A good example of how political philosophy is driven by ethics.
Here is Engels, Karl Marx’s collaborator in writing The Communist Manifesto and other works, criticizing liberals despite nineteenth-century liberalism’s great accomplishment in reducing war and promoting peace between nations:
“You have brought about the fraternization of the peoples — but the fraternity is the fraternity of thieves. You have reduced the number of wars — to earn all the bigger profits in peace, to intensify to the utmost the enmity between individuals, the ignominious war of competition! When have you done anything ‘out of pure humanity,’ from consciousness of the futility of the opposition between the general and the individual interest? When have you been moral without being interested, without harboring at the back of your mind immoral, egoistical motives?” [1]
Three observations:
1. In the second sentence Engels subscribes to the “capitalist peace” thesis — i.e., that free market trade promotes peace between nations: one doesn’t want to harm one’s customers or one’s suppliers with whom one has profitable relations. Interesting, since typically (or when it suits their purposes) leftists and especially Marxists argue that capitalism causes war by promoting competition for economic gain. But while Engels grants that the capitalist peace thesis is true, he doesn’t like it.
2. Engels is an anti-egoist and anti-consequentialist: the consequences of liberalism — peace, fraternity, and mutually-beneficial transactions — count for nothing because they come from “egoistical motives.”
3. And Engels’s account of proper motivation is Kantian. The final sentence requiring that one be “moral without being interested” is straight out of Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork: “Now an action done from duty must wholly exclude the influence of inclination,” and “I am willing to allow that most of our actions many accord with duty; but if we look more closely at our scheming and striving, we everywhere come across the dear self, which is always turning up; and it is on this that the purpose of our actions is based — not on the strict command of duty, which would often require self-denial.” [2]
Sources:
[1] Friedrich Engels, “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy.” Quoted in Tom Palmer, editor, After the Welfare State, Jameson Books/Students for Liberty/Atlas Network, 2012, p. 37. [Thanks to Richard Lorenc for bringing the quotation to my attention.]
[2] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated by H. J. Paton, Harper Torchbooks, Sections 397 and 407.
Related: Is commerce rendering war obsolete?
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The Communist Manifesto, in the Philosophers, Explained series
Notice Engles use of weasel words. He didn’t just say “egotistical motives.” Engles said “immoral, egotistical motives.” He provides not argument for this but simply assumes that egotistical motives are immoral.
Well bob given that capitalism has exacerbated inequality we can most certainly make a good argument egotistical motives ARE immoral when they emanate from men and women of inferior character that don’t respect limits of any system of power and exploitation.
Capitalism and free markets could work if humanity was responsible and intelligent enough to not abuse and understand the limits of power, but that definitely is not modern america nor it’s leaders. The damn leaders of the capitalist world.
If anything the peace that prosperity brings from trade is temporary since technology is now displacing jobs at an incredible rate and capitalism as we know it will be forced into some kind of socialism in the future because of AI and robotics. So marx may be right after all but it won’t be revolution from below but brute fact of capitalism making the bulk of the population unable to sustain themselves given the primitive economic model in a high tech society.
If we add up all the suicides from work and relationship stress in capitalism can we really say it promotes peace or do free markets merely channel violence into certain members of the population and rob them of their health of body and mind? (the huge rise of depression, anxiety, disability, etc) in modern markets because of enormous stress job competition and precarious work creates.
I think Engel captures the altruistic motive better than most. I think anti-consequentialist altruism is where the heart of the issue lies, and I think it will be the natural outgrowth as the failures of socialism repeat themselves. I don’t think it’s fair to separate consequence and intent. I think the two are intimately tied, whether you’re right or wrong. The socialists and Communists will merely drop the consequential part when it becomes inconvenient, as it is the system itself that their members are interested in.
I just saw this reply.
“Well bob given that capitalism has exacerbated inequality we can most certainly make a good argument egotistical motives ARE immoral when they emanate from men and women of inferior character that don’t respect limits of any system of power and exploitation.”
Why is it a given that “capitalism has exacerbated inequality”? Are you claiming that there was no inequality during ancient times or the Middle Ages? Are you also claiming that “men and women of inferior character” an “egotistical motives” only exist under Capitalism? I would love to here your evidence for both of these.
“If anything the peace that prosperity brings from trade is temporary since technology is now displacing jobs at an incredible rate and capitalism as we know it will be forced into some kind of socialism in the future because of AI and robotics. So marx may be right after all but it won’t be revolution from below but brute fact of capitalism making the bulk of the population unable to sustain themselves given the primitive economic model in a high tech society.”
Are you serious? “Temporary” indeed. Read Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now” to see how things have ENORMOUSLY improved over the last few decades as far as life span, health, and income.
“If we add up all the suicides from work and relationship stress in capitalism can we really say it promotes peace or do free markets merely channel violence into certain members of the population and rob them of their health of body and mind? (the huge rise of depression, anxiety, disability, etc) in modern markets because of enormous stress job competition and precarious work creates.”
False cause. You have presented no evidence at all that Capitalism is doing any of that. As for the rise in suicides, the old Soviet Union and Mao’s China had no need for suicides. After all, their governments killed more than enough people to make up for suicides. The same goes for present-day Socialist Venezuela. No need to kill yourself when you are starving to death.
What I cannot understand is why people who hate Capitalism offer Socialism as an alternative when Socialism has murdered more people than any other system in history.
hi, just catching up today.
If I looked up that Engels quote in context, I predict it would be a response to Capitalist claims, that Engels is calling hypocritical “by your standards”, or “by Christian standards of altruism”, not to say by Engels’ standards.
From what little I know, Engels and Marx claimed a certain logic & efficiency to socialism, planning vs chaos, and *ultimately* a super-productive inexpensive economic paradise in some distant future, but were not mushy altruists … far from it.
An important note is critics who point out that Marx invented the term “Capitalism” and that Capitalism, even moreso today, is the antithesis of the free market vision of classical western philosophers of political-economy … hence the propaganda term “neo-classical economics” to imply “solid tradition” while instituting legal and philosophical changes.
When free markets are competitive, and assuming “the worst tyrants” are in power, at least that power is diluted and diversified to some extent. We don’t have a Laventy Beria (sic?) slaughtering entire towns over one ostensible rebel or traitor, or to prevent opposition with terror.
We have bad cops *and* good cops.
Neither Obama nor Trump has had free rein.
There’s been a lot of corporate consolidation … and a whole lot of near-monopoly biz in various sectors — old media, Amazon & Walmart, etc. — and too often those industry giants are able to extract govt concessions and benefits along the way. There’s plenty of liberal arguments about workers, but those special benefits mainly destroy smaller businesses which *would* compete on service or specialty but often face steep headwinds when they don’t get special handouts of land, special tax breaks, public roads, etc.
Capitalism is or should be quite dynamic, and it’s that dynamism that (critical) economists like Steve Keen can support. Keen isn’t a critic of capitalism, he’s a critic of neoclassical econ dogma that drives capitalist rules and policies imposed (or not imposed) by Govt.
Capitalism, when balanced and humane, can be nice enough … as nice as human being managers and owners can be. When not nice, at least there’s more diversification of individual tyranny in markets where there’s plenty of competition for labor and where dissatisfied consumers can leave, harming the business. Employees quit, and turnover can be very expensive.
There’s a tendency for the pressures of outside investors — and leveraged corporate raiders — to impose harsh terms on that actual business in order to extract maximum profits in the shortest time, even when it clearly harms the business and drives away customers. There’s an art and science to seizing 51% of shares and looting healthy businesses, to maximize short-term gains.
We shouldn’t forget that Corporations are Collectives of Capitalists forming a single “artificial person” — in contrast to “natural person” — entity, and as such, while libertarians recognized the primacy of individual property ownership, to Rothbard this started with the human body and extended to “land” in general after human labor was applied to improve it, there’s no such “natural law” or “God-given rights” of corporations, in the absence of Government and Laws defining such entities and defining and protecting the rights of “artificial persons”.
I have joked that the current relationship between Govts and “Corporate Persons” is the most ridiculous example of *Affirmative Action* for a “minority race”. Law today has been partly rooted in early obscure legal arguments that corporations — railroad corps in particular — were discriminated against — faced essentially ‘racism’ — from ‘the masses’ of natural persons, who were ‘bigoted’ against artificial persons.
The fact that England treated corporations — such as American rebels opposed in Boston — as “persons” in certain legal contacts, led to the outright ‘chutzpah’ in the American legal system to argue that collective entities of officers, investors, and capital ought to have their Lockean “God-given” rights protected by Big Government.
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On Socialist Govts, there’s plenty of “not real socialism” arguments that are rightfully mocked, but the point stands to some extent.
Mao intentionally starved the masses in order to pay back an industrial dev loan from the USSR, despite Khrushchev advising him to *not* go the Stalinist route. This was never a ‘socialist principle’.
It was the ego, drive, and deliberate logic of a warlord-turned-premier, a person for whom mass human sacrifice — as necessary for victories — was more along the lines of say General Westmoreland than it was a civilian American President.
Mass starvation and killing of traitors in China wasn’t a “failure” it was a deliberate policy of efficiency.
Lenin & Trotsky also were clearly committed to mass murder (i.e. 10% estimated) in order to impose state-socialism and industrialize rapidly, to match the West.
There’s a quote by Lenin that it was the West’s development of military-industrial-capitalism that has shaped the Soviet model, not that the USSR leaders invented that.
The USSR, in the 1920s, sent engineers to Chicago to study Taylorism, even when US workers were rebelling against this “scientific management of workers”, in order to impose the vision of Frederick Winslow Taylor on Russian workers in “scientific socialism”.
Adam Smith said division of labor would be harmful to human societies and people.
Fred Taylor argued that division of labor was not extreme enough — each person needed to be restricted to one repetitive task with the least amount of skill … a simple automaton, with no power, easily replaceable.
Lenin and Stalin and his people *unapologetically embraced* Taylorism.
NOW, was this “socialism” in principle, a bottom-up driven system of maximum freedom and democracy, as some Marxist-Leninists claimed? Obviously not. Work was imposed, brutally. Managers who didn’t meet quotas were accused of treason. Managers who *did* meet quotas were nevertheless vulnerable to being accused of intentional treason and sabotage, if they were accused of not being as efficient as need be — or if there was a flaw in design or production and a scapegoat was needed. In the Soviet case, the scapegoat was not merely terminated from work, he might be terminated from life or at least have his freedom terminated.
I wonder how firmly labor was imposed in USSR factories even compared to agricultural slavery in the USA.
The US/West and USSR obviously have significant difference — esp in principle — but that shouldn’t obscure the similarities, both the altruistic and egalitarian principles.
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As for Venezuela, there’s a number of external influences such as ALL THEIR GOLD STORES SEIZED by Britain and ALL THEIR PAYMENTS from US oil firms SEIZED and sent to Goldman-Sachs.
If any American person or company faced Washington blocking all their assets and all their credit, globally, no other options, well it’s likely that your family would suffer greatly, become homeless, etc.
Vn can process thick tar oil at $55 and above. During the Chavez boom when they expanded public subsidies and built homes, the world prices of oil was well above $55 and hit highs of $140. The price has stayed below $55 for a decade after the tail end of Bush/Cheney.
When oil prices have dropped too low in the past, such as the mid-80s when the Saudi Embargo was broken, Texas small producers capped their wells and filed bankruptcy. The difference is, crude oil production isn’t the sole or main US business.
It is dishonest to ignore these factors wrt Venezuela and attribute everything to lack of extreme neoliberal economics.