TheLegacyofMarxianEthicsToday

TheLegacyofMarxianEthicsToday

bygnesHeller

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Source: PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:4/1981,pages:346364,onwww.ceeol.com.

THE LEGACY OF MARXIAN ETHICS TODAY*

Agnes Heller Marxian philosophy and social theory were committed to an understanding of the world in order to change it. Certainly, not even the understanding of the world can be value-free, although several philosophies suggest that it should be. But no one would support the statement that one can, or even should, be involved in changing the world without any previous value commitment. Certain Marxists, from Plekhanov to Althusser, undoubtedly suggested that Marxian science has to be disjointed from the value commitments of the persons involved in social practice. Were such a proposal generally accepted, we would be in no position to speak about a Marxian (or rather, Marxist) ethics at all, only of the private ethics of persons who accept the Marxian theory and, independently of this act of acceptance, conduct their actions in keeping with values and norms which are in no way interconnected with their scientific creed. Plekhanovs and Althussers suggestion is not in itself absurd. It only becomes absurd when the theorists in question announce with the same breath that Marxian science implies socio-political practices. Applied science is technology, socio-political practice is not. The latter involves the conscious actions of people who have the desire or the will to bring about a change in a particular direction. The goal and/or the change in direction of the goal is, by implication, evaluated. Anyone who embarks on changing the world in the direction of a desired or willed goal takes responsibility for the goal and the actions taken, at least implicitly. It follows from this that all others who do not accept Marxian theory legitimately pass ethical judgments on the socio-political practices of those who do. Moreover, given that Marxists do not agree on the interpretation of Marxian theory and thus derive entirely different (occasionally even opposite) sociopolitical practices from it, it is legitimate for the Marxists in disagreement to pass judgments on each others practices. Thus it is not a matter of arbitrary decision whether or not we subject socialist goals and their adequate or inadequate practices to the moral judgment of others, and justly so. It is an entirely different problem whether Marxian theory explicitly contains certain moral obligations for those committed to it. No evaluated goal in itself provides actors with such obligations, even though the various norms of conduct are normally related to specific value-objects (Wertdinge). In order to answer this question, one has to reopen the Marx-case again. In so doing, I do not intend to enter into the analysis of the personal morality of the individual called Karl Marx, even if it were not totally irrelevant for the problem under scrutiny. Further, I have to abstract this complex from Marxian theory as a whole, on the one hand, and disregard certain occasional remarks of Marx on it, on the other hand. The dominant tone of Marxian ethics had been struck as early as the time of the young Marxs writing his dissertation. The dictum of the protagonist of the
* An Italian version of this essay will be included in Storia del Marxismo, vol. 4, published by Giulio Einaudi editore, Torino. It appears here with kind permission of the publishers.

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dissertation, of Epicurus, that it is misery to live in necessity but it is not necessary to live in necessity, remained Marxs basic philosophical creed throughout his life. For Epicurus, transforming the misery of necessity into freedom was the deed of the individual; for Marx it became the deed of a class. For Epicurus, the misery of necessity can be transformed into freedom at any time; for Marx it is just here and now that the time has come to do it. In history hitherto it had been necessary to live in necessity, but now it is no longer. However, Marx remained faithful to Epicurus in one crucial respect: freedom had always meant the freedom of individuals for him. The individual is free if there is absolutely no external authority for him and beyond him. Prometheus passionate words I hate all gods were mightily resounded by Marx. But he added that the individual cannot be completely free if he only hates gods, if he only acts as if gods did not exist. Atheism, he claimed, is but the first step to communism. The secret of the holy family is the this-worldly family. Other-worldly authority is only the mirror image of this-worldly authority. In order to be free from the former, we have to become emancipated from the latter: from economic constraints, the state, the family, law, and from the norms of moral conduct as well. But this emancipation must take place not only in the imagination, as was the case with Epicureanism, but in reality: external authorities should cease to exist. The world-historical role of the proletariat is to liberate human beings from all external authorities. Of course, the process of liberation is distinctly different from the state of freedom. Liberation is not the goal, only the process, the movement which leads to freedom. Marxs hatred of all external authorities, and in particular of Judaism and Christianity, reminds us of Nietzsche. But the Marxian emphasis on absolute freedom, the absolute autonomy of the human person, had always been democratic. He had no Superman in mind; what he did have in mind was supersociety. In this respect he had never renounced the legacy of the Enlightenment, not even of liberalism: the freedom of one individual presupposed the freedom of all individuals, and vice versa. The idea that the absolute autonomy of the person is identical with the absolute autonomy of the individual as a whole meant a radical break with the Kantian distinction between homo noumenon and homo phenomenon. Marx made a case for the unity of the noumenal and the phenomenal individual: a human society without any kind of external authority may indeed only function if this unity comes about. The conception that in communist society individual being and species (human) essence will coalesce, an idea powerfully presented in The Paris Manuscripts, was not simply a youthful exaggeration to be overcome in the mature period. Marx never abandoned this beautiful Utopia; he often repeats it. In Die heilige Familie he writes the following: Unter menschlichen Verhltnissen . . . wird die Strafe wirklich nichts anderes sein als das Urteil des Fehlenden ber sich selbst . . . In den andern Menschen wird er vielmehr die natrlichen Erlser von der Strafe finden, die er ber sich selbst verhngt hat.1 In the Theories of Surplus Value he emphasizes: But free time, disposable time . . . is not dominated by the pressure of an extraneous purpose which must be fulfilled, and the fulfilment of which is regarded as a natural necessity or a social duty, according to ones inclination.2 The conception of the mature Marx

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differs from the conception of the young one only insofar as he no longer believes that the realm of necessity can be completely overcome. Production, the metabolism with external nature, remains as the realm of necessity. But even though nature is no authority, the simple fact that people have to do something means that they are not free. Duty (social duty) is identical with the lack of freedom. Where there is freedom, there is absolutely no social duty. Freedom is beyond duty, beyond any kind of obligation, beyond any extraneous purpose whatsoever. It is obvious that in both quotations the coalescence of species essence and the individual is presupposed, for if this were not the case, we could not imagine any society without duty or obligation, nor any extraneous purpose which must be fulfilled by the individual. The coalescence of the species being and the individual does not mean, however, a society without morality, but that moral authority is entirely placed inside. Otherwise how could human beings punish themselves, and why would they do it? This is a morality of conscience which is the morality of practical reason, pure insofar as it is not affected by any external obligation (by any substantive value), but not pure insofar as homo noumenon and homo phenomenon become identical. The idea of absolute autonomy (the coalescence of species being and the individual) involved not only the radicalization of Kant, but also the radicalization of Hegels conception of the interplay between the ethical world of institutions (Sittlichkeit) and morality. Since every institution which functions, or which might function, as an external authority for any individual is eo ipso alienated for Marx, a new image of Sittlichkeit had to be elaborated. There is only one human bond which can be conceived of as the direct expression of individuality, and vice versa, and this is personal human contact. Human community is the repository of these contacts. In communism, community is neither based on natural conditions nor is it mediated by things. Those wellversed in Marx know that for him commodity production reverses rather than reinforces personal contacts. It has also been pointed out that production, even in communism, remains the realm of necessity: in production it is things that mediate between persons, or rather persons mediate between things. The complete socialization of human nature (coalescence of species being and the individual) can only come about with the complete socialization (Vergesellschaftlichung) of human relations. Marx writes the following in The German Ideology: . . . erst in der Gemeinschaft wird also die persnliche Freiheit mglich . . . Die scheinbare Gemeinschaft, zu der sich bisher die Individuen vereinigten, verselbstndigte sich stets ihnen gegenber . . . In der wirklichen Gemeinschaft erlangen die Individuen in und durch ihre Assoziation zugleich ihre Freiheit.3 (The characterization of communism as the society of associated producers in Capital refers exactly to this kind of community.) Consequently, as long as community can become independent, as opposed to individuals, it is a sham, not a real, community. There are various farms of the independence of community as against that of individuals; class relations are only one from among many. So is law, the body politic, and every system of norms of conduct, every institution which may even have a logic relatively independent of the individual will and the individual need in any given moment. Thus we return here to the initial problem: community cannot function as

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external authority for individuals in any respect. But, and this but is of the highest importance, this very community, as the social bond of all, is the prerequisite of individual-personal freedom. Thus the distinction between Sittlichkeit and morality disappears. Human bonds without authority constitute Sittlichkeit which for its part is nothing but the relation of individual morality to the external world. This conception bears some resemblance, on the one hand, to Kants Utopia of the collective world of morality in his Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, and, on the other hand, to Feuerbach. But the anthropological-ontological foundation of the Marxian utopia is different: it is very much in harmony with the materialist conception of history. Marx quite explicitly denies that human essence dwells within individuals throughout history, therefore it has only to unfold in genuine community. Rather he emphasizes that this very essence has developed outside the individuals who, for their part, can appropriate it again in communism. But even if human essence is appropriated and species being and individual being coalesce, the nonauthoritarian community with its human bonds will still remain the embodiment of this essence. Thus humanized social relations (social bonds) will constitute individual human essence to no lesser extent. The centrality of the value of freedom in Marx has often been emphasized. So was his idea of absolute autonomy and his rejection of every authority. But neither the first, nor the second, is specific to Marx. Freedom was conceived of as the supreme value by almost every protagonist of the philosophy of modernity, and even the identification of freedom with absolute autonomy has repeatedly been argued for by Stirner and Bakunin, among others, against whom Marx had waged an incessant theoretical war. Thus if we want to go deeper into the specificity of the Marxian theory of ethics, we have to analyze three further aspects: the interpretation of freedom, the understanding of moral concepts and norms of history hitherto, and the theory of the process of liberation, all three, of course, exclusively from the point of view of morality. Freedom is the externally unrestricted development of individuals. And since it is externally unrestricted, it is the full development of all human powers, their manifold development: The development of human energy which is an end in itself (is) the true realm of freedom;4 the fundamental principle (of communism) is the full and free development of every individual.5 In this way, freedom is conceived of not only as a negative concept (as being free from any external authority), but as a positive concept as well: the free person is the individual rich in needs, capabilities, enjoyments, and productive forces. Here we can return to a problem analyzed above, to the emphasis on the coalescence of individual and species. Marx writes the following in The Paris Manuscripts: The rich man is simultaneously one who needs a totality of human manifestations of life and in whom his own realization exists as inner necessity, as need.6 It has already been mentioned that for Marx social duty does not exist in the realm of freedom as opposed to the realm of necessity, and that the withering away of social duty does not mean the disappearance of the internal obligation of practical reason. In the above quotation, internal obligation is termed a need, an inner necessity signalizing the unity of noumenal and phenomenal man. Even internal (rational) obligation does not appear in the form

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of obligation but as a need. Nonetheless, it is an obligation as it is internal necessity. Again, there is no reason to believe that Marx gave up this idea in his later works. In The Critique of the Gotha programme he even emphasized that work will become a vital need (which he vigorously denied in Capital). The interpretation of freedom, and of the absolute autonomy of individuals, as the full and total self-development of the person as a goal in itself is a conception which can rightly be described as super-Enlightenment. But as far as the reconstruction of history and of capitalist society is concerned, Marx vehemently renounced the position of the Enlightenment. Neither the moral nor intellectual education of humankind (or any particular society) can bring about radical social change, for all moral and intellectual concepts belong to the very society which has to be changed. When Marx discussed moral norms and ideas in conjunction with religion, metaphysics, and state as being embedded in specific social forms of intercourse (Verkehrsformen) which, on their part, are related to particular types of production, he had in mind a system of moral conduct called Sittlichkeit by Hegel. Whether or not one accepts the thesis of the development of the forces of production as the independent variable of historical development, one can subscribe without reservation to the theoretical proposition that every system of norms of moral conduct is intrinsic to the totality of social life-processes of any given culture and society. As far as this idea is concerned, the materialist conception of history is widely accepted in the scientific discourse of today, Marxist or non-Marxist. Marx had a very detached view of the various ideological forms, as he termed them. He intended to understand them in their own right without moralizing; in other words, he did not want to superimpose any kind of modern morality upon them, nor did he judge them. All the less so, as alienated as they were, they were manifestations of humanity as well, and it is well-known that the famous Latin dictum I am human, and nothing human is alien to me, was Marxs favorite. It is also well-known that Marx believed in a progressive world-history. Although the continuity of progress was mainly ascribed by him to the development of the forces of production, he also suggested that each social formation is superior to the previous one, and this is so in spite of uneven development and eventual setbacks. This conception also implied the progress of Sittlichkeit. It is interesting to notice that the most resolute critic of capitalist society attributed the greatest, and even the decisive, progress in human social intercourse to this very society. It is at this point that the dialectic of progress is put into effect. Everything needed for human redemption had been created by capitalism, the redeemer included; only the redemption is excluded. As far as the pre-capitalist world is concerned:
Es knnen hier grosse Entwicklungen stattfinden innerhalb eines bestimmten Kreises. Die Individuen knnen gross erscheinen. Aber an freie und volle Entwicklung, weder des Individuums, noch der Gesellschaft nicht hier zu denken, da solche Entwicklung mit dem ursprnglichen Verhltnis im Widerspruch steht... So scheint die alte Anschauung, wo der Mensch, in welcher bornierten nationalen, religisen, politischen Bestimmung auch immer als Zweck der

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Produktion erscheint, sehr erhaben zu sein gegen die moderne Welt, wo die Produktion als Zweck des Menschen und der Reichtum als Zweck der Produktion erscheint. Aber, wenn die bornierte brgerliche Form abgestreift wird, was ist der Reichtum anders, als die im universellen Austausch erzeugte Universalitt, der Bedrfnisse, Fhigkeiten, Gensse, Produktivkrfte etc. der Individuen? Die volle Entwicklung der menschlichen Herrschaft ber die Naturkrfte, die der sogenannten Natur sowohl, wie seiner eignen Natur? Das absolute Herausarbeiten seiner schpferischen Anlagen, ohne andere Voraussetzung als die vorhergegangne historische Entwicklung, die diese Totalitt der Entwicklung, d.h. der Entwicklung aller menschlichen Krfte als solcher, nicht gemessen an einem vorhergegebenen Masstab, zum Selbstzweck macht?7

In other words, in contrast to all previous societies in which the norms of Sittlichkeit set limits as well to human endeavours (to the production of wealth), capitalism broke through all limitations. No external authority is left, only external constraint, the constraint of economy. The work of eliminating all external authorities had thus been accomplished. What remains is the task of eliminating the economic constraint (of bourgeois private property). It is a misinterpretation of Marx to attribute any moral mission to the proletariat. Even though I will come back to this point later, this much must be said here: a social or a historical mission can be a moral mission as well only insofar as the historical agent is confronted with an authority of human conduct which has to be challenged. However, the gravedigger of capitalism does not need to challenge any valid system of moral authority because capitalism had already destroyed all such authorities. Marx praised Ricardos cynicism just because it properly expressed the spirit of capitalism. The systems of particular moral values in modernity are not capitalist but rather, according to Marx, petty bourgeois, shabby vestiges of a world already gone. There is only one authority left: the state. However, the state is not a moral authority but simply the agent of the civil-capitalist society, at least so Marx believed. In confronting the state, the mission of the proletariat is not a moral mission either but a political one: to abolish or to crush it, and to use it for its own purposes. The anthropological-ethnological understanding of various structures of Sittlichkeit and the justified forbearance to pass moral judgment on them did not restrain Marx from passing a historical judgment on these very structures from the standpoint of a coming human society, as he put it. Acclaiming the destruction of all external authorities of moral conduct as historical progress is in itself a historical judgment. The external authorities of human conduct are by definition alienated. Whatever their substantive values and obligations, they are all individuals subject to their own creations, these very values and obligations: they all reduce the individual variety of persons to the average and thus impede their self-development; they all reinforce the system of domination; they all inflict suffering (first of all, on those being dominated). The dominating moral ideas are always the ideas of the dominating classes. But class existence and class morality are in themselves alienation of the dominating class to no lesser extent than of the dominated even if normally the dominating class feels at ease, and the dominated ill at ease, in the state of alienation. Thus the materialist conception of history recurs to the value of absolute autonomy as the free self-

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development of every human person. Marxs intention is to understand every system of external authority free of moral evaluation because he does evaluate all of them negatively from the standpoint of virtual history, of humankind. The Marxian conception of Sittlichkeit is the key to the Marxian conception of moral motivation. Even if Marx makes only sporadic references to this problem, his ideas can be reconstructed with relative accuracy. This is what he writes in The German Ideology:
. . . die Kommunisten weder den Egoismus gegen die Aufopferung noch die Aufopferung gegen den Egoismus geltend machen und theoretisch diesen Gegensatz weder in jener gemtlichen noch in jener berschwenglichen, ideologischen Form fassen, vielmehr seine materielle Geburtssttte nachweisen, mit welcher er von selbst verschwindet. Die Kommunisten predigen berhaupt keine Moral. . . Sie stellen nicht die moralische Forderung an die Menschen: Liebet Euch untereinander, seid keine Egoisten pp.; sie wissen im Gegenteil sehr gut, dass der Egoismus ebenso wie die Aufopferung eine unter bestimmten Verhltnissen notwendige Form der Durchsetzung der Individuen ist.8

The very society in which the motivational conflict of egoism versus self-sacrifice unfolds is, according to Marx, the bourgeois society. The contradiction itself is constituted by this very society, and people cannot help being entangled in it. This is why the communists do not preach morality, and not because they are indifferent to it as many interpreters of the passage quoted above have suggested. Marx, who wrote his dissertation on ancient Greek philosophy, who knew Aristotle by heart, meant exactly what he wrote, and not something else. It is unquestionable that the conflict between egoism and self-sacrifice was completely absent from ancient Greek philosophy. In Aristotle, everyones goal is happiness. The happy man is the good man. The good man is, by definition, the good citizen. Every free human relation is reciprocal. The good state is the life basis of the good man and vice versa. Friendship is based on mutual utility, mutual pleasure or mutual virtuous activity. Egoism and self-sacrifice, as typical and conflicting extreme poles of the ethical world, were unthinkable. Marx was unquestionably entirely right when he suggested that this very motivational conflict is not eternal but is embedded in the capitalist life-world. On the other hand, Marx did not describe the bourgeoisie as a moral monster. He argued rather, against Stirner:
Der Habgierige, der hier als unreiner, unheiliger Egoist im gewhnlichen Verstande auftritt, ist nichts als eine (von) moralischen Kinderfreunden und Romanen breitgetretene, in der Wirklichkeit aber nur (als) Abnormitt vorkommende Figur, keineswegs der Reprsentant der habgierigen Bourgeois, die im Gegenteil weder Mahnungen des Gewissens, Ehrgefhl, etc. zu verleugnen brauchen noch sich auf die eine Leidenschaft der Habgier beschrnken.9

When Marx denounces preaching morality, he means, among other things, not to make capitalists morally responsible for capitalism, a warning he later repeated in Capital. It follows from this that capitalists should not be punished, even disapproved, for the very fact that they had been capitalists, during and after the proletarian revolution, which is an important implication understood only by a very few Marxists, perhaps only by Rosa Luxemburg. The physical

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extermination en masse of capitalists, for the simple reason of having been capitalists, as happened after the October revolution, in itself makes all of Lenins references to Marx inauthentic. The text quoted above from The German Ideology is a reformulation of the conception as presented in The Paris Manuscripts. Marxs way of argumentation is the following:
Die Moral der Nationalkonomie ist der Erwerb, die Arbeit und die Sparsamkeit, die Nchternheit aber die Nationalkonomie verspricht mir, meine Bedrfnisse zu befriedigen. Die Nationalkonomie der Moral ist der Reichtum an gutem Gewissen, an Tugend etc., aber wie kann ich tugendhaft sein, wenn ich nicht bin, wie ein gutes Gewissen haben, wenn ich nichts weiss? Es ist dies im Wesen der Entfremdung gegrndet, dass jede Sphre einen andren und entgegengesetzten, Masstab an mich legt, einen andren die Moral, einen andren die Nationalkonomie, weil jede eine bestimmte Entfremdung der Menschen ist und jede einen besonderen Kreis der entfremdeten Wesensttigkeit fixiert, jede sich entfremdet zu der andren Entfremdung verhlt . . .10

However it is worth mentioning that, contrary to The German Ideology, Marx here refers to the motivational conflict of the worker, and not to that of the capitalist. Therefore it is obvious that the conflict of egoism versus self-sacrifice is nothing but the expression of the contradiction between the laws of the economy and the norms of morality which cannot be obeyed simultaneously. When Max Weber later refers to the multiplicity of deities in modernity and to the problem that we cannot serve but one of them, he is closer to Marx than he ever believed himself to be. But there is a great difference between Weber and Marx deeply rooted in the skepticism of the former and the messianic optimism of the latter. When Weber faces the dilemma of modern morality the difficulties it imposes on actors, in particular on political actors despite his skepticism, he tries at least to establish a firm moral principle of action and judgment. Even if his theoretical proposal in favor of an ethics of responsibility is far from satisfactory, his sensitivity to the problem to be solved is of merit in itself. Marx, however, the optimistic messianic, never even tried to establish any moral principle of action, and Marxism has paid dearly for this neglect. But the neglect was not due to any indifference on Marxs part to morality, but rather to his commitment to the absolute. In history hitherto morality has been alienated; human beings were subjected to the external authority of moral conduct. In the last class society, these external authorities of moral conduct were destroyed and modern individuality, rich in needs and unlimited in aspirations, was born. But the internal direction of human beings (conscience) collides with the only (nonmoral) constraint, with the quasi-natural laws of capitalist economy. There is no need any longer for external moral principles. If the last obstacle of internal direction is abolished, human beings will finally be what they are: free individuals in the full capacity of their moral organ, their conscience. Of course, the offsprings of capitalism are torn between the conflicting motivation of egoism and altruism. In order to become free and universally unfolded individuals, they have to change. Humans make themselves. They cannot change without changing the world. But in changing the world they will

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change: in the process of revolution. The revolution will be total, and this totality implies the total change of persons as well. Even if Marx did not believe that the phoenix born of the total revolution would already be the completely free human being rich in needs, he at least believed that after the total revolution the development of human beings towards total freedom and internal/external wealth would proceed unimpeded. In the Grundrisse Marx writes the following: Die freie Zeit die sowohl Mussezeit als Zeit fur hhere Ttigkeit ist hat ihren Besitzer natrlich in ein andres Subjekt verwandelt.11 This naturally is most telling. For Marx it was not only natural that people who change the world change themselves in and by the process (this would be only too obvious), but also that they change themselves in a specific direction (freedom, abundance, and the like). For Marx it was not only natural that free time changes human beings (this, again, would be very obvious), but also that it changes them in a specific direction (the full and many-sided development of their personality). There is a theoretical fallacy in this firm belief. The substitution of change towards the better for change pure and simple (the second is indeed natural, the first is far from natural) is the very reason for the gap. I suggested that no moral principle is needed to regulate the change if change leads towards the supreme good anyway. The firm belief that the total revolution brings about a truly human world does not imply the belief in the moral superiority of the bearer (the subject) of the revolution. Marx never suggested that the proletariat is morally superior to any other social classes. Whenever touching upon the problem, he rather stressed the opposite. This is what he writes in The Holy Family:
Wenn die sozialistischen Schriftsteller dem Proletariat diese weltgeschichtliche Rolle zuschreiben, so geschieht dies keineswegs . . ., weil sie die Proletarier fr Gtter halten. Vielmehr umgekehrt. Weil die Abstraktion von aller Menschlichkeit, im ausgebildeten Proletariat praktisch vollendet ist . . ., weil der Mensch in ihm sich selbst verloren, aber zugleich nicht nur das theoretische Bewusstsein dieses Verlustes gewonnen hat, sondern auch unmittelbar durch die nicht mehr abzuweisende, nicht mehr zu beschnigende, absolut gebieterische Not den praktischen Ausdruck der Notwendigkeit zur Emprung gegen diese Unmenschlichkeit gezwungen ist, darum kann und muss das Proletariat sich selbst befreien. Es kann sich aber nicht selbst befreien, ohne seine eigenen Lebensbedingungen aufzuheben. Es kann seine eigenen Lebensbedingungen nicht aufheben, ohne alle unmenschlichen Lebensbedingungen der heutigen Gesellschaft . . . aufzuheben.12

Marx goes even further and emphasizes that the process of liberation (of the proletariat and of humankind, in a simultaneous act) need not be present as a goal for the subject of the revolution. The goal is posited by history without even being posited by the historical agent: Es handelt sich nicht darum, was dieser oder jener Proletarier oder selbst das ganze Proletariat als Ziel sich einstweilen vorstellt. Es handelt sich darum, was es ist und was es diesem Sein gemss geschichtlich zu tun gezwungen sein wird.13 This is a hyper-Hegelian conception indeed. Liberation is not only conceived of as the recognition of necessity, but the recognition of necessity is, in itself,

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necessary (the result of a necessary motivation, Not). Thus the goal is not chosen, it is simply given, and this is why it cannot function as a value, as a regulative idea for action. We know that every moral obligation is related to specific good-values (Wertdinge). If there are absolutely no good-values accepted in a human community, integration stratum, or class, there cannot be any moral obligation either. If the proletariat does not posit at least its own liberation and the liberation of humankind as an evaluated goal, it is, as a class, devoid of any moral obligations. There is no place for any ethics for the very class which is supposed to establish the totally moral world. No wonder then that the Marxists involved in the daily struggles of a real proletariat could do nothing with the great philosophical construction of Karl Marx, the fountainhead of their own ideology. The misinterpretations of the ethical implications of Marxs general theory were not their fault alone. I can list only a few of these various misinterpretations. While for Marx moral ideas and norms are embedded in the social life process as a whole, Marxists understood morality as the mere expression of class interest. While for Marx all class moralities are by definition alienated, Marxists emphasized rather that the class morality of the proletariat is the good one. The conflict of egoism and self-sacrifice described by Marx as the expression of bourgeois society was no longer regarded and analyzed as a conflict at all. Just the contrary happened. In terms of the conception of the followers of Marx, the proletariat was to follow its own class interest, and the individual workers had to identify with their class interest which supposedly stood higher than the private one. They even had to sacrifice their private interest for this higher instance. This is precisely the ethics which is, in terms of Marx, totally alienated. Nevertheless, this totally alienated ethics (alienated in the terms of Marx) became the professed ethics of Marxism after Marx. Paradoxically, utility, never regarded as the foundation of a good action by Marx, not even in his worst dreams, thus became the cornerstone of an ethics deriving its name from him. For instance Pannekoek, one of the most lucid intellects of the Marxists of the Second International, challenged utilitarian reductionism. If ethics could simply be deduced from class interest, he wrote, moral judgment should always be replaced by intellectual judgment (Vernunftsurteil), by assessing utility and harm in regard of society. 14 But after having criticized reductionism, he gave his final definition of what is moral as follows: Not that is moral which is useful for the class but that which is generally and regularly adequate to the benefit and interest of the class.15 Plekhanov, on his part, reverts Marxian hyper-Hegelianism back to traditional Hegelianism. Like Marx, he too emphasizes that the historical deed of the proletariat is a necessity, but he suggests that the recognition of this necessity is already freedom: . . . freedom from ignorance and from the bondage of the contradiction of ideal and reality.16 Marx obviously never said or believed that the recognition of any kind of necessity is freedom in any possible understanding of the notion. Plekhanov, as already mentioned, strictly distinguished between scientific socialism and the ideals of the proletariat. The first provides us with an insight into the necessary tendencies of historical development (freedom), the

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other with moral motivations. Thus the reconciliation of idea and reality implies that the more emphatically someone is motivated by the insight into necessity, the more superior his/her morality will be. He even goes as far as to make a general statement regarding this interconnection: The more energetically a person fights for the realization of his social ideals, the greater his self-sacrifice in this struggle, the higher he steps on the rungs of the ladder of moral perfection.17 Apart from the (not at all harmless) absurdity of such a generalized statement, it is obvious that the contrast of egoism versus self-sacrifice attributed by Marx to bourgeois society is completely ignored here. Egoism and selfsacrifice are not only reconciled, but class egoism, on the one hand, and individual self-sacrifice, on the other, are glorified as the repository of a genuinely Marxian ethics. In terms of this conception, class interest constitutes socialist ethics, and this is why individuals have to sacrifice themselves for this interest if they wish to step higher on the ladder of moral perfection. For Marx, such a conception would have qualified as the ethic of total alienation as it presupposes that class interest functions as an external authority over against individuals who, on their part, are obliged to completely subject themselves to this external authority. When later Lenin remarked that everything which serves the interest of the proletariat is good, he only added the final touch to this dangerous misinterpretation. The latter formulation is normally, and rightly, regarded as utilitarian. But it has further implications as well. Since Lenin, in his What Is To Be Done?, insisted that the proletariat is not aware of its real interest (its consciousness is spontaneously bourgeois consciousness), and that it is only the Marxist elite that has a clear view of this real interest, good is identified with the projects and objectives of this elite the professional revolutionaries, the party. As a result, the dictum can be read in the following way as well: everything which serves the party is good (and everything else is, by definition, bad or evil). One owes blind self-sacrifice to the party, this repository of class interest. The Marxian philosophy of super-enlightenment thus turns into an ideology of deenlightenment. From the last decade of the nineteenth century onwards some of the SocialDemocrat theorists realized that utilitarian reductionism (combined with the ideal of self-sacrifice) does not work; they even smelled a certain danger. A proposal to combine Marxian science with Kantian ethics was meant as a remedy for this inherent danger. The problem was quite clearly formulated by Staudinger:
Die einfache Tatsache der Beteiligung an der Gesetzgebung schliesst die Verpflichtung ein, an der Gestaltung der Ordnung mitzuwirken. Da aber fehlt auf einmal der Masstab fr das, was gut ist, den frher die konkrete, diktierte Ordnung ganz von selber darbot. Wonach soll sich jetzt der Mensch . . . richten, wenn er ernstlich fragt, woher er den Masstab zur Entscheidung findet, wenn er selber neu ordnen soll?18

Staudinger does not misinterpret Marx, he tries to complement him. Obviously the suggestion that the socialist project needs principles and obligations for moral action contradicts the Marxian conception according to which no such principles and obligations are needed. But this contradiction is far less problematic than the

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unbridgeable gap between the ideologies of the orthodox Marxists criticized by Staudinger and the philosophy of Marx. There is quite a remarkable difference between the socialists who observe a valid external principle (which was certainly not acceptable in terms of Marxs own theory) and those who subject themselves to the class interest or blindly obey a party. I consider the question legitimate; I also believe that certain binding principles have to be worked out (or accepted). But Staudingers own answer to the question is fairly weak: Was den Zusammenhang des Lebens freiwollender Menschen frdert, ist gut, was ihn hemmt oder mindert, ist schlecht. 19 This obligation does not qualify as a Kantian formula, and it is, at the same time, empty. The freedom-seeking (freiwollende) person is not identical with the pure will of the free-practical reason. In order to observe the principle one has to know 0the freedom-seeking men are and decide on this question which, however, has absolutely nothing to do with the observance of the obligation suggested by the formula. The most interesting dispute regarding this issue took place between Otto Bauer and Kautsky. Bauer did not raise the problem of a specific principle for socialist action, but he approached ethics from a different angle. As he correctly insisted, all moral decisions are individual ones, and they cannot be deduced either from historical necessity or from class interest. This is his own formulation: To put moral phenomena under scientific scrutiny . . . and to give an answer to a moral dilemma of life, to the passionate question . . . what should I do?, are completely different problems.20 He did not coin any new formula but rather subscribed to the Kantian: a person must not be used as a mere means by other persons. Bauer supports his proposal for the acceptance of the Kantian formula with a very interesting argument: Who would dare to say that in a socialist society a man or a group of men will not be used even once as mere means, without being used as goals in themselves at the same time?21 As Kautskys ethics excluded this possibility ex principio, he did not suggest any answer to this problem. He asserted that people in the present society were compelled to use other persons also as mere means, and since we are actors of the present, the Kantian formula does not advise us about our conflicts. To put it simply, since the categorical imperative is counterfactual (which it is indeed, for reasons of principle), it is of no use. Kautsky transforms the moral question into a scientific one: Indeed, the materialist conception of history does not always offer an opportunity to the comprehension of all single individual actions even if such a comprehension were necessary. But it (historical materialism) opens up the way to understand the necessity of moral judgments passed upon these individual actions.22 The underlying idea of this assertion is that optimal action is based on optimal science and any deviation from optimal action can be explained by optimal science. Kautskys idea is nothing but the further elaboration of Engels formulation that free will means decision with expertize (Anti-Dhring), a thoroughly positivist proposition. But despite the shortcomings of his solutions, Kautsky at least tried to face ethics as a problem. Simultaneously preoccupied with preserving materialism and accounting for moral motivation, he combined Darwin with Marx. In this endeavor, he went as far as to assert that we had inherited our moral motivations from the animal kingdom, the sense of democracy included. Ridiculous as it may sound, the

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conception was intended as a plea for democracy and as the recognition of the relative independence of our motivational system from the ever changing ideas of the superstructure. At the same time, the problem of force and violence came increasingly on the agenda. This, again, was a new approach when compared to the original problematic of Marx. Marx conceived of force as an important, but at best secondary, or even tertiary, factor. All external authorities involve force; as a result, they involve constraint. State is defined as the agent of force; so is law in the broad sense of the word. The proletarian revolution (a type of civil war) had to crush the state. But the problem of how many people will have to be killed during such a revolution, who has to be killed, whether killing was justified, never even entered Marxs mind. It is a fair guess that he assessed the human costs of the revolution would not be excessively great. In his view, capitalism was a collapsing economic system, and overthrowing an ailing social body would not require much bloodshed anyway. Rather Marx thought that state power would be an easy prey, and he conceived of the revolution mainly as a series of measures taken by a self-organized proletariat against capital. The brief period which had been called by Marx the dictatorship of the proletariat had absolutely nothing to do with terror. But it was precisely terror, terrorism as implemented by the Russian nihilists, that transformed the problem of force into an ethical issue. The terror of the Narodnaya Volya was regarded as historically justified almost unanimously. But the problem to be answered was whether historical justification implies moral justification as well. Almost all Marxists were ill at ease when confronted with this question. Educated in terms of a historical necessity, of Marxism as a science, and of socio-political judgments rather than of any moral doctrine, it was far easier for them to disapprove of terrorism politically (as a means inadequate to the end) than ethically. Even Bernstein came to the conclusion that, given that the norm you shant kill is always violated anyway, one should kill in the interest of the proletariat if almost necessary, neglecting the obvious point that the second proposition did not follow from the first. However, he added that killing must not become a habit with socialists since if it were so, we would rather move away from socialist society.23 It is worth mentioning that the very person who wrote a book on violence, Sorel, was adamant in repudiating the moral justification of terrorism advocated by the revisionist Jaurs, this admirer of Jacobinism. It was Lukcs who, at an incomparably higher level, synthetized all the issues raised concerning Marxist ethics in his studies between 1919-1922. His references to historical necessity or class interest expressed only what was consensual in the Marxist discourse of his days, but his synthesis embraced important novel elements as well, and a completely new outlook on the whole. Lukcs understanding of communist society is indeed orthodox Marxian, even if his vocabulary is slightly different from that of Marx. His main point is: The final end of communism is the construction of a society in which the freedom of morality will replace the constraint of law in regulating all actions. 24 This is the image of absolute freedom without any external authority whatsoever, without any kind of duty imposed on individuals, an image which, like the Marxian, presupposes the coalescence of both individual and species, of both homo

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phenomenon and homo noumenon, and thereby completes the conscience-directed character of the human person. However, Lukcs faced a problem which Marx never considered: the moral preconditions of the realization of the supreme goal, preconditions which had to be met then and there. For Lukcs, the proletariat had a moral mission, and so did the communist party. They had to embody, then and there, all values they were supposed to realize in the future. Moreover, the future depended on the morality of the historical actors of the present: It depends on the proletariat whether it will come to the withering away of the prehistorical epoch of humankind, the power of economy over men, the power of institutions and of constraint over morality. It depends on the proletariat, whether the real history of humankind begins which is nothing else but the power of morality over institutions and economy.25 Or: The human ideal of the realm of freedom must become for the communist parties . . . the conscious principle of their action, the momentum of their life.26 This quite non-Marxian emphasis has two different implications, both very much interconnected with one another. On the one hand, Lukcs realizes, contrary to Marx, that the necessary change is by no means necessarily a change towards the good. The principle of the good (Marxs value ideal) has to be strictly observed, it has to become a motivating force of the historical actors who might otherwise change the world in a direction different, or even opposite to their original intentions. Thus Ought, the moral obligation, had been introduced in Marxism. On the other hand, Lukcs deified the proletariat and the communist party. While Marx insisted that the proletariat will perform its historical role because it is completely dehumanized, therefore it is compelled to do it by internal constraint (Not), Lukcs emphasized just the contrary: the proletariat and the communist party should be morally above humankind in order to adequately perform their historical role. Thus the emphasis on moral principles backlashes in Lukcs. Even though his theory leaves it open whether or not either the proletariat or the party will become what they should, this option is only nominal. Given that Lukcs upheld the theory that the breakthrough to communist society is a historical necessity, only one real option had remained: the belief in the substantial correctness of the deeds of the party and the proletariat. On this basis, blind faith was substituted for sound reasoning and comprehension. Even in times when the party thus glorified performed far below the moral standard of contemporary humanity, in terms of this theory it had to be acclaimed as the repository of human morality. The same ambiguity characteristic of Lukcs work in respect to moral principles can be traced in his conception when it comes to moral decision and motivation. Lukcs asserts that every moral decision is irrevocably individual and that everyone has to make this decision on his/her own account and to take full responsibility for the decision and its consequences. He even formulates a specific postulate of good moral decision. In so doing he solves the problem raised by Staudinger (that of the application of the categorical imperative to a changing world) at a far higher and philosophically more consistent level than Staudinger did. This is the postulate mentioned above: Ethics turns to the individual, and as the necessary consequence of this propensity it confronts the individual conscience and consciousness of responsibility with the postulate that it so acts as

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if the turn and the fate of the world depended on the individuals action or his forbearance . . .27 Of course, this postulate is not categorical (only in its form) as it presupposes the previous knowledge of a future on which the fate of the world depends. Lukcs is aware of this non-categorical character of his imperative. He is also aware that this postulate can collide with another one, namely with the traditional Kantian formula that a man should never use the other man as mere means. Finally, Lukcs is conscious of the fact that the latter (the Kantian) formula stands morally higher than the former. In his conception, there are conflicting duties, which is a statement specifically rejected by Kant. But should someone decide for the hypothetical imperative as against the categorical imperative, he must be aware that he has sacrificed the supreme moral duty. But why should someone sacrifice the supreme moral duty for another one? The only reason for doing so can be that the other, the selected duty, is related to the supreme good (communist society). The distinction between supreme good and supreme morality serves one purpose: the moral justification of a-morality, in particular of the terror. Only the murderous act of a man who is unwaveringly and without the slightest doubt aware of the fact that murder cannot be approved of under any circumstances, can be of moral nature.28 And Lukcs quotes Hebbels Judith: And if God placed guilt between me and the deed meted out to me, who am I to possibly evade it?29 Needless to say, this way of reasoning was totally alien to Marx. The individual hero or heroine who takes the guilt of the world on his or her shoulders in order to redeem this world, the lonely actor of the historical drama who ponders on guilt and moral sacrifice was so far from anything bearing the slightest resemblance to Marx that there is no need for any further elaboration. A hero-worship of this kind is unquestionably a Weberian legacy in Lukcs to the same extent as is his fascination for charismatic leaders. It is precisely because of this obvious influence that Webers own criticism of Lukcs, in his Politics as Vocation, addressed to the Lukcsian ethics of ultimate ends, is not convincing. The Weberian politician of the ethics of responsibility who calculates all possible outcomes of his or her action differs from the Lukcsian hero insofar as he/she has no ultimate ends. But observing the norms of the ethics of responsibility does not prevent any hero or heroine from becoming a murderer on moral grounds if he or she considers the consequences of this murder beneficial. The deep problematic of an ethics of this kind i s obviously not the assertion shared by Weber and Lukcs in common that every moral decision is bound up with the individual and that the individual takes full responsibility for his/her actions. It is rather to be found in the implication that the moral decisions of solitary, but crucially influential, individuals constitute the ethics of a given socio-political action. One can, and should, contrast to this the democratic model of socio-political decision-making, the procedure in which social actors try to establish a moral consensus regarding the desirability of an action which leaves the option open for the individual not to participate, in case such participation runs counter to his or her conscience, without excluding himself or herself thereby from the possibility of participating in any subsequent discussion and action. This model has never been worked out in Marxist ethical discourse. Only Kautsky made a feeble theoretical attempt in this direction, a ma or merit of his

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Marxist theory; and Rosa Luxemburg practiced an ethics of this type without elaborating it theoretically. And here I rest my case regarding the ethical discourse in Marxian theory. One could, of course, reconstruct the hidden ethics of certain theorists of Western Marxism still linked to the Marxian heritage. Certain other Western Marxist interpreters drew their ethical inspirations from different sources. On the other hand, Eastern Marxism wrote a wholly different chapter in the history of ethics and moral theory. What was to be called Soviet ethics was and is the combination of old and novel constraints in the direct service of a brutal and murderous system of domination. The opposition to this regime put certain moral questions on the agenda. The stringency of elaborating a Marxian ethics was recognized in other quarters as well. Both Sartre and Lukcs wanted to write an ethics in their old age. Neither of them did it. Our generation inherited an enormous task and empty pages filled with silence. Wittgenstein refused to speak of ethics on the grounds that if we cannot say anything about something, we ought to remain silent. The question of whether we can say anything at all about a Marxian ethics today has to be taken in all its grave seriousness. The analysis of Karl Marxs ethics has frequently been undertaken by Marxists and Marxologists after World War II. But this work, important as it may be, cannot be substituted for the elaboration of a new moral philosophy, Marxian in spirit, capable of coping with the issues of our times at a level adequate to contemporary philosophical discourse. The task seems to be enormously difficult, and it is questionable whether it can be done at all. Needless to say not only the project of a Marxian moral philosophy is confronted with formidable obstacles, so is every contemporary moral philosophy. The reasons for having these enormous obstacles can be summed up on the basis of Marxian philosophy: the gap between understanding moral behavior and providing human actors with valid moral principles for action became almost unbridgeable. The Marxian solution of the problem, disregarding the second problem as irrelevant, is not a course to be taken by the present. Should one take the philosophy of praxis seriously, one cannot experiment with metaethics of any kind. Should one take historical experiences seriously, one cannot conceive of any philosophy of praxis which does not provide us with moral principles for our praxis. Should one take the criticism of bourgeois ethics seriously, one cannot follow in the footsteps of utilitarianism either, of the only present-day philosophy which is still capable of bridging the gap between understanding moral behavior, on the one hand, and consistently providing the actors with principles for action, on the other. The ethics of the philosophy of praxis has to answer the question so passionately raised by Bauer: What should I do? Of course, no philosophical ethics can advise individuals in all possible particular situations and thus relieve them of the responsibility of deliberation and of choice. But providing individuals with postulates, with moral principles as guidelines of choice, is an obligation no philosophy of praxis should avoid. However, postulates, moral principles for action, cannot be completely constructed by any philosophy. They must have a foundation in life. They must address people with a language of evidence. Moreover, any Marxian philosophy takes of necessity the position of humankind. The moral postulates and principles constructed by it ought to

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address every human being on our earth, whatever their traditional life-world or particular moral system may be. This involves difficulties which never even entered the mind of Marx who only thought in terms of his Western civilization. Bridging the gap between understanding moral behavior and working out postulates for good action is a tremendous task which requires that we constantly keep in mind the particular systems of conduct in modern life. This has been suggested by Marx as a task, and it indeed is a task, as only an approach of this kind (the ethnological-anthropological approach as I have termed it elsewhere) can induce us to be aware of the difficulties of the real acceptance of any ethical principles or postulates, even if these principles or postulates are embedded in life as regulative ideas, in other words, counterfactually. If philosophy does not follow in the footsteps of the Marxian solution in this respect, it can save headaches for itself. But it will become sterile, for it will disjoin moral problems from socio-economic ones. Yet in order to combine the construction of moral postulates and principles (on the ground of the comprehension of their existence as regulative ideas) with the understanding of socio-economic and political obstacles to their acceptance as constitutive ideas, and with the exploration of possibilities for all this to happen, one has to construct first the moral postulates. I am fully aware of the fact that the moment we start looking for any regulative principles for action, we engage in an endeavor which was specifically rejected by Marx, as we suggest thereby the acceptance of certain external authorities in order to regulate human life. Any principle or postulate for action is an obligation generated intersubjectively, not within the individual. In spite of all this, one can remain reasonably close to Marx by suggesting the acceptance of the postulates of the species (humankind) to which I shall return later. And this is not meant as a provisional way of proceeding, valid only for the period before the realization of communism: no philosophical ethics can be formulated with the intent of being provisional. By the very gesture of constructing a few principles and/or postulates for human action, one renounces not only the possibility, but also the desirability, of the coalescence of individual and species. As mentioned above, in all histories hitherto moral values (and virtues) had always been related to value-objects (Wertdinge), nor is there any reason to believe that it could or should be otherwise in the future. Even though Marx rejected moral norms and principles, he reasserted freedom, interpreted as the full and free development of every individual, as the supreme value. The value of freedom is not a random choice, freedom became the value idea of the whole humankind as its opposite (unfreedom) cannot be chosen as a value. The interpretation of freedom as the full and free development of every individual is, however, not consensually accepted. It can be accepted only by those who will abolish every system of domination, exploitation, and social hierarchy, since without their abolition the free and full development of every individual would be impossible (self-contradictory). This interpretation of freedom provides us with a moral postulate, namely, with the Kantian one: a person should not use another person as a mere means, or else his or her action would not be positively related to the value of the free and full development of every individual. Moreover, alienation, unfreedom, and exploitation are suffering. Once Marx referred to the abolition of suffering as the categorical imperative of the

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communists. (It is now appropriate to speak rather of socialists given the historical connotations of the word communist in recent history). Alleviation of suffering became, no less than freedom, a value idea in our times as its opposite (inflicting suffering) cannot be chosen as a value. The value idea of alleviating suffering provides us with the same ethical formula as the Marxian interpretation of freedom: a person should not use another person as a mere means or else he or she would inflict suffering on at least one person (the one who has been used as a mere means) and thus his or her action could no longer be positively related to the value of alleviating every instance of suffering (without self-contradiction), It is beyond doubt that this suggested use of the Kantian formulation of the categorical imperative does not conform to the Kantian philosophy which excludes every material value from the realm of moral obligation. In the case of the formula suggested by me, it is not the categorical imperative that constitutes the value-objects (Wertdinge), but the latter imply the following imperatives: So act as if the free and full development of every human person depended on your action, and So act as if the alleviation of the suffering of every human being depended on your action. It stands to reason that moral conflict is not excluded here either if the two postulates cannot be observed simultaneously. But the use of another person as a mere means is morally prohibited even in this case. The Lukcsian theory of moral sacrifice, on the basis of which murder can be morally approved of, thus has to be rejected. Even if killing can be occasionally justified either personally, or socially, or politically, it can never be approved of morally. As far as the more general problem is concerned (how to solve a moral conflict without using other persons as a mere means), modern philosophy owes very much to the communication theory of ethics in Apel and Habermas. Several philosophical theories, Marxist and non-Marxist, propose to constitute universal postulates for human actions related to universalized values of humankind. Several sociological theories, Marxist or non-Marxist, scrutinize the social, political, and economic possibilities (and impossibilities) of the various global social systems. A few of them (Marxist or non-Marxist, philosophical or sociological theorists) share equally the values of personal freedom and of the alleviation of suffering. If their endeavors could be combined, and at the same time embedded in movements, a new ethics, not orthodox Marxian in words, but fraternal with Marx in spirit, could come about. The empty pages we have inherited from our Marxist ancestors ought to be filled with meaningful words in an era of planetarian responsibility. This is not only a further step in theory but also a moral obligation.

NOTES
1 Die heilige Familie, MEW, Band 2 (Berlin, 1969), p. 190. 2 Theories of Surplus Value, Vol. III. (London, 1972), p. 257 (italics mine, A. H.). 3 Die heilige Familie, op.cit., 74. 4 Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. III. (Moscow, 1961), p. 800. 5 Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I. op.cit., p. 502. 6 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844), Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (New York, 1967), edited and translated by Loyd D. Easton

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and Kurt H. Guddat, p. 312. Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen konomie (Berlin, 1953), pp. 386-7. Karl Marx-Friedrich Engels, Die deutsche Ideologie, MEW 3, op.cit., p 229. Ibid., p. 230. konomisch-philosophische Manuskripte (1844), MEW, op.cit., p. 551. Grundrisse, op.cit., p. 599 (emphasis added, A. H.). Die heilige Familie, MEW, 2, op.cit., p. 38. Ibid. Anton Pannekoek, Ethik und Sozialismus (Leipziger Buchdruckerei Aktiengesellschaft 1906), p. 20. Op.cit., p. 22. Plekhanov, A szemelyiseg trtenelmi szerepenek kerdesehez (Hungarian edition, To the Historical Role of Personality), (Budapest, 1947), (Szikra, 1947), p. 13. Plekhanov, Tolstoj und Herzen, Plekhanov, Kunst und Literatur (Berlin, 1955), p. 828. F. Staudinger, Sozialismus und Ethik, Marxismus und Ethik, Herausgegeben von Hans Jrg Sandkhler und Rafael de la Vega (Frankfurt, 1974), p. 126. Op.cit., p. 131. Otto Bauer, Marxismus und Ethik, Die Neue Zeit, 1906, p. 486. Ibid., p. 497. Karl Kautsky, Leben, Wissenschaft und Ethik, Die Neue Zeit, 1906 p. 523. E. Bernstein, Moralische und unmoralische Spaziergnge, II. Recht und Gerechtigkeit, Die Neue Zeit, 1893-4, p. 361. G. Lukcs, Die Rolle der Moral in der kommunistischen Produktion, GL Werke, Band II. (Neuwied/Berlin, 1968), p. 90. Ibid., p. 94. Die moralische Sendung der kommunistischen Partei, ibid., p. 110. G. Lukcs, Taktik und Ethik, ibid., p. 50. Ibid., p. 52. Ibid., p. 53.

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