11.07.08
Marx’s rejection of abstract ethical idealism
A quote from Sidney Hook
As one example of the pitfalls of Marxism, here is a quote from redfortyeight.com from Sidney Hook’s (ancient) text, From Hegel to Marx. Marx’s rejection of abstract ethical idealism seems puzzling now, since it certainly did not, it seems, correctly analyze the situation. It led to a situation where a social movement wretchedly exploited the idealism of millions, when all the while behind the scenes ethical indifference lurked until it came forth with violent wrath, witness Lenin, and the slaughter of all the innocent Socialist Revolutionaries in the tide of Bolshevism. You have to ask why they did it that way, well, because of Marx’s place in the legacy of Hegelianism. To grasp this situation is hard and requires starting with the reactions to Kant’s ethical theories, followed by Fichte, then Hegel, and finally the influence of all that on Marx.
Strange to say, and ironically, the best rendition of socialist theory is Kantian Ethical Socialism as this appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, immediately exposing Marxist theory on the spot. Socialism in this form ought to be in the toolkit of every liberal as a benchmark.
Opposition to the excesses of rabid individualism, however, comes not only from social realists but even more often from ethical idealists. Indeed it is in this latter form that it is most vocal and emphatic. What age has not heard a cry for justice in the name of Christ, Kant or some other ethical prophet? When has not someone’s conscience, someone’s devotion to things invisible led to conflict with the social order? And yet both Hegel and Marx regarded abstract ethical idealism, whether it have its roots in Christ, Rousseau or Kant, as Utopian and unreasonable-as even more dangerous than any philosophy of social atomism. It involved the same denial of the priority of the group over the individual; the same acceptance of the natural rights, or conscience, ethics which lies at the basis of philo¬sophical anarchism. Because it endangered the stability of the state, Hegel stamped it as a revolutionary doctrine; because it hampered militant class activity, Marx condemned it as Incipiently counter-revolutionary.
This is the insanity at work. In the end those who cry for justice are taken out and shot.