An Ambiguity in Marx's and Engels's Account of Justice and Equality

Author(s): Alan Gilbert

Source: The American Political Science Review, Vol. 76, No. 2 (Jun., 1982), pp. 328-346
Published by: American Political Science Association
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 An Ambiguity in Marx's and Engels's Account of
Justice and Equality'
ALAN GILBERT
University of Denver

Given the widespread moral conventionalism or historicism in contemporary social science and
ethics, many have viewed Marx as arguing either that conceptions of justice simply shift historically
and lack objectivity (relativism) or that notions of justice are to be understood solely as expressions of
class interests (reductionism). Although metaethical ambiguities about the status of conceptions of
justice influenced some of Marx's and Engels 'sformulations, they condemned the "crying contrasts "
of rich and poor. Marx is better understood as defending a version of moral objectivity or moral
realism. The paper begins with an example from the recent debate about justice in the international
distribution of wealth to highlight the implausibility of a relativist or reductionist account. It then
describes alternative views of the status of justice and equality in Marx and Engels and explores the
logical structure of Marx's critique of Proudhon. A fourth section examines the analogy between
Marx's and Engels's realism in the philosophy of science and their realist arguments in ethics, focus-
ing on Marx's and Engels's non-relativist and non-reductionist conception of moral progress. The
conclusion sets Marx's use of concepts of exploitation in the context of his overall moral judgments
and suggests that Marx's social or historical theory rather than his moral standards are the most con-
troversial part of his ethical argument.

Moral ObjectivityversusHistoricism with this theory of history. According to the rela-

tivist and reductionist views, Marx and Engels of-
On Marx's generaltheoreticalhypothesis,sys- fered only a historical critique of prevailing con-
tems of law and related moral conceptions arise ceptions of justice and equality and eschewed
with given systems of production, spur their ad- these concepts except to debunk them. A third
vance, and share in their demise. Such prevailing view, a moral realist one, suggests that Marx and
conceptions are relative to historical epochs; they Engels dialectically reformulated existing pro-
enjoy validity for a limited period but compel no letarian demands for equality and justice.
eternal or universal assent. Thus, in response to According to the relativist view, the Marxist
the claim that payment of interest is a matter of sees as an issue only the historical efficacy of an
natural justice, Marx contended: ethical system to a given mode of production-for
example, a justification of the natural character
The justice of transactionswhichgo on between
agentsof productionrests on the fact that these of slaveholding in ancient Greece or of wage
transactionsariseas naturalconsequencesof the slavery in the contemporary United States-rather
relationsof production.The juridicalforms in than the truth of a moral argument. Claims of
which these economic transactions appear as justice in social theory are incidental to the causal
voluntaryactionsof the participants,. . . as con- role of prevailing economic tendencies, although
tractsthat may be enforcedby the stateagainsta those claims might reinforce or retard economic
single party, cannot, being mere forms, deter- trends, and moral concepts make no distinguish-
minethis content.Theyonly expressit. This con- able contribution to social explanations. Concep-
tent is just wheneverit correspondsto the mode tions of justice differ incommensurably from per-
of production, is adequate to it. It is unjust
wheneverit contradictsthat mode (Marx 1961, iod to period, class to class. (See, for example,
Vol. 3, pp. 339-40;Marxand Engels 1959, Vol. Trotsky 1963, and Fisk 1975). Representative pro-
25, p. 351). ponents of these conceptions, abstracted from
their specific historical settings, would continue to
Three interpretations of justice, each with some defend their own visions of justice, but quarrel
basis in Marx and Engels, might be consistent endlessly. This interpretation is a form of ap-
praiser's-group relativism: that is, an act is judged
by a given appraiser to be right if and only if it ac-
'I am indebted to Nicholas Sturgeon and Richard cords with his society's prevailing moral code
Boyd for helpful criticismsof this paper, and to Allen (Lyons 1976, p. 109).
Wood for several enlightening conversations about Whereas the representatives of different epochs
these issues. take their own visions of justice seriously, Marx-
328

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1982 An Ambiguityin Marxand Engels
ists do not; they adopt a version of ethical rela-
tivism and dismiss moral arguments as a muddle.
Ethical relativists could still defend their own
ethical conceptions or those of their epoch, yet
Marxian relativists refuse to endorse such concep-
tions because they radically differentiate moral
knowledge from other kinds of knowledge. Such
Marxians argue that in natural science and social
theory, investigators can discover approximate
truth without reference to the social origins of a
point of view. Here ethics suffers by comparison
with science. From a scientific standpoint, no
moral truth or objectivity exists. Furthermore,
this ethical relativist interpretation denies both
moral progress and advance in ethical theory, a
view that corresponds to the widespread ethical
relativist, conventionalist, or historicist trend in
Anglo-American philosophy and social science.
According to the reductionist interpretation, a
Marxist could not only explain standards of jus-
tice by reference to the mode of production, but
could endorse them on this basis (Wood 1972,
1979, has skillfully defended this argument). This
view conflicts with ethical relativism. It relates the
existing historical variety of conceptions of justice
to the agent's group; an act is right (at a given
time) if and only if it accords with the moral code
of the agent's mode of production or social class.
(Lyons 1976). The reductionist then assesses the
validity of these differing conceptions of justice
not in their own terms but according to their im-
pact on the productive forces. Thus, observers
could agree that slavery was just not because
slaves were inferior or barbarians lacking mental
competence, as slaveholders alleged, but because
slavery temporarily stimulated production. In
fact, although temporarily endorsing the slave-
holders' judgment about justice, this view seems
(peculiarly) compatible with the denial of the
slaveholders' reasons. Such an interpretation
saves itself from ethical relativism but only at the
expense of reductionism. More strongly than the
relativist interpretation, this view debunks all con-
ceptions of justice.
In Wood's version of reductionism, the histori-
cal observer concurs with juridical standards if
they conform to the relations of production.
Wood sees justice as a conservative notion that
corresponds to the old relations of production
even when that productive system has gone into
decline. Radical critics can never use such concep-
tions. A new view of justice becomes valid only
after a political revolution has sanctioned new
production relations. Although this interpretation
attempts to account for Marx's criticisms of the
use of the term eternal justice by moralistic
radicals (Marx 1966, Vol. 1: 84-85), it leaves a
crucial question unanswered: in periods when one
mode of production declines, a new one arises,
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329
and a revolutionary movement flourishes, at least
two conceptions of justice clash. How is the
observer to choose between them? According to
Marx's general historical theory, a reductionist
could endorse the new conception because it ad-
vances the productive forces even before new pro-
duction relations become predominant. Prevalent
moral standards lose their validity when the old
production relations retard the productive forces,
and the reductionist could then sanction the use of
the term unjust by radicals. Either version of
reductionism permits a kind of dialectical pro-
gress, a progress in productivity, but at least in
Wood's account, no progress in morality or
ethical theory can occur.
In subsequent debate, Wood maintained that
Marx used other ethical standards, such as politi-
cal community, freedom, and self-realization, to
indict predominant modes of production and
restricted a reductionist argument to concepts of
justice (Wood 1979, pp. 282-91). This recognition
undermines any historicist attempt to reduce
Marx's overall ethical judgments to his critique of
prevailing ideas about justice. In comparison to
these other ethical goods, Wood regards justice as
unimportant. A reductionist account could, there-
fore, acknowledge ethical progress in these other
goods, but Wood does not. For Marx and Engels,
however, greater realization of political commu-
nity, cooperative productive activity, and indi-
viduality distinguishes communism from previous
exploitative societies (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol.
2, p. 24; Marx 1973, pp. 325, 487-8).
We might regard this reductionist interpretation
as a version of scientific realism, one that identi-
fies which actual relationships have been termed
justice. But unlike the moral realist interpretation,
the reductionist account denies that any concep-
tion of justice could be true. Like its ethical
cousin, relativism, the reductionist interpretation
denies moral truth or objectivity.
Some theorists, such as Leo Strauss, have criti-
cized all modern political thought, liberal and
radical, for a putative commitment to moral rela-
tivism or historicism in contrast to the moral ob-
jectivity and loftier political and philosophical
theory of the ancients (Strauss 1965). In Strauss's
terms, modern liberalism and radicalism must en-
dorse a contentless notion of individual freedom.
If either a relativist or a reductionist account of
Marx's moral judgments is true, such a critic
could identify Marxian theory as part of an his-
toricist trend.
Strauss's critique captures one important strand
in modern political theory. For example,
Hobbes's idea of an anarchy of moral meanings
which requires the Leviathan of civil society to
establish a positive order, is a strongly conven-
tionalist view; that is, moral ideas mean what the
330 The AmericanPoliticalScience Review
sovereign says they mean (Hobbes 1962, pp.
39-40). Michael Oakeshott offers an elegant refor-
mulation of Hobbes's conception: a philosophical
defense of modern individuality reflects current
European self-understanding and has no further,
more objective basis (Oakeshott 1975, pp. 325-6).
John Rawls, a liberal theorist, looks to moral
reasoning in an original position to encourage
moral objectivity. Yet Rawls draws the relatively
pure moral intuitions that play a role in his
"reflective equilibrium" from "our intuitions,"
that is, the intuitions which at this historical mo-
ment moral philosophers happen to have (Rawls
1971, pp. 19-20, 49-50). In the social sciences,
similar notions of moral conventionalism have
become widespread. To take only one example,
Max Weber's conception of legitimacy appeals to
what a given population thinks to be just. Weber
brackets the issue of whether legitimate govern-
mental practices actually are just or unjust. Fur-
thermore, Weber viewed different dimensions of
reality, politics and religion for example, as ruled
by clashing demons and denied the possibility of
moral objectivity. His "national economics" cele-
brated the eloquent relativist ideal of Machia-
velli's Florentine, who valued his city more highly
than his soul (Weber 1958a, p. 126; 1958b, p. 107;
Gilbert 1981c). The importance of moral rela-
tivism in contemporary liberal philosophical and
social scientific thinking lends some plausibility to
the general Straussian critique.
Nonetheless, Strauss's argument is thoroughly
unfair to the diversity of modern liberalism. He
ignores the hardly contentless liberal and radical
denial of ancient slavery as a prerequisite for any
morally defensible form of social cooperation and
individuality (see Montesquieu 1965, bk. xv;
Hegel 1975, pp. 54, 140; Gilbert 1981b), and he
fails to identify Marx's moral judgments, if Marx-
ian social theory is true, as objective or realist
claims about human needs and capacities.
Thus, a moral realist interprets Marx's stan-
dards of human goods, including political com-
munity, freedom, individuality, friendship, soli-
darity, and scientific and artistic achievement, as
stemming from Marx's conception of human
nature (see also Gilbert 1981a). This human
nature exhibits certain original capacities and
needs, roughly those identified by Darwin's
theory; subsequent historical development has
refined these original capacities or created new
ones (Marx 1961, Vol. 1, pp. 178, 341: Cohen
1979, pp. 151-2). This vision of a historically
modified human nature combined with Marx's
theory of economic and political development
favors a society that fosters the greatest flourish-
ing of individuality and achievement of poten-
tials. Note that this view contradicts any relativist
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Vol. 76
interpretation, which sees humanity itself as
epoch relative or contends that no human nature
exists (Fisk 1975, pp. 74-8).
Defending an aspect of moral realism, Husami
has challenged Wood's reductionism by dis-
tinguishing Marx's claims about the truth of
moral judgments from his account of their origins
or "sociology of moral norms" (Husami 1980,
pp. 42-53). Husami argues that Marx recognized
moral facts about justice under capitalism; how-
ever, he tries to deny Wood's reductionism any
basis in Marx's own comments on justice. But as
Wood (1979 Section III) has responded, Marx not
only criticized capitalist standards of justice but
also the notions of "eternal justice" offered by
radicals like Proudhon and Lassalle. Marx some-
times appeared to substitute scientific explanation
(and political strategy) for any moral claims at all.
By rejecting Wood's interpretation outright,
Husami has nearly painted Marx as the type of
moralist Marx criticized, a theorist who offers a
primarily ethical critique of capitalism. Wood in
response similarly denies any merit in Husami's
contention that Marx scathingly indicted the in-
human consequences of capitalist exploitation.
Taking Husami's and Wood's accounts to-
gether, Marx and Engels appear to be ambiguous
about whether or not capitalist exploitation is un-
just. I will argue, however, that although Marx
and Engels did not regard injustice as the only or
even the main indictment of capitalism, they saw
the historic differences between rich and poor, ex-
plained by Marx's theory of exploitation, as, in
Engels's phrase, crying injustices. Thus, the
Wood-Husami debate does not stem from any
ambiguity in Marx's and Engels's moral judg-
ments or in their condemnation of capitalism and
previous exploitative societies but rather from a
different ambiguity in Marx's and Engels's ac-
count of the status or truth of moral concepts.
The difficulty lies not in Marx's and Engels's
ethics but in their metaethics and its peculiar im-
pact on their interpretation of their scientific,
political, and ethical disputes with other radicals.
On this argument, many readers of Marx, both
sympathetic and unsympathetic, have mistakenly
used some of Marx's and Engels's relativist or
reductionist metaethical statements to ignore their
actual moral judgments.
I call my interpretation of Marx's ethical judg-
ments a moral realist one in analogy with the real-
ist arguments of Putnam (1975), Boyd (1979) and
Kripke (1980) in contemporary philosophy of sci-
ence and language. Moral realism recognizes the
objectivity of moral judgments about human
needs and capacities, progress in morality and
moral theory, the dependence of ethical progress
on advances in social organization and social
1982 An Ambiguity in Marx and Engels
theory, and the role of moral conceptions,
especially true ones in social explanation and
political strategy.
Anglo-American philosophy, influenced by em-
piricism, has stressed a priori analysis of the defi-
nition of moral terms; for example, the ancient
Greeks' criteria for using the term good would de-
termine its meaning.' Consequently, any change
in the definition of the term good renders moral
continuity problematic, and a claim that ancient
Greeks and modern liberals share important con-
ceptions of the good life or freedom is incoherent.
Thus, this general empiricist conception in the
philosophy of language leads directly to moral
relativism or historicism (Rorty 1979, pp. 280-1).
In contrast, for the realist, moral concepts refer
to actual human social and psychological capaci-
ties for cooperation, freedom, and individuality
manifested in the course of historical develop-
ment. The realist view begins from Aristotle's
argument that the Greek polis first demonstrated
the human potentials for a good life, or of man to
be a political animal, potentials that were not
previously recognized in Persian or ancient Greek
despotism (Aristotle, Politics, 1252b 16-23,
1253a30-31). Later arguments, such as Hegel's
that in Greece, only male citizens were free, but
modern society has recognized that all males are
free, or Marx's argument that communism
enables the full realization of social individuality,
attempt to identify new manifestations of human
ethical possibilities.
Thus, a realist explanation of the ambiguity in
Marx's metaethics can lead to a much more sym-
pathetic view of justice than relativism or reduc-
tionism. Realism acknowledges some merit in past
and current views about justice but offers a theo-
retical reformulation of those views; it shows how
dramatically moral differences between liberals
and the ancients, for example Montesquieu's re-
jection of Aristotle's social biological defense of
slavery, or between Marxists and liberals, pivot on
issues of social theory rather than on incommen-
surable ethical premises. The moral realist ac-
count recognizes historical progress but is not his-
toricist or relativist. Unlike empiricist or neo-
Kantian moral philosophy, moral realism empha-
sizes the discovery of moral knowledge a pos-
teriori based on observable human social practice
and denies it any a priori status. The realist re-
gards an approximately true moral theory as pos-
2The empiricist view of moral terms ultimately derives
from Locke's argument that words refer only to nomi-
nal essences, specified by lists of secondary qualities,
not to real or internal essences. Locke, 1979, bk. 3, chs.
5-6, esp. pp. 442-45. Kripke (1980, pp. 134-40) and
Boyd (1980) have criticized this view.
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331
sible. One might even claim that Aristotle ad-
vanced such a theory about cooperation and free-
dom among those recognized as human, although
he wrongly excluded women and slaves (Gilbert
198lb). The realist also contends that progress has
occurred in morality, for instance from slave to
nonslave organizations of society, and in moral
theory. Such advances are heavily dependent on
advances in history and in social theory. The truth
of claims about justice or other moral judgments
would influence the destiny of radical movements
and would prove indispensable to an adequate
social theory.
Thus, this paper argues that a moral realist ac-
count provides the most consistent interpretation
of Marx's and Engels's judgments about justice
and the role of ethical judgments in Marxian
social theory and will show that their occasional
metaethical relativist or reductionist comments
are misleading. If this argument is correct, it
results in a more sweeping reinterpretation of the
status of moral argument in Marx's historical
theory and political strategy and a more funda-
mental recasting of Marx's relationship to an-
cient, liberal, and earlier radical political and
moral theory than any previous view.
What Can Marxists Fairly Say About Injustices?
In One Hundred Countries, Two Billion Peo-
ple, Robert S. McNamara, then president of the
World Bank, made an impassioned plea for inter-
national redistribution. Pointing to the plight of
the most impoverished citizens of India, he con-
tended:
It is the poorest40% who despitetheircountry's
gross economicgrowth remainin conditionsof
deprivationthat fall below any rationaldefini-
tion of human decency.... When we reflect
that of the morethanhalf a billionpersonsliving
on the Indian subcontinent,some 200 million
subsist on incomesthat averageless than $40 a
year, how are we to comprehendwhatthat really
implies?(McNamara1973, pp. 104-5)
One might add that if the lowest 400o7 are so poor,
the circumstances of the vast majority are only
slightly less oppressive and uncertain. By any con-
ception of meeting the minimal human needs of
food, shelter, and jobs, let alone health care and
schooling, these inequalities, characteristic of in-
dividual countries and more strikingly of inter-
national society as a whole, seem unjust if not
perverse and outrageous. Furthermore, by
McNamara's own account, inequality of income
shares is increasing in India as in many other poor
nations.
For McNamara, the causes of this impoverish-
ment seem unclear; they reside in some absence of
332 The American Political Science Review
dynamism among entrepreneurs or the masses in
poor nations, or perhaps ultimately in some puta-
tive cultural or psychological deficiency, and do
not stem mainly from the heritage of colonialism
or the contemporary effects of foreign interven-
tion. But once a common concern, spurred by
McNamara's book, becomes widespread among
policy-making elites, McNamara expects that the
conditions of the least advantaged will improve.
How might a Marxist respond to McNamara's
appeal to justice? In a classic strategy suggested
by Engels's The Housing Question (1873), a cri-
tique of the German Proudhonist Millberger, a
Marxist might point to facts about the interaction
of rich and poor which make McNamara's view
implausible. In the poor nations the new elites
benefit from skewed income distribution (Tucker
1977, pp. 154-5). Furthermore, the elites of the
advanced capitalist nations who sometimes supply
economic and military aid to the poor nations
have a common interest with these elites in main-
taining impoverishment (they benefit from cheap
labor, for example), and international monetary
institutions sustain their interests. For the Marx-
ist, some version of Lenin's theory of imperialism
or today's dependency theory would appear to ex-
plain the increase in inequality and to illuminate
the gap between at best skewed and unequal
economic growth and internal and international
rhetoric about redistribution (Myrdal 1970, pp.
60-1).3 Correspondingly, only mutual support
among workers, peasants, students, and intellec-
tuals in both poor and rich nations, offers any
hope of securing redistribution to the less advan-
taged (Gilbert 1978b).
McNamara's view suggests that the World
Bank, once it recognized the injustice of inter-
national distribution, would welcome attempts at
redistribution in the poor nations. From a Marx-
ian point of view, the World Bank is tied to cer-
tain class interests, and rhetoric notwithstanding,
would oppose serious attempts at such redistribu-
tion. For example, consider the World Bank's
reaction to the election in 1970 of the democratic
socialist regime of Chilean Salvador Allende. Far
from encouraging this non-revolutionary attempt
at redistribution, the World Bank cut its aid from
more than twenty million dollars to none. After
the 1973 coup, the World Bank restored its aid to
the Pinochet regime (Cusack 1977, p. 144; Payre
1975). The Marxist might conclude that the facts
and an accurate social theory show that within a
3ThoughI cannot examinethe issue in this paper,the
internationaldivision of labor in EasternEurope and
the ThirdWorld, presidedover by the Soviet economic
elite, strikinglyresembles capitalist forms of depen-
dency.
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Vol. 76
capitalist internationaleconomic system, major
redistributioncannot occur.
Yet somethingseemspeculiarabout this Marx-
ian response.AlthoughMcNamaraagonizesover
the arbitrarynatureof this situation,the Marxist
says nothing about justice. Perhapsthis Marxist
holds the relativist interpretation,according to
which McNamarahas a bourgeoisconceptionof
justice, and conceptions of justice are simply a
muddle, or perhapshe has a reductionistconcep-
tion, that McNamarais rightthat this distribution
is unjust (capitalismas a productivesystem has
passed its historicalzenith), but wrong about the
reasons. Yet the Marxist'ssocial analysis,if true,
undermines only McNamara's claim that the
World Bank can serve as an instrument for
redistribution (Taylor 1973); it leaves
McNamara'sclaim about the glaringinjusticeof
internationaldistribution, or the "crying con-
trasts" of rich and poor, in Engels's phrase,
perfectlyintact (Engels1966,pp. 173-4).Further-
more, the Marxist's social theory shows who
benefits from these injustices and pinpoints a
defect of characterin McNamarawho at least
deceives himself.4 Although the Marxist might
contend that the condemnationof injustice can
occur only on McNamara'smoral premise, it is
hard to see why a Marxist wouldn't share this
premise. Marxistsdo, after all, object to eror-
mous disparitiesof wealth and povertyand their
social consequences;an indictmentof these con-
sequencesprovides an importantmotivation for
socialism. In this case, a common moral concern
lends urgency to the Marxian criticism of
McNamara'ssolution. Nothing in the social cri-
tique of McNamara'sremedy-calling on con-
scientious elites to rectify impoverishment-
logically requiresa rejection of all concepts of
justice.
Beyond this, the Marxist'srefusal to address
McNamara'smoral assessment of international
distribution seems ironic, for if anything, the
Marxisthas better reasons for calling this situa-
tion an injustice than McNamara has.
McNamara'sargumentmightblamethe victimor
historical accident, but suppose the citizens of
poor nations lack initiativeowing to internalen-
vironmentalcauses, or supposeno one is to blame
for internationalinequalities. If people are im-
poverishedas a result of their own inadequacies,
no injustice has occurred. And although Rawls
has forcefullydefendedthe fairnessof rectifying
social and naturalarbitrariness,it is hard to see.
blameless arbitrarinessas an injustice (Gilbert
1978a, pp. 109-10, 117). The Marxiananalysis,
'Shklar (1979) rightly argues against exaggerating the
moral significance of such character defects.
1982 An Ambiguityin Marxand Engels
however, fixes appropriate responsibility on the
beneficiaries of inegalitarian distribution and
shows how victimization has occurred. More
plausibly than McNamara, a Marxist can view
contemporary international distribution as unjust.
A realist argument demonstrating the grain of
truth in McNamara's conception, seems far more
appropriate than either relativist abstention from
moral comment or reductionism. This example
highlights the inaccuracy of Marx's and Engels's
occasional characterization of their own views as
a historical critique of prevailing conceptions of
justice. Since Marxian historical theory leads
more decisively than McNamara's to a condemna-
tion of injustice, this analysis compels a deeper in-
quiry into the reasons why Marx and Engels
found relativist or reductionist formulations
attractive.
Three Accounts of Justice in Marx and Engels
Marx's and Engels's metaethical argument
vacillates between relativist or reductionist and
realist conceptions of justice. As I have noted, on
Marx's and Engels's historical critique, prevailing
conceptions of justice derive from a system of law
which suits the needs of a predominant mode of
production. Pointing to the epoch relativism or
merely functional validity of such moral concepts,
this historical theory deflates the grandiose claims
of theorists who seek to recast society according
to ideal standards of justice. Ironically, even radi-
cal claims about injustice frequently share in the
prevailing conceptions and offer no adequate
analysis of social structure and political alterna-
tives. In some of Marx's formulations, radicals re-
quire only a clear understanding of the internal
conflicts in capitalist society and definite political
strategies to overthrow it. Moral indignation can-
not substitute for such analysis and obscures the
need for a patient, realistic strategic perspective
(Marx 1961, Vol. 1, 84-5; Marx and Engels 1962,
Vol. 2, pp. 25, 30). Furthermore, such moral
views encourage an elitist radicalism that scorns
the struggle of the oppressed classes, where the
participants might discover the validity of a revo-
lutionary point of view. Moralistic radicals substi-
tute their own artificial solutions-crotchets, as
Marx called them-for real class conflict. Thus,
Proudhon sought to inaugurate a reign of eternal
justice by the formation of cooperative banking
arrangements (mutualism) as the guarantor of fair
exchanges among small propertyholders. He op-
posed unions on the grounds that they violated in-
dividual liberty and even defended the French
government when it shot down striking coal
miners at Rive-de-Gier (Marx 1963, pp. 125-6;
Proudhon 1924, pp. 377-80, 384-5). Similarly,
the German tailor Wilhelm Weitling, sometimes
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333
celebrated as a Christian humanist alternative to
the heartless atheist Marx, dismissed the industrial
working class as unready for immediate revolt and
recommended a communist uprising by the
"thieving proletariat" (Wittke 1950, p. 120;
Forder 1970, pp. 220-21; Gilbert 1981, chs. 3-4).
In both cases, influential radical opponents of
Marx relied on moral concepts as the central
feature of their social theory and displayed
profound elitist hostility to the working-class
movement.
To combat these views, Marx and Engels at-
tempted to distinguish neatly between communist
political radicalism (designed to make socialism
and internationalism issues in the midst of active
class conflict) and moralistic radicalism. In quasi-
positivist fashion, they contrasted their scientific
arguments with their opponents' ethical or ideo-
logical ones, interpreted on a relativist or reduc-
tionist basis. (In fact, a reductionist reconstruc-
tion of issues of justice is a classic empiricist
move, which begs the question of whether or not
the situations people have referred to as unjust
deserve our concern (Sturgeon 1980, pp. 31-2)).
A reader may properly ask whether Marx's quar-
rel is with all moralities or only with the use of
moral concepts by ruling class spokespersons or
by radicals who hold accompanying erroneous
theories of capitalism.
Yet Marx and Engels offered another view of
justice and equality. They recognized that
workers, artisans, and peasants often use moral
concepts to criticize a prevailing social order. As
Engels remarked in Anti-Duhring (1878), the de-
mand for social equality became the battle cry of
the sixteenth-century German peasant war and ex-
pressed "the revolutionary instincts of the pea-
santry," their "spontaneous reaction against the
crying social inequalities, against the contrast of
rich and poor, feudal lords and their serfs, surfeit
and starvation." He noted similar demands in the
French communist workers' movement and called
for "the abolition of classes" as the "real con-
tent" of these demands (Engels 1966, pp. 117-8).
But indignation over inequality between rich
and poor is a component of justice. In inegali-
tarian economies, all crises and hardships fall with
especial severity on the poor. As class societies,
even feudal ones, legitimize expectations of cus-
tomary provision of subsistence among the pro-
ducers, such special hardships often appear as an
abridgment of the obligations of the non-
producers, or in modern times as a violation of in-
dividual rights. Given that the lives of the pro-
ducers and their families depend on the reliable
fulfillment of such expectations, their violation is
a seeming breach of promise and provokes a par-
ticularly vivid sense of outrage, which historically
has played an important causal role in popular
334 The American Political Science Review
revolts (Moore 1965; Thompson 1971; Scott
1976).
In contrast to an impoverished conception of
justice that confines itself solely to legal relations
and hence cannot, for example, criticize the in-
justice of laws that sanction slavery, any adequate
conception must assess how given social arrange-
ments affect the needs and capacities of all in-
dividuals. Minimally, it would condemn any
system of distribution that provided superfluity
for the few combined with starvation for the
many. Maximally, in Marx's view of communism,
for example, a just system of distribution would
measure need according to diverse individual
capacity, a view that invokes an ancient concep-
tion of natural justice, such as Aristotle's sugges-
tion that the best fluteplayer, rather than the
handsomest or wealthiest, should receive the best
supply of flutes (Aristotle, Politics, 1282b30-
1283a4; Brecht 1966, p. 128). Thus, Engels and
Marx do not reject the proletarian demand for
equality as ideological but justify it in terms of
need and reformulate it as a demand for abolition
of classes.
In Marx's Value, Price and Profit (1865), he ad-
vocated participation in strikes and unions that
could drive up workers' wages at least tempo-
rarily. (Marx drew a new distinction between a
relatively invariant physical element of subsis-
tence and a much more elastic moral or social ele-
ment.) In the long run, however, Marx contended
that capitalism would undercut these union gains
and drive workers to revolt. Through participa-
tion in their "real movement," he advocated the
substitution of the "revolutionary watchword,"
abolition of classes, for the "conservative motto
'a fair day's pay for a fair day's work' " (Marx
and Engels 1962, Vol. 1, p. 446). Marxian social
theory sees the concept of a "fair day's pay" as
conservative because that demand does not ques-
tion the existence of capitalism and seeks only a
"better rate of exploitation" from the workers'
point of view. According to Marx, the particular
conception of "fairness" invoked in this demand
cuts against the workers' real interests. Yet Marx
defended the workers' anger and supported their
demands with this particular moral gloss re-
moved. He thought that the capitalist division of
rich and poor, characterized by a certain kind of
exploitation in production, justified the workers'
fight for higher wages and a shorter working day.
His own social theory dramatically extended the
workers' claims to the expropriation of all surplus
value from the capitalists and the creation of a
classless society. Since Marx's analysis illuminates
and reinforces the workers' indignation, it seems
peculiar to view this change of demands as
replacement of an ideological ethics devoid of sci-
entific content with a social theory devoid of
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Vol. 76
ethical content. More plausibly, science does not
neatly replace ethical evaluation. The revolu-
tionary demand grows out of the moral content of
the workers' original demand and in a Hegelian
sense recalls it.
According to Marx's moral realist line of argu-
ment, ethical indictments by workers, artisans,
and peasants arise from the real experience and
understanding of a given social system's oppres-
siveness; Marx sought to learn from this popular
understanding by studying actual movements
(Gilbert 1981, chs. 1-2). Thus Marx's scientific
and political critique of Proudhon and the uto-
pian socialists focused on their refusal to par-
ticipate in and learn from class conflict. Unlike
such elitists, his theory requires Marxists to take
the opinions of others seriously and to engage
them in moral as well as theoretical and political
conversation about why, for instance, workers
should aim for the abolition of classes rather than
equality. In contrast, according to the relativist or
reductionist interpretations, all that a Marxist can
fairly say about concepts of justice is to debunk
them.
Engels's and Marx's Argument against
Proudhon's "Eternal Justice"
In The Housing Question, Engels dismissed
Proudhon's conception of "eternal justice" as a
fantasy. As one strategy for making this argu-
ment, Engels debunked all conceptions of justice
as relative either to a mode of production or to the
person holding the specific conception. He con-
tended that "The justice of the Greeks and
Romans held slavery to be just; the justice of the
bourgeoisie of 1789 demanded the abolition of
feudalism on the ground that it was unjust. For
the Prussian Junker even the miserable District
Ordinance is a violation of eternal justice."' Fur-
thermore, the concept of eternal justice "belongs
among those things of which Millberger correctly
says 'everyone understands something differ-
ent' " (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 1, p. 624). In
these statements, Engels adopted either an ap-
praiser's-group relativism or a person relativism.
Engels again seemed to take a positivist stand
toward moral concepts; unlike scientific investiga-
tion in which researchers can ultimately resolve
disagreements, human beings can never resolve
disputes about justice, which only result in
ceaseless wrangling.
Earlier, Engels criticized Millberger's wish that
'See also Marx 1961, Vol. 3, pp. 339-40. Marx, how-
ever, avoided the puzzling inconsistencies, for instance
the endorsement of person-relativism, sometimes found
in Engels's philosophical arguments.
1982 An Ambiguityin Marxand Engels
rent agreements under capitalism could be "per-
vaded by a conception of right . . . carried out
everywhere according to the strict demands of jus-
tice." This "justice" would protect each artisan
or peasant in his ownership of a dwelling. Engels
counterposed the facts of capitalist production to
Mfilberger's dream. Capitalism persistently up-
roots small propertyholders and forces them into
large cities; it tends to replace independent prop-
ertyholding, including homeownership, with
capitalist landlordship:
Whatdoes this rigamarolemean?Nothing more
than that the practicaleffects of the economic
laws which govern present-daysociety run con-
traryto the author'ssense of justice and that he
cherishesthe pious wish that the mattermightbe
so arrangedas to remedythe situation. Yes, if
toads had tails they would no longer be toads!
And is thenthe capitalistmodeof productionnot
'pervadedby a conceptionof right,'namely,that
of its own right to exploit the workers?And if
the author tells us that is not his conceptionof
right, are we one step further(Marxand Engels
1962, Vol. 1, pp. 562-3)?
In this argument, we can see that Engels's claim
about the person relativism of justice ("the
author's sense of right") does not necessarily
follow from the claim of Marx's historical theory
about mode-of-production relativism. In fact,
Engels uses the conception of right appropriate to
capitalism to debunk Milberger's personal sense.
Furthermore, throughout The Housing Question,
Engels analyzes Millberger's sense of right as a
class sense, namely a small propertyholder's or
petit bourgeois conception of justice, rendered
anachronistic by capitalist expansion. Thus, from
a Marxian point of view, one could simply drop
the person relativist argument and stick with the
appraiser's-group relativist one. But given this ac-
count, Engels's argument seems peculiar. Engels
characterizes capitalism's "justice" as "its own
right to exploit the workers"-a description that a
capitalist would hardly endorse. (Is this charac-
terization merely an expression of Engels's "own
sense of justice"?). Engels's comment on ex-
ploitation does not follow from his ethical relativ-
ism or reductionism but rather from the realist
argument noted above, which Engels used to in-
dict capitalism.'
'Note that Engels'sjudgmentmightbe appropriateto
a form of ethical relativism,namelya defense of one's
own moral views given that this moral position is as
validas any other. Engelsdid not endorsethis form of
relativism,however,becauseof his admirationfor sci-
ence at the expenseof ethics. Beyondthis, contraryto
any form of relativism,as we shall see, Engelsthought
divisions of rich and poor were unjust given human
needs, not merelydependingon the specific observer,
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335
Elsewhere in The Housing Question, Engels
condemned miserable housing conditions and
cheating by merchants as examples of the "count-
less small, secondary abuses (Obelstande)" of
capitalism and stigmatized exploitation
(Ausbeutung) of the worker in production as the
"fundamental evil (Grundilbel)." Recalling the
Communist Manifesto, Engels criticized the
Proudhonists in a realist vein: "It is the essence of
bourgeois socialism to want to maintain the basis
of all the evils of present-day society and at the
same time to want to abolish the evils themselves"
(Marx and Engels 1959, Vol. 18, pp. 214-5; 1962,
Vol. 1, pp. 558-81). Thus, a revolutionary strategy
based on an accurate social theory would strike at
the basic evil in the mode of production.
Engels analyzed the facts against Proudhon's
appeal to "eternal justice" in the light of Marx's
historical theory; his claims depend upon the ap-
proximate truth of the theory and include a spe-
cific explanation of capitalist exploitation, of the
fundamental class conflicts that grow out of it,
such as the fight over the length of the working
day, of capitalism's tendency to concentrate con-
trol of industry in a few hands and to create a
large propertyless proletariat, and of the tendency
of the rate of profit to fall and engender crises.
Given this analysis Engels argued that "fac-
tually," capitalism produces its own gravediggers.
Contrary to Proudhon and Miflberger, workers
could not, scientifically speaking, overturn
capitalism by establishing the "sincerity of ex-
changes" among revivified small propertyholders,
any more than according to Darwin, toads could
have tails (Proudhon 1923, Vol. 1, p. 258).
In Capital, Marx gave an ironic twist to this cri-
tique of Proudhonism. Proudhon identified jus-
tice among small propertyowners with the regula-
tion of production and exchange by means of the
equal labor times embodied in commodities. For
Proudhon, the violation of such exchanges by
large capitalists could occur only through "swin-
dling," someone taking more than his or her
due. Contrary to Proudhon, Marx showed that
the extraction of surplus value and its concrete
forms of profit, interest, and rent could occur
regularly under capitalism without swindling. He
argued that one commodity in use, labor power,
creates a greater value (surplus value) than its own
value in exchange (subsistence). But, Marx in-
sisted, the capitalist extracts surplus value without
violating the laws of circulation, that is, the juridi-
cal standards of capitalism (Marx 1966, Vol. 1,
pp. 193-4); in this sense only, capitalist exploita-
and defendeda conceptionof moralprogressand moral
truth.
336 The AmericanPoliticalScience Review
tion is not "robbery" (Marx and Engels 1959,
Vol. 19, pp. 382, 359-60). Satirizing Proudhon,
Marx showed that the generalization of commodi-
ty production, characteristic of capitalism, led to
the gradual expropriation of small holders, not to
their salvation: "So long as the laws of exchange
are observed in every specific act of exchange the
mode of appropriation can be completely revolu-
tionized without in any way affecting the property
rights which correspond to commodity produc-
tion" (Marx 1961, Vol. 1, p. 587). Marx added,
"We may well therefore feel astonished at the
cleverness of Proudhon, who would abolish capi-
talist property by enforcing the eternal laws of
property that are based on commodity produc-
tion" (Marx 1961, Vol. 1, p. 587, n. 1) and com-
pared Proudhon to an incompetent chemist:
Proudhonbegins by taking his ideal of justice
(Gerechtigkeit),of 'justice eternelle' from the
juridicalrelationsthatcorrespondto the produc-
tion of commodities;therebyit may be noted he
proves to the consolation of all good citizens,
that the productionof commoditiesis a form of
production as everlastingas justice. Then he
turnsroundand seeks to reformthe actual pro-
ductionof commodities,and the actuallegalsys-
tem correspondingthereto, in accordancewith
this ideal. What opinion should we have of a
chemistwho, insteadof studyingthe actuallaws
of the molecularchangesin the compositionand
decompositionof matter, and on that founda-
tion solving definite problems,claimedto regu-
late the compositionand decompositionof mat-
ter by the 'eternalideas' of 'naturalit6'and 'af-
finite? (Marx 1961, Vol. 1, pp. 84-5; Marxand
Engels 1959, Vol. 23, pp. 99-100).
Based on his scientific criticism of Proudhon's
theory, Marx made seven claims: (1) he identified
Proudhon's specific conception of justice as an
ideological reflection of capitalist juridical rela-
tions; (2) he argued that conceptions of justice are
transitory (limited to one or several historical
epochs) rather than eternally valid as Proudhon
thought; (3) contrary to the Ricardian socialists
and Proudhon, he showed that capitalist exploita-
tion occurs without robbery in the process of
commodity circulation; (4) he opposed Proud-
hon's overrating of the significance of justice in
historical explanations; (5) he argued that stra-
tegically, workers could not overcome capitalist
oppression by reforming the juridical system to
accord with its corresponding ideal of justice, but
rather by making political revolution and trans-
forming the mode of production; (6) he con-
tended that given the nature of capitalism, appeals
to the moral sense of capitalists would do no good
(Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 1, pp. 62, 582); and
(7) he criticized all ideas of justice in the name of
science. If Marx's scientific argument is correct,
however, it establishes only claims one through
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Vol. 76
six; it does not show that all claims of injustice
and exploitation are relative to specific modes of
production but just that Proudhon's is nor does it
show that all claims of justice must be the basis of
(or be based upon) an inaccurate scientific theory
and an inadequate political strategy. It does not
rule out, for example, a scientific and moral
theory-say one of exploitation-which could
evaluate social situations over several epochs of
class society and play a political role in the forging
of communism. Claims one through six are con-
sistent with any of the three interpretations of
justice described in the introduction. Only claim
seven-an implausible one given Marx's actual
argument against Proudhon-would sustain an
ethical relativist or reductionist account against a
realist one.
Furthermore, Marx and Engels undermined
claim seven because their own argument shares a
common moral premise with Proudhon's. In
Anti-Duhring, for example, Engels wrote:
If for the imminent overthrowof the present
mode of distributionwith its cryingcontrastsof
want and luxury, starvation and debauchery
(schreiendenGegensatzenvon Elendund Uppig-
keit, Hungersnotund Schwelgerei),we had no
betterguaranteethan the consciousnessthat the
mode of production is unjust (ungerecht) . .. we
shouldbe in a prettybad way. The mysticsof the
MiddleAges who dreamedof the comingmillen-
nium were already conscious of the injustice
(Ungerechtigkeit)of classcontrasts(Engels1966,
p. 173;Marxand Engels 1959, Vol. 20, p. 146).
Engels commented that "to economic science,
moral indignation, however justifiable, cannot
serve as an argument, but only as a symptom"
(Engels, 1966, pp. 173-4). Engels not only recog-
nized the justification of moral anger, but con-
tended,
The indignation(Zorn)whichcreatesthe poet is
absolutely in place in describingthese terrible
conditions, and also in attackingthose apostles
of harmonyin the serviceof the rulingclass who
eitherdenyor palliatetheseabuses,but how little
it can prove anythingfor the particularcase is
evident from the fact that in each epoch of all
past history there has been no lack of material
for such indignation(Engels1966, p. 166;Marx
and Engels 1959, Vol. 20, p. 139).
Engels viewed divisions between rich and poor
as a reprehensible feature of all previous epochs
except early communal society. Although a sense
of injustice alone could not do away with these
divisions, "poetic criticism" had unmasked the
"apostles of harmony" and contributed to a
political atmosphere conducive to a more thor-
oughgoing radicalism. Engels suggested that the
proletarian demand for equality had a double
meaning. One meaning grew out of the bourgeois
1982 An Ambiguityin MarxandEngels
demand for political equality and had a certain
validity. But Engels stressed the other meaning of
equality: the "spontaneous reaction" against divi-
sions of rich and poor as a "simple expression of
the revolutionary instinct" of workers and pea-
sants which "finds its justification in that and
only in that" (Engels 1966, p. 117). He saw this
account of equality as separable from its first
meaning and legitimate in its own terms. Finally,
Marx's analysis of exploitation, the extraction of
gratuitous or unpaid labor, provided a new inter-
pretation of the source of these class divisions.
Contrary to Wood's argument, while Marx iden-
tified the mistakes in Proudhon's conception of
swindling, he also offered a more defensible
explanation and indictment of capitalist ex-
ploitation.
It might appear that Engels's appeal to facts to
overcome moral disagreement described a neces-
sary course of social development and displayed a
moral neutrality between capitalism and commu-
nism. Yet Marx and Engels always condemned the
exploitative features of capitalism and praised
communism. For instance, in attacking the
Proudhonist conception of the dispossession of
individual homeowners as a retrogression "below
the savages," Engels contended:
The Englishproletarianof 1872is on an infinite-
ly higherlevelthan the ruralweaverof 1772with
his 'hearthand home.' And will the troglodyte
with his cave ... ever accomplisha June insur-
rectionor a Paris Commune(Marxand Engels
1962, Vol. 1, p. 564)?7
For Engels, the Paris workers' revolt of June,
1848, or the first proletarian government, the
Commune, exemplified a specially admirable
ethical achievement. Marx also spoke of the Coin-
munards, heroic "heaven storming"; he praised
the political action of worker-officials who re-
ceived only a skilled workman's wage in order to
forge a cooperative society (Marx and Engels
1971, p. 153). Engels's celebration of the Com-
mune is not easy to reconcile with his mode-of-
production relativism, for this political communi-
ty not only accorded with socialist relations of
production but in Engels's view was "infinitely
higher," an example of moral progress. Engels's
indictment of legal justice that protects the capi-
talists' "right to exploit" accentuated the Com-
mune' s positive features. Engels offered this
praise as an accurate assessment of reality rather
7Notethat Engels's(and Marx's)chauvinismtoward
savagesand troglodytesis not necessaryto the argu-
ment. A Marxistcould admirethe Communeand yet
hail the accomplishmentsof oppressedclasses in less
economicallyadvancedsettings,as Engels,for example,
celebratedthe Germanpeasantwar.
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337
than merely his own "sense of right." The facts of
capitalism coincided with the ethical need to
create a classless society in which the "richest"
flourishing of human individuality could occur
(Marx 1973, p. 325; Marx and Engels, 1962, Vol.
2, p. 24).
Marx also justified the moral outrage that
underlay, in his view, inadequate demands for
social equality. In 1875, for example, Marx
praised Proudhon's "epoch making" What is
Property? for "provocative defiance, laying
hands of the economic 'holy of holies' (large scale
private property in the means of production),
superb paradox which makes a mock of bourgeois
common sense . . . a deep and genuine feeling of
indignation at the infamy of what exists (and)
revolutionary earnestness," though he also noted
that, while characterizing property as theft,
Proudhon had entangled himself in obscure
speculations about "true," that is small,
bourgeois property. Marx distinguished Proud-
hon's achievement in What is Property? from the
pretension to science, caricature of Hegel's dialec-
tics, and lack of anger of Proudhon's Philosophy
of Poverty (1962, Vol. 1, pp. 391-2).
Thus, Marx and Engels shared with Proudhon
a common factual recognition of the division of
rich and poor and a common moral indignation at
its consequences. All three argued that social sys-
tems should prevent the starvation or extinction
of their members and ultimately give individuals
their due,8 and condemned divisions between rich
and poor which give some abundance while many
others do not receive their due and, at worst,
starve. Therefore, divisions of rich and poor are
infamous and unjust. Agreeing up to this point,
they then add further factual premises to reach
their divergent political and moral conclusions.
Proudhon argued that in the capitalist form of
this division, capitalists regularly violate the laws
of commodity exchange by monopoly, swindling
and usury, and saw the remedy as the establishing
of a society of small, equal propertyholders, regu-
lating their economy through a mutualist banking
system in accordance with the exchange of equal
labor times or the principles of eternal justice.
Marx and Engels maintained that in the capitalist
form of this division, capitalists regularly extract
surplus value from workers in ways consistent
with the laws of commodity exchange, depriving
'Proudhon had a far narrower sense of what was due
to small propertyholders than Marx's conception of a
communist distribution according to need. Marx's con-
ception of the Commune as a prerequisite for in-
dividuality is analogous in form to Proudhon's concep-
tion of (mutualist) individuality. See also Oakeshott
1975, p. 319, n. 1.
338 The American Political Science Review
small holders of the means of production, pitting
a majority of propertyless proletarians against a
small number of property owners, and creating in-
creasingly harsh conditions for the propertyless.
As Chartism, the June insurrection, and the Paris
Commune demonstrate, working-class solidarity
and political community is possible. Marx and
Engels saw the remedy as the abolition of exploi-
tation and ultimately all class divisions and the
establishing of a society in which social in-
dividuality can flourish.
In summarizing their disagreement with Proud-
hon, Marx and Engels stressed a drastic conflict
between ethical judgment and scientific theory
and surmised that their argument engaged Proud-
hon's only with respect to social theory and not
moral judgment. But since Marx and Engels
joined with Proudhon to condemn the crying con-
trasts of luxury and need, their scientific argu-
ment had an inextricable moral component. Marx
did not disagree with Proudhon about the moral
desirability of opposing capitalism but rather
about the inadequacy of Proudhon's theory of
mutualism as an effective means of transforma-
tion. In other words, the dispute turned not over
indignation, but over the notion that, in today's
philosophical jargon, "ought implies can." Con-
trary to the positivist impression created by
Engels's and Marx's relativist or reductionist
remarks, they appealed to facts and social theory
to show how moral disputes and indignation at
unjust conditions might at last be successfully
resolved.
If the foregoing analysis is correct, it has broad
implications for a comparison of Marx's view
with other arguments about justice. Marx shares
his ethical premise with many contemporary theo-
rists and would disagree with today's moral
theory mainly over the nature of modern society
and the means needed to change it. For instance, a
Rawlsian would object to divisions of income that
fail to benefit the least advantaged, and for utili-
tarians, the deprivations of the poor would under-
mine overall or average happiness. But if Marx's
social theory is true and such divisions arise as a
fundamental consequence of capitalist exploita-
tion, then either of these moral arguments would
justify socialism (Rawls 1975, p. 546). As Wood
has argued, probably any recognizably moral
principles would lead to the condemnation of
capitalism and its consequences as Marx under-
stood them; a theory that could condone these
consequences would not be a moral theory at all
(Wood 1972, pp. 281-2). Although Wood does
not draw this conclusion, his argument suggests a
greater objectivity in moral theory than has often
been supposed.
Now a Rawlsian might deny this degree of
objectivity in moral judgments by arguing that
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Vol. 76
Marx's (and Rawls's) criticism of divisions of
wealth and poverty rests merely on a relatively
purified intuition. However altered by social
theory and moral principles to achieve a reflective
equilibrium, such a condemnation remains ulti-
mately "our" (historically limited) judgment. But
one might look at such intuitions as embryonic
moral generalizations and analyze the notion of
human nature, needs, and capabilities on which
this indictment rests. If one interprets intuitions in
this way, one can argue about whether they are
(empirically) right or wrong. For instance, Ari-
stotle offers certain strongly intuitive arguments
about the "naturalness" of slavery (Politics, Bk.
1). Given subsequent revolts against slavery and
the existence of non-slaveholding societies, Mon-
tesquieu, Hegel, and others showed that this intui-
tion rested on a mistaken theory about other
human beings. Marx would make similar argu-
ments against the naturalness of wage slavery. In
other words, such intuitions could be considered
moral observations and might play a role in
ethical theory more nearly akin to theory-loaded
scientific observations than Rawls envisions. In
that case, the process of observation and theo-
retical refinement characteristic of reflective
equilibrium would strongly resemble the process
of scientific reflection and alteration of theory to
achieve successive approximations to the truth
(Rawls 1971, pp. 49-50).'
Scientific Realism and Moral Realism
In debating with Mulberger, Engels compares
the possibility of moral progress, which he ap-
pears to deny, with that of scientific progress,
which he vigorously affirms, but here, too, his
argument is more ambiguous than it seems at first
glance. To combat MUlberger, Engels likened jus-
tice to a sort of "social phlogiston":
While in everyday life, in view of the simplicity
of the relations discussed, expressions like right,
wrong, justice and sense of right are accepted
without misunderstanding even with reference to
social matters, they create, as we have seen, the
same hopeless confusion in any scientific investi-
gation of economic relations as would be cre-
ated, for instance, if the terminology of the phlo-
giston theory were to be retained. The confusion
becomes still worse if one, like Proudhon,
believes in the social phlogiston, 'justice' or if
one like MUlberger avers that the phlogiston
'I owe this comparison to Richard Boyd. In an impor-
tant ambiguity, Rawls does not just argue intuitively for
political and moral equality but recognizes its basis in
facts about human moral capacity-"equality is sup-
ported by the general facts of nature." Rawls 1971, pp.
506, 510, 548.
1982 An Ambiguityin Marxand Engels
theory is as correct as the oxygen one (Marx and
Engels 1962, Vol. 1, p. 625).
Here again, Engels drew a positivist distinction
between scientific investigation, which achieves
agreement on relatively reliable theories, and
moral clashes, which lead to no resolution. Engels
praised MUlberger's person-relativist conception
that concerning justice, "everyone understands
something different," but refused to commend
Milberger's peculiar conception of oxygen-based
and phlogiston-based chemistry as, scientifically
speaking, equally valid. In this context, Engels's
analogy of justice with social phlogiston, moving
from ethics to science, views justice, like phlogis-
ton, as simply part of an inadequate (unscientific)
ethical theory that a purely scientific one has
replaced. Engels's mode-of-production relativist
arguments reinforce this impression. In this set-
ting, Proudhon's notion of eternal justice, reflect-
ing commodity production, seems just so much
erroneous ideological mist that will dissipate in
the sunlight of a socialist mode of production.
Yet Engels's analogy has another possible inter-
pretation. In a footnote to this passage, he con-
tended that phlogiston theory pointed to a single
element involved in combustion, even though it
got most of that element's properties backward.
The phlogiston theory contributed importantly to
the discovery of oxygen:
Before the discovery of oxygen chemists ex-
plained the burning of substances in atmospheric
air by assuming the existence of a special igneous
substance, phlogiston, which escaped during the
process of combustion. Since they found that
simple substances on combustion weighed more
after having been burned than they did before,
they declared that phlogiston had a negative
weight so that a substance without its phlogiston
weighed more than one with it. In this way, all
the main properties of oxygen were gradually
ascribed to phlogiston, but all in an inverted
form (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 1, p. 625).
The phlogiston theory was not even approxi-
mately true. Yet that theory helped to pose the
issue of the nature of combustion in such a way
that a novel theory could explain it. In this sense,
Lavoisier's discovery of a new element, oxygen,
which combined with other elements upon burn-
ing, grew out of and solved the central problem of
phlogiston chemistry. In his Preface to Volume 2
of Capital, Engels remarked that "this discovery
(phlogiston) sufficed for the explanation of most
of the chemical phenomena then known (until the
later 18th century) although not without forcing
in many cases" (Marx and Engels 1-962, Vol. 1, p.
470). Compared to Engels's relativist description
of justice as mere shifting ideology, this argument
seems strikingly favorable to the scientific accom-
plishments of phlogiston theory. For Engels,
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339
modern chemistry provided a better explanation
for anomalies in a previously mistaken but not
wholly inadequate chemistry. In today's terms,
Engels adopted a scientific realist attitude toward
phlogiston theory rather than that of a relativist
or a Kuhnian.1'
Thus, the analogy of justice with phlogiston
reflects a realistic hunch on Engels's part about
moral questions, one that might also explain
Engels's claim that matters of right and wrong in
everyday life are not confusing. If this major
feature of morality presents no important diffi-
culties, it is hard to see why we could not ulti-
mately hope to achieve similar agreement in moral
theories about the basic structure of society, since
self-interest and rationalizations certainly affect
everyday judgments in one's own case. Com-
parable rationalizations, based on class interests,
might simply render progress in moral theory (and
in moral reality) more difficult, though not insur-
mountably so, than progress in daily life and in
the sciences (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 1, p.
582). We can gauge the strength of this realist ink-
ling by examining Engels's most important use of
the phlogiston analogy, his exploration of the sig-
nificance of Marx's discovery of surplus value for
political economy and moral argument.
According to Engels, earlier scientific expo-
nents of a labor theory of value had partially
recognized that capitalists extracted a surplus
from the workers. In The Principles of Political
Economy and Taxation, Ricardo argued that
Adam Smith had confused the value of the labor-
time incorporated in the production of commodi-
ties with the value of the labor-time which the
worker's wages could command on the market
(1948, pp. 5-11). Distinguishing these separate
commodities, Ricardo isolated the amount paid
for the use of the worker's labor (what Marx
would call labor-power) and the extra value cre-
ated by the worker in production (what Marx
would call surplus value). Yet Ricardo never
treated this surplus as a special concept nor at-
tempted to reexamine previous political economy
based on this insight (Marx 1961, Vol. 1, pp.
515-6, 537-8). Engels drew an analogy between
Ricardo's identification of surplus and Priestley's
and Scheele's discovery of "dephlogisticated air"
or "fire air." As Engels suggested, these chemists,
although close to discovering oxygen, remained
entangled in the "phlogistic categories as they
found them" just as Ricardo remained enmeshed
within the older political economy. But the Ricar-
dian socialists and Proudhon abandoned
"'A Kuhnian attitude toward science would in fact be
far more consistent with ethical relativism than Engels's
own position. See Rorty 1979.
340 The American Political Science Review
Ricardo's clear distinction. They asked: what is
the value of labor? and answered: the full value of
the product. They then condemned the appropria-
tion of any part of the output by the capitalist as
injustice or stealing. Here we see a different and
particularly strong motivation for Marx's and
Engels's critique of "eternal justice." Instead of
solving political economy's central problem of the
value of labor, Proudhon and others obscured it
through the use of moral categories. Thus, this
specific disagreement with other radicals in scien-
tific analysis fused with Marx's and Engels's
general antipathy to Proudhon's moralism; scien-
tific and political critique, focused against the
moralists' economic analysis, seemed to go hand
in hand. Engels's phlogiston analogy demon-
strates the full force of Marx's characterization of
the moralists, who derived political remedies from
an inadequate social theory, as bad chemists
(Althusser 1965, Vol. 2, pp. 118-26).
According to Engels, Marx, like Lavoisier, ap-
proached the central anomaly in previous theory
with fresh eyes; where others "had seen a solu-
tion, he saw only a problem." Marx solved this
problem-"placed previous political economy on
its feet"-with his discovery of surplus value, and
provided new analyses of such crucial difficulties
in classical political economy as the relations of
commodities and money, the character of class
conflict under capitalism, and the nature of rent,
profit and interest. For example, Marx explained
the generally recognized falling rate of profit as a
qualified tendency resulting from a rapid intro-
duction of machinery or shift in the organic com-
position of capital, whereas older theories had in-
terpreted it as an inevitable result of increasing
population (Malthus) or rising rent (Ricardo)
(Dobb 1973, p. 157). Engels contended:
With this fact (surplus value) as his starting
point, he (Marx) examined all the categories he
found at hand, just as Lavoisier, with oxygen as
his starting point, had examined the categories of
phlogiston chemistry he had found at hand
(Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 1, pp. 471-2).
In the projected fourth volume of Capital,
Theories of Surplus Value, Marx examined earlier
theories in political economy to mark their dis-
coveries and to show how the concept of surplus
value could resolve their internal problems. Both
Marx and Engels viewed political economy-the
study of the real relations of capitalist produc-
tion-as a more mature scientific theory than
phlogiston chemistry (Marx 1961, Vol. 1, p. 80).
Despite the major changes wrought by Marx's dis-
covery of surplus value, political economy had
previously existed as a full-blown scientific enter-
prise. Thus, they explored the history of this disci-
pline from a realistic perspective and demon-
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Vol. 76
strated its progress in achieving successive approx-
imations to the truth.
Given Marx's and Engels's realist interpretation
of political economy, Engels's comparison of
justice with phlogiston chemistry seems strikingly
favorable to justice. At least popular conceptions
of justice, one might surmise, would serve as a
first approximation to the truth, and Marx's
theory reformulated them. Engels failed to see the
force of his analogy in sustaining moral realism
because of his criticism of Proudhon's labor
theory as a mistaken solution to the fundamental
difficulty in Ricardo's political economy, his op-
position to Proudhon's focus on the putative
"eternality" of justice, and his rejection of moral-
ism in the radical debates of the time. But
although Engels's general account wobbled be-
tween relativist or reductionist and realist formu-
lations, his specific arguments about moral con-
cepts were strongly realistic.
For instance, he contended that the proletarian
demand for social equality grew out of the bour-
geois demand for political equality in the Puritan
and French Revolutions: "The proletarians took
the bourgeoisie at their word: equality must not
be merely apparent, must not apply merely to the
sphere of the state, but must also be real, must be
extended to the social and economic sphere"
(Engels 1966, pp. 117, 24-5). Did Engels see this
proletarian extension of the demand for social
equality as an inaccurate or ideological one? On
the contrary, this extension improved on the
general demand for political equality by identify-
ing the real source of class domination that would
corrupt the quality of citizenship. It moved a step
closer to the true conception as articulated in
Engels's and Marx's social theory. Thus, Engels
concluded that the proletarian demand "draw(s)
more or less correct and far-reaching demands
from the bourgeois demand."" Engels reformu-
lated this conception of social equality: "The real
content of the proletarian demand for equality is
the abolition of classes. Any demand for equality
which goes beyond that, of necessity passes into
absurdity" (Engels 1966, p. 117).
On the basis of Marx's historical theory, Engels
partially criticized this proletarian slogan-he
suggested that a demand for absolute equality
among human beings denies individuality and
becomes absurd-but called for the achievement
of an aspect of equality, the abolition of exploita-
tion as a prerequisite for (social) individuality.
Engels himself used the term equality in precisely
this way. Contrary to Wood's interpretation,
"In citing Engels's remark, Wood 1979, p. 282, omits
the crucial clause and fails to see a possible realist inter-
pretation.
1982 An Ambiguityin MarxandEngels
Engels contended in "On Marx's Capital" that
the bad or exploitative features of capitalism
nonetheless "develop(ed) the productive forces of
society to a level which will make possible an
equal development worthy of human beings for
all members of society" (Marx and Engels 1962,
Vol. 1, pp. 468-9).'"
According to a realist account, the earlier radi-
cal theories of Munzer, Fourier, Blanqui, and
Bray about social inequality provided approx-
imately true descriptions of exploitation and the
corruption of bourgeois society. Marx's theory
improves on them and represents a form of moral
progress just as proletarian socialist movements
represent a moral improvement over the Levellers.
Alternately, these (mainly inadequate) ethical
theories, analogous to phlogiston chemistry,
posed problems that a better scientific and ethical
theory could solve." Marx's theory of exploita-
tion, class conflict, and the abolition of classes
captures the important grain of truth in the claims
of injustice of preceding radical theories. Even
this weaker claim for the earlier theories recog-
nizes the possibility of ethical progress.
In Anti-Duhring, Engels defended such prog-
ress in moral knowledge and compared it to ad-
vances in the natural sciences:
... as society has hitherto moved in class an-
tagonisms,moralitywas alwaysclass morality;it
has eitherjustifiedthe dominationand the inter-
ests of the ruling class, or, as soon as the op-
pressedclasshas becomepowerfulenough, it has
representedthe revolt against this domination
and the futureinterestsof the oppressed.That in
this processtherehas on the wholebeen progress
(Fortschritt)in morality,as in all otherbranches
"In analyzing Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program,
Wood 1979, p. 292, argues: "To do away with these
defects (the defects of equal right) one must 'wholly
transcend the narrow horizon of bourgeois right' repre-
sented by all principles of equality. Marx alludes to
Louis Blanc's slogan 'from each according to his abili-
ties, to each according to his needs' precisely because
this is not in any sense a principle of equality, it does not
treat people alike or equally from any point of view but
considers them simply as individuals with their own
special needs and faculties." Contrary to Wood, Marx's
conception of social individuality sees all individuals as
equally free from the exploitation characteristic of pre-
vious class societies and as "individuals with their own
special needs and faculties."
"A reductionist though realist view leaves the concept
of justice in even worse shape than phlogiston.
Although an atomic analysis of combustion is true even
though phlogiston does not exist, no ethical analysis of
the relationship designated by justice is true. Engels's
and Marx's refinement of workers' demands for equali-
ty or fairness, however, counts decisively against a
reductionist interpretation.
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341
of human knowledge (Erkenntnis), cannot really
be doubted. But we have not yet passed beyond
class morality. A really human morality (wirklich
menschlische Moral) which transcends class an-
tagonisms and their legacies in thought becomes
possible only at a stage of society which has not
only overcome class contradictions but has even
forgotten them in practical life (Engels 1966, p.
105; Marx and Engels 1959, Vol. 20, p. 87).
Given exploitative class divisions, all moral judg-
ments, true as well as false, have served class in-
terests; such divisions and the ideologies that they
engender cloud moral argument and prohibit the
clarity that exists, according to Engels, in the
morality of everyday life. But the removal of such
class divisions and ideologies renders the ethics of
social relations under communism as transparent
as those of individual relationships had been. It
permits a "genuinely human morality."
Wood has properly recognized a conflict be-
tween his reductionist interpretation of Marx on
justice and Engels's argument about a genuine
non-relativist human morality, but he suggests
that in this passage, "Engels denies that the 'pro-
letarian morality of the future' is 'true' as con-
trasted with its predecessors" (Wood 1979, p.
291). To concur with Wood's judgment, one
would have to ascribe to Engels the notion that no
truth or progress exists in chemistry or political
economy, a view that Engels plainly rejects. Even
in his most relativist comments on morality,
Engels disagreed with that contention in Mul-
berger. In the chapter in Anti-Duhring on moral
progress, Engels dismissed the "eternality" of
chemical and biological theory which, he noted,
achieve approximate truth only eventually and
after major conceptual changes (Engels 1966, pp.
98-9).14 This critique of an alleged "eternality" of
scientific theories, analogous to Engels's argu-
ment against Proudhon, hardly rules out the
possibility of true biological knowledge. Wood's
failure to see Engels's scientific realism leads him
'4Engels argued:
What a long series of intermediaries from Galen
to Malpighi was necessary for correctly establish-
ing such a simple matter as the circulation of the
blood in mammals . . . and often enough dis-
coveries, such as that of the cell, are made which
compel us to revise completely all formerly estab-
lished final and ultimate truths in the realm of
biology, and put whole piles of them on the scrap
heap once and for all.
Engels rightly used a concept of approximate truth but
contended carelessly that: "Really scientific works as a
rule avoid such dogmatic and moral expressions as Ifinal
and ultimate] error and truth." Engels 1966, pp. 99,
102.
342 The AmericanPoliticalScienceReview
to overlook the strong element of moral realism in
Engels's account of justice.
To illustrate progress in moral theory, we might
briefly examine Marx's relation to Hegel. Hegel
had argued that the primary ethical difference be-
tween the ancient Greek city and the modern state
resides in the modern recognition of subjectivity
(freedom, individuality) as a fundamental compo-
nent of universality or political community. In
this regard, Hegel contended, "the very status
slavery is an outrage on the conception of man."
The complex ethical life of the free individual
developing through family, civil society (the arena
for the individual pursuit of economic needs and
interests), and the universality of the state (the
general legal framework for the realization of in-
dividuality), requires the abolition of slavery.
Having studied English political experience and
classical political economy. Hegel already feared
that the dynamics of the capitalist division of rich
and poor would undermine the ethical universality
of the modern state. Starting from this tension in
Hegel's The Philosophy of Right, Marx argued
that capitalism would use the state against the
workers and that the proletarian movement would
create the genuine possibility for the flourishing
of individual achievement, based on political
community and the elimination of exploitation
(Hegel 1977, pp. 15, 48, 84, 126-7, 133-4, 148-51;
Avineri 1972, pp. 90-8; Gilbert 1981b). He might
have reformulated Hegel's dictum: "wage slavery
is an outrage on the conception of man," and
seen social individuality under communism as the
realization of Hegel's basic argument on indi-
viduality and universality.
Hegel had emphasized historical progress in
morality: Christianity had helped to create the
conditions for a development of individuality and
the abolition of slavery; post-French-revolution
civil society, at least as it existed in Germany, em-
bodied a significant achievement of freedom
(Hegel 1977, pp. 31, 129-30). Marx could share
Hegel's judgment about progress since slavery,
but given his analysis of capitalism, he extended
Hegel's argument: only the working class move-
ment could fully realize human freedom and in-
dividuality. On the issue of freedom and moral
progress, Marx by no means rejected but criticized
and refined Hegel's vision.
Given this conception of a dialectical moral
progress, one might see Engels's phlogiston
analogy as providing an accurate interpretation of
the relation of Marx's historical theory to
previous political economy, of the relation of its
ethical component to previous demands for
equality, and of the relation of Marx's ethical and
political theory to previous ones. In this sense,
Engels's and Marx's mode-of-production rela-
tivism or reductionism serve as misleading glosses
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Vol. 76
on their own theory. These interpretations cap-
ture only their critique of prevailing moralities
and of Proudhon's eternal justice but miss their
own fundamental moral realism. Starting from
the negative consequences of divisions between
rich and poor, their historical theory, if true,
points to a single ethical resolution: the abolition
of exploitation and the uniting of mental and
manual labor.
Interestingly enough, Lenin, a not overly senti-
mental Marxist, took up Marx's and Engels's
moral as well as scientific realism. In his note-
books on Hegel's Logic, Lenin contrasted Kant's
"empty abstraction of the Thing-in-itself with liv-
ing movement, deeper and deeper, of our knowl-
edge about things" (Lenin, 1974, Vol. 38, p. 91).
The historical progress of experimental or practi-
cal investigation and theoretical criticism
engenders theoretical conclusions that increasing-
ly approximate the truth. In State and Revolu-
tion, Lenin adopted a similarly realistic interpre-
tation of Marx's critique of earlier conceptions of
equality and regarded Marx's theory of the phases
of communism in Critique of the Gotha Program
as a refined conception of justice:
The first phase of communism, therefore, cannot
yet provide justice and equality: differences and
unjust differences in wealth will still persist, but
the exploitation of man by man will have become
impossible because it will be impossible to seize
the means of production-the factories, ma-
chines, land, etc.-and make them private prop-
erty. In smashing Lassalle's (early leader of Ger-
man worker's movement) petty-bourgeois, vague
phrases about 'equality' and 'justice' in general,
Marx shows the course of development of com-
munist society which is compelled to abolish at
first only the 'injustice' of the means of produc-
tion seized by individuals and which is unable at
once to eliminate the other injustice which con-
sists in the distribution of consumer goods 'ac-
cording to the amount of labor performed' (and
not according to needs) (Lenin 1974, Vol. 25, p.
466).
For Marx, the first phase of communism would
rectify some fundamental grievances, notably ex-
ploitation, which workers previously referred to
as injustice. Yet the initial communist principle of
justice results in further inequalities since it bene-
fits those who work harder or more skillfully and
those who have smaller families. The principle of
to each according to her work fails to recognize
individual differences and needs; the original
complaints about injustice stemmed from the
denial of such needs. As Marx put it, "In order to
avoid all these defects (Misstande), justice (Recht)
would more often have to be unequal than
equal." Although full recognition of these dif-
ferences by distribution according to need in a
1982 An Ambiguityin Marxand Engels
sense goes beyond justice, the higher stage of
communism also realizes that people have meant
by justice. In the Critique, Marx suggested that:
"Justice can never be higher than the economic
form of society and the cultural development
determined by it" (Marx and Engels 1962, Vol. 2,
pp. 24, 21; Marx and Engels 1959, Vol. 19, pp.
21, 18). This statement, marking the limitations
on realizing justice in differing forms of society,
recognizes moral progress from the lower (class
divided societies) to the higher (communism).
Lenin provides a straightforward realist reading
of the Gotha Program (Marx and Engels 1962,
tribution and need in Anti-Da/hring and Critique
of the Gotha Program (Marx and Engels 1962,
Vol. 2, pp. 22-4).
Written just before the October Revolution,
Lenin's "Can the Bolsheviks Retain State
Power?" strikingly affirmed a Marxian concep-
tion of justice. Peshekhonev, a government
minister, had opposed such Bolshevik programs
as those for shorter hours of work, nationaliza-
tion of factories, and an end to the supression of
national minorities in order to maintain Russian
participation in World War I. Yet he acknowl-
edged the justice of Bolshevik demands: "They
are the claims of the working people, the claims of
the cheated and oppressed nationalities. It is not
so easy, therefore, for the democracy to break
with the Bolsheviks, to reject these class demands,
primarily because in essence these demands are
just." Although Lenin stressed the economic and
political conditions that would make justice
realizable, he insisted on the revolutionary power
of such proletarian claims against opponents who
dismissed the efficacy of moral argument:
For him (Peshekhonev)'justice' is merely an
emptyphrase.For the massof semi-proletarians,
however,and for the majorityof the urbanand
ruralpetite bourgeoisie(as well as the workers)
who havebeen ruined,torturedand wornout by
the war, it is not an empty phrase, but almost
acute, most burning and immense question of
death from starvation,of a crust of bread....
Justiceis an emptywordsay the intellectualsand
those rascalswho are inclinedto proclaimthem-
selves Marxistson the lofty grounds that they
have contemplatedthe hind parts of economic
materialism(Lenin 1974, Vol. 26, pp. 128-30).
Lenin envisioned that the justice of Bolshevik
demands and specific historical circumstances
would lead to a broad revolutionary alliance of
workers and other oppressed classes. In stressing
the radical impact of ethical concepts, Lenin
recalled Marx's early remark: "Ideas become a
power when they grip the people." In a Marxian
social theory of revolution, such moral concepts
play an important explanatory role, and the
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343
political effectiveness of demands for justice and
equality stems from their truth.
Conclusion
As I have argued elsewhere, Marx's moral judg-
ments might cohere in a eudaimonist framework
of moral argument which focuses on the quality
of individual lives and the consequences of dif-
ferent social structures on a broadly conceived in-
dividual happiness (Gilbert 1981a). Here Marx
envisioned such intrinsic goods as political com-
munity, development of human productive
powers, friendship, and artistic achievement,
which composed an ideal picture of communist
social individuality. These goods were achieve-
ments of a historically developing human nature.
Human beings could realize some intrinsic goods
even in fundamentally exploitative societies, for
instance, the Greek political community, which
Marx admired despite its roots in slavery, the
solidarity of Roman slave revolt led by Spartacus,
or scientific discovery. For long periods of
history, however, Marx thought that human prog-
ress could not occur mainly through intrinsically
good activities. Yet such progress, bought at the
price of widespread suffering, laid the basis for
the ultimate possibility of communism. Marx
therefore extenuated such progress with a concep-
tion of merely instrumental goods and dis-
tinguished communist progress which fused in-
trinsic and instrumental goods from previously
alienated or mainly instrumental progress. Thus
he saw a socialist political community like the
Paris Commune as good in itself and as furthering
the emergence of communism. Despite his
acknowledgment of the productive achievements
of exploitative societies, Marx severely restricted
his extenuation of alienated progress. A rhetoric
of indictment resounds as the predominant moral
tone in Marx's analysis of early capitalist accumu-
lation and colonialism. Since in Marx's view
Greek political community or philosophy could
only arise at the cost of slavery and a mechanized
economy from capitalist exploitation, Marx never
reached any overall moral judgment of these
societies. In assessing them, however, he dis-
tinguishes between good and bad features: Greek
science was praiseworthy; slavery was not. In this
sense, Marx's sometimes exaggerated restraint in
the use of moral concepts reflects the character
and difficulty of the cases under examination, not
as Marx and Engels sometimes inclined to think,
the impossibility of objective moral assessment.
In general, moral conceptions not only lead to
evaluation but point to action. Even in these hard
cases, Marx's standards allow, semantically
speaking, a specification of moral conflicts, for
instance, between the progress of science and
344 The AmericanPoliticalScience Review
egalitarianism, and counsel action to create in the
long run a society that no longer necessitates such
conflicts (Miller 1978). At the point when his-
torically socialism becomes possible, Marx ad-
mired the main features of a revolutionary
political movement and working class political
community. At this point, already characteristic
of the time when Marx wrote, standards of intrin-
sic goods, previously subordinate or merely nega-
tive (exhibited mainly in Marx's condemnation of
their denial), became primary. Given the par-
ticular difficulties of the concepts of justice and
equality, Marx confined himself even in the first
phase of communism to specifying how the socie-
ty is mainly just by abolishing exploitation and
secondarily unjust by failing to distribute accord-
ing to need. As Wood has suggested, equality dif-
fers from intrinsic goods such as political commu-
nity, freedom, and the realization of individual-
ity; equality, reformulated by Marx as the aboli-
tion of classes, is a means to secure these other
goods (1979, pp. 281-2).
The context of Marx's larger moral judgments
provides a new perspective on his concepts of
justice and equality. Such concepts always played
an important role in Marx's historical arguments;
he detested the exploitation of man by man and
regarded all class-divided societies before social-
ism as exploitative. Marx's own conception of ex-
ploitation served as a standard to indict the legal
and moral concepts generated by prevailing
modes of production. Even though Marx empha-
sized this aspect of social development, however,
his historical theory extenuates alien or merely in-
strumental forms of social progress. In effect, he
restrained his moral criticism for historical
periods in which he regarded alien development as
necessary or no revolutionary movement as pos-
sible (Gilbert 1979). Looking at Marx's overall
moral judgments in relation to his historical
theory, we can see a new reason, beyond his cri-
tique of moralism or his specific argument with
Proudhon, for his caution in using concepts of
justice, namely an objectively limited possibility
of overall moral judgment for several historical
epochs. This restraint accounts for the grain of
truth in Wood's emphasis on Marx's refusal to of-
fer a simple indictment of pre-socialist class socie-
ties. Wood's interpretation becomes exaggerated
only when he ignores the ever-present (even when
subordinated) hatred of exploitation and its con-
sequences which runs like the proverbial red
thread through Marx's historical argument.
Marx and Engels offered an ethical argument
closely linked to their historical or scientific argu-
ment. Their moral argument makes a specific con-
tribution in examining the problem of justice not
only from the point of view of explaining his-
torical controversies about justice but from the
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Vol. 76
point of view of assessing its truth. In analyzing
ideologies, Marx defended only the consequence-
dependence of moral principles-the notion that
in class societies, moral judgments, true or not,
would tend to serve specific classes-rather than
an origin-dependence, the conception that the
claims of moral argument to truth can simply be
debunked by pointing to their social or class
origin. In Marx, arguments on exploitation and
equality, like his conceptions of political com-
munity, freedom, friendship, and individuality,
are components of an ethical picture that is a con-
tender for moral truth. Such conceptions, as I
have argued elsewhere, also play an important
political role in the conflicts over the development
of the working-class movement and the mainte-
nance of socialism (Gilbert 1981a).
Many contemporary philosophers and social
scientists have imagined that an unbridgable gulf
must exist between descriptive historical theory
and prescriptive moral judgment and that con-
flicting moral arguments, for instance Ari-
stotelian and Marxian ones, must derive from ir-
reconcilable moral premises. This view ignores the
intertwining in any nonanalytic moral theory be-
tween social theory and moral judgment (Lyons
1977, pp. 128-9). To the degree that investigators
can agree on historical analysis, for instance that
no natural slavery exists, the scope of moral dis-
agreement is narrowed (Miller 1978).15 The fore-
going argument suggests that disagreements over
social theory and facts are often far more funda-
mental than the original moral disagreements or
perhaps even conceal original moral agreement.
Few would argue that abundance for a heedless
minority accompanied by starvation for many or
that the widespread denial of individual capacities
is morally desirable. To give a different example,
take those who would want to quarrel, given the
many dimensions of moral progress and possible
conflicts among them, with Marx's ethical vision
and psychological judgments about the possibility
of a flowering of human achievement and multi-
competent individuality under communism. If
these theorists concurred with Marx's social
theory, they would have to agree with many of
Marx's moral and political conclusions although
they might still conclude that social individuality
would prove less grand in its accomplishments
than Marx had hoped or value different types or
balances of activity than Marx did. These remain-
ing differences, however, seem far less striking
'Agreement about natural science may sometimes
play a similar role. Consider the effect on Aristotle's
argument of the modern astronomical observation that
there are no unchanging celestial beings who engage in
ceaseless contemplation. (Strauss 1965, p. 8).
1982 An Ambiguityin Marxand Engels
than the wide area of common agreement; pre-
sumably, once socialism had reached a certain
stage, empirical study could even resolve many of
these disagreements. Correspondingly, the most
powerful denial of Marx's vision would be a suc-
cessful defense of the functioning and conse-
quences of capitalism (as opposed to those of
socialism) coupled with at least roughly similar
moral premises.
Marx and Engels sometimes overstressed the
importance of their scientific theory at the ex-
pense of moral argument. Yet their scientific view
turns out to be the most debatable part of their
ethical argument. According to Marxian theory,
straightforward moral rationality-the idea that a
lucid exposition of moral concepts will persuade
all reasonable people-does not work; for exam-
ple, the most eloquent persuasion alone would not
get European, American, and Japanese banks and
corporations to stop investing in South African
apartheid. Clashing class interests as well as con-
flicting social theories prevent any easy ethical
agreement. Historical analysis and political stra-
tegy, not moral argument or philosophy as a
separate enterprise, play the primary role in Marx-
ian theory. Nonetheless, someone who holds a
realist interpretation of Marx's moral argument
should have no hesitancy about engaging in moral
as well as theoretical and political dialogue with
proponents of other points of view.
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