that he makes right is that we ought to limit the working day to preserve the health and the social relations of the workers and to facilitate their education and edification in various ways.

C. Derick Varn 1:00:31

That leads me to you know the there's a hint here about the society of the future and I wanted to to to you know to deal with that a little bit because Marx will talk about you know sometimes what communism our cat our socialism is I mean the the difference between communism and socialism for Marx with the exception of one text which is the critique of the Gertha of the Gertha program which is a letter that was not intended originally for the public and was only made public by Engels after Marx after Marx's death in lieu of support of the ERF program. But nonetheless there you get a sense of what

Communism Without A Blueprint

C. Derick Varn 1:01:19

communism is you get some definitions although they're mostly negative what it doesn't contain and what it will contain but drop off and then I think in capital you get just about you know the the the working day decline and dealing with Owens and all that but in general Marx refuses to actually say what the future will look like. The other fight you get it is Engels's on authority which is actually a very very unpleasant sounding future honestly. And I wanted to ask you about that because I I actually do think Marx is actually is a little bit inconsistent on whether or not we can talk about the future and it it I've even argued that you know in his arguments with anarchists it makes him a little bit inconsistent even about what he th what he thinks freedom is and how far away in a non-capitalist economy the economic production of society is from the social and and and but I wanted to ask you like what do these ethical norms imply about the the society of the future if you won't lay out a blueprint for them?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:33

Yeah it's a good question.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:35

And it's a tricky question because Engels I mean at one point I think in in On the Family Engels seems to allude to the fact that he's aware of of this problem that you know he seems they seem to really like because in that text Engels does make a few normative compla claims about sexual morality interestingly enough right which you know I guess some might find as a bit of a surprise but I I actually really like that that book it's but he very explicitly says near the end of one of the chapters that people in the future who are not like constrained by the limits of of bourgeois consciousness like he and Marx shouldn't really care much about any kind of positive normative claims that he or Marx might make about the future right which is is good because you know if you read some of their letters they're like a little homophobic at times so you could say well yeah like that maybe they were but there it is Engels saying but you guys shouldn't really listen to me 200 years in the future anyways you figure your own stuff out. But then Engels does say that we you know that we can make negative claims about what the morality of the future would look like which I think is is pretty important yeah because Marx doesn't want to lay out blueprints but at the same time there are very clear normative commitments about what is not going to be in the future so one thing obviously communism would not have slavery right it cannot have slavery that would be inconsistent with with the whole you know purpose really of a communist revolution you know so so slavery is out forced marriages are out as per the sort of sexual morality the or self-interested marriage it seems to be out as well political or economic marriage right but then yeah he's very clearly allergic to to making too many positive claims about you know what what that society consists of there are a few cases but I think at the end of volume three of Capital Marx talks about it a little bit I think that there's some question as to like what is the nature of work in this communist society which you'd think would be one of the few things that Marx would be very clear about but at times he seems to think that it's just like the absolute minimization of work and the automation of everything. But then that also seems to be inconsistent with his philosophical anthropology and that's suggested as much by the fact that you know elsewhere he says I think in in critique of the Growth program and elsewhere he says that under communism work would be man's prime want. Right? So if we want to work why would we want to own like cram everything down to you know an hour a day and what are we doing with the rest of our time Is it free time? And then in the Grundrisa, Mark says, well, and again, he shows this kind of lack of clarity about this. He says the Fourier was like pointed us towards the future by saying that under socialism there will be no distinction between free time and work. And Mark says, Well, that clearly can't be the case, but we need something like it. What do you mean by that? Right? Which then he doesn't really explain. Maybe I think that the go to program probably is like maybe the best place that you know he's.

C. Derick Varn 1:06:41

I don't want to throw it out. Every now and then, like uh Larsley, for example, seemed to downplay its importance. And I'm like, it's literally the only place where we get a definition of what the communist future looks like. Although even it's vague because we have to fight over like what like you know, lower stages of socialism and what parts of bourgeois culture are allowed to be, you know, maintained and what aren't. And like when I and a lot of like maybe more left communist people read the Critique de Gertha program, we're like, it's time accounting. He's talking about time accounting, right? But then if you're, I don't know, a dungest Maoist, it's all of bourgeois culture. Except it's no, even private ownership. No, no, all of bourgeois culture somehow allowed it. The ugly you just got the state, like a worker state, like managing it, I think, is is their interpretation. And you know, while I think their interpretation is wrong, I actually can't settle it with the text, and I can't settle it outside of the text because Marx is very vague on that stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:46

Yeah, yeah. And I think Marx is intentionally vague about, I mean, I you know, I think he he knows completely what he's he's doing, and I think part of it, I suspect part of it is that he didn't want to be wrong. Uh he like he he very clearly seems to think of a you know, I mean, and he was you know probably right about this. Is what Engel saw, right? Like he's like this great intellect, but not the most humble person, right? And I definitely, you know, I think he always wanted to be right about everything. I think he knew that, you know, I do think like he's more positive on Hegel about being able to predict the future, right? There's that famous Hegel quote about like the owl of Minerva, only flying at the dusk, right? And obviously Marx is is a bit more positive on making future predictions. But I also I I definitely think that you know because he wasn't sure where the revolution would start or when, he he didn't really think that he could say, you know, what the transitional period would look like. Like clearly it would look very different in Russia than it would in Germany. And you see them in wrestling with this, if you read like all the drafts in his letter to Vera Stasulic, you know, or I think that's how you say her name, right? He he writes like all these drafts and then ends up just sending a really short terrorist relative to the other drafts version. And so I think that that's one problem he has. Because he knows, yeah, if the revolution happens in in in this country, it's gonna be very different than that country. So at least in the short term, they're gonna have to take different steps. But then I think, you know, I I think for Marx, like once workers get socialism, you know, he thinks that yeah, they're gonna end up developing something like like communism, but I I think he's not really sure what the workers under socialism would want communism to be like. And he knows that like they're you know, that they're gonna be the ones who are figuring it out, and either they're gonna read it into whatever he has to say, or they they might make make the wrong decision because they're too wedded to this blueprint he has to offer, you know. And so I think it's a it's a it's a lack of confidence on on his part in a way. Which I think is revindicated in a certain sense that you know the the world has changed so much since he died that you know I think any any communist society we've come up with today wouldn't look quite like the one that you know he he could have imagined. But yeah, it it's just like a it's it's almost like like a like slightly pathological refusal to really talk about it, you know.

C. Derick Varn 1:10:52

Um this does like it is interesting because on one hand we have a clearly normative ethics, but all it can really lay out is negative injunctions. Uh we're not gonna have this, we're not gonna have this, we're not gonna have this. These elements of bourgeois society are gonna fall away. We're not gonna need a government because a government implies a government actually does imply a permanent class difference, at least if it has a standing army, like et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm gonna be honest, be honest. One of the reasons why so many people have to rely on, like, you know, interpreters of Marx like Lenin or Kotsky is or Engels, even, although I think Engels and Marx are fairly sympathetic. I'm not on the Kohei Saito or New Left of the 60s, you know, like Marx, Marx is good, Engels bad.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:43

Yeah, I I don't like that either.

C. Derick Varn 1:11:45

I mean, I cite Engels a lot. Right. So but but Engels is an interpreter because a lot of the stuff in Marx, particularly as I mean, one of the things we can say about Marx over time is that you have politics that is based off of his readings of economics, but we all know, or maybe we don't all know, but anyone who's read their Hal Draper or knows about Mega or read their Marcel Musto, or almost anybody who's done any deep dives into the notebooks of Marx knows that Marx had intended capital to cover all elements of bourgeois society, not just the economic ones, but we started with the commodity and worked up and we basically got to banks. Um we don't I didn't even finish that one, you know. It's like that's a chapter on class, right? But you know, yeah, we stop in the chapter of class, like in the middle of the chapter in class, which by the way, would have been the most important chapter to possibly have in Marx. We have one definition of what the working class is in Marx, only one, and it's actually in contrast, it's in tension with itself if you're a really, really close reader. Uh and Marx seems to know that and doesn't ever solve it. I mean, like um so you know, when people are like Marx is scientific, I I think he was trying to be, but then they're like, Marx is scientific, and we can figure out most of the answers from reading Marx himself. And I'm like, he didn't, it's unfinished, man. Like, I don't know what to tell you.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:25

Um the one I miss the most is uh I know who's gonna write one on the state. I would have found that really interesting.

C. Derick Varn 1:13:34

Right. I mean, like, we don't we have we we have kind of a theory of the state and the brumaire, we have kind of the theory of the state and civil war in France, and we have some statements on the state in England. And Alan Ryan, the political philosopher, has pointed out that they're not actually the same theory of the state. They sound like they are, but they're not. And and the reason why they're not is when Marx is writing about the state in regards to England, he sees a state that really is run like a ruling committee of the bourgeoisie under the king, and like it really just does adjudicate, and they're very much coordinating and acting coordinatedly. But when you see the bourgeois acting up in France, they're basically at war with one another. Yeah. And so, you know, you could say they're both, you know, bourgeois governments, right? But one of them is like a very clear HR department, and the other one is like politics as internal war. Yeah. Um and the the issue that you have later on in Marx's interpretation is if you believe in the second interpretation, you can come up with various ways in which you can see the intercontestation of the bourgeois in the state making the state actually class neutral. But if you believe in the first interpretation, there's no way in how that could ever happen. And even the second confrontation, the class neutral state, isn't obvious, but it's one that's been argued a lot, you know, both for the state and against it, actually. So I find that interesting when we talk to like about ethics, because one of the things that's a big, you know, in the society of the future that you really think about when we get the go through programming and some of those things, is you have this you have this promise that we will get to a stateless society because we simply won't need it.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:38

Yeah.

C. Derick Varn 1:15:39

Like, and I'm like, okay, I I agree with you, but on what norms and what anthropological assumptions do we get there? Like, and he really doesn't make that clear. One of the things that I've that I've complained about Marx a lot is like outside, particularly after the early manuscripts, which are still very much under Hegelian and Farabakian influence, but you don't have a clear theory of mind in Marx. Um like you it's it's it's not because he doesn't think of one, it's not because like he's inconsistent about it. It's not something he's worried about. Like, you know, Engels thinks more about it than Marx does. I mean, you get some interesting things in Marx, like the admission, for example, that you can predict aggregate class politics pretty easily, but you can't predict an individual's politics based off that and stuff like that. Like that's there in Marx sometimes, you know, except when he's making insults. And I find that very interesting because that's relevant to two things I wanted to talk to you about, actually, even though this seems like a tangent, it it is and it isn't. The way moral tragedy is actually important to Marx, and in and in the way that like that tension is something that Engels uses from Marx to attempt to create a meta-ethical framework for Marx that later people like Lenin and Trotsky are going to try to pick up on. So I wanted to ask you like, what is that moral tragedy element? That's something that you are one of the only people I've seen write extensively about. Like maybe you and maybe Cyril Smith or somebody, but like what is going on with Marx and tragedy?

SPEAKER_04 1:17:29

Yeah. That's like one of the that's a chapter I added after the dissertation. And uh, it was something I I wish I had figured out before I did it. But

Tragedy, Hegel, And Class Morality

SPEAKER_04 1:17:42

a lot of it actually it kind of came from from Hegel, like me reading some Hegel, and like I guess a few other little hints that are just kind of moving me in that direction. Hegel has this great essay on natural on natural law, right? From 1801 round, yeah, maybe like maybe 1803 or something. And in it, he basically uses Greek tragedy as a metaphor to or he argues that Greek tragedy is a metaphor, I guess, or allegory for the moral conflicts that exist within Greek society. And he says that these Greek tragedies were you know a way for the the Greeks to to kind of cope with that. And he's he's using this also as a critique of Kant in various ways, you know, as Kant has this like universalist idea of morality that he thinks is nice and rational and you know completely universal, can it solve all moral problems, and and Hegel's trying to show that that's not possible. And and the reason that that Hegel says it's not possible, and this is something that develops later in the aesthetics and and philosophy of right, is that and also phenomenology, is that you have been up with contradictions within any moral system that emerge out of like the the organic reality that that exists in that society. So any attempt to create a formal moral system like like Kant does, and not only Kant, like the utilitarians or you know, even like Christian ethics or anything like this, it's always the ethics of a of a certain point of view in that society or standpoint, if you want to use that language. So Antigone, for instance, you have a conflict between Antigone and Creon. Antigone is is speaking from the standpoint of family, and so she wants to bury her brother, right, who's been deemed a traitor. And Creon, he's speaking from the standpoint of the state. He's trying to maintain social order and and make sure that nobody can, you know, because they just had the civil war, and so he's trying to ban anyone from burying traitors, right? To to kind of reinforce the legitimacy of the state. And in Hegel's reading, both of those are legitimate, they're both, you know, good within the logic of Greek society, but they're also inherently in conflict with each other. And this also comes up in the the Hegel's reading of Oristia, which is a conflict between the the law of the Furies. So Orestes murders his mom, and he murders his mom because she murdered Agamemnon, his dad. And and then the Furies get mad at him, right, and try to punish him for matricide. Right? So the Furies have this older matriarchal morality of vengeance and the family. It's very like rooted in your organic body, you're literally from her. Whereas Apollo, who's justifying Orestes, that's that's a very patriarchal morality of the state and state legitimacy. And you know, for Hegel, both of those are legitimate, right? Like then it's not like you can dismiss one without the other. And the end, you know, spoiler alert for Aristia is uh actually Deus Ex Machina that like Athena has has like a jury trial, and she so it's so the end of Aristia, right? Basically, Athena comes in and she says, Well, we're basically just gonna mash these laws together, and I figured out a clever way of making the law of the furies a part of the law of Apollo, and now every everything's reconciled and we're happy, and no one we're never gonna have the the tragedies like we saw in Aristia ever again. Right now we have a proper system of law with jury trials, and the furies become good spirits, good guys, I guess. Okay. They become the human humanities. So so Hegel sees this like I think a general model for morality, like this will just always be the case. There's always be these like contradictions in the moral views of any society, and I think that Marx takes this up, but to understand moral conflict between classes and Engels, you you see it too pretty clearly in anti-dering. But I think for for Marx, this is like a useful model to understand how different classes have different moral stories to tell, right? And sometimes it's going to be, say, the working class having their own entirely original, or some other class, right? Having their own entirely original moral views that come purely from you know what distinguishes them as a class. And other times it's going to come from them appropriating the moral ideas of other classes and reinterpreting them in their own terms, in their own language. So, you know, the proletariat, for instance, takes up bourgeois morality in various ways, but they change it, they change it in ways like the bourgeoisie wouldn't really ever think to do and improve upon it, right? I think for Marx, like the proletariat actually finds like the inner gems of bourgeois morality that even the bourgeoisie themselves could not have fully grasped. And they also come up with their, as I said, their own sort of moral discourse. And and this creates a tragedy because the bourgeoisie, they have a moral account of the way the world works, right? And the proletariat has a moral account of how the world works. Because both of these classes exist within a capitalist society, they both in different ways capture they capture some element of truth, right? And the proletariat is correct about certain things, but also those uh those two accounts are fundamentally contradictory with one another. And we see that like the working day, the the line I quoted earlier, that you know, when equal rights come into conflict with each other, force prevails, right? And that's the tragedy, right? That you have different moral accounts that are both correct, and one cannot ever be good according to both of them. You can only be good in accordance with one, and then the other is going to see you as evil for good reasons, right? And and for Marx, that's largely a conflict between the the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, obviously, you know, but there were other earlier ones, so the conflict between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. And Marx and Engels they have think the aristocracy is right about some things. They also thought that the bourgeoisie are right about some things, and the proletariat are right about another set of things. And it's not that all those classes are equally right, you know, but the point is that there are certain, you know, however right that the proletariat is, until they abolish capitalism itself, the bourgeoisie won't be entirely unjustified in their moral beliefs, uh, at least some of them. And those moral beliefs are inevitably going to come into conflict with those of the proletariat. And so I think for Marx and Engels, this allows for you know, an evolutionary account might not be quite the right word, but something like it in terms of how morality develops through time, is that it kind of develops through the struggles between these different tragic conflicts. And every time there's a tragedy, eventually those tragedies are overcome by some new social condition. But inasmuch as those new social conditions is a new class society, you're just going to have new tragedies that need to be resolved. And so the only solution for Marx uh is I don't think it's clear whether he thinks that this would end all of these tragedies or just some of them or most of them. But communism, at least one of the things that it would do would be to abolish such tragic circumstances because now you only have one class, which also means you have no classes, right? Class itself is abolished, and you're not going to get a situation where the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy and the peasants have fundamentally irreconcilable moral positions, right? There may still be disagreement between people, but the that disagreement's not going to be premised on fundamentally incompatible class-based worldviews. And Engels really picks up on this, I think, in anti-Düring, where you know he's critiquing During, who has very much like a universal theory of morality that he thinks that, oh, well, if you're rational, you're gonna think what I think about morality. And and basically, you know. Engels, you know, he's treating treating Turing as is like a, you know, as as the meme goes, like like the Kant you have at home, right? Like during his worst Kant, basically. Like Kant, he's alright, he's pretty brilliant, but wrong. And during is is just awful and stupid, right? One of the reasons that he's foolish is thinking that he has solved all of the moral questions through reason. And what Engel says is that you know, all morality, and I think actually this I originally wanted to call the book All Ethics Hitherto. So I thought that was very clever. And then the publisher was like, like, oh, you know, we need to figure out SEO, and I didn't even know what SEO was at the time. So okay, you guys need to to make it like searchable. Okay. So you need marks in the title. So that's why we have uh some of I think the the the current title used to be the the the subtitle, right, of the the book, not subtitle.

C. Derick Varn 1:29:05

The the the beyond the and the ethics of human flourishing part of the title.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:10

I I think so, yeah. Something like that. And so you know, for for for angles, right? That is what morality is. It's all class morality, right? And it's not even just class morality in anti during says it's like multiple iterations of each class morality. So in the medieval what you have like the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic and then the Muslim, and then later on the Protestants come about, right? But then some of those Protestants they create a capitalist society, and now you have a new flowering of different bourgeois ethics. So there's utilitarianism, right? Benthamite utilitarianism, which they they just love to, you know. Uh, but also Kant, you know, maybe Hobbes even sort of like a or a lock of like early versions. So then you have this bourgeois morality, which you know has variety, but it agrees on certain points. For instance, that you know it's best or most good if people are able to freely sell goods and services with each other. Right? So that they all kind of justify that in various ways. I mean, I think for Marx it seems possible or at least consistent with the overall theory with P and Engels that you know the the proletariat too is gonna have different accounts of morality, but they're largely going to agree on on certain core points. And so those will be things like we ought to shorten the working day. Another one that Engels seems particularly excited about and on the family is that the proletariat and I think I think Engels will be way too optimistic when he says this, but so finally the proletariat has has marriage based on love, right? Whereas the bourgeoisie, they idolize marriage based on love, but married based on property. And and the aristocracy, you know, they engage in marriage on politics, and then they have these like illicit affairs like Lancelot and Guinevere, you know. That that's where you find true love is by when you're cheating on your your wife who you married because she was rich and wanted her land holdings, you know. So you know, for for angles at least, you know, he thinks of like proletarian morality, for instance, you're gonna get true love, love relations. And so that you know, a lot of these more the the normative claims that they make over the course of their careers, I think, fit with neatly within proletarian morality. Either this kind of the the one that's generated from within the proletariat or the one that they've kind of appropriated from the other classes. So yeah, the the argument that we ought to shorten the working day is a direct consequence or a direct logical conclusion of you know proletarian morality. And the reason it's a tragedy is because as right as the proletariat is, the bourgeoisie is also right to say, well, you know, but you sign the contract. That's that's a free decision, and and free exchange on the market is is more free than than passing a whole bunch of laws telling people what they can and can't buy or sell.

C. Derick Varn 1:32:51

Although, I mean, the one thing I would I would add to that is if going back to Brumaire is Marx also seems to think that the bourgeois will give up its, because of its internal contradictions, the bourgeois will give up its morality very quickly. Whereas proletarian morality under proletarian political dominance are after class abolition, so there's no proletarian anymore, anyway. I think it is implied would they would still be contradictory things, but you would work them out through the discourse of producing civil society, not through other means, because those other means would not be available to you. Like you don't gonna have an army,

Fixing Marx, Method, And Failed Predictions

C. Derick Varn 1:33:39

right? Yeah, but I don't know. I mean, that's the thing, like Marx doesn't ever actually say that, he just implies it. So, you know, but I you know, I guess to end back off on the questions people go, well, a lot of this seems tangential to morality. And I'm like, but these are normative claims, they're normative claims about human flourishing. Marx does try to base them in early anthropology and in his you know historical materialism, but they are normative, and I I I it's frustrating when Marxists pretend that they're not, and including sometimes Marx himself. So I don't know what to do with that. And my other thing is my my other thing is like if you want to render Marxism a predictive science, you you have a problem, and that there are specific predictions made in both Engels and Marx, and they did not happen. Yeah, and I don't mean the vague ones, I mean like a revolution in eight in the 1850s due to the depression that ensued in that time, and Engels saying we had the we had the material basis for communism in 1888. Yeah, like so um I'm just like if you really want like a clear, positivistic, predictive science in a 19th century sense, then Marxism's not actually all that defensible, I don't think. Yeah, if you want, you know, which is which is why everyone and their brother has been trying to turn it into some kind of methodology, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:25

Because Lukash, yeah, Lukash everything in Marx, every prediction he makes being wrong, but the method still works, yeah.

C. Derick Varn 1:35:34

Right. And I also think to some degree, even though Alpha Serre and Lukash are like always posited as the two great opposing pillars of Marxist theoretical analysis, there is a real sense that they're both trying to fix the methodological problem.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:58

Yeah.

C. Derick Varn 1:35:59

Are the methodological inconsistencies or whatever. I mean, and it helps if you acknowledge it that it's there, and I think that I think morality is one of the places where it really shows up. Um I haven't agreed with most of the historical attempts to fix Marx, but I think we should just admit like almost every school of Marxism that exists is trying to do something to fix Marx. Yeah. The only people who wouldn't claim that are the Marxist humanists, and I think they're being solutional. But but anyway, I I do think that's important when we talk about these normative claims because I don't think it works without accepting that some of these are norms, not scientifically, objectively provable, positivistic descriptive claims.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:47

Yeah, yeah.

C. Derick Varn 1:36:49

I mean, some of them are, and I do think a lot of Marxist structural analysis holds up descriptively, you know. Like it's not just norms. I don't want to sound like that either, but I do it, it's been a major issue for me because I used to be one of those people like Marx doesn't deal with morality, and then I'm like, but how do I justify even the language and capital and definitely the humanist manuscripts, and honestly, even the anthropological notebooks? Yeah, like that's late, so you can't do the whole epistemological break thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:24

Yeah, yeah. Well, is it you know, and even this pit and angles where he says, like, you know, it means a very clear normative claim, and it's a pretty basic one. He says, Well, the incest taboo is a good thing, like it's a good thing that we came up with that, right? And even though people didn't really understand it at the time, you know, which yeah, we're like, well, okay, at least at least we got that one straight.

C. Derick Varn 1:37:49

But yeah, it's good that people thought it was icky before they knew why it was icky.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:55

Yeah, right. I mean, it was for Engels, it's what made us possible for us to figure out it was icky, you know, unless you were like a pharaoh or a Habsburg or like an Inca or something, then you're so special, I guess.

C. Derick Varn 1:38:09

Yeah, and you don't and you have a theory for why you don't look human after about five generations. Um yeah, that that stuff is I mean, you know, there's some I always tell people, you know, acknowledging that there's some strange stuff in Marx and Engels, like Marx thinking most ancient, I think it no, it's Engels thinks most ancient people were just cannibals, which while I do think some of the late 20th century denies of early human cannibalism are just even genetically disproven at this point. For those of you who don't know how we genetically disprove it, a third of us are immune to prion diseases. How does that happen? Usually eating the nervous system of your own species. But uh in in deep history, not you not you personally. Um but so you know we know that cannibalism was not completely uncommon, but it does seem to have been, you know, not nearly as pervasive as Marx and Engels thought it was.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:19

I mean, yeah.

C. Derick Varn 1:39:20

I guess one of the things I reject from the Ingalian worldview is that there's still this lingering progressivism in his worldview that I actually think is a little bit more debatable in Marx. Like Marx Marxist dialectics is not all doesn't necessarily automatically lead to happy conclusions. Engels usually does.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:42

So yeah, which I think is where if I recall like the socialism or barbarism, I think it might have originally come from Engels, maybe.

C. Derick Varn 1:39:50

Yeah, yeah. I mean it's it's Luxembourg who who like I think I think for Engels it may have been socialism or the common ruin, and then and then Luxembourg turned it into socialism or barbarism. Yeah, I think to tell you guys, because that was specifically in terms of World War I, barbarism won.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:10

Yeah, huh?

C. Derick Varn 1:40:12

That wasn't just an abstract question. There's so many of these I will say this about Marx and Engels and interpretations. There's so many of these phrases like finish the bourgeois revolution that we take of as like like some big abstract question of which we can derive an entire philosophy out of, right? Yeah, whereas like for Marx, it's like no, literally, they hadn't finished the bourgeois revolution in Germany, like it really hadn't finished yet, and it hadn't really finished in English either. Um it was debatable in France, you know, like until you know, after World War I. And I find that I find that quite interesting when we deal with the ethical claims. Okay, so where can people find your work?

SPEAKER_04 1:41:00

It's on Amazon, I think, but I think the best place to look for it is on the Bloomsbury the Bloomsbury website. I think uh there's like a couple different prices I saw on it, though. So I think they might have two different websites for the book on there. But yeah, so I got a copy here. They sent me like six. So yeah, the Bloomsbury website is the place that I would look for it. Pretty sure it's on Amazon too, because they said they were trying to set that up for the search engine. I don't think it's anywhere else yet, but you could also always order it at your library. I mean, these academic books are like ridiculously overpriced, so

Where To Find The Work

SPEAKER_04 1:41:44

you know, I don't don't really blame anyone for not buying it. It costs, I think the the cheapest price I saw on the website was $80.

C. Derick Varn 1:41:51

But yeah, it goes up to like $120 retail or something.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:54

Like yeah, yeah, all these academic works. I mean, I I I they might come out with a cheaper version if I sell a few, but you know, actually family bought some. You know, but uh I had a couple friends who bought it, but yeah, I it's interesting.

C. Derick Varn 1:42:13

You know, I used to tell people back when there were more of these kinds of presses, but they're going away, to do you know, a second gloss on your academic book and send it to a place like OR Zero back when it was a separate press repeater because they'll publish like popularizations of academic works. Um so you might consider it the problem is a Zed is another one. The problem is there's less of those presses these days, yeah. Um, and also some books are hard to you know turn into a popular book. There's been some monographs where where people have asked me, how would I turn this into a popular book? And I'm like, I have no idea. I liked it, but I'm not the average reader, even for you know left-wing theory. So but yeah, people should look up your work. This shows look up your Substack. I I quite enjoy your Substack. I have back when I was doing radical engagements, I think I did like two of your articles. So people should check you out your work there. Uh, anyplace else that they can find your work. So they can find the book on Amazon, but Bloomsbury's the cheapest. We keep they can find recent writings on Substack. Do you publish anywhere else?

SPEAKER_04 1:43:31

I have a couple journal articles, which you know paywalled by academia. So maybe not there, but I did write an essay also for Thousand Word Philosophy essay on on the critique of the Goethe program and the famous phrase to each according to their ability, from each according to their need.

C. Derick Varn 1:43:54

Oh, so it's not unique to that. Yeah, I mean, you know this one my author is it's like it's like not even originally from that text, like it's a it's a it's a there's a debate, there's actually even a debate about like about how old it is because some people like trace it all the way back to the Bible.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:13

Oh yeah, yeah. That's interesting.

C. Derick Varn 1:44:19

But it's I I think that's a stretch. But yeah, I love that. I love that because it is a kind of a good way of understanding communism and also the way of understanding the why there's a tension between LaSalle and Marx, because if if from each according to the ability to each according their need implies that you have made provisions for the people who can't work, whereas the LaSallean methodology basically means that no one is making provisions for those people, or the provisions are being made by workers in their private lives. And that is interesting as far as like a difference in like what your conception of socialism is.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:03

Yeah, LaSalle has much more of that, like yeah, workers, yeah. Which is you see during you know, Trotsky, to be fair, during the revolution and then it's like everyone's gotta work or you're gonna starve, right? But they could say, oh well, I guess that's just a lower stage, right? We're gonna get to the stage where you don't have to work later.

C. Derick Varn 1:45:22

But yeah, you know they promised that. Did they ever get there? No. But um, you know, there's this weird, there's this weird tendency right now among socialists to be like, don't criticize actually existing socialism, even in the way socialists in those states actually criticize themselves. It's like it's like, okay, man, I don't know what you want me to do. Also, why does it matter? Like, particularly when it comes to Soviet Union, like they don't exist anymore. Get over yourself.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:57

Like, yeah, and even if it did, like, honestly, like, you know, so I critique America a lot. Nothing's happened to it. I don't I I don't think you can destroy a state by you know writing a couple of like mild criticisms of its economic or political decision making.

C. Derick Varn 1:46:16

Or me shift talking the British state hasn't caused England not to exist.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:21

So yeah, the most critique state in in uh history, you know, still around I mean it it's it's worse for wear these days, but that's not because of critique. Yeah, yeah. That's bad management.

C. Derick Varn 1:46:39

Yeah management being an island, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:43

Whose only resource is like coal and iron and hedgerows, you know.

C. Derick Varn 1:46:46

Yeah, I mean, and the British people, I guess. Yeah, but you know, thank you, Sam, for coming on. I really enjoyed this conversation. We've been trying to get this off the ground for a while, and I'll probably have you back on when you write something interesting on your substack. So have a great rest of your day.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:09

Thanks for having me on.

C. Derick Varn 1:47:10

All right, take care.